Major Shaitan Singh
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2010
- Messages
- 3,550
- Reaction score
- 43
- Country
- Location
The F-CK-1 Ching-Kuo is one of Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation's major products
After failing to purchase F-16C/D fighters from the United States, Taiwan's Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation is seeking assistance from Russia to design domestic fifth-generation fighters, according to our Chinese-language sister newspaper Want Daily.
The move by Taiwan may take casual observers by surprise given the island's anti-Communist history, but during the early stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Soviet Union was a major supplier of military aircraft to the Republic of China Air Force. In addition to 322 bombers, 777 fighters and 100 trainers, the Soviet Union even sent 3,665 pilots and ground crew to support China's war of resistance against the Japanese. After the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact was signed in 1941, the United States then replaced the Soviet Union to become the Republic of China's major supporter.
F-CK-1 Ching-Kuo
The Soviet Union subsequently became an enemy of the Republic of China due to the assistance it provided to the Communist Party of China during the Chinese Civil War. After the ROC government retreated to Taiwan in 1949, it had to rely on the United States for military hardware. No military-to-military cooperation was established between Moscow and Taipei even after the Soviet Union and Communist China became hostile towards each other in the late 1960s.
An agent from the Soviet Union named Victor Louis was dispatched to Taipei in 1968 to meet then ROC president Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, to discuss a potential alliance between the two nations according to David Dean who served as political counselor of the US embassy to the Republic of China at the time. Eventually, Chiang Kai-shek rejected the idea of establishing cooperation with the Soviet Union to avoid upsetting the United States.
Even after the United States switched its diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China to the People's Republic of China in 1979, Chiang Ching-kuo, despite, or perhaps because of his background studying in Soviet Union, maintained distance from Moscow, allowing for the continuance of the Taiwan Relations Act, under which the US provided the island with weapons. Not until the death of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1988 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was Taiwan finally able to establish unofficial relationships with Russia and other former states of the Eastern Bloc.
Under the leadership of former president Lee Ting-hui, a delegation consisting of aviation experts from Taiwan was sent to Moscow to visit the State Committee on Science and Technology of the former Soviet Union in December 1991. After a short discussion, Russia expressed its willingness to sell Taiwan 100 Sukhoi Su-27 fighters priced at US$35 million each. The ROC Air Force was allowed to send two pilots to Russia for training immediately.
Hsia Han-min, former minister of ROC's National Science Council then signed a contract with Alexander Rutskoy, the former vice president of Russia, for the two nations to jointly develop subsonic aircraft. Eventually, the sale of Su-27 fighters to Taiwan was cancelled under protest from the United States. All Su-27 fighters originally developed for the Republic of China Air Force were then sold to the People's Liberation Army in June of 1992.
Lee Teng-hui was unable to get Su-27 fighters for Taiwan, but the subsonic aircraft program continued. A report from the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation on June of 2014 indicated that a new blueprint of Taiwan's fifth-generation fighter had been completed with the assistance of Russian advisers. The aircraft will look very similar to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter of the United States the report stated.
The aircraft is developed with two engines and has short takeoff and landing capability, allowing them to take off and land even if the PLA successfully destroys all the major air force bases in Taiwan. It is designed to fit President Ma Ying-jeou's strategy of fighting asymmetric warfare against China and will serve as an alternative to US F-35 fighters, which the nation is unlikely to receive.
Taiwan seeks Russia's help in designing 5th gen fighters｜WantChinaTimes.com
