The People's Liberation Army Air Force

China’s air force is rapidly modernizing, with advanced fighters, long-range missiles, and a growing drone fleet. But can the PLAAF truly challenge the USAF in a future conflict?

Flag of the PLAAF

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is the world’s second-largest air force, boasting over 3,700 aircraft and 430,000 personnel. Beyond its fighter fleet, it commands a vast array of ground-based air defense systems, some of the world’s most advanced long-range air-to-air missiles, and an expanding UAV arsenal. Over the past two decades, the PLAAF has evolved from a Soviet-style force, focused on defending Chinese airspace, into a modern air power capable of projecting strength beyond its borders. More than just an extension of national defense, China’s air force is now a central pillar of its strategy to deter U.S. intervention in the Taiwan Strait. Xi Jinping’s ambitions for Taiwan rest on having a large, competitive, and combat-ready air force. Without it, military success remains doubtful.

China is rapidly expanding its air force, becoming one of only three nations capable of designing and producing its own fifth-generation fighters and it has already flown sixth-generation prototypes. However, despite fielding thousands of fighter jets, the PLAAF remains constrained by limited strategic lift, airborne early warning and control (AWACS), and air-to-air refueling capabilities, the core enablers of sustained air operations. While these gaps may not hinder China in a short conflict, they would pose a serious challenge in prolonged air campaigns over Taiwan or the wider Western Pacific. Recognizing this, the PLAAF is actively closing these gaps as part of its broader Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy. With a growing arsenal of long-range missiles, stealth fighters, and strike capabilities, it aims to not only neutralize U.S. aircraft but also threaten U.S. Navy vessels and regional bases, raising the cost of intervention in any future conflict.

China’s military leadership views 2027 as a critical deadline for the PLAAF to achieve full-spectrum modern capabilities - one that will determine whether it can credibly deter or defeat U.S. intervention. The urgency is compounded by Washington’s renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific under President Donald Trump, escalating the race between the U.S. and China for dominance in the region. The US faces costly upgrades to its air fleet and uncertainty about whether it can produce enough munitions to remain in a fight for months on end. If the PLAAF can bridge its remaining gaps in airpower, Beijing will gain far greater leverage over Taiwan’s future - and over America’s strategic calculus in the Pacific.

A Chinese MiG-15 Fighter jet flown by the PLAAF in the Korean War.

From a Soviet Clone to a Peer Competitor: The PLAAF’s Evolution

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force was formed on November 11, 1949. Throughout the Chinese Civil War, in which Mao Zedong’s People's Liberation Army was ultimately victorious, the communists had limited access to air power, only gaining US-made aircraft from the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek by capturing them on the ground or through defections. In the Defense of Yan’an (1947), the PLA demonstrated how they typically dealt with superior nationalist air power by using ground-based air defenses and guerrilla tactics (in this case, retreating from their revolutionary capital). Corruption, a lack of fuel, and coordination meant that the nationalists could never decisively use their air supremacy to counter communist offensives. The Soviet Union did supply some Il-10 ground-attack aircraft along with training and advisors in 1949, but air power was not crucial to the communist victory. China’s poverty, lack of domestic manufacturing capability, and the primacy of the army in both the victory and minds of senior communist leadership meant that developing a domestically produced air force was a secondary concern in the immediate aftermath of the war, but the outbreak of the Korean war and the delivery of more Soviet aircraft changed this and saw the rapid expansion of the PLAAF.

During the Korean War, the PLAAF’s primary mission was to provide air defense for PLA and Korean forces fighting the South Korean and US-led UN forces. Soviet assistance, in the form of more training and advanced MiG-15 jet fighters, led to the PLAAF claiming over 300 allied aircraft shot down, including F-86 Sabre, F-84, and F-80 jets. By the end of the Korean War, the PLAAF had around 3000 aircraft, and Chinese industry was constructing Soviet-designed aircraft under license. Post-war, ts mission continued to be air defense in support of the PLA, which received the majority of funding and was seen to be the key to eventually winning any war against an adversary, but the PLAAF did engage in skirmishes with the Republic of China’s air force over the Taiwan straits throughout the 1950s and 60s..

Even after the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, China continued to produce Soviet aircraft under license and although the PLAAF maintained thousands of aircraft, these gradually became less and less qualitatively comparable to Western aircraft. During the Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979, Deng Xiaoping refused to allow the PLAAF to engage in combat operations to avoid antagonizing the Soviets.

Following a series of reorganizations in the 2010s, since 2016, the PLAAF has been organized into a brigade structure. At the top of the hierarchy sits the PLAAF HQ (which reports to the Central Military Commission), to which five geographically distributed Theater Command Air Forces control seven to ten brigades. Each brigade has three to six fighter groups totaling 30 to 50 aircraft, so a brigade such as the 9th Fighter Brigade (the first unit to be equipped with J-20 fighters) would be akin to a USAF Wing.

A PLAAF J-20 fifth-generation stealth fighter.

Closing the gap with the US Air Force

The mainstay of the PLAAF 1,975-strong fighter force is 588 J10 single-engine multirole fighters, approximately equivalent to the F-16 jet flown by the US and many of its allies. In the US Air Force, Navy and Marines, the F-16 is gradually being replaced by variants of the F-35, a fifth-generation single-engine multirole stealth fighter capable of flying from Okinawa to Taipei on a combat mission without utilizing mid-air refueling. The PLAAF also flies 280 J-16, 205 J11, and 97 Sukhoi Su-30 fourth-generation jets and smaller numbers of older fighters, strike and multirole aircraft, as well as over 1000 training aircraft.

Hampered by the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is only producing small numbers of the Sukhoi Su-57 fifth-generation fighter, while other countries, such as the United Kingdom’s GCAP/Tempest jet, are still in the design process. Meanwhile, China is the only country besides the US producing sizeable numbers of fifth-generation fighters, producing roughly 120 J-20 multirole fighters annually, compared to 110 F-35s made by Lockheed Martin in 2024 after a disappointing 48 units in 2023.

Although technically a multirole fighter, the primary mission of the J20 is to establish air superiority, leaving strike missions on land and sea targets to other aircraft and ballistic missiles launched by the Peoples Liberation Army Rocket Force. While the J-20 is not a direct competitor to the F-35 it is supposedly faster but less stealthy, equipped with worse sensor and network capabilities. The first J-20s had either the Chinese WS-10B or Russian-made AL-31FM2/3 engines, which were inferior in thrust, efficiency, and reliability. While production numbers for the J-20 are higher than the F-35, both air forces are replacing older units with these newer fifth-generation aircraft, meaning the overall size of the PLAAF may not increase substantially over the coming decade as units will be equipped with older jets received J-20s (and older models of the J-20 are substituted for more advanced models). As the F-35 has been in production since 2011 and over 1000 F-35s have been delivered, even at an increased production rate for the J-20, it will take some years for the PLAAF to catch up in delivering its best fighter jets to most units. The J-20, like the J-10, is produced by the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, a subsidiary of state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the sixth-largest defense company in the world.

The J-20’s development has almost certainly been aided by Chinese industrial espionage, captured American technology (China acquired a downed F117 stealth jet from Serbia in 1999) and outright theft. Although the J-20 and F-35 look similar in appearance, the aesthetics of the jet are not the primary worry for the Americans (to some extent, jet aesthetics will continue to converge as aerodynamics limits differing styles for planes) but how the Chinese have stolen technology relating to engine treatments and engine heat reduction, the F-35’s fire-control array radar system and methods used by the turbine to cool gases, among other secrets that aid the F-35’s stealth capabilities. Beyond the J-20, China is developing additional stealth fighters. A second fifth-generation fighter, the J-35, is closer not just in name but role to the F-35, being a multirole aircraft. It has a naval variant designed for the PLA Navy. This has not yet entered frontline service with either the PLAAF or PLA Navy.

In December 2024, a new stealth aircraft was seen flying over populated areas in China, which has been termed the J-36, a sixth-generation fighter. These planes are optimized for even greater stealth, with better radar and targeting systems to deliver payloads at even greater distances and look more similar to a B-2 bomber than an F-16. This aircraft may be some years off entering frontline service, but if it can utilize greater stealth and “loyal wingman” or Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) controlled by the aircraft rather than pilots located back at bases, which is an ambition of sixth-generation developers, this will pose a fearsome threat to adversaries. Although the USAF has reportedly flown a demonstrator of its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) jet and the US Navy is working on the F/A-XX Program, given the secrecy and cost of these programs, China may be ahead in getting these vehicles into frontline units. While cost estimates for the J-36 are not yet available, the NGAD fighter is expected to cost in the region of $250 million per plane, a staggering upfront cost that implies considerable maintenance costs.

A J-36 sixth generation fighter jet, seen over Chengdu, Sichuan province.

China is one of the only three air forces to retain a strategic bomber force in the guise of 209 H6 bombers. Like the B-52 bomber still flown by the USAF, the H6 was first produced in the 1950s, being a copy of the Societ Tu-16, but has not been upgraded nearly as extensively as the B-52. The latest variant, HN-6, was introduced in 2019 and can carry DF-21D, used by the Peoples Liberation Army Rocket Force as an advanced anti-ship weapon. The prior variant, the HK-6, is capable of carrying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, making it a part of the Chinese nuclear triad, but with a combat range of less than half a B-52, the PLAAF’s limited air-to-air refueling and limited numbers make it one of the less critical components of the Chinese military. Many of the potential missions given to an H6 crew could be tasked to the PLARF instead of risking a crew, but their continued operation tracks the overall ambition of the Chinese military to give as many options to political leadership for delivering strikes as possible.

Its strategic airlift component is a small but steadily growing element of the PLAAF’s fleet. The Y-20 transport aircraft, which the Chinese Air Force has 67 (including air-to-air refueling variants), is comparable yet inferior to the USAF C-17 Globemaster with a Y-20 cargo capacity of 60 metric tons, less than the C-17. The USASF has more than three times the number of C-17s than the PLAAF’s Y-20s, and the PLAAF has no competitor to the massive C-5M Super Galaxy strategic airlift vehicles (with a 122 metric ton capacity) the USAF possesses. Although the number of aircraft and the total cargo capacity is far smaller than the USAF fleet, the Y-20 was only introduced in 2016. The PLAAF Airborne Corps, an airborne rapid reaction force that is technically under the administration of the PLAAF but reports directly to the Central Military Commision (which is why it has not been discussed in this post), would make use of these aircraft if they were to parachute into a combat zone. An upgraded version of the Y-20 was first seen in 2024, and the PLAAF is currently prioritizing acquiring specialized versions of the aircraft to enable more air-to-air refueling (YY-20) and Airborne Warning and Control System (KJ-3000) capabilities.

The PLAAF operates multiple AWACS aircraft. The KJ-3000 is its most advanced system, while the KJ-2000, KJ-500, and KJ-200 serve in supporting roles. A carrier-based variant, the KJ-600, operates from China's aircraft carriers. AWACS is vital to modern airspace battle management, and these planes are airborne nerve centers - spotting threats, directing fights, and keeping commanders plugged into the battlespace in real-time. Any air force involved in directing fighter jets in strike missions or maintaining air superiority requires AWACS to coordinate the battle effectively. Although the number of aircraft is approaching parity with the USAF, the PLAAF is inexperienced at doing this in real-life scenarios.

The PLAAF has operated UAVs since the 1950s, beginning with Soviet-made Lavochkin La-17 radio-controlled target drones. Modern UAVs are capable of doing much more than just operating as flying targets for pilots or missile defense units, and the PLAAF has kept pace with US efforts to develop unmanned combat and reconnaissance drones. Most Chinese UAVs were initially reverse-engineered from foreign designs. In the case of Wu Zhen 5, a reconnaissance drone developed in the 1980s, it was reverse-engineered from captured US AQM-34 Firebee drones in the Vietnam War, but the more advanced ASN-301 anti-radiation loitering munition (designed to attack enemy radar) was effectively directly copied from Israeli Harpy drone, which China acquired in 1994. The 2025 force includes the GJ-2 (Wing Loong II), a combat and reconnaissance drone akin to the MQ-9 Reaper, capable of launching munitions up to 480kg in weight. It has been reportedly used in combat in Libya (by the UAE), Nigeria, Sudan, and Pakistan. A more advanced model has been showcased at air shows within China, but exact numbers on how many of these drones the PLAAF are not publicly available. Other UAVs, like the WZ-7 (Soaring Dragon) and BZK-005 (Giant Eagle), are primarily reconnaissance drones, that have been used to observe Taiwanese units. The PLAAF has also been working on uncrewed combat air vehicles (UCAV) designed to fly independently of ground-based pilots or linked to sixth-generation fighters, which the USAF abandoned in the early 2010s to focus on Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

As its mission is to safeguard Chinese airspace, the PLAAF is responsible for most of the PLA’s ground-based air defense, a system similar to the Russian military but unlike the US military, who delegates most of its air defense requirements to the US Army. To achieve this mission, the PLAAF is equipped with various missile defense systems, including radar, transportation, and interceptor missiles. The longest-ranged, capable of covering across the Taiwan Strait and the western portion of the island itself, is the HQ-9, first developed in the 1980s. The PLAAF has at least 260 HQ-9 launchers. With a slightly shorter range but domestically developed, the PLAAF operates at least 130 HQ-22 launchers, comparable to the US Patriot Missile System used by American allies in the Pacific. As the world has seen in Ukraine, GBAD systems are vital to defend against adversary's missile and air attacks. In a conflict, the PLAAF would task its GBAD systems to throw up a shield under which its own units can operate and blunt the effectiveness of enemy air power and missile attacks.

A HQ-9 ground-based mobile air defense system.

Training, Corruption, and Inexperience: The PLAAF’s Biggest Weaknesses

Like all the other elements of the Chinese military, the PLAAF has not fought a war for decades. No amount of training can adequately compensate for the institutional knowledge and personal experience that fighting and conducting operations for real can bring. China’s private aviation sector is limited, so pilots have to be trained to fly with usually no prior experience. Chinese pilots take four years to graduate from one of three training academies and then spend a further year of advanced combat training when they are assigned to a squadron. With minimal use of simulators, students are reliant on JL-10 training aircraft, which do not fully prepare them for the more advanced J-20 fighters the PLAAF is hoping to equip the majority of its air force with by the 2030s. Chinese pilots are not exempted from political education and oversight all Chinese military personnel have to participate in, exchanging valuable training or relaxation time for learning about the intricacies of Xi Jinping thought, an experience that will not change as long as the Chinese Communist Party rules China,

Chinese flight academies graduate about 400 pilots a year, whereas the USAF produces 1350 annually after only a two-year training program. The bottleneck in pilot graduation will continue to be an issue, even as some PLAAF academies attempt to cut the four-year program to three. China has hired former Western military pilots to help train the PLAAF in advanced techniques and to glean more information about how Western militaries operate, but this practice has been noticed, and individuals participating in these schemes face severe criminal sanctions for doing so. Having attempted to do this suggests the PLAAF's confidence in its own training regimes and pilots is deficient. China is not allowed to participate in Western bilateral or multilateral international exercises, so exercises primarily take place with the Russian air force. The PLAAF has been able to exercise in the past with the Pakistani, Turkish and Thai air forces, but these exercises require US permission to go ahead.

Corruption is pervasive within China, and the PLAAF is no different. Stories involving corruption leading to PLA Rocket Force missiles being filled with water instead of fuel were nonsensical, but siphoning aircraft fuel to cook hotpot is more plausible. Senior PLAAF officers have been removed (Ding Laihang, a former commander of the PLAAF) on corruption allegations, as have members of the Chinese aviation industry. Tan Ruisong, the former chairman of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which manufactures J-20 fighters, was accused of taking enormous bribes and sexual misconduct.

Can the PLAAF Fight and Win?

The immense resources poured into the PLAAF have one overriding objective - to constitute a force capable of defeating the US Air Force in a fight between China and a US ally or Taiwan, which the US currently gives an implicit guarantee. In this hypothetical engagement, it is not just the forces of the PLAAF who would be fighting the USAF, and the USAF would not be the only force that could disrupt Chinese operations. Just as the PLA Navy would be able to shoot down USAF jets using naval surface-to-air missiles, US submarines could launch cruise missiles aimed at Chinese radar or command and control systems. While the PLA Rocket Force has built up a sizeable arsenal of ballistic missiles to destroy air defenses, radars and runways in Taiwan, the PLAAF would have to keep the USAF not only out of the airspace around Taiwan in the event of a conflict but also defend installations closer to US bases in South Korea and Japan.

If the US and China went to war over Taiwan, South Korea and Japan would likely allow the Seventh (South Korea) and Fifth (Japan) US air forces to operate from bases there, which China could not attack unless it was willing to risk war with those countries in addition to Taiwan and the US. In addition to the roughly 700 fourth- and fifth-generation fighters that South Korea and Japan possess, this would also bring in these American allies' naval and land forces. Although China could destroy these air bases and significant amounts of US personnel and equipment, it would almost certainly mean that the US would feel free to operate from Taiwan itself and send troops to defend the island from an imminent invasion. The US can swiftly relocate F-35, F-16 and other air assets to the Western Pacific, meaning that although the strength of the USAF Pacific is currently only a few hundred fighter jets, this could very quickly (within days) become a force of over 1000 fighters, with B2 stealth bombers available for strikes on targets within China. Chinese leaders may decide that an air war with the U.S. is preferable to attacking U.S. bases in Japan, South Korea, or Guam. If so, the PLAAF would need to be far better equipped than it is today.

An air war is not just about the number of fighters an air force possesses. The PLAAF would not be fighting a war isolated from other elements of the Chinese military, but it is a part of a broader force designed to achieve tactical and strategic objectives. Its mission in a conflict is to deliver “kill chains” (detecting, identifying, tracking, engaging, and destroying a target) from the air, and to disrupt the kill chains of the enemy.

It does have advantages over the US - its own munitions production is far faster and cheaper than the US (currently, the US will run out of munitions within weeks), it has a sophisticated and considerable force of ballistic missiles to destroy Taiwanese defenses, and a far shorter distance from which to fight. The US and its production problems with producing munitions for its air, sea, and land forces face far higher purchase and upkeep costs for its aircraft. As previously mentioned, with an approximate upfront cost of $300 million for an NGAD jet (this may be an underestimate), the USAF may find itself stretched thin to afford the 200 sixth-generation fighters it thinks it would need it would need to maintain supremacy over the PLAAF.

A computer-generated image of what the USAF NGAD may look like.

This expensive problem is made worse as the US air-to-air refueling fleet is increasingly old and in need of replacement. The mainstay of the fleet, the KC-135 Stratotanker, was first introduced in the 1960s, and although the KC-46A Pegasus is gradually replacing it, the unit cost is $287 million. To replace the whole fleet with KC-46A Pegasus would cost in the region of $51 billion. The US also needs to replace its E-3 Sentry AWCAS aircraft, which have an average age of 45 years, with 28 Boeing E-7A Wedgetail planes, which currently cost over $1.2 billion for each aircraft. Due to cheaper labor, energy, materials, and industrial espionage, Chinese production costs are very likely lower than those of comparable US aircraft, although this can’t be confirmed as Chinese military spending data is not as readily publicly available as US procurement programs.

Furthermore, Chinese air-to-air missiles, specifically the PL-15 and PL-17, (which has a range of 400km, meaning aircraft flying 80km from the Chinese coast could therefore shoot down planes over Seoul). The PL-17 has been in service since 2022, and the US has only introduced the comparable AIM-174B in 2024. The US is hoping to expand its missile production (for all parts of the military), recently awarding a $3.5 billion contract to Lockheed Martin to produce more extreme-range missiles, but this pricey contract will only increase production by 380 missiles a year. China can make more, at a lower cost.

If the US wants to deter China even as it grows its air force, it needs to take advantage of cost asymmetries and make the PLAAF face the same difficulties it would face in conducting air attacks in China. This would require equipping allies with more advanced GBAD. Taiwan must purchase far more air defenses to blunt attacks from the PLA Rocket and Air Forces. The PLAAF will likely use its growing arsenal of drones for diversionary or speculative attacks to whittle down the number of interceptor missiles, so US or allied laser defense systems should be made available to the Taiwanese military. The USAF faces stark choices on where to direct its resources best, and for the first time since the end of the Cold War, is facing an industrial and military competitor who can outproduce and potentially outspend it.

Conclusion: The U.S. Still Has the Advantage - For Now

China’s willingness to invest significantly in its military capabilities is unlikely to cease. Although the PLAAF may be lagging in deploying its most advanced units compared to the PLARF and PLAN, China’s massive production capability will mean it can continue to deliver advanced jets and drones. Even if these are not as qualitatively good as US-made aircraft at the fifth generation, by building more sixth-generation fighters, investing in CCA and UCAV, and developing better coordination with other PLA units, the PLAAF will be in a good position to challenge the US. Once these objectives are achieved, the PLAAF may turn to compete with the USAF’s global reach. Although the PLAAF may miss Xi Jinping’s 2027 deadline of delivering a first-rate military, with enough time to deliver hundreds of J-20 and more advanced planes, plus a more robust air defense network, will mean the PLAAF is able to defend Chinese airspace against the US, replace losses in combat and pose a significant threat to the ability of the USAF to disrupt and defeat a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.