China showed its Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter in public for the first time yesterday, opening the nation’s biggest meeting of aircraft makers and buyers with a show of its military clout.
The China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai offers Beijing an opportunity to demonstrate its ambitions in civil aerospace and to underline its growing capability in defense. China is set to overtake the US as the world’s top aviation market in the next decade.
Two J-20s, Zhuhai’s headline act, swept over dignitaries, hundreds of spectators and industry executives gathered at the show’s opening ceremony in a flypast that barely exceeded a minute, generating a deafening roar that was met with gasps and applause, and set off car alarms in a parking lot.
Photo: EPA
Experts say China has been refining the design of the J-20, first glimpsed by planespotters in 2010, in the hope of narrowing a military technology gap with the US.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has pushed to toughen the armed forces as China takes a more assertive stance in Asia, particularly in the South China and East China seas.
“It is clearly a big step forward in Chinese combat capability,” said veteran China watcher, Bradley Perrett, of Aviation Week.
After screeching onto the Zhuhai stage as a pair, one of the J-20s quickly disappeared over the horizon, leaving the other to perform a series of turns, revealing its delta wing shape against the bright sub-tropical haze.
It was China’s second consecutive display of stealth at the biennial show, following the 2014 debut of the J-31.
However, analysts said the brief and relatively cautious J-20 routine — the pilots did not open weapon bay doors or perform low-speed passes — answered few questions.
“I think we learned very little. We learned it is very loud, but we can’t tell what type of engine it has or very much about the mobility,” FlightGlobal Asia managing editor Greg Waldron said. “Most importantly, we didn’t learn much about its radar cross-section.”
A key question is whether the new fighter can match the radar-evading properties of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, or the US’ latest jet, Lockheed’s F-35. The F-22 is the J-20’s closest lookalike.
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