Why did they show it to us now?
That is the key question that should occupy Americans when they think about the aircraft that appeared in the skies over Chengdu on December 26.
There is so much that is unknown, especially outside of security clearances. After all, it has only been five days since the existence of this aircraft, already being called the J-36, became public knowledge. There has been good analysis of the aircraft based on its appearance on social and professional media, but there have also been a lot of gaudy headlines based on unsupported assumptions.
Note that this article is specifically about the aircraft seen above Chengdu — another aircraft was photographed above Shenyang on the same day and will be covered by Domino Theory in the future.
So, here are the things that we don’t know about the J-36:
We don’t know its speed.
We don’t know its range.
We don’t know what engines it has.
We don’t know how stealthy it is.
We don’t know what its intended function is.
We don’t know how much weapons payload capacity it has.
In short, we cannot be certain about anything that cannot be gleaned by visual inspection from some distance, and all of that from photos and videos.
I want to hone in on the key implication of two things I wrote above.
If we don’t know how stealthy it is and what engines it has, we can’t say whether or not it is “sixth-generation.”
If we don’t know what its function is, we can’t say that it is a fighter jet.
That’s why the headline of this article doesn’t say “What we know about China’s new sixth-generation fighter jet.”
To be fair to people who think this is China’s new sixth-generation fighter jet, it might well be. There is in particular one very good reason to think that: It looks an awful lot like what we expect the U.S.’s sixth-generation fighter jet will look like.
Or perhaps, would have looked like. The U.S. Air Force paused work on its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program this year.
However, concept art released by Lockheed Martin shows a large, tailless delta-winged aircraft, which is exactly what we saw above Chengdu. (It’s worth noting that other, different, NGAD concept artwork exists, such as this one from the U.S.A.F. which features twin vertical stabilizers.)
But if the J-36 isn’t a sixth-generation fighter jet, what could it be?
Andreas Rupprecht is a specialist in Chinese air power. He sent Domino Theory some thoughts he had already prepared for his own report, notes that are now also available on X.
Firstly, Rupprecht doesn’t think that this is a classic fighter, in effect an equivalent to NGAD. He also doesn’t think that this is a dedicated strike aircraft, the suggested J/H-XX. For him, this is a conceptually new type of fighter, what he calls the Chinese interpretation of future aerial warfare. It’s not obvious even how to describe such an aircraft; Rupprecht says that it might be called a “theater level deep penetration command combat aircraft” or simply “high performance fighter” in the sense that a “battleship” is a heavier class of warship above a “destroyer.” Rick Joe writing in The Diplomat suggested the term “modern stealthy, theater striker.”
One thing that Rupprecht did emphasize was that it appears the J-36 is going to have a very large range and carry a very large weapons load, due to its large overall size and the shape of the wing and payload bays.
Bill Sweetman, writing for the Royal Aeronautical Society, thinks that the new aircraft will be able to hold at risk American assets like aircraft carriers and airborne refueling aircraft that would be operating far away from China’s coast in case of a conflict. And the fact that this aircraft, which he calls “Boxer,” is also likely to be very fast means that it will be able to sortie more, an advantage over subsonic bombers like the H-6 or B-21.
But again I ask, whatever this aircraft actually is, why show the world now?
Behind the doors of the Pentagon, we can only hope that this was not a surprise. Then who would the audience be? Chinese people will be proud that the first actual pictures of a “sixth-generation fighter jet” come from inside their borders. Chinese observers have certainly talked up its capabilities enough.
But for American observers, whether they be China-watchers, members of Congress or, and I use this word cautiously, “normal” people, what is their takeaway? Do they bury themselves into the minutiae and look past the headlines? Clearly, many will not. And yet many will see headlines suggesting that China has pulled ahead and the U.S. is falling behind in this “air race.”
The U.S. is still in a lame duck period — Donald Trump will not take office for another three weeks. In early December his richest and perhaps most influential supporter, Elon Musk, briefly set X/Twitter ablaze by arguing that manned fifth-generation platforms like the F-35 were already obsolete. The Air Force is already wavering on NGAD and had explicitly postponed any decision for after Trump’s inauguration.
Did China show off this new aircraft now because it wants to scare Americans and tilt the new administration into going hard on its support for NGAD?
It would be foolish to act rashly, and rash to act foolishly. Trump, his team, and the Air Force should use their far more holistic perspective to make a decision on NGAD based on their assessment of what America needs to win in the skies, rather than in the media.
Leave a Reply