Asia Defense | Security | Southeast Asia

Indonesia’s Chinese Fighter Gamble Will Test ASEAN Trust

President Prabowo Subianto’s hyper-hedging may preserve his country’s diplomatic flexibility, but it risks military fragmentation and regional uncertainty.

A J-10B fighter aircraft carrying PL-8 and PL-12 air-to-air missiles.

Indonesia’s foreign policy has long rested on the simple idea of “bebas aktif”: i.e., to remain free and active, avoid permanent alignment, and keep relations open with competing powers. President Prabowo Subianto has expressed that instinct through a familiar proverb: “A thousand friends are too few, one enemy is too many.”

In diplomacy, the formula is attractive. However, building an air force is a much more difficult proposition. Indonesia publicly announced plans in October 2025 to acquire at least 42 Chinese-made J-10C fighters. A few months later, Jakarta was also reported to be in advanced talks with Pakistan over more than 40 JF-17s, a fighter jointly developed by Pakistan and China. The practical status of these possible acquisitions remains unclear. Still, together they show that Chinese-origin combat aircraft have moved beyond the realm of speculation and now play a serious role in Indonesia’s military modernization plans.

This comes while Indonesia is already receiving French Rafales and has agreed to acquire Turkish KAAN fighters over the longer term, while the proposed F-15EX program with Boeing has fallen away. Still, the wider pattern remains: Jakarta is searching across Europe, the United States, Türkiye, China, and Pakistan for platforms that can modernize an ageing force without leaving Indonesia dependent on any single supplier. Politically, that approach makes sense. However, it is an unusually active form of hedging.

Indonesia joined BRICS in 2025, deepened its defense ties with Japan, and participated in the U.S.-led exercises Talisman Sabre and Super Garuda Shield. It is now joining Australia’s Pitch Black 2026 alongside the United States, Japan, France, the Philippines, and South Korea. In tandem with this increased cooperation with the West, Jakarta has broadened security engagement with Beijing. For instance, Indonesia and China agreed to resume joint military training. In addition, in April 2025, Indonesia became the first recipient of China’s new “2 2” dialogue format, which brings together the countries’ foreign and defense ministers. This was no routine diplomatic meeting; Beijing itself described it as the first such mechanism China has created with another nation.

Jakarta is performing the same balancing act on the economic front. Chinese capital underlies Indonesia’s boom in nickel processing, EV supply chain plans, and its ambitions to become an EV battery powerhouse. Chinese companies currently dominate Indonesia’s nickel-refining capacity, while a CATL-backed project spans mining, processing, EV battery manufacturing, and battery recycling. China also financed and constructed the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway. However, even as Indonesia engages China on the economic front, it is also acting as a maritime rival in its immediate neighborhood around the Natuna Islands. Although Jakarta denies the legal basis of Beijing’s expansive maritime claims in the South China Sea and does not officially recognize that there even is a dispute, it has still chosen to manage the situation peacefully and avoid turning this issue into the defining issue of the relationship.

Prabowo’s solution to Indonesia’s strategic situation is to cast a wide net. To that effect, he is engaging with the United States and Australia, acquiring fighters from Türkiye and France, partnering on defense technology with Japan, enhancing his dialogue with China, and joining BRICS. He is also treating disputes as momentary hiccups rather than permanent headaches.

However, the main concern is that such diplomatic prowess may not translate into a coherent military capability. Fighter aircraft are complex weapon systems with maintenance, engine support, armaments, simulators, mission planning, electronic warfare libraries, and training systems. Adding fighters from China and Türkiye to the current Indonesian inventory, which is composed of Russian, American, French, and Korean-origin equipment, would lead to a profusion of disparate combat systems.

Further exacerbating this challenge is the feasibility of teaching Indonesian pilots to operate another fighter jet from a completely different supplier. But the real challenge is to have enough spare parts, technicians, and weapons, and to ensure that secure data links are in place to keep all these aircraft effective and combat-ready during a prolonged crisis.

Interoperability issues can also be politically delicate. In common with its allies, Indonesia carries out many military exercises on sophisticated Western aircraft and on Western military networks. Some of its allies might be less willing to give Jakarta details of their electronic signature or mission information, or to share their technical or voice communications equipment, if Jakarta........

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