Congrat China for J-15S project. Once again , this J-15S proves WS-10A is serving China military aviation very well. Now we have seen 2 important project of J-16 and J-15S first prototypes running with domestic WS-10A instead of usual AL-31 engines.
This clearly shows WS-10A engine is very mature and opposite to what many western analyst of China not having a single domestic modern turbofan serving the military and have problem manufacture it.
But this also comfirm my analysis Chengdu AVIC has big trouble obtaining WS-10A for its own project like J-10A and J-10B. You can all see, J-10A is only able to continue in serial production because they turn their engine source to Russia instead of Shenyang Liming.
Looks like Shenyang Liming is giving all kind of excuse to derail any of Chengdu projects including the J-10B which until now has not enter any operation. J-20 able to obtain some WS-10G, probably due to some very high level intervention to keep this top 5th gen project alive.
We can see all Shenyang project, be it J-11B, J-11BS, J-15, J-15S, J-16 have totally not a single problem of obtaining WS-10A engines. Except the J-31 which uses another different engines.