Barely a few weeks after the tense four-day military stand-off between India and Pakistan following the dastardy Pahalgam terror attack, reports emerge that Pakistan's plan to procure the highly advanced fifth-generation fighter jets from China has just been expedited.
Pakistan is set to get the Shenyang FC-31 ‘Gyrfalcon', the export variant of J-35A, which will be equipped with PL-17 air-to-air missile (AAM), in a few months, if reports are to be believed.
The fighter jets “will begin arriving within months,” Janes quoted an unidentified senior Pakistani official as saying.
Pakistani pilots are already training in China—the biggest arms supplier to Islamabad— to operate the FC-31. While there is little information available yet on the tactical and technical data regarding the stealth aircraft, it is expected to have as many as six internal suspension points for missiles, precision weapons, and bombs, besides the external suspension points. The PL-17 fitted onto the aircraft is expected to have a range of 400 km.
Designed for air superiority, air interdiction, and precision strikes, FC-31—which China positions as a counter to US-made fifth-gen fighter F-35— reportedly incorporates edge-aligned control surfaces, serpentine engine inlets, sawtooth-edged compartment doors, and radar-absorbent materials or enhanced stealth.
Earlier, Pakistani Air Chief Marshal Zaheer Ahmed Baber Sidhu had said, “the foundation for acquiring the J-31 stealth fighter aircraft has already been laid.”
The acquisition of the fighter jets by Pakistan is seen as a move to bridge the air superiority capability gap with India, whose indigenous fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) is expected to take at least a decade to be fully inducted.