A set of indirect testimonies and a series of photos published by the Chinese aircraft manufacturer AVIC suggest that China will soon launch studies of a new stealth fighter plane intended to replace the JH-7 attack plane currently in service in the PL. This would mean that the new device would enter service by 2030.
At the same time, while many indications suggested that the J-20 would benefit from a navalized version to equip Chinese catapult aircraft carriers, recent contracts seem to indicate that it will in reality be the aircraft manufacturer Shenyang which will be in charge of this aircraft, with most probably a navalized version of the FC-31 gyrfalcon. A prototype should see the light of day by next year, or 2020. It is currently identified by the code J-XY, and should enter service in 2025, with the arrival of the second Chinese CATOBAR aircraft carrier .
Since 1988, China will have launched 8 new fighters and attack planes
1988 – JH7- twin-engine attack aircraft – 270 examples
1998 – J10 – single-engine multipurpose fighter – 300+ examples
1998 – J11 – twin-engine fighter – 250+ examples
2003 – JF17 – light multi-purpose single-engine export fighter – 150+ examples
2009 – J15 – twin-engine embarked multi-purpose fighter – 40+ examples
2013 – J16 – twin-engine multipurpose fighter – 50+ examples
2011 – J20 – heavy stealth fighter – 20+ copies
2013 – FC-31/J-XY- twin-engine stealth embarked multipurpose fighter
That’s a rate of one new device every 5 years. Furthermore, if the JH7 was the equivalent of the F111 when it was released, an aircraft 20 years older than it, the latest Chinese productions are perfectly on par with current Western productions. In other words, China has made a technological leap of 60 years in 40 years, one and a half times faster than Western production. This observation does not only apply to fighter planes, but to all Chinese defense production, both in naval terms and in missiles and land weapons.
In fact, current Western generational cycles are no longer suitable, otherwise they would quickly begin to show marked technological delays by 2030. However, the loss of leadership by Westerners is likely not to be an easily acceptable notion, both in terms of industrialists and politicians. This painful awareness, but essential to avoid technological downgrading, will necessarily lead to the revision of generational cycles between families of equipment, and the abandonment of the fantasy of the absolute weapon which replaces all others, the very one which under -tends the F-35 program, but also, to a certain extent, the Rafale.
This is precisely what General Mattis is trying to put in place at the Pentagon, proof if any were needed that a paradigm shift is necessary to stay in contact with Chinese and Russian industry.
As a corollary, an article from national interestargues that the United States, and by extension the West, have already lost the technological initiative in the field of hypersonic weapons.
Thus, with the Kinjal missile and the Avangard hypersonic glider, Russia has shown that it has, today, a technological lead of around ten years, if not more, in terms of hypersonic weapons. China is not left out with the DF-17, and its Wu-14 hypersonic glider prototype. According to many experts, the United States will not be able to have equivalent weapons before 2030. France neither, since both the AS4G program and the new generation cruise missile program, should not be operational before this date. .
The West has apparently forgotten that Russia had already been able to surprise Western strategists and industrialists, with Gagarin's flight of course, but also with the Mig25 or the Alpha submarine. And the official presentation of the Kinjal, the Status-6 and the Avagard by V.Putin, like the recorded tests of the DF-17 missiles and the Wu-14 glider, probably generated the same feelings in the General Staff of today as the first radar echoes of the Mig25 in Turkey in 1972.