Azerbaijan recently announced that it is purchasing Chinese-made JF-17 Thunder fighter jets. This is a bold move by China into what was, up until recently, a Russian-dominated military sales market, and the geopolitical space that Moscow considers its own and which Washington considers as vital to its interests both in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Given how sales of military equipment can solidify alliances between nations - such as between the U.S. and Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and many other states - this purchase has the potential to alter security dynamics in the Caucasus and beyond. On its own, Azerbaijan demonstrated that it can reject a wide variety of military aircraft - such as American F-16 and F/A18, EU's Eurofighter, French Rafael, Swedish Gripen, Russian Mig-29 and Su-27 - in favor of a plane that is untried and untested in military combat.
This purchase binds Baku to Beijing's military industry, since supply parts, service, maintenance and training would have to be done by China, at least initially. At this point, only Pakistan operates JF-17, which is close to combat performance than Russian-made Mig-29 or American F/A-18 fighter planes. However, Azerbaijan may have simply been buying smart - the cost of a each Chinese fighter jets is only $20 million.
