But
is the J-20 a threat to American air superiority?
On Nov. 1, above review stands filled with dignitaries and
aviation enthusiasts, two arrow-shaped aircraft roared low over Airshow China,
the biennial exhibition in the southern city of Zhuhai. As reverberations from
their thundering engines set off car alarms below, China’s first stealth fighter
made its public debut: The Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter had arrived.
Over the decades, as China’s economy has grown into the world’s
second-largest, the country’s military requirements have changed. The peasant
armies are gone, replaced by stealth fighters, armed drones, and submarines.
The People’s Liberation Army has seen overall numbers slashed even as its
budget grows and its technology advances. At the same time, Beijing’s
reassertion of its expansionist territorial claims in the East and South China
Seas has made rivals out Tokyo and Washington. From China’s perspective, this
means it needs a modern military with the ability to project power outside of
its own borders, operating at the same technological level as those of the
United States, Western European countries, and Japan. And the J-20 is the
poster child of China’s efforts at expanding and modernizing its defense
establishment.
China’s efforts to primarily import military technology had a
fledgling start in the 1980s, when imports from the West began to trickle into
the gap left by the Sino-Soviet split in 1968, but were cut short by an arms
embargo in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. This forced China to
rely again upon Russian arms technology, industrial espionage directed at
Western arms manufacturers, and domestic research and development. Fortunately
for Beijing, a growing economy has meant China has been able to afford a 10
percent average annual increase in defense spending over the past quarter
century, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute data shows. Much of
this has gone into R&D.
The J-20 stealth fighter is a symbol not only of China’s growing power-projection
capability — causing growing unease among its neighbors — but also of a
domestic arms industry that is increasingly competitive with its Western peers.
Chinese pundits are already talking up the plane. Du Wenlong, a military
analyst with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, told the Paper,
a state-funded digital publication based in Shanghai, that “in the J-20, we
don’t just see ‘made in China’ but also ‘created by China.’ Its aerodynamic
configuration is totally different from Russian jets or the jets we are
familiar with. It’s absolutely Chinese … the Chinese aerospace system and the
Chinese combat ammunition system all symbolize the nature of the PLA Air
Force.”
The history of the J-20 goes back to the mid-to-late 1990s, when
the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence noted the existence of a Chinese project to create a
stealthy, twin-engine fighter nicknamed “XXJ.” In November 2009, Gen. He
Weirong, the commander of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, announced on state television that the J-20 was expected
to debut between 2017 and 2019. The first leaked photos of the Chengdu Aerospace Corporation’s new
jet appeared in December 2010, and the initial prototype made its first flight
the following month. The conspicuous test run coincided with U.S. Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates’s official visit to Beijing, with the New York Times calling the event an “unusually bold show of force by China.” Photos
of the second prototype emerged
in 2012.
The J-20 is a very ambitious aircraft. It features two engines and
a stealthy exterior designed to beat enemy radar. The single-seat airplane has
two air intakes on both sides of the cockpit, a pair of small, wing-like
canards, and twin vertical stabilizers. A pair of dagger-like ventral strakes
partially conceal the turbofan engine exhausts from side view.
The plan was to create a “fifth-generation fighter,” incorporating
advanced avionics, a high performance engine and airframe, advanced battlefield
communications, and most importantly, a stealthy airframe. The comparable plane
at the time of its introduction was the American F-22 Raptor.
The 2011 reveal created more questions than it answered. How
stealthy was the plane exactly? What was its mission? What engines powered it?
How did China, which had previously only produced one original
fourth-generation fighter — the Chengdu J-10 —
field a fifth-generation design so quickly? How much of the progress was due to
Chinese innovation and the sheer amount of resources poured into the program?
How much was due to Chinese industrial espionage, including the 2007 theft of Joint Strike Fighter secrets? Did the Chinese
made deliberate compromises in the design, viewing the perfect to be the enemy
of the good?
Some of these questions were answered three years later by the appearance of the first
development aircraft, which flew on March 1, 2014. The new, improved design
featured radar-absorbent paint, a redesigned canopy, redesigned external
features such as air intakes and wheel doors, and — most importantly — a new
nose to accommodate an active electronically scanned radar (AESA). A gold
standard among modern fighters, AESA radars create discrete “beams” of radio
waves that allow detection without revealing the aircraft carrying it — a key
requirement for stealth aircraft.
Even more features were added. An infrared search and track
sensor, another Western innovation allowing the plane to use infrared cameras
to detect, identify, track and ultimately shoot at enemy aircraft, was
installed in a fairing underneath the nose. The aircraft also appears to have
windows on all sides of the fuselage, suggesting it may have a distributed
aperture system, a network of cameras that allow the pilot to see in all directions
through his helmet without turning his head.
The cockpit of the J-20 now sports three large flat panel displays
that replace traditional instruments and dials. It also has a holographic
heads-up display, standard on warplanes since the 1980s, to feed the pilot
essential information.
The aircraft’s shape and stealthy profile have evolved over the
course of development. While it’s difficult to measure an airplane’s stealth
without actively testing it, the J-20 appears to have a very stealthy profile
from the front angle, though the canards — or winglets — placed behind the
cockpit make it less stealthy from the sides. The rear of the plane, with fully
exposed engine exhausts (the F-22 Raptor hides its engine exhausts) is
vulnerable to detection by enemy radar.
Meanwhile, sourcing the fighter jet’s engines has proven a problem
for China. The J-20 needs two powerful, high-performance engines to
“supercruise” — aviation jargon for cruising above the speed of sound with a
full load of weapons and fuel. China’s aviation industry has lagged far behind
those of the West and Russia in the development of high-performance jet
engines. Early J-20 models are flying with imported Russian AL-31FN engines, as
its predecessor plane, the J-10, did, but production aircraft are expected to
fly with domestically built Xian WS-15 engines offering 50 percent more thrust.
But what exactly is this plane for? A twin-engine aircraft with
three internal weapons bays is capable of a range of missions. One potential
use for the J-20 is as a long-range strike aircraft, capable of penetrating
enemy air defense networks to launch missiles against high-value ground targets
such as airfields, command and control bases, and other military installations.
Another is as an air superiority fighter like the F-22, designed to duke it out
with enemy planes far from the Chinese mainland — such as disputed territories
in the South and East China Seas.
Aviation analysts Mike Yeo and Chris Pocock believe that based on the emphasis on frontal-aspect low
visibility the J-20 is meant to be a long-range interceptor. In that case, the
J-20 would detect and shoot at enemy planes head-on from beyond visual range.
Such a role would make the J-20’s less-effective stealth from the sides and
rear less of an issue than if it was intended to be a penetrating strike jet
that would travel deep into enemy territory and need to be stealthy from all angles.
Andreas Rupprecht, author of the authoritative Modern Chinese Warplanes, told Foreign Policy that satellite photography reveals the J-20 is not as large
as originally thought, suggesting it has less internal volume to carry large
air-to-ground munitions. He also pointed to the writings of influential Chinese
aircraft designers that stressed “supercruise, high maneuverability, [and]
unconventional maneuvers” as requirements for the plane that would eventually
become the J-20 — all attributes of fighters and not attack jets.
Yin Zhuo, a Chinese military academic, concurs, stating in the Paper, “The stealth
fighter is bound to be China’s major fighter airplane in future, as well as the
principal fighter through which China will gain air supremacy.”
It has already gained China some international respect. The rapid
development of the J-20 — from mock-up to low-rate production in less than a
decade — has stunned aviation enthusiasts. Rupprecht points out that Gen. He
was correct in predicting the J-20 would be operational between 2017 and 2019,
a prediction that had been initially met with considerable skepticism outside
China. Whatever the delays, difficulties, or costs — all of which are totally
unknown thanks to the opacity of China’s military establishment — the plane has
come in on time. Rupprecht believes the J-20 is indeed on schedule, with a
first flight testing and training squadron standing up in 2017 and a
combat-ready unit to follow two years thereafter.
The J-20 is a giant leap for the Chinese aviation industry — and
the country’s military strength. We still don’t know the plane’s capabilities
and what difficulties it will face in the future. But we do know one thing: The
West now has to take the aircraft, and China’s military-industrial complex,
seriously.
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