Myanmar is the first country to buy JF-17 Thunder fighters developed by China and Pakistan. Currently, the country has ordered 16 JF-17 Thunder worth about 250 million USD and began to receive them on the service.
With the current unit price of about $ 25 million, which is cheaper than the French AMX 56 tank costing $ 27.5 million, the JF-17 Thunder fighter developed by China and Pakistan is being evaluated as a combat line. New cheapest muscle in the world.
Myanmar signed a contract to order 16 JF-17 Thunder from China since 2015.
Surprisingly, instead of paying $ 25 million / unit, Myanmar had to pay only $ 16 million / unit. At this price, the JF-17 fighter is only marginally more than half the price of a French tank, a price that cannot be cheaper for a newly produced fighter.
Thus, the total contract value for these 16 fighter jets is only over 250 million USD. This amount is only enough to buy 3 F-16 Block 70/72 or 3 Su-30SM.
Observers said that in order to stimulate demand for this aircraft, China agreed with a cheaper price to promote the image of JF-17 in the export market.
Despite being advertised with many outstanding features and surprisingly low prices, but so far, apart from Pakistan as a developing country, Myanmar is the only country to order this fighter.
Although Beijing has repeatedly stated that there are dozens of customers showing interest and preparing to buy JF-17, so far no new customers have been revealed.
Joint Fighter-17 (JF-17) Thunder also known as Fighter China-1 (FC-1) Kiao Long in China, is a single-seat all-purpose fighter, developed by China and Pakistan on the basis of J-7 fighter (MiG-21 of Soviet Union).
The aircraft had its first flight in August 2003, introduced in March 2017.
The JF-17 uses a Russian-made RD-93 engine, China also studies and produces the WS-13 engine, but it is considered to be unstable.
Regarding the weapons system, JF-17 is equipped with 7 weapon pylons that can carry up to 3.4 tons of weapons including air-to-air and anti-ship missiles.
The types of missiles included include PL-5, PL-9C, PL-12 and AIM-9, Chinese-made C-802A anti-ship missiles, and several types of bombs.
It is also equipped with a GSh-23-2 23mm twin barrel automatic cannon or a GSh-30-2 30mm double barrel gun.
JF-17 is equipped with radar that can track 10 targets at the same time and destroy 2 targets simultaneously.
Target detection range in front of the aircraft is over 75km and behind is 35km, target detection at sea is 135km away.
Pakistan plans to buy 110 of these aircraft, 50 of which will be delivered from China and the rest will be produced domestically and will be upgraded to Block II standards.
It is known that the JF-17 fighter version that Myanmar ordered from China is called JF-17 Block II.
This version was born in 2013, began testing in 2015.
Compared to Block I, the Block II version has more aerial refueling, improved aerodynamic styling, and enhanced electronic warfare.
Currently, Beijing and Pakistan are trying PR for this fighter line in the hope that they will be more attention in the export market.