Chinese AVIC speeds up J-20 stealth fighter production after WS-10 domestic engine adoption.

According to Liu Xuanzun in Global Times, the maker of the J-20, China's most advanced stealth fighter jet, revealed that it recently broke records in terms of aircraft delivery due to high demand, with experts saying on December 12 that the J-20 has entered a mass production phase after it solved the last missing piece of the puzzle, the domestically developed WS-10 engine.

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Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters (Picture source: Wikipedia)

Since the start of the fourth quarter, Chengdu Aircraft Industrial Group Co Ltd under the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China has been facing challenging research and development, production and delivery missions, as multiple users were waiting to receive delivery of many aircraft, the company said in a statement released over the weekend on its social media account. In this period, the company completed several key test flight missions, and indexes related to aircraft delivery have broken record highs, the statement said.

The switch to domestically-made WS-10 engines from imported ones has made mass production possible, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military aviation expert, told Global Times, noting that other systems on the J-20, including the avionics system, radar system and weapons systems, were already domestically developed. Now that there is no limitation caused by the import of engines, and the homemade WS-10 engine has been tested on other aircraft like the J-10, J-11 and J-16, the J-20 is in a position to start mass production, Fu said.

"In a short time, we will be able to see J-20s operated by all eastern, southern, western, northern and central theater commands, and become the main force to safeguard China's sovereignty and territorial airspace security," Fu predicted. For the next step, the J-20 will continue to evolve, for example, by switching to using more advanced engines, Fu said.

The Chengdu J-20, also known as Mighty Dragon, is a single-seat, twinjet, all-weather, stealth, fighter aircraft developed by China's Chengdu Aerospace Corporation for the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The J-20 is designed as an air superiority fighter with precision strike capability; it descends from the J-XX program of the 1990s. The J-20 made its maiden flight on 11 January 2011 and was officially revealed at the 2016 China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition. The aircraft entered service in March 2017,] and began its combat training phase in September 2017. The first J-20 combat unit was formed in February 2018. The J-20 is the world's third operational fifth-generation stealth fighter aircraft after the F-22 and F-35.