Elite Air Unit Guarding Beijing Coverts From J-11B to Advanced J-20 Stealth Fighters

New footage of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army 19th Air Brigade has indicted that a long anticipated conversion is currently underway to replace J-11B fighters with new J-20A fifth generation fighters, which will facilitate a major improvement for the unit’s combat potential. The brigade is based at Zhangjiakou Airbase in Hebei Province, which is one of the closest facilities to the Chinese capital Beijing. J-20s have been deployed near the capital in the past, with the 172nd Air Brigade based at the Cangzhou Flight Training Base, also in Hebei, having transitioned to the J-20 in February 2018. The J-20 is currently in production on an expanded scale estimated of 100-120 airframes per year, meaning it is being procured in over twice the numbers by China’s air force than any other fighter class in the world is by any single service. The aircraft is a direct successor to the J-11B, with both being heavyweight twin engine fighters with long ranges, large radars, high manoeuvrability, and airframes optimised for air-to-air combat.

The 19th Air Brigade transitioned to the J-11B from the baseline J-11 in 2015-2016, with its base at Zhangjiakou considered a high priority location due to its proximity both to Beijing and to surrounding industrial areas. As a direct successor to the J-11, the J-20 has replaced the aircraft across multiple units, including in the 1st Air Brigade based in Anshan, and in the 111th Air Brigade at Dazu. In 2022 the J-20 also replaced the J-11B as fighter escort for highly symbolic repatriations of fallen Chinese personnel from South Korea. The J-11B notably saw some overlap in production with the J-20, with production having ended in 2018 three years after J-20 production begun. Although being phased out of higher priority locations, J-11Bs have continued to be modernised with fifth generation avionics, including AESA radars, under the J-11BG program, and have been reallocated to lower priority units and facilities in China. New avionics allow the fighters to share data seamlessly with the J-20 and the ‘4+ generation’ J-16 and J-10C fighters, and to use the same armaments including PL-15 air-to-air missiles.

The J-11B first entered service in 2009 as a significantly enhanced derivative of the Soviet Su-27 fighter that was previously produced in China under license. In his recent book on the J-20 program, expert on Chinese fighter aviation Abraham Abrams referred to the J-11B’s superseding of Russian fighters as the product of “advances in satellite communications and navigation, semiconductors, composite materials, missile engines, display screens and a wide range of other areas,” assessing that some of the most significant improvements included use of the indigenous Type 1493 multimode pulse Doppler radar, a stronger but 700kg-lighter airframe resulting from a modified structure, and much greater use of composite materials. The aircraft have been succeeded on production lines in Shenyang by the more modern J-16, which is widely considered the world’s most capable pre-fifth generation fighter, and of which over 370 are estimated to be in service. J-11Bs initially relied on Russian-sourced AL-31 engines, but in January 2022 were confirmed to have begun replacing them with indigenous WS-10B turbofans.The J-20 similarly phased out Russian AL-31FM2 engines in 2020, with units delivered from 2021 using the indigenous WS-10C. The WS-10 would similarly phase out the AL-31 on Chinese J-10 single engine fighters form 2018.

The J-11B served as a key stepping stone towards the development of fourth generation fighters with much greater performances as China’s tech sector raised its global standing, with its derivatives including the J-16 and carrier based J-15B remaining in production today. A notable difference between the J-11 and its direct successor the J-20, however, is that the former was one of multiple fourth generation fighter classes procured by China’s air force and navy simultaneously, while the latter is being procured on a much larger scale as the only fighter class of its generation to enter service so far. The future of both the J-20 program, and of the fourth generation fleet, were brought into serious question in December 2024 as China was confirmed to have brought two separate sixth generation fighters to flight demonstrator stages, with one of these expected to succeed the J-20 around the year 2030 much as the J-20 had succeeded the J-11 before it.