Chinese Fighter Aircraft

The system is pinyin initials by mission: J (Jiān, 歼 — "annihilate") for fighters, H (Hōng, 轰) for bombers, Q (Qiáng, 强) for attack, JH for fighter-bombers and JL (Jiàoliàn, 教练) for trainers, numbered in rough sequence. Export versions are relabelled in English — the J-7 sells as the F-7, the Q-5 as the A-5, and the Pakistani JF-17 is the FC-1 Xiaolong at home. NATO reporting names follow the Soviet convention: inherited names for the licensed MiGs (Fresco, Farmer), new F-words for indigenous types (Finback, Flounder).

One lane per line of work, one dot per type entering service — the 2024 demonstrators sit at first flight. Three eras read clearly: Soviet licenses until the Sino-Soviet split, a long march of reverse-engineering through the embargo decades, then the acceleration — a fourth generation in 1998, stealth in 2017, and tailless sixth-generation demonstrators flying by 2024, ahead of anything equivalent in the West.

The PLAAF was born Soviet: the J-5 was a licensed MiG-17, the J-6 a licensed MiG-19 built in the thousands. When the Sino-Soviet split cut off the blueprints mid-transfer, China spent a decade reverse-engineering the MiG-21 into the J-7 — then kept building it until 2013, long after its parent retired. The J-8, an enlarged twin-engine delta, was the first attempt to grow beyond the MiG lineage with domestic design.

Modern Chinese air power stands on two legs. The indigenous leg is the J-10, a canard delta often linked to Israel's cancelled Lavi, now in its third major version. The other leg is the Flanker: Su-27s assembled under license as the J-11, continued without a license as the J-11B, matured into the J-16 strike fighter — and taken to sea as the J-15, developed from an unfinished Su-33 prototype bought from Ukraine.

The J-20 made China the second country to field a stealth fighter in numbers, and its fleet now counts in the hundreds. The carrier-capable J-35 followed into service in 2025, giving the navy its stealth wing. Then, in December 2024, two tailless demonstrators — known provisionally as J-36 and J-50 — flew within a day of each other: the first sixth-generation airframes flying anywhere.

The H-6 is the persistence story: a Tu-16 licensed in 1957 and assembled in Harbin from 1959, re-engined and rebuilt into a cruise-missile and ballistic-missile carrier that is still in production seven decades after its parent first flew. Below it, the Q-5 turned the MiG-19 into an attack jet and the JH-7 carried the navy's anti-ship punch. The export leg runs through Pakistan: the JL-8 trainer and the JF-17 — designed jointly, built in Kamra, and the backbone of the Pakistani fleet.