The coming year will offer more glimpses of People's Liberation Army Air Force programmes, with an emphasis on advanced capabilities. While the Chengdu J-20 made a confident appearance at Airshow China in Zhuhai in late 2018, with four examples appearing in the flying display, the story of this aircraft is far from over. The examples flying at the show were likely powered by Russia's Saturn AL-31 engine, but the type's future power will come from the Shenyang WS-15. Although this has been in development for years, underlining Beijing's challenges with engines, there are signs of growing confidence. That confidence was on display at Zhuhai, where state manufacturer AVIC surprised the industry by flying a J-10B powered by the local WS-10 fitted with a thrust vectoring control (TVC). The aircraft put on an impressive display, with TVC enabling high angles of attack and impressive manoeuvres such as the falling leaf. Only a handful of elite aircraft use TVC, including the Lockheed Martin F-22 and Sukhoi's Su-30MKI and Su-35.
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