On Thursday, in less than 24 hours, two Chinese aircraft brands unveiled new stealth fighter demonstrators. And any protester. The separate designs of the Chengdu and Shenyang aircraft brands may be among the most complex manned fighters ever designed.
Historically, the Chinese military displays its first new technologies at the end of the Western Calfinishar year, in December or January. Perhaps most famously, the People’s Liberation Army allowed the first photographs of Chengdu’s J-20 stealth fighter to be posted online in January 2011. Thirteen years later, there may be many J-20s in frontline service in the PLA Air Force.
This year’s stunner is one of the most dramatic for the PLA’s PR machine. Around the same time on Thursday, online videos gave the impression that two more protesters appeared with stealth fighters in flight. The Chengdu style had a J-20 escort. The Shenyang type flew alongside a Shenyang-made clone of the Sukhoi Su-27.
The two new types are tailless deltas. Its wings and all surfaces appear to be in the same horizontal plane. This can decrease a fighter’s radar signature, but it comes at a cost. “These cars are known to be aerodynamically complex aircraft with unique dynamic flight characteristics and complex flight laws,” one team wrote in a 2007 report for the US Air Force Flight Test Center.
It is clear that the PLAAF is committed to obtaining an incredibly stealthy fighter with complex flight controls, and is taking any risk. The Air Force’s two main fighter brands are based on designs. One can succeed where the other fails while still providing a significant warfighting capability.
The Chinese military took the same approach with its first generation of stealth fighters. Chengdu’s twin-engine, supersonic J-20 worked as designed—and the PLAAF ultimately ordered a large number. But if the J-20 had failed, there was an alternative: the lighter Shenyang J-35, which first flew in 2012 and may yet enter front-line service as a navy carrier fighter.
The Thursday reveal was momentous, but it was partly a marketing triumph. It’s worth noting that the U.S. Air Force tested what was likely a tailless fighter demonstrator back in 2020 as part of its troubled Next Generation Air Dominance program. “NGAD has come so far that the full-scale flight demonstrator has already flown in the physical world,” Will Roper, then the head of Air Force acquisitions, said at the time.
While the USAF hid its new stealth fighter demonstrator, the PLAAF proudly showed off its two new demonstrators. What happens next will depend on how well protesters perform under the strain of heavy use in a real-world environment and how many billions of dollars Beijing is willing to invest in one or either model.
One or any of the protesters may simply be multirole fighters with significant air-to-air capabilities. But they can also serve as stealth ground attack aircraft. “The PLAAF is developing new medium- and long-range stealth bombers to attack regional and global targets,” the Pentagon said in the latest edition of its annual report on the Chinese military.
The long-range stealth bomber, the Xi’an H-20 flying wing, is still under development and probably won’t appear in public for a few years. The medium-range stealth bomber, called JH-XX, remains a mystery.
Could Thursday’s wonderful protesters evolve into medium bombers? It is possible.
Sources:
1. Justin Bronk
2. OedoSoldier
3. US Air Force
4. US Department of Defense
5. Defense one
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