High Invulnerability Performance 'Black Box' For China's Military Aircraft

China has installed a next generation flight data recorder (FDR) also known as the ‘black box’ with high invulnerability performance on its People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s military aircraft.

China will also use the new FDR in civil aviation and relevant industrial sectors in China, ChinaMil reported quoting unnamed sources as saying Thursday.

A Black Box can record aircraft’s flight data in detail, restore accident process and also help in determining cause of accident.

According to the report, the new FDR makes use of high-strength, high-toughness materials and more optimized structural design.

Higher invulnerability performance is a unique requirement for FDR. In recent years, the performance of China’s military and civil aircraft has been greatly upgraded. But the upgrading of FDR has lagged behind, and FDR’s invulnerability performance is the main bottleneck problem.

To overcome the problem, it takes three years for the PLA Air Force to develop the new-generation FDR with its invulnerability performance being 1.5 times that of previous FDR.