The 9th Fighter Brigade (9th BDE, ), sometimes called the 9th Air Brigade is a fighter

brigade A brigade is a major tactical military formation that typically comprises three to six battalions plus supporting elements. It is roughly equivalent to an enlarged or reinforced regiment. Two or more brigades may constitute a division. Br ...

of the Chinese

People's Liberation Army Air Force The People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF; ), also known as the Chinese Air Force (中国空军) or the People's Air Force (人民空军), is an aerial service branch of the People's Liberation Army, the regular armed forces of the Peo ...

(PLAAF) based at

Wuhu Air Base Wuhu Wanli Airport () , often called Wuhu Air Base, is a Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) air base in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China. History Wuhu Airbase was originally constructed in 1934 in response to Imperial Japanese aggres ...

Wuhu Wuhu () is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Anhui province, China. Sitting on the southeast bank of the Yangtze River, Wuhu borders Xuancheng to the southeast, Chizhou and Tongling to the southwest, Hefei city to the northwest, Ma'anshan ...

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

province. Called "the elite of all elite divisions in the PLAAF," the unit flies the

Chengdu J-20 The Chengdu J-20 (), also known as ''Mighty Dragon'' (), is a twinjet all-weather stealth fighter aircraft developed by China's Chengdu Aerospace Corporation for the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The J-20 is designed as an air ...

stealth fighter as the premier fighter aviation unit in the

Eastern Theater Command The Eastern Theater Command () is one of the five theater commands of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), founded 1 February 2016. It replaced the Nanjing Military Region. The command is headquartered in Nanjing. Its jurisdiction includes Ji ...

Air Force An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...

. Until 2017, the 9th Brigade was known as the 1st Flying Brigade of the 9th Regiment of the 3rd Fighter Air Division, at which time the division was abolished and the surviving 7th,

8th 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...

, and 9th regiments beneath it were reorganized into independent fighter brigades. Also known as the Wang Hai Brigade, the unit and its ancestors were each the first PLAAF unit to operationally employ the

Chengdu J-7 The Chengdu J-7 (Chinese: 歼-7; third generation export version F-7; NATO reporting name: Fishcan) is a People's Republic of China fighter aircraft. It is a license-built version of the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21, and thus shares many si ...

Sukhoi Su-27 The Sukhoi Su-27 (russian: Сухой Су-27; NATO reporting name: Flanker) is a Soviet-origin twin-engine supermaneuverable fighter aircraft designed by Sukhoi. It was intended as a direct competitor for the large US fourth-generation jet ...

Sukhoi Su-30MKK The Sukhoi Su-30MKK (NATO reporting name: Flanker-G)MKK stands for Russian ''Mnogofunktzionniy Kommercheskiy Kitayski'' (Cyrillic: Многофунктзионний Коммерческий Китайски), "Multifunctional Commercial for C ...

, and Chengdu J-20. The brigade's MUCD is not publicly known.

History

The 7th, 8th, and 9th Fighter Divisions were created between November and December 1950 upon the arrival of the third batch of fighter aircraft transferred to China by the Soviet Union to build out the PLAAF. By 1953, all divisions had three regiments beneath them.

4th generation fighter unit

The 9th Division was the first air division in the PLAAF to operationally employ the

, Su-27, Su-30MKK, and Chengdu J-20. On June 27, 1992, the 9th Regiment received the first batch of 12

fighters, 8 SK single-seat aircraft and 4 UBK two-seat trainers. On November 25, 1992, a further 12 Su-27SK single-seat fighters completed the 9th Regiment's complement, becoming China's first entirely

fourth generation fighter The fourth-generation fighter is a class of jet fighters in service from around 1980 to the present, and represents design concepts of the 1970s. Fourth-generation designs are heavily influenced by lessons learned from the previous generation of ...

regiment of the PLAAF.On December 20, 2000, the first batch of 10

s joined the 9th Regiment, with a second batch of nine aircraft delivered on August 21, 2001. Upon the arrival of the Su-30's, existing Su-27s were transferred to the 19th Fighter Division of the

Jinan Military Region The Jinan Military Region was a PLA Military Region located in the east of the People's Republic of China, covering the Shandong and Henan Provinces, which also formed military districts. It appears that Yang Dezhi was one of the first commander ...

Air Force.

Operations

In January 2019 the brigade became the first operational unit to be equipped with the Chengdu J-20, replacing the

airframes it had operated since 2001. The brigade finished transitioning to entirely J-20's in the first half of 2021, fielding a fleet of between 24 and 30 of the stealth aircraft. Tail codes for the brigade's J-20s fall within the range of 62x0x, starting with 62001.

References

{{Structure of the People's Liberation Army Air Force, state=expand Air force units and formations of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Brigades of the People's Liberation Army Military units and formations established in the 2010s