page_title: List of Chengdu J-7 variants
section_title: J-7 series
hierarchical_section_title: List of Chengdu J-7 variants / J-7 series
caption_attribution_description: The forward landing gear of a Chengdu J-7 on display at the Minsk World theme park in Shenzhen, PRC.
context_page_description: This is a list of variants and specifications for variants of the Chengdu J-7, which differed considerably between models in its 48 years of production run.
context_section_description: J-7 series were the first group of J-7 produced. MiG-21F-13 directly imported from former USSR were the earlier production batches of MiG-21, but the kits for license assembly in China were later production batches with numerous improvement. Decision was made to reverse engineer to the standard of the latest production batch. Coupled with the inability of Chinese aerospace industry to produce some of the components, design went through four major changes. The initial production of J-7 was serious affected by the political turmoil at the time, namely, Cultural Revolution, which delayed the planned production run. Due to the urgent need of the fighter, original plans of some early models had to be scaled back to less ambitious scale by producing what could be done at the time, and then make improvement later when technologies matured.
  J-7: 1st batch of 100% Chinese domestically built model. Fuselage is 7% stronger than MiG-21F-13 in terms of endurance to stress, achieved via more material, but this also means that the heavier J-7 is slightly less maneuverable than MiG-21F-13. J-7 is equipped with Chinese copy of SRD-5 ranging radar designated as CL, short for Ce-jÜ (测距, meaning ranging in Chinese) Lei-da (雷达, meaning radar in Chinese). The range of CL ranging radar only 3 km, significantly shorter than the 7 km range of the original SRD-5 on MiG-21F-13. A total of 11 J-7 were produced after production run begun 1967.
  J-7 for Albania: After a total of 11 J-7s were completed, another 12 more were built and given to Albania for free as military aid. By this time, China was able to produce the APU-13 missile launching rail (MLR) of late production models of MiG-21F, which replaced the early APU-28 MLR of early production models of MiG-21F on the first 11, and APU-13 MLR was subsequently used on all future J-7s, including these 12 J-7s for Albania. The completion of these last 12 J7s marked the end of production run of J-7 in 1970, with a total of 23 built. After the production of J-7 completed, production of future models of J-7 was transferred to Chengdu Aircraft Corp (CAC) and Guizhou Aircraft Industry Corporation (GAIC) respectively.
  J-7 ASST: Like its predecessor MiG-21, the original J-7 also sometimes had the stability problem at high altitude when traveling at high speed near Mach 2. Attempt to avert this problem is an automatic stabilizing system developed by Xi'an Flight Control Research institute (also known as the 618th Institute) upon PLAAF request. A J-7 was converted as an Automatic Stabilizing System Testbed for trials conducted between 1970 through 1971. However, the project proved to be too ambitious for Chinese aerospace industry at the time and thus subsequently cancelled.
  J-7 drone: Retired J-7 converted for Mach 2 aerial targets. Subsequently, same conversion was also carried out for later models of J-7s after their retirement. Some of these drones were destroyed by Chengdu J-10 during weapons trials.
caption: Landing gear of a J-7 @ Minsk World in Shenzhen.
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