ANALYSIS: Can China break the military aircraft engine bottleneck?
WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flightglobal.com
a day ago
By Richard Fisher
China’s political and aerospace leadership is painfully aware that its airpower ambitions are severely impeded by the lack of what it calls a “Chinese heart” – modern, indigenous aircraft engines.
The Pentagon’s latest assessment on Chinese military capabilities, released on 8 May, is even more blunt, saying: “the Chinese aircraft industry remains reliant on foreign sourcing for dependable, proven high-performance aircraft engines.”
Indeed, it has taken nearly 30 years of development for China’s first fourth-generation turbofan – the Shenyang-Liming WS-10A Taihang – to achieve a useful level of production; unofficially estimated at greater than 300 units.
To rectify this crisis, China may be ready to spend $300 billion over the next 20 years on its engine sector, according to ’s Galleon Consulting. The group’s annual China Aerospace Propulsion Technology Summit, conducted in co-operation with China’s government and engine industry, offers a rare keyhole to help understand the status of China’s military aircraft engine sector.
Can China meet what could become a steep demand for thousands of new turbofans for future fighter, bomber, transport, support, trainer and unmanned air vehicle programmes?
An August 2014 National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) report on “civil-military integration” called for the production of 400 Xian Aircraft Corporation (XAC) Y-20 four-engined transports. Though only a policy suggestion, this number of aircraft could require up to 2,400 high bypass turbofans, assuming reported PLA practice of acquiring a 50% reserve of engines.
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) may grow by 544 combat aircraft by 2020, according to the early 2014 estimate of an Asian government, affirming demand for advanced turbofans. In addition, the lack of indigenous engines limits foreign sales of China’s aircraft.
“Break the airpower bottleneck, revitalise the aero engine industry,” was a Chinese exhortation slogan that appeared in March, at the time of the annual National People’s Consultative Congress.
The bottleneck is a Soviet-style “distributed” engine sector in which a commanding state-owned corporation, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) controls four major “centres” for military turbofans: the AVIC Shenyang Liming Aero-Engine Group, the AVIC Xi'an Aero-Engine Group, the AVIC Aero-Engine Group and the AVIC Guizhou Liyang Aero-Engine Group.
Each is subordinate to a larger aircraft corporation: respectively, the Corporation (SAC) and the Xian Aircraft Corporation (XAC), while Chengdu Aero-Engine and Guizhou Liyang appear to work mainly with the Corporation (CAC). Both engine and aircraft concerns have their own design institutes, factories and sub-system makers. This structure promoted the inefficient development of unique engines for single aircraft that could not be shared.
Such a structure was suited to Mao Zedong’s “People’s War” strategies of a long war to repel a Soviet invasion. More recently, it has been encouraged by 1998 PLA logistics reforms promoting greater competition among defence concerns. But it has prevented China from creating modern integrated corporations capable of sustained investments to produce constant technology breakthroughs necessary for better engines.
Hoping to keep control of their engine and aircraft concerns, AVIC officials at least talked a good game. Writing in China Aviation News last July, AVIC Communist Party Secretary Chen Rui stated: “We have an urgent need to develop an integrated engine industry, to effectively resolve scattered strength, manufacturing technology chain fragmentation [and] adhere to the direction of market-oriented reform.”
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