Illustration: Xia Qing/GT
Latest media consideration has targeted on Taiwan area’s buy of 66 F-16V (Blk 70) fighter jets from the US, the primary two of which at the moment are en path to the island. A mainland knowledgeable stated the induction of those jets can not change the cross-Straits air energy steadiness. Their efficiency is akin to the PLA’s J-10C, however towards the likes of J-16, J-20 and J-35, their tactical worth is proscribed. The true hole, nevertheless, is just not in particular person plane, however within the PLA’s already mature air fight system.
Taiwan area is starting to obtain the primary operational plane from its 66-jet F-16V Block 70 order, reported Defence Safety Asia on Saturday. The primary two single-seat fighters, serials 6727 and 6728, departed the US on August 17, 2026, transited via Fort Value and Hawaii, and had been anticipated to proceed via Guam earlier than reaching Chihhang Air Base, climate allowing.
Along with buying brand-new fighters, Taiwan area had beforehand cooperated with the US to improve 140 F-16A/B plane to the F-16V (Blk 20) customary. That improve work was absolutely accomplished in December 2023, in accordance with CNA on August 19.
Taiwan area beforehand claimed that the F-16V (Blk 70), along with that includes elevated thrust, airframe optimizations, prolonged vary, and conformal gas tanks, additionally enhances beyond-visual-range fight functionality and partial stealth traits. It’s outfitted with an Lively Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, offering a number of features together with air-to-air search, monitoring, weapons steerage, digital warfare, and communications, in accordance with the HK01.
The F-16V (Blk 70) is the most recent variant of the F-16 household, Tune Zhongping, a mainland navy affairs knowledgeable, advised the International Occasions on Sunday. The PLA’s mainstay fighters have already been broadly outfitted with AESA radars and are on the identical technological technology because the F-16V (Blk 70). Compared with the J-10C, each fall into the light-to-medium fighter class and have a level of comparability.
Nevertheless, evaluating to a heavy fighter such because the J-16, and particularly when going through fifth-generation plane just like the J-20 and J-35 that possess a transparent generational benefit, the F-16V has no edge in any respect. Constrained by its unique medium-weight, single-engine design, the F-16V faces inherent gaps versus heavy fighters in vary, payload, and improve potential, Tune defined.
The knowledgeable identified that what decides victory or defeat is now not the efficiency of particular person plane, however all the fight system behind them.
Fashionable warfare is now not a matter of “soldier versus soldier, common versus common.” The PLA’s benefit lies in its comprehensively overwhelming system-of-systems fight functionality. It isn’t essential to shoot down an F-16V within the air, it will also be destroyed on the bottom, by placing its shelters or cratering runways in order that it can not take off or land, Tune stated.
The F-16V does enhance Taiwan area’s particular person plane capabilities, however as soon as built-in right into a system-of-systems fight setting, its capability to change the general state of affairs is extraordinarily restricted, stated Tune.
A Xinhua Information Company report in March 2026 described how a sure PLA Air Drive unit organized its three mainstay fighters, the J-20, J-16 and J-10C, to conduct multi-day-and-night air fight confrontation coaching masking state of affairs sharing, coordinated strikes, electromagnetic countermeasures, and different topics.
The Taiwan regional authorities’ try to depend on these F-16Vs to “resist reunification by pressure” isn’t any totally different from a mantis making an attempt to cease a chariot, Tune stated.
From August 5 to 14, the Taiwan regional authorities performed this yr’s “Han Kuang” navy workout routines. A CCTV Information report on August 14 famous that the Taiwan area’s Han Kuang workout routines have change into an annual farce. Your entire train was tormented by steady controversies.
The so-called “Han Kuang” workout routines have all the time been a hole, wasteful spectacle. The Democratic Progressive Get together authorities are hereby warned: the “Taiwan independence” lifeless finish leads nowhere and can’t be altered. The PLA stays on excessive alert across the clock, constantly enhancing its fight readiness towards separatist and exterior interference actions. It’s, and can all the time be, the stable basis for safeguarding nationwide sovereignty and territorial integrity, and for sustaining peace and stability throughout the Taiwan Straits, Senior Colonel Chen Xi, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Nationwide Protection, stated on August 14.
