China continues to depend on Ukrainian aero engines
Reuben F Johnson, Zaporozhye - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
10 December 2015
The AVIC/GTE Minshan engine on display at the 2012 Air Show China exposition in Zhuhai. Note the oversized FADEC control unit. Source: R Johnson
Recent discussions with Ukrainian technicians indicate that China's aero-engine industry continues to depend on Ukrainian technology almost as much as it does on Russian propulsion systems.
Impressions of the state of China's aero-engine programmes among staff of the Ivchenko-Progress design bureau in Zaporozhye, southeastern Ukraine, are that Chinese efforts remain stymied by technological bottlenecks, despite public announcements and displays of "indigenous" engine designs.
In November 2012 the Gas Turbine Establishment (GTE) of China's state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) displayed its Minshan engine design at the Zhuhai-based Air Show China. AVIC and China Aerotechnology Import-Export Corporation (CATIC) officials held a press briefing in which they declared that this engine would be used in later models of the Hongdu Aviation L-15 jet trainer. Currently the aircraft is powered by a non-afterburning version of the AI-222-25 jet engine designed at the Ivchenko bureau and produced at the Motor Sich plant in Zaporozhye.
The combined enterprises of the Ivchenko-Progress design bureau represent one of the largest surviving aero-engine enterprises from the Soviet period. Ivchenko officials have told
IHS Jane's that due to several factors, including the advantages of being co-located, "these two companies represent what might be the only Soviet-era enterprise capable of designing and building a jet engine from scratch in a more or less standalone capacity".
The officials point out that comparable Russian enterprises, such as the Salyut plant in Moscow, are today only able to contemplate development of a next-generation engine in co-operation with other aero-engine enterprises. In the case of the Russian plan for the development of a fifth-generation fighter engine, Salyut has entered into a co-operative alliance with its main adversary: the Saturn-Lyulka production association. The new engine would replace the Saturn bureau's 117S engine that is currently installed in both the Sukhoi Su-35 and the T-50 Perspective Frontline Fighter (PFI) demonstrator aircraft.