China’s J-20 transforms military
Chengdu, China-J20 fighter
Chengdu, China-J20 fighter
While China is strutting out new weapon systems and Russia is developing new plans, the US is canceling planes because it cannot afford to invest in newer technology.
Robbin Laird writing for the second Line of Defense brilliantly describes the US shackles “The Afghan engagement is eating up our military resources, which are no longer available to fund air and naval power transition. And even more significant is the instinct to invest in the past rather than future. The notion of funding 4th generation aircraft with the new generation already here in the F-22 and close at hand in the F-35 is truly amazing. Funding a next generation jammer when the F-35 carries in its combat systems significantly greater capability is equally amazing.
The Chinese are clearly posing a threat to our way of doing air operations. We need to shift to a new concept of air operations leveraging the new aircraft and capabilities, and to build forward from this point.”
Australian defense analysts have gone berserk about the J-20. Japan is panicking, and India is fretting it. Not often is it in the history of aviation that a plane creates such a buzz that it threatens to transform the status quo and change the military balance. The J-20 and the Chinese Space Plan did just that. Neither Japan, nor any of the European powers have the capcity to transform their stealth research into production. Russia‘s T-50 comes the closest. Pakistan is including stealth in the later version of its J-17 17. Bharat wants to buy stealth from Russia at a colossal cost, but that is simply a purchase of some of Russia’s PAKFA fighters dubbed as FGFAs.
The People Daily reports that “the Chinese J-20 stealth stealth fighter jet (R) is seen during a test flight in Chengdu, southwest China on Jan. 7, 2011. Guan Youfei, deputy director of Foreign Affairs Office of the Defense Ministry, said Tuesday that China’s military hardware development is not aimed at any other country while responding to a question on the reported test flight of J-20 stealth fighter jet.” ()
“Japan should buy a fleet of F-35 stealth jet fighters to boost its air force”, a panicked US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates exclaimed, a day after China unveiled its own version of the radar-dodging aircraft.
In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald one defense analyst Dan Oakes uses hyperbole to say that “the shock unveiling of a Chinese stealth fighter plane has changed the power balance in Asia and means Australia must rethink its regional strategy, an Australian analyst has said.”
Tai Ming Cheung is an associate research scientist at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation in San Diego. His book, Fortifying China, examines the transformation and workings of the Chinese defense economy. Ming writing for the Wall Street Journal says “The stealthy online unveiling of China’s next-generation fighter aircraft, dubbed the J-20, represents an important marker in the accelerating development of China’s defense science, technology, and innovation capabilities. Although it will likely take another five-to-ten years before the aircraft is ready for serial production and operational service, its unofficial public debut serves notice of China’s intent to become a world-class military power within the next decade.”
Dan Oakes and Ming are not the only ones who think the world of the J-20. Peter Goon, a veteran critic of the F-35 joint strike fighter, and co-founder of the Air Power Australia think-tank, says “the Chinese J-20 is far superior to the American fighter and we must immediately adapt to the new status quo.” He added that US had been ”caught flat-footed” by the J-20. Goon thinks that J-20 is far superior to the JSF, and even to America’s top-of-the-range F-22 ”Raptor” jet. ”It is basically a lot more stealthy than the JSF, will fly faster and higher, be more agile and because it’s a much bigger aircraft it can carry more weapons,” he said. ”This thing has been designed to compete with and defeat the F-22. They haven’t even bothered with the JSF, and why would you?’
China has a string of pearls strategy which extends from Gwader, to Humbolta, to Chattagong to ports in Burma and Thailand. Mr Goon said the J-20 had been designed to advance China’s ”second island chain” strategy, which promotes the protection of Chinese trade routes within an area bordered in the east by Pacific islands such as the Marianas, Guam and the Caroline Islands, all the way to the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago. In other words, most of south-east Asia.”
It could have been a coincident, but many think not. The Chinese leaked the information about the J-20 on the day that the US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, arrived in Beijing for defense talks. It was obvious that the Chinese had been testing the plane for a while. The pictures were revealed and leaked in front of the American who had said that China was a decade away from getting stealth technology. To top t all, the Chinese then leaked pictures about their Space Plane too. Many think that the PLA was thumbing its nose at Bob Gates.
The US has canceled the F-35 and stopped production of the F-22 Fighters. Many in Australian oppose these cuts. One of the priorities in the federal government’s 2009 Defence white paper was the need for Australia to achieve and maintain air combat superiority in the region.
Some analysts are using the J-20 to begin the resale of the J-35. Lockheed Martin hinted at a JSF anti-stealth capability in 2009. “The F-35’s avionics include onboard sensors that will enable pilots to strike fixed or moving ground targets in high-threat environments, day or night, in any weather, while simultaneously targeting and eliminating advanced airborne threats,” said Dan Crowley, then-executive vice president and F-35 program general manager.
Northrop Grumman’s lower-frequency, L-band AESA radar on Australia’s Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft is larger and potentially more capable of detecting stealth aircraft at longer ranges.
Ming says “China’s military aviation industry is now a prospective candidate to join an exclusive group of countries able to indigenously develop a stealth aircraft. The only established member of this elite set is the U.S., which has successfully developed and fielded a number of stealth aircraft over the past two decades. Russia is in the early stages of test-flying its first stealthy aircraft, called the T-50.”.
Mr Goon says ”If Defence does not rethink in a timely, objective and coherent way their current plans we should take them out, put them in the stocks and pillory them,” ”If they don’t now redress the situation that’s obvious to everyone else as a result of the J-20 and the T-50, then they’re being delinquent in their responsibilities.”
Dan Oakes says “Air Power Australia has been a loud critic of the government’s decision to order 100 of the joint strike fighters for up to $16 billion, on the basis of cost and capability. The JSF project has been bedevilled by cost blowouts, technical problems and schedule overruns.”
Critics point out to the possibilities that China has. “The Chinese aero-engine sector has yet to begin serial production of its own high-performance turbofan engines such as the WS-10 even though it claims to have mastered development a few years ago. China has had to import Russian engines to equip its mainstay J-10 and J-11 fighter fleet. Of particular relevance for the J-20 program was China’s request to Russia for Type 117S aero-engines during annual defense technology cooperation talks between the two countries last year. These engines are being used on Russia’s T-50 aircraft.” (WSJ, Ming).
Trefor Moss is a freelance journalist who covers Asian politics, in particular defense, security and economic issues. He is a former Asia-Pacific editor for Jane’s Defense Weekly. Trefor Moss writing for the Asia Times Online (AToL) says “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” . Moss however thinks that the J-20 is technologically inferior to the T-50, F-22 and F-35 and thinks the US reaction to the J-20 is an escuse to revive the JSF and the F-22.
Robbin Laird says t best “The J-20 is built on the top of the global shift in manufacturing capability towards China, a significant investment by China in global commodities and the enhanced presence of China on the world stage are all significant developments. When married to a growing investment in the development and fielding of military capabilities, something globally significant is afoot – of the sort which suggests changing epochs.” We should not be surprised by the J-20 or the Chinese Space planet. These were as inevitable as the Chinease rise to the largest economy in the world and the power that comes with it.
)
