Overview

Continuing the story of the Shenyang – later Chengdu - F-7 and FT-7 family of jet fighters aircraft made in the People's Republic of China, the Volume 2 is telling the story of major improvements in their equipment, and commercial success over the decades. The rapprochement with the West and the integration of Western avionics into the Soviet airframe did not make the J/F-7 a very advanced combat aircraft, but it increased its combat value to such an extent that it became an export hit. More importantly, the Chinese thus not only gained access to Western technologies – including air-to-air missiles – and copied it, but this formed the basis for in-house developments of modern equipment and weapons systems. When cooperation with the West came to an abrupt end after the Tian'anmen massacre of 1989, Chinese engineers and scientists have accumulated enough know-how to provide their own impetus in the further development of the J/F-7 family. Thanks to the combination of new aerodynamics and modern avionics, true multi-role combat aircraft were finally created, which today still spearhead their air forces in numerous countries in Asia and Africa. When the production of the J/F-7 finally ended, in 2016, two generations of modern fighters based on this design were coming off the production line in China, and the prototypes of the fifth generation were already flying. It is not least the experience gained by China's aerospace industry in developing the J/F-7 from a day fighter to a multi-role fighter that has made this success possible. Volume 2 is providing both a detailed description of equipment and avionics installed into every single variant and sub-variant of the J-7/F-7/FT-7 family and a detailed account of their operational use by more than a dozen of countries on five continents. AUTHOR: Born in 1968 in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), Holger Müller was always an aviation enthusiast since his childhood. He completed his military service in the GDR Air Force from 1988 to 1990 as a technician specialising in MiG-21s. Since then, this subject has never left him – as evidenced by numerous related articles and books he has published. Müller has travelled to more than 20 user countries of the MiG-21 and J/F-7s fighters and the mass of his publications about this prolific family, is based on his own research and photographic material.

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9781804519110

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