Amid speculation that China has completed a prototype of a stealth aircraft that experts say could rival the US Air Force’s F-22 — the world’s only fully operational next-generation stealth fighter aircraft — national defense officials yesterday said they doubted the Chinese aircraft would be operational any time soon and raised doubts as to the veracity of information made public about the plane.
Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Intelligence at the Ministry of National Defense Shen Yi-ming (沈一鳴) said photographs, purportedly of the Chengdu J-20 aircraft, had generated speculation that China had entered the testing phase for the fifth-generation aircraft.
However, the authenticity of the photographs was “questionable,” Shen told the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
Photographs published online and Chinese military sources cited by Japanese media last week seemed to indicate that a prototype version of the J-20 fighter had been completed, with taxi tests carried out last week in southwestern China.
The news came days before a visit to Beijing by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who will seek to repair military ties cut off a year ago by China when Washington sold billions of dollars worth of arms to Taiwan, as well as a visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to Washington.
The J-20 would come equipped with potent missiles and could reach the US territory of Guam with aerial refueling, although it would take between 10 and 15 more years to develop technology on a par with that of the F-22, reports said.
Defense industry publication Aviation Week said the J-20 was larger than expected — suggesting a long-range capability and the ability to carry heavy weapon loads.
Quoting Chinese military sources, the Asahi Shimbun reported that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) planned to begin test flights of the J-20 as soon as this month, with plans to deploy the jet as early as 2017.
The J-20 “will become fully competitive with the F-22, in capability and perhaps in numbers, around the end of this decade,” Rick Fisher, an expert on the Chinese military at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a US think tank, told Agence France-Press.
Dennis Blasko, a specialist on the PLA, said the timeline for development of the aircraft was “probably considerably longer than what most outside observers would estimate.”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) also played down the speculation about the fighter jet.
Lin said the emblem on the tail fin of the aircraft was not consistent with that of the PLAAF and that the emblems on the front wings were of a design no longer used.
Shen, who said Lin’s observations were “basically correct,” added that Russian analysis showed that China still lagged technologically in terms of manufacturing engines, radar, composite materials, instrumentation and electrical systems.
Asked by Lin if he believed China was incapable at this point of producing the J-20, Shen said he believed that was the case.
Western military experts have also expressed doubts over the J-20.
“I have yet to see proof of a test flight and testing for a prototype can take quite some time before production begins,” Blasko said.
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