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PLA Air Force denies
news of advanced fighter crash
By J. Michael Cole / Staff Reporter
The Peopleˇ¦s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) on Sunday denied rumors that one
of its experimental fighter aircraft had crashed during a test flight in Shaanxi
Province after Hong Kong and Taiwanese media reported the news.
The reports said that an all-weather, single engine J-10B -multirole fighter
aircraft had crashed at the China Flight Test Establishment in Xianyang, Xi-an,
adding that the pilot was killed in the accident as he attempted to save the
aircraft.
Chinese officials said no aircraft had crashed and that no pilot had been
killed, calling the story pure fabrication and adding that the rumor had been
traced back to the personal blog of a worker in Beijing, the Peopleˇ¦s Daily said
yesterday.
The Global Times said the allegations first emerged in a sina.com microblog post
on Friday and had been picked up by the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao, which ran a
story on Saturday. The report was widely circulated and was eventually picked up
by Taiwanese media, the PLAAF said.
The State Internet Information Office, which was set up in May, has ordered that
the individual who first published the ˇ§fakeˇ¨ news and the Web site that carried
it be punished according to the law, PLAAF officials were quoted as saying.
Despite modest improvements in recent years, the Chinese military continues to
face accusations of a lack of transparency. Given the stateˇ¦s tight grip on
-information, news of accidents involving the military rarely gets reported by
official Chinese media.
The J-10B is a variant of the J-10 multirole fighter aircraft designed and
produced by Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corp. A J-10B prototype reportedly made
its maiden flight in December 2008, with photos beginning to emerge on Chinese
Web sites in March 2009. The J-10B, which has an improved airframe, avionics and
sensors, is expected to become the standard for later J-10 productions.
Military experts have said that the J-10B would remain superior to Taiwanˇ¦s
F-16A/Bs, even after the 145 aircraft are upgraded as part of a US$5.3 billion
package announced by Washington last month.
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