It was December 26th, 2024 – Chairman Mao’s Birthday – when a pair of unmarked, unidentified warplane screamed across the skies above Chengdu, a city that hosts the factory of the Chengdu Aerospace Corporation that is known to be currently working on a new fighter jet.
Tentatively being called the J-36 and J-XX, (no official names exist) these are believed to be 6th generation warplanes, or at least “next generation”. What generation is China on that these would be from the “next?” The current J-20 is generally referred to as having the speed, stealth, integration, payload, and maneuverability of a 5th generation fighter jet – equivalent to the US Air Force’s F-35.
In that case, one might call these 6th generation, although US strategists admit that China tends to favor greater incrementalism in its military development, compared to the Air Force, which prefers to produce larger advances across longer time spans, and so maybe it’s more appropriate to call it 5.5th generation.
Either way, with the F-35 already being the most expensive conventional weapon system ever produced for the Pentagon while still suffering several technical and performance issues, the chance is greater than not that the US has officially fallen behind in combat aircraft technology.
Although perhaps not, since no information on the J-36 or J-XX is officially available. What is available comes from observations mostly, by a group referred to as the “PLA watching community”. Some of these folks are more assertive than others. Journalist and PLA watcher Rick Joe takes a middle ground, calling the J-36 and J-XX “genuine competition” vis-à-vis the Pentagon, while also admitting that the PLA watching community’s predictions of the appearance and nature of these two aircraft have been remarkably on point.
Hellbound and Down 