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China’s stealth jet may have done flyover of
S Korea
A vaguely worded statement from the PLAAF has made some
wonder if a J-20 fighter was deployed to gather intel on a US-South Korean war
game
By ASIA TIMES STAFF DECEMBER 7, 2017
6:48 PM (UTC+8)
Has China’s fifth-generation fighter the J-20 just
accomplished a top-secret reconnaissance of the ongoing war game Vigilant Ace
between the United States and South Korea, totally undetected by either
military?
According to Chinese news portal Sina, yes. Evidence?
The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) said on
its Weibo account on Monday that its reconnaissance aircraft, during a
scheduled training exercise, took off from an airbase in northern China and
flew routes they had not taken before, “to places they had never been before.”
Some military observers in China believe these planes
traversed South Korean airspace above the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea.
Yet what is interesting is the fact that Seoul has been silent so far.
Some speculate that Korean radar must have failed to
track Chinese reconnaissance planes tasked to gather intelligence on the joint
drill, for which Pentagon has marshaled its ace warplanes including F-22s to
the Korean Peninsula.
“If that’s the case, then the only Chinese plane that was
so stealthy that [it] could come and go totally undetected must be the J-20,”
one commentator said.
“One or two J-20s may have flown with the group, which
first headed to the East China Sea in a freedom-of-navigation patrol, but the
fighter then turned northeast and pierced Seoul’s airspace, taking advantage of
its cutting-edge stealth coating without triggering any alarm on Seoul’s
radars.”
Other sources suggest that the PLAAF has started
deploying a small batch of J-20s, which just entered service this year, at its
key airbase in Cangzhou, in the northern province of Hebei.
Cangzhou borders the Bohai Sea across Korea Bay as well
as the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, but is secure enough as it’s guarded
by China’s Shandong and Liaodong peninsulas.
Original post: atimes.com
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