China’s military has trimmed at least a year off its fighter pilot training programmes, with one US source predicting that the PLA will have “completely modernised” its pilot instruction system by the early 2030s.
The reduction in the pilot programme from at least four years to three comes as the People’s Liberation Army steps up combat readiness and overhauls its fighter fleet, adding more stealth J-20s and commissioning the J-35A, an upgraded version of the fifth-generation multirole fighter.
Training has been fast-tracked by the addition of the JL-10 trainer jet at China’s flight academies in recent years, allowing the older JL-8 to be phased out.
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The PLA Daily reported in June that the JL-8 officially retired from the Shijiazhuang Flight Academy’s fleet of training aircraft after over 20 years of service. The last group of pilot candidates to train on the JL-8 had finished their training in early summer at the academy, one of three under the PLA Air Force, the report said.
It marked the “full roll-out of the new flight talent development model” at the academy, where trainees would only require three years of flight training to qualify as fighter pilots for third-generation aircraft, the academy leadership was quoted in the report as saying.
The air force’s Harbin Flight Academy has also started training pilot candidates with the JL-10.
In the early 2010s, such training programmes took about seven years, a period that was shortened to a minimum of four years around 2020.
Other academies have been slower to adopt the JL-10 but it is possible that most of the PLA Air Force’s potential fighter pilots will complete their initial flight and transition training in three years by 2026, according to a report released by the US Air University’s China Aerospace Studies Institute last month.
The institute, which tracks the Chinese air force’s progress, estimated China trained about 400 pilots a year – a number that is increasing slowly.
By comparison, about 1,350 pilots graduate from US Air Force training programmes each year, a figure short of the US goal of between 1,800 and 2,000, report author Derek Solen was quoted in various reports as saying.
The institute’s report also said that initial flight training in the US Air Force could take up to two years.
The JL-10 went into service in the PLA Air Force in 2016. It is highly manoeuvrable and has most of the other features of third-generation aircraft, the PLA Daily report said.
Its use in the pilot programme enabled students to go directly from the CJ-6 basic trainer aircraft to advanced flight training on the JL-10, shortening their training by a year, state broadcaster CCTV reported in 2022. That is followed by advanced training and at least one year of instruction on a third-generation fighter.
Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper said the JL-10 had “extended the service time of pilots while reducing the need for aircraft transitions”.
The China Aerospace Studies Institute report also noted that the Chinese flight academies had taken a greater role in transition training for candidates using the J-10 and J-11 planes. In the past, training new pilots to fly and fight in fighters was mostly the responsibility of combat units.
It was likely that by the early 2030s, the PLA Air Force would have modernised its institutions, aircraft and programmes to train fighter pilots, the US report said, citing factors such as the pace of replacing its fighters.
As the PLA has accelerated its training programme, it is also speeding up the commissioning of J-20 advanced stealth fighter jets which were designed to rival America’s F-35s. Janes Information Services estimated that in mid-2024, around 195 of the aircraft were in service, with more than 70 introduced in the year to June alone.
The J-35A, the country’s newest stealth fighter, debuted at the Zhuhai air show last month, making China the second country in the world to operate two types of stealth fighter jets, which could have complementary roles in joint missions with the Chinese military’s J-20s.
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