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According to US and Chinese social media reports, online video showing a Chinese jet crashing over the weekend reveals that the Chinese air force is receiving flight training from Russian instructors.
Russian military assistance was demonstrated after a two-seat JL-10 supersonic jet trainer crashed on Saturday. Local residents recorded the crash scene and the pilots and posted the footage online.
The two pilots were shown in a field with minimal injury shortly after ejection from the JL-10. A pilot wearing a Chinese air force uniform spoke to his commander in Chinese on his cell phone. The co-pilot was a red-haired Caucasian with an English accent.
“Don’t do that,” the foreign pilot said to a villager using a video camera.
Chinese social media described the man as a Russian flight instructor.
The JL-10 trainer is a China-based jet based on the Russian Yak-130 trainer and began flying in China in 2019.
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The use of Russian flight instructors is not unusual for the training of pilots on aircraft designed by Moscow. However, the employment of non-Chinese pilot instructors is considered a Chinese military secret. Analysts say the People’s Liberation Army insists its military forces are self-sufficient and do not rely on foreign training.
A Chinese dissident source said Russian flight instructors had been training Chinese pilots on the JL-10 for at least a year. Russian military instructors also trained Chinese pilots to land on an aircraft carrier.
In the phone call in the video, the Chinese pilot can be heard telling a military commissioner that he suspects he broke his leg in the accident. The images were first posted on Chinese social media platform Weibo and reposted on Twitter.
Several videos of the accident scene were released. One showed the JL-10 flying overhead, another showed a large cloud of black smoke and debris from the crash site.
“Are you a member of the People’s Liberation Army?” he seems to be asking. The villager then pointed to the stranger and said, “Who is he?” he asked.
“This is our instructor,” replied the Chinese pilot. “Do not take pictures.” The video is over at that moment.
The location was reported on Twitter as Zhenligu county in Henan province, about 434 miles south of Beijing. Another jet crash occurred in Anhui province.
“Are these pilots doing a surrender exercise?” A Chinese Twitter user asked.
China’s Ministry of Defense announced in January that the first set of pilots has been trained at the Shijiazhuang Flight Academy in western Hubei province.
Derek Solen, a civilian analyst at the US Air Force China Institute for Aeronautics and Space Studies, said in a recent report that the JL-10 training will be used to prepare fighter pilots for the fifth-generation J-20 fighter jets. The J-20 is China’s most advanced fighter aircraft. The Pentagon said it was developed and manufactured with technology stolen from US F-35 and F-22 jets.
The Air Force think tank report said Chinese flight instructors “performed poorly” and lost positions.
“while [PLA air force’s] The policy ensures that new flight instructors are relatively experienced pilots and that flight academies are closer to operational units and their real-world missions, while flight academies seek to provide opportunities for existing flight instructors to gain the experience and skills they have. We should have new colleagues,” he said.
The report made no mention of foreign flight instructors used in the PLA air force.
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