Chinese engineers at Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group (CAC), the company conglomerate which produce some of the most successful current and future fighters of the PLAAF (People’s Liberation Army Air Force), must be Star Wars fans.
Indeed, images that have appeared on several Chinese blogs and forums, seem to suggest that the CAC’s new UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), reportedly a variable wing model, was somehow inspired by the X-wings starfighters from the original Star Wars trilogy.
Image credit: Chinese Internet via China Defense Mashup
David Cenciotti is a freelance journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written four books.
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