You can’t say the Pentagon didn’t warn us. On December 18, the US Defense Department released the latest edition of its Congressionally mandated annual report on Chinese military capabilities.
It’s a sobering read detailing the People’s Liberation Army’s breakneck modernisation in space and cyberspace, in the air, on the ground and on and beneath the waves – modernisation clearly meant to equip PLA forces to invade and occupy Taiwan while holding off any US or allied forces that try to intervene.
One paragraph addressing the PLA Air Force was particularly prescient. “The PLAAF is seeking to extend its power projection capability,” the report warned. The farther PLAAF squadrons can venture into the western Pacific Ocean, and the more weapons they can bring to bear without succumbing to the enemy’s own weapons, the better the PLA’s chances as it launches across the Taiwan Strait, bound for Taiwan’s heavily defended beaches.
Eight days after the report dropped, that Chinese aerial ambition was dramatically on display. In the span of less than a day, two different Chinese aeroplane makers separately revealed totally different – and uniquely sophisticated – demonstrators for new manned, possibly sixth-generation stealth warplanes.
While observers had expected the PLAAF to develop a next-generation aircraft to eventually complement its current fifth-generation Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter – China’s answer to the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor – it’s fair to say few expected there to be two separate demonstrators, which are early versions of planes that could evolve first into prototypes and later into combat-ready warplanes.
The two demonstrators took to the air in broad daylight over the factory airfields of their respective builders, the Chengdu and Shenyang Aircraft Corporations – each escorted by an older fighter model. Officials in Beijing clearly planned a coordinated media campaign: “civilians” on the ground near both airfields were in position to record videos that offered just enough detail about the demonstrators to create vague impressions of technological sophistication.
Most notably, both the Chengdu and Shenyang sixth-gen demonstrators are tailless: their wings and all their control surfaces exist in the same horizontal plane. This visually elegant layout, which is shared by the USAF’s Northrop Grumman B-2 and B-21 stealth bombers, minimises a plane’s radar signature while maximising its volume for internally carrying fuel and weapons.
You can’t say the Pentagon didn’t warn us. On December 18, the US Defense Department released the latest edition of its Congressionally mandated annual report on Chinese military capabilities.
It’s a sobering read detailing the People’s Liberation Army’s breakneck modernisation in space and cyberspace, in the air, on the ground and on and beneath the waves – modernisation clearly meant to equip PLA forces to invade and occupy Taiwan while holding off any US or allied forces that try to intervene.
One paragraph addressing the PLA Air Force was particularly prescient. “The PLAAF is seeking to extend its power projection capability,” the report warned. The farther PLAAF squadrons can venture into the western Pacific Ocean, and the more weapons they can bring to bear without succumbing to the enemy’s own weapons, the better the PLA’s chances as it launches across the Taiwan Strait, bound for Taiwan’s heavily defended beaches.
Eight days after the report dropped, that Chinese aerial ambition was dramatically on display. In the span of less than a day, two different Chinese aeroplane makers separately revealed totally different – and uniquely sophisticated – demonstrators for new manned, possibly sixth-generation stealth warplanes.
While observers had expected the PLAAF to develop a next-generation aircraft to eventually complement its current fifth-generation Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter – China’s answer to the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor – it’s fair to say few expected there to be two separate demonstrators, which are early versions of planes that could evolve first into prototypes and later into combat-ready warplanes.
The two demonstrators took to the air in broad daylight over the factory airfields of their respective builders, the Chengdu and Shenyang Aircraft Corporations – each escorted by an older fighter model. Officials in Beijing clearly planned a coordinated media campaign: “civilians” on the ground near both airfields were in position to record videos that offered just enough detail about the demonstrators to create vague impressions of technological sophistication.
Most notably, both the Chengdu and Shenyang sixth-gen demonstrators are tailless: their wings and all their control surfaces exist in the same horizontal plane. This visually elegant layout, which is shared by the USAF’s Northrop Grumman B-2 and B-21 stealth bombers, minimises a plane’s radar signature while maximising its volume for internally carrying fuel and weapons.