China tries to steal a march
By Trefor Moss
Former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping once advised his future successors to bide their time and hide their capabilities, but China's military leadership has this month done precisely the opposite, appearing in a big hurry to show the world exactly what they are capable of. It is as though China's first working stealth jet was just too exciting a development to be left sitting unsung in the hangar - especially with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates about to come calling.
The story of the Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter, whose existence was revealed at the turn of the year, is perhaps more remarkable for what it says about the bravura of China's rulers - and about the West's reactions - than for what it reveals about the future
capability of the Chinese air force.
Beijing's decision to trumpet the J-20's development resides within the culture of conspicuous wealth which China's urban residents will recognize as a trait of the country's moneyed elite. This is a generation that flaunts its capabilities, not hides them; and as the newest, flashiest expression of China's wealth and vigor the stealth plane simply had to be put on parade where the whole world could see it. The big question is whether we are right to be impressed by their technological achievement.
On January 10, the J-20 prototype took its first flight above Chengdu, provincial capital of Sichuan, but amid the media sensation it was unclear how best to interpret the aircraft's emergence, with the J-20 having become central to two contrasting narratives about the nature and implications of China's military modernization.
In the first, the J-20 has become an emblem of the rise of China and the decline of American power. With the US experiencing technical holdups and huge cost overruns in the development of its own stealth fighter, the F-35, and poised to axe production of its other stealthy jet, the F-22 Raptor, China has displayed its growing confidence and technical prowess by debuting the J-20 years earlier than Western analysts were predicting.
In the second, the J-20's unveiling was little more than a publicity stunt on the part of a government that would sooner try to stoke, rather than calm, American fears. A mishmash of outdated US and Russian design features, the aircraft displayed no signs of genuine Chinese innovation and remained a decade away from active service, its detractors have argued. As a weapon system, its primary role was as a pin with which to prick Gates, whose bridge-building trip to Beijing coincided with the aircraft's appearance on the Chengdu tarmac.
What's clear from the pictures crowding the Chinese blogosphere is that the J-20 is a big aircraft, which may point to a future role as a long-range interceptor or as an anti-access weapon with the ability to operate beyond the second island chain, which includes Guam, home to an important US airbase. However, China's air-to-air refueling capability is not yet mature enough to support this kind of long-range mission, and the J-20's size may point to technical limitations - most likely with the plane's engines, which Chinese industry is yet to build capably - rather than strategic choice.
Whatever the case, the American defense lobby was always likely to interpret the J-20 as a severe threat to US security, having fought a long (and unsuccessful) campaign to keep building the F-22 - an air superiority fighter which they regard as the ultimate guarantor of America's command of the skies. Indeed, the J-20 may have handed the F-22 one final lifeline. Gates, who killed the F-22 program, is about to step down, and his replacement could conceivably hand the Raptor an eleventh-hour reprieve and keep the production line turning.
However, any such a decision would be most wisely taken as a hedge against further pitfalls in the development path of the F-35, the aircraft selected as the mainstay of future US air power at the F-22's expense - and not as a knee-jerk reaction to the J-20's arrival.
"This is a useful reminder that more F-22s would be good," says aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia, the vice president of analysis at the Teal Group and an advocate of the proven Raptor. "But any suggestion that the Chinese have reached parity with the West is absolutely ridiculous. It's an awful lot of hysteria. The J-20 represents a certain degree of progress, but it is very far from being anything like a current-generation US aircraft."
In Aboulafia's estimation, the J-20 prototype "looked very unimpressive". He says that the aircraft is oversized and that its canards - the fins positioned between the cockpit and the wings - will reduce its stealth characteristics. Its shape is reminiscent of "how you designed planes in the 1980s", he suggests. The J-20's front end does indeed look a lot like an F-22, which first flew in 1990, while its back end recalls an old Russian MiG prototype. So the J-20 does not, it seems, signify a breakthrough in indigenous Chinese innovation, instead splicing together used American and Russian ideas.
In any case, "the real challenge isn't building a prototype," Aboulafia continues. "It's getting all the capable industries that give you the key enablers." His point is that while nobody knows what kind of systems are inside the machine that flew on January 10, China is believed not to have developed the many supporting industries - the providers of technologies such as engines, electronic warfare systems, advanced radar, data links, sensor fusion software, command and control systems - that would make the J-20 a true threat to the US military.
As such, even if the J-20 does enter production seven to ten years from now, it is unlikely to be in the same technological class as the F-22, the F-35, or the T-50, a Russian stealth jet which had its first flight last year.
Not all analysts agree with this downbeat assessment of the J-20's capabilities, however. Writing on the Air Power Australia blog, Carlo Kopp and Peter Goon argue that the aircraft poses a formidable challenge. "Any notion that an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or F/A-18E/F Super Hornet [an older, non-stealthy US fighter] will be capable of competing against this Chengdu design in air combat, let alone penetrate airspace defended by this fighter, would be simply absurd," they conclude.
This J-20 report card is far more glowing than most, and takes a lot for granted about what the untried jet will ultimately be capable of - if indeed it ever enters series production. Anyone confidently predicting that this plane will outgun the F-35 runs the risk of buying into the China mystique: that the all-conquering Chinese can accomplish anything they set their minds to.
To be sure, some of China's recent industrial and technological achievements have been impressive. But getting a world-beating stealth fighter into active service within the next decade is a fearsome challenge, even by Chinese standards.
Only one aspect of the J-20 saga appears beyond dispute: that the plane's unveiling was carefully stage-managed to coincide with Gates' visit. It is worrying that the Chinese should have sought to ruffle Gates at a time when he was visiting Beijing specifically to mend Sino-US military relations. But in the end, China's shock tactics may have backfired: Gates' Pentagon analysts most likely told him that the J-20 is nothing much to worry about. Maybe Beijing's top brass should have listened to Deng after all.
