Chinese Ministry of Defense acquired 140 AL-31F engines through intermediary of Rosoboronexport in early 2012, Lenta.ru reports with reference to Vedomosti.

According to the source, close to the Russian export state company, the amount of the contract is about $700 million. Moscow-based FSUE “Gas-turbine engineering research and production center “Salut” will be delivering the engines to the Chinese customer.

During the last two and a half years China has acquired Russian engines to the amount of $4 billion; thanks to these contracts Salut has workload until 2015. It is expected that China will order more AL-31F engines in future (this refers to the high-powered modifications). At that the 140 ordered engines will have the increased thrust.

China acquired 150 AL-31F engines in 2011 for Su-27 fighters delivered earlier to this country and the Chinese copies of Su-27 – J-11 aircraft. The Chinese party has also purchased 123 AL-31FN engines for J-10 jets. In addition, the contract on delivery of 186 D-30KP-2 engines to China intended for Il-76 transport aircraft, H-6 bombers (a copy of Tu-16) and new Y-20 transport aircraft was signed in autumn 2011.

CEO of Salut, Vladislav Masalov, said last October that the total number of engines delivered to China has already exceeded 1000 ones. At that it is getting harder to perform contracts for Salut with the increase of orders. "We have some bottlenecks connected with suppliers of metal and some components", - Masalov noted.

China is one of the largest purchasers of Russian engines. The current technological level of this country does not allow manufacturing its own engines suitable for long-term operation. The country manufactures WS-10 engines and some other models for J-10 and J-11 aircraft, however, their reliability, thrust and time between overhaul are inferior to the indicators of Russian AL-31 engines.