Chinese-built L-15 jets spotted at Long Island airport

Chinese-built jet trainers touched down on American soil this week, flown not by China’s own military but by the United Arab Emirates, in what OSINT trackers say is the aircraft’s first appearance at a U.S. airshow. The Weibo account known as “的航空之翼,” a Chinese aviation-focused open-source account, reported that the UAE Air Force’s aerobatic display team had arrived at Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York, flying Hongdu L-15 jet trainers ahead of the upcoming FourLeaf Air Show.

Aviation OSINT tracker Andreas Rupprecht relayed the report on X, crediting a post from the account known as Armstrong, and the claim lines up with FourLeaf Air Show’s own published performer roster, which lists the UAE’s national aerobatic team, Fursan Al Emarat, known in English as Al Fursan or “The Knights,” among the acts scheduled to fly at Jones Beach State Park on July 5 and 6, 2026.

The team formed in 2008 under the UAE Air Force and Air Defense, trained by instructors from Italy’s Frecce Tricolori, and made its public debut at the 2011 Dubai Airshow flying the Italian-built Aermacchi MB-339, an aircraft it operated exclusively for airshow duty for roughly 15 years. That changed at the Dubai Airshow in November 2025, when Al Fursan unveiled a complete transition to the Hongdu L-15, marking the first aircraft change in the team’s history and putting a Chinese-designed jet into the black-and-gold paint scheme that has represented the UAE’s seven emirates at airshows across Europe, the Gulf, and Asia for over a decade.

The L-15, designated the JL-10 in Chinese military service, is an advanced jet trainer built by Hongdu Aviation with design input from Russia’s Yakovlev bureau, the same design house behind the Yak-130 trainer that shares a broadly similar airframe philosophy. It features a fly-by-wire flight control system, a digital glass cockpit, and twin engines, and while some variants of the aircraft carry supersonic capability and weapon hardpoints for a light attack role, the jets delivered to the UAE are configured specifically for aerobatic display work rather than combat. China remains the L-15’s primary operator, and Zambia also flies the type, but the UAE’s order of a dozen aircraft, first announced by the UAE Ministry of Defense in February 2022, makes Abu Dhabi the aircraft’s highest-profile export customer to date and the first nation to put the jet in front of Western airshow crowds on a national display team.

The UAE has spent the past several years diversifying its arms suppliers beyond its traditional Western partners, and the L-15 purchase fits a broader pattern of Gulf states hedging their procurement across American, European, and Chinese suppliers rather than relying on any single source for military hardware.

The FourLeaf Air Show itself has grown considerably since its founding in 2004, when the Blue Angels headlined its first Jones Beach performance, and organizers moved this year’s show from its traditional Memorial Day weekend slot to July 4th weekend specifically to align with Fleet Week New York and the country’s semiquincentennial celebrations. The 2025 edition of the show drew more than 300,000 attendees and generated an estimated $35.8 million in economic impact for the region, according to New York state officials, figures that underscore just how large an audience Al Fursan’s Hongdu jets would be flying in front of if the team’s participation proceeds as listed.