China Puts Attack Jets at Its First Overseas Air Base
Satellite images show eight light attack aircraft and more than a dozen military vehicles at Ban Keun airport in Laos, fifty kilometres north of Vientiane, a day after China opened a joint “support and training centre” there on 29 September. It would be Beijing’s first facility outside China capable of handling fighter jets.
The airframes match the Hongdu JL-8, a two-seat trainer that can carry bombs; the International Institute for Strategic Studies believes Laos owns four of them, which is rather fewer than eight. Construction at the site appears aimed at extending the runway, which would in time allow it to take bombers. It is also China’s first military foothold in mainland south-east Asia. Beijing’s defence ministry says the centre will “help Laos strengthen the training of its air force pilots” and is not “directed against any third party”. The analyst Collin Koh judges that it “may not be wrong to conclude this is the first full-fledged PLA overseas base in south-east Asia”, while the Institute for the Study of War calls it the first Chinese overseas facility focused on air power but cautions that it is “not yet equipped to provide the PLA with the ability to execute major combat operations, unlike US military bases”. Thailand’s defence ministry says Bangkok will “closely monitor developments”. Laos has said nothing at all. One detail deserves its own note: the images come from a commercial provider, Vantor. This is a strategic shift disclosed by private satellites rather than by any government, which is increasingly how these things surface. It should be read with that in mind: the account rests on one newspaper’s reading of commercial imagery, no other approved source has examined the pictures independently, and the identification of the aircraft turns on their shape.