China unveiled two new Stealth Fighter designs on a momentous day

In less than 24 hours on Thursday, two Chinese aircraft manufacturers unveiled new stealth fighter demonstrators. And not just any protesters. The separate designs from the airframers Chengdu and Shenyang may be among the most sophisticated manned fighters ever.

The Chinese military traditionally unveils major new technology at the end of the Western calendar year in December or January. Perhaps most famously, the People’s Liberation Army allowed the first pictures of Chengdu’s J-20 stealth fighter to circulate online in January 2011. Thirteen years later, there could be hundreds of J-20s in front-line service with the PLA Air Force.

This year’s surprise was among the most dramatic for the PLA’s PR machine. Around the same time on Thursday, videos appeared online depicting two different manned stealth fighter protesters in flight. The Chengdu model had a J-20 escort. The Shenyang type flew alongside a Shenyang-made Sukhoi Su-27 clone.

Both new types are tailless deltas. Their wings and all control surfaces appear to be in the same horizontal plane. It can reduce a fighter jet’s radar signature – but at a cost. “Such vehicles are known to be aerodynamically complex aircraft with distinctive aerodynamic properties and intricate flight control laws,” a team wrote in a report from 2007 to the US Air Force Flight Test Center.

It is clear that the PLAAF is determined to acquire an extremely stealthy fighter with complex flight controls – and it is taking no chances. The Air Force’s two major fighter aircraft manufacturers are both working on designs. One could succeed where the other fails and still provide an important wartime capability.

The Chinese military took the same approach with its first generation stealth fighters. Chengdu’s twin-engine, supersonic J-20 worked as designed—and the PLAAF ultimately ordered large numbers. 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 naval destroyer.

Thursday’s unveiling was significant, but it was partly a marketing triumph. It’s worth noting that the US 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 aircraft demonstrator has already flown in the physical world,” Will Roper, then the head of Air Force Acquisitions, said then.

Where the USAF has been hiding its new stealth fighter demonstrator, the PLAAF has proudly displayed both of its own new demonstrators. What happens next depends on how well the demonstrators actually work under the stress of hard, real-world use — and how many billions of dollars Beijing is willing to invest in one or both designs.

One or both demonstrators could become multi-role fighters with serious air-to-air capability. But they can also act as stealthy ground attack aircraft. “PLAAF Develops New Medium- and Long-Range Stealth Bombers to Strike Regional and Global Targets,” Pentagon noticed 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 may not appear publicly for a few years. The medium-range stealth bomber, the so-called JH-XX, has been more of a mystery.

Could Thursday’s surprise protesters evolve into medium-sized bombers? It is possible.

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