Azerbaijan Now Has its Region’s Most Advanced Fighter Jets: Chinese JF-17 Block III Begins Deliveries

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was on September 25 presented with the first JF-17 Block III fighter aircraft ordered for his country’s air force, which arrived at Heydar Aliyev International Airport. The fighters were assembled at the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, with the complex’s chairman Vice Marshal Hakim Raza attending the ceremony and reporting on the aircraft’s specifications. “The JF-17C (Block-III) is a single-engine, multi-role combat aircraft designed for both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, boasting high manoeuvrability at low and medium altitudes and effective firepower,” he stated. Azerbaijan has long been reported to have shown a strong interest in the fighter class, which first flew in December 2019, with unconfirmed reports having stated that the country had <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/azerbaijan-jf17-bl3-j20-dna" target="_blank">already placed </a>a $1.6 billion order for the aircraft. This is expected to allow the country to acquire around 30 of the new fighters at a conservative estimate, and thus significantly expand its frontline combat fleet even if fully retiring its existing fleet of MiG-29s.&nbsp;<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2024/09/27/article_66f5f7ad0577c2_89218108.jpeg" title="Azerbaijani Air Force MiG-29" >The JF-17 Block III provides Azerbaijan with a significantly more advanced fighter class than those deployed by neighbouring states. The fleets of Iran and Turkey rely on early fourth generation fighter classes such as the F-16 Block 52 and MiG-29A to form their most capable units, with these using obsolete mechanically scanned array radars and 20th century air to air missile classes. Armenia and Russia deploy more modern ‘4+ generation’ fighters such as the Su-30SM with phased array radars, but the missile classes available to them are significantly far less sophisticated than the visual ranged PL-10 and beyond visual range PL-15 used by the JF-17 Block III. In addition, the Chinese fighter class boasts an active electronically scanned array radar, where Russian built fourth generation fighters all use passive electronically scanned array radars – an older technology. The JF-17 Block III’s airframe is also thought to make use of more modern composite materials. Only the Russian Su-57 fighter, of which just a single regiment is in service, can be considered technologically a near peer fighter to Azerbaijan’s new aircraft.&nbsp;<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2024/09/27/article_66f5f792a0e153_84034436.jpeg" title="JF-17 Block 3">Despite its advantages, the JF-17 Block III is far from capable of comfortably overpowering the fighters of neighbouring states – such as Armenia’s fleet of Su-30SMs. While the JF-17 Block III is more sophisticated, its low cost is primarily due to the fact that it is one of the smallest fighters in the world, and comes from a ‘very light’ weight range much like the Swedish Gripen. Thus although its radar is advanced, it is one of the smallest carried by any fighter and just a little over one tenth the size of the radars carried by heavyweight fighters like the Su-30SM, ensuring that the Chinese jet’s situational awareness will be more limited. The JF-17’s flight performance, including its operational altitude, climb rate and manoeuvrability, are also relatively modest. Should the two go against each other, the JF-17 Block III’s primary advantage would be the vast superiority of its air to air missiles, with the PL-15 carrying a more powerful sensor than the American AIM-120 or Russian R-77 and boasting a longer range, while the PL-10 is able to engage at much more extreme angles. Iranian and Turkish fighters notably entirely lack helmet mounted sights needed for high off boresight targeting, while Russian and Armenian fighters had a less advanced version of this technology.<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2024/09/27/article_66f5f7e447c967_45068501.jpg" title="Armenian Air Force Su-30SM Fighters"> The JF-17 Block III’s lifetime operational costs and maintenance requirements are a small fraction of those of large fighters like the Su-30SM, and as a result it is highly affordable to give a large pool of pilots a high number of annual flying hours, and to acquire the aircraft at scale. The fighter is particularly attractive for providing truly state of the art capabilities with world leading avionics and weaponry for a very low cost, which is expected to guarantee it continued export successes to a far greater scale than the less remarkable previous iterations of the JF-17 design.&nbsp;Although developed in China, the aircraft is produced exclusively for export both domestically and in Pakistan, with the Pakistan Air Force being its primary client. The aircraft has allowed Pakistan to modernise the previously obsolete bulk of its fighter fleet without making sharp contractions to its size, retiring older Mirage III, Mirage 5 and J-7 fighters.&nbsp;