HMM: At Long Last, China’s J-20 Jet Has a New Engine.

At the Zhuhai airshow in China this week, China showed off its J-20 jet, known as the “Mighty Dragon.” According to a report by Eurasian Times, the fighter jets sported a Chinese-made WS-10C engine.

This is significant, the report said, because of what it says about China’s ability to make its own parts. Until now, the only countries on the UN Security Council that produce “capable and reliable” jet engines were the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.

“This indicates a high degree of confidence among the country’s aerospace engineering community and the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). WS-10C is part of their concerted effort to initiate a clean break from Russian power plants,” the report said. “Jet engines are an area where even the reverse-engineering expert Chinese have not been able to master, baring the sheer complexity and sophistication of the technology that countries guard so fanatically.”

The South China Morning Post had reported back in January that Chinese engineers had been “directed to modify the engine on the J-20 until it matches America’s F-22 Raptor.”

But have they? China’s rocket engineering has come a long way in a very short time, but not even the Soviets/Russians were able to build a jet engine to western spec.