Where does China stand in term of fighter jet prowess
Is China closer than thought to matching U.S. fighter jet prowess?
(CNN) -- Images believed to be of China's next generation of military air power have been buzzing around the internet, but Pentagon officials are insisting it does not mean China has matched American air capabilities.
The new Chinese stealth fighter jet, known as the J-20, isn't supposed to be operational until at least 2017, but a Chinese air force commander told Chinese TV in 2009 that flight testing would begin much sooner. Stealth jets, such as the United States' F-22, are designed to evade detection by radar and anti-aircraft defenses.
Now unknown sources have posted photos of what appears to be the plane on an airfield runway in southwestern China.
"We are aware of their plans to develop this fifth-generation fighter," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Wednesday. "The photos that were released recently are presumably of some taxi testing."
At a Thursday briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei declined to comment on reports on China testing the jet.
"China insists on a path of peaceful development," he said. "We have adopted a national defense policy that is defensive in nature and do not threaten any other countries. China has been an important force in maintaining regional and global peace."
The emergence of the photos comes as Defense Secretary Robert Gates heads to China this weekend to discuss the military relationship between the U.S. and China. And later this month, President Hu Jintao will go to Washington for a summit with President Barack Obama.
One China watcher says Beijing's failure to censor the grainy images on the web proves the photos are of the new jet and the country wants them to circulate.
"The Chinese military and the police could have swept the area around the airfield very easily, but what they've done is they've controlled this. They've allowed Chinese to only take photos with cell phones, meaning that the photos that we have are low-resolution, do not give us a great deal of detail about the aircraft and they're put on the web with a low-resolution format," said China military scholar and author Richard Fisher. "The response within China has been overwhelmingly positive and has spurred national pride to an enormous degree."
The Pentagon is taking a low-key approach to the surge in publicity about the Chinese fighter, saying their existing top-of-the-line warplane has engine problems and that their next plane is years away. But Fisher says that timeline could be sped up if the Chinese buy an engine from Russia as opposed to developing it themselves.
"It's something that is in some form of development, as a fifth-generation fighter. As I noted, the Chinese are still having difficulties with their fourth-generation fighter," Lapan said in an off-camera question session with journalists in his office.
And he said that while the new jet was not mentioned in the Pentagon report on China that was sent to Congress in August as an annual update for China's defense capabilities, the Defense Department has talked about it.
"We as a department have publicly spoken about it in the past. It is not as if we have not acknowledged that they are pursuing a fifth-generation fighter," Lapan said. "So we are aware of it. But it is not of concern that they are working on a fifth-generation fighter."
Fisher, however, says it should be a concern, citing the Chinese jet's potential ability to overtake that of America's F-22 in thrust and "supercruise" speed, which is the ability to fly supersonically without using fuel-guzzling afterburners.
"We can't say precisely what the capabilities are, but we have a good idea. Right now, we should be reviving production of the F-22 and not just reviving production, we should be developing an advance version of the F-22," said Fisher. "And sadly, even though it is a troubled program, already the F-35 needs another rework. It needs to be made competitive with this fighter."
The F-22 was scaled back in production in 2009. The production of the F-35, which is being developed and tested, could be slowed under Gates' budget-cutting initiative.
In 2009, Gates said that no nation comes close to the United States' air power, and he anticipated the Chinese having only "a handful" of fighters that challenge the U.S. advanced fleets by 2025. But Fisher cautions that this Chinese jet could cause a change in the balance of power in the Pacific.
"Since World War II, the American military has never gone into battle without the assurance of air superiority. China is a rising power, and it is determined to challenge the American position globally," said Fisher. "This fighter will allow them to do that on a military level... and from my perspective, that's simply unacceptable."
CNN's Steven Jiang in Beijing contributed to this report.
China flexes military muscle for US
In this file photo, military vehicles carrying DF-21D
carrier-killer missiles parade past
Tiananmen Square. (AP
Beijing: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, on a mission to resuscitate moribund military relations with China, will not arrive in Beijing for talks with the nation's top military leaders until Sunday. But at an airfield in Chengdu, a metropolis in the nation's center, China's military leaders have already rolled out a welcome for him.
It is the J-20, a radar-evading jet fighter that has the same two angled tailfins that are the trademark of the Pentagon's own stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor. After years of top-secret development, the jet -- China's first stealth plane -- was put through what appear to be preliminary, but also very public, tests this week on the runway of the Aviation Design Institute in Chengdu, a site so open that aircraft enthusiasts often gather there to snap photos.
Some analysts say the timing is no coincidence. "This is their new policy of deterrence," Andrei Chang, the Hong Kong editor in chief of the Canadian journal Kanwa Defense Weekly, who reported the jet's tests, said Wednesday. "They want to show the U. S., show Mr. Gates, their muscle."
These days, there is more muscle to show. A decade of aggressive modernization of China's once creaky military is beginning to bear fruit, and both the Pentagon and China's Asian neighbors are increasingly taking notice.
By most accounts, China remains a generation or more behind the United States in military technology, and even further behind in deploying battle-tested versions of its most sophisticated naval and air capabilities. But after years of denials that it has any intention of becoming a peer military power of the United States, it is now unveiling capabilities that suggest that it intends, sooner or later, to be able to challenge American forces in the Pacific.
Besides the J-20, a midair-refuelable, missile-capable jet designed to fly far beyond Chinese borders, the Chinese are reported to be refitting a Soviet-era Ukrainian aircraft carrier -- China's first such power-projecting ship -- for deployment as soon as next year.
A spate of news reports allege that construction is already under way in Shanghai on one or more carriers; the military denied a similar report in 2006, but senior military officials have been more outspoken this year about China's desire to build the big ships. China could launch several carriers by 2020, the Pentagon stated in a 2009 report.
The military's nuclear deterrent, estimated by experts at no more than 160 warheads, has been redeployed since 2008 onto mobile launchers and advanced submarines that no longer are sitting ducks for attackers. Multiple-warhead missiles are widely presumed to come next. China's 60-boat submarine fleet, already Asia's largest, is being refurbished with super-quiet nuclear-powered vessels and a second generation of ballistic-missile-equipped subs.
And a widely anticipated antiship ballistic missile, called a "carrier-killer" for its potential to strike the big carriers at the heart of the American naval presence in the Pacific, appears to be approaching deployment. The head of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, told a Japanese newspaper in December that the weapon had reached "initial operational capability," an important benchmark. Navy officials said later that the Chinese had a working design but that it apparently had yet to be tested over water.
On that and other weaponry, China's clear message nevertheless is that its ability to deter others from territory it owns, or claims, is growing fast.
China, of course, has its own rationales for its military buildup. A common theme is that potentially offensive weapons like aircraft carriers, antiship missiles and stealth fighters are needed to enforce claims to Taiwan, should leaders there seek legal independence from the mainland.
Taiwan's current status, governed separately but claimed by China as part of its sovereign territory, is maintained in part by an American commitment to defend it should Beijing carry out an attack. Some experts date elements of today's military buildup from crises in the mid-1990s, when the United States sent aircraft carriers unmolested into waters around Taiwan to drive home Washington's commitment to the island.
Chinese officials also clearly worry that the United States plans to ring China with military alliances to contain Beijing's ambitions for power and influence. In that view, the Pentagon's long-term strategy is to cement in Central Asia the sorts of partnerships it has built on China's eastern flank in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
"Some Chinese scholars worry that the U. S. will complete its encirclement of China this way," said Xu Qinhua, who studies Russia and Central Asia at the Renmin University of China and advises government officials on regional issues. "We should worry about this. It's natural."
The Pentagon's official view has long been that it welcomes a stronger Chinese military as a partner with the United States to maintain open sea lanes, fight piracy and perform other international duties now shouldered -- and paid for -- by American service members and taxpayers.
But Chinese military leaders have seldom offered more than a glimpse of their long-term military strategy, and the steady buildup of a force with offensive abilities well beyond Chinese territory clearly worries American military planners.
"When we talk about a threat, it's a combination of capabilities and intentions," said Abraham M. Denmark, a former China country director in Mr. Gates's office. "The capabilities are becoming more and more clearly defined, and they're more and more clearly targeted at limiting American abilities to project military power into the western Pacific."
"What's unclear to us is the intent," he added. "China's military modernization is certainly their right. What others question is how that military power is going to be used."
Mr. Denmark, who now directs the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said China's recent strong-arm reaction to territorial disputes with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors had given both the Pentagon and China's neighbors cause for concern.
Still, a top Navy intelligence officer told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that the United States should not overestimate Beijing's military prowess and that China had not yet demonstrated an ability to use its different weapons systems together in proficient warfare. The officer, Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, the deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, said that although China had developed some weapons faster than the United States expected, he was not alarmed over all.
"Have you seen them deploy large groups of naval forces?" he said. "No. Have we seen large, joint, sophisticated exercises? No. Do they have any combat proficiency? No."
Admiral Dorsett said that even though the Chinese were planning sea trials on a "used, very old" Russian aircraft carrier this year and were intent on building their own carriers as well, they would still have limited proficiency in landing planes on carriers and operating them as part of larger battle groups at sea.
Little about China's military intentions is clear. The Pentagon's 2009 assessment of China's military strategy stated baldly that despite "persistent efforts," its understanding of how and how much China's government spends on defense "has not improved measurably."
In an interview on Wednesday, a leading Chinese expert on the military, Zhu Feng, said he viewed some claims of rapid progress on advanced weapons as little more than puffery.
"What's the real story?" he asked in a telephone interview. "I must be very skeptical. I see a lot of vast headlines with regards to weapons procurement. But behind the curtain, I see a lot of wasted money -- a lot of ballooning, a lot of exaggeration."
Mr. Zhu, who directs the international security program at Peking University, suggested that China's military establishment -- not unlike that in the United States -- was inclined to inflate threats and exaggerate its progress in a continual bid to win more influence and money for its favored programs.
And that may be true. If so, however, the artifice may be lost on China's cross-Pacific rivals.
"Ultimately, from a U. S. perspective it comes down to an issue of whether the United States will be as dominant in the western Pacific as we always have been," Bonnie Glaser, a China scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a telephone interview. "And clearly the Chinese would like to make it far more complicated for us."
"That's something the Chinese would see as reasonable," she said. "But from a U. S. perspective, that's just unacceptable."
China’s stealth jet fighter sends signal about its military power
The timing also appeared to have strategic value. Gates asked Chinese President Hu Jintao during a meeting whether the flight was timed to coincide with his visit. Jintao denied it, saying the flight of the J-20 was pre-planned, Gates told reporters.
It also comes a week before Jintao is scheduled to meet with President Obama at the White House. Among their topics scheduled for discussion is China’s growing military might and U.S. apprehensions about it. So far, negotiations between the two countries on limiting military expansions have stalled.
Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie said in interviews this week that U.S. proposals to negotiate strategic arms limitations would be “considered and studied.”
Until now, the U.S. military operated the world’s only operational stealth jet fighters, called the F-22 Raptor.
Military analysts said they are nearly certain the 15-minute flight at an airfield in the southern city of Chengdu, along with the extensive press coverage, were intended to send a message to the United States about China’s military capability.
U.S. Vice Admiral David Dorsett, who heads naval intelligence services, said he has been surprised by China’s military technologies.
“They’ve entered operational capability quicker than we frequently project,” Dorsett said in an interview posted on the Pentagon’s Web site. “We’ve been on the mark on an awful lot of our assessments, but there have been a handful of things we’ve underestimated.”
He also said China is becoming more willing to demonstrate its military power than in previous years.
“Over the years, the Chinese military doctrine was ‘hide and bide’ – hide your resources and bide your time,” Dorsett said. “They now appear to have shifted into an era where they’re willing to show their resources and capabilities.”
China appears to have speeded up its development of the J-20 after the U.S. military deployed F-22 Raptors to Guam over the past three years and used them during military training exercises with South Korea.
U.S. military analysts also speculate that China has developed tactical missiles that could strike ships at sea.
The J-20 appears to be an outgrowth of China’s decision to increase its military budget, which now ranks second in the world behind the United States, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The Chinese government announced last March it had increased military spending by 7.5 percent last year.
China had increased its military budget by at least 10 percent each year for the previous decade.
U.S. concern about China’s military budget coincides with disagreements over North Korea’s growing militarism toward South Korea and its nuclear weapons program.
Gates said North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons was becoming a “direct threat” to the United States.
China was the only country that refused to condemn North Korea for bombarding an island off the South Korean coast last month.
General Guo Boxiong, a top Chinese military leader, recently made a statement criticizing the “imperialist aggression” of the U.S. military for its support of South Korea.
The new Chinese stealth fighter jet, known as the J-20, isn't expected to be operational until at least 2017
(CNN) -- Images believed to be of China's next generation of military air power have been buzzing around the internet, but Pentagon officials are insisting it does not mean China has matched American air capabilities.
The new Chinese stealth fighter jet, known as the J-20, isn't supposed to be operational until at least 2017, but a Chinese air force commander told Chinese TV in 2009 that flight testing would begin much sooner. Stealth jets, such as the United States' F-22, are designed to evade detection by radar and anti-aircraft defenses.
Now unknown sources have posted photos of what appears to be the plane on an airfield runway in southwestern China.
"We are aware of their plans to develop this fifth-generation fighter," Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Wednesday. "The photos that were released recently are presumably of some taxi testing."
At a Thursday briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei declined to comment on reports on China testing the jet.
"China insists on a path of peaceful development," he said. "We have adopted a national defense policy that is defensive in nature and do not threaten any other countries. China has been an important force in maintaining regional and global peace."
The emergence of the photos comes as Defense Secretary Robert Gates heads to China this weekend to discuss the military relationship between the U.S. and China. And later this month, President Hu Jintao will go to Washington for a summit with President Barack Obama.
One China watcher says Beijing's failure to censor the grainy images on the web proves the photos are of the new jet and the country wants them to circulate.
"The Chinese military and the police could have swept the area around the airfield very easily, but what they've done is they've controlled this. They've allowed Chinese to only take photos with cell phones, meaning that the photos that we have are low-resolution, do not give us a great deal of detail about the aircraft and they're put on the web with a low-resolution format," said China military scholar and author Richard Fisher. "The response within China has been overwhelmingly positive and has spurred national pride to an enormous degree."
The Pentagon is taking a low-key approach to the surge in publicity about the Chinese fighter, saying their existing top-of-the-line warplane has engine problems and that their next plane is years away. But Fisher says that timeline could be sped up if the Chinese buy an engine from Russia as opposed to developing it themselves.
"It's something that is in some form of development, as a fifth-generation fighter. As I noted, the Chinese are still having difficulties with their fourth-generation fighter," Lapan said in an off-camera question session with journalists in his office.
And he said that while the new jet was not mentioned in the Pentagon report on China that was sent to Congress in August as an annual update for China's defense capabilities, the Defense Department has talked about it.
"We as a department have publicly spoken about it in the past. It is not as if we have not acknowledged that they are pursuing a fifth-generation fighter," Lapan said. "So we are aware of it. But it is not of concern that they are working on a fifth-generation fighter."
Fisher, however, says it should be a concern, citing the Chinese jet's potential ability to overtake that of America's F-22 in thrust and "supercruise" speed, which is the ability to fly supersonically without using fuel-guzzling afterburners.
"We can't say precisely what the capabilities are, but we have a good idea. Right now, we should be reviving production of the F-22 and not just reviving production, we should be developing an advance version of the F-22," said Fisher. "And sadly, even though it is a troubled program, already the F-35 needs another rework. It needs to be made competitive with this fighter."
The F-22 was scaled back in production in 2009. The production of the F-35, which is being developed and tested, could be slowed under Gates' budget-cutting initiative.
In 2009, Gates said that no nation comes close to the United States' air power, and he anticipated the Chinese having only "a handful" of fighters that challenge the U.S. advanced fleets by 2025. But Fisher cautions that this Chinese jet could cause a change in the balance of power in the Pacific.
"Since World War II, the American military has never gone into battle without the assurance of air superiority. China is a rising power, and it is determined to challenge the American position globally," said Fisher. "This fighter will allow them to do that on a military level... and from my perspective, that's simply unacceptable."
CNN's Steven Jiang in Beijing contributed to this report.
China flexes military muscle for US
In this file photo, military vehicles carrying DF-21D
carrier-killer missiles parade past
Tiananmen Square. (AP
Beijing: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, on a mission to resuscitate moribund military relations with China, will not arrive in Beijing for talks with the nation's top military leaders until Sunday. But at an airfield in Chengdu, a metropolis in the nation's center, China's military leaders have already rolled out a welcome for him.
It is the J-20, a radar-evading jet fighter that has the same two angled tailfins that are the trademark of the Pentagon's own stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor. After years of top-secret development, the jet -- China's first stealth plane -- was put through what appear to be preliminary, but also very public, tests this week on the runway of the Aviation Design Institute in Chengdu, a site so open that aircraft enthusiasts often gather there to snap photos.
Some analysts say the timing is no coincidence. "This is their new policy of deterrence," Andrei Chang, the Hong Kong editor in chief of the Canadian journal Kanwa Defense Weekly, who reported the jet's tests, said Wednesday. "They want to show the U. S., show Mr. Gates, their muscle."
These days, there is more muscle to show. A decade of aggressive modernization of China's once creaky military is beginning to bear fruit, and both the Pentagon and China's Asian neighbors are increasingly taking notice.
By most accounts, China remains a generation or more behind the United States in military technology, and even further behind in deploying battle-tested versions of its most sophisticated naval and air capabilities. But after years of denials that it has any intention of becoming a peer military power of the United States, it is now unveiling capabilities that suggest that it intends, sooner or later, to be able to challenge American forces in the Pacific.
Besides the J-20, a midair-refuelable, missile-capable jet designed to fly far beyond Chinese borders, the Chinese are reported to be refitting a Soviet-era Ukrainian aircraft carrier -- China's first such power-projecting ship -- for deployment as soon as next year.
A spate of news reports allege that construction is already under way in Shanghai on one or more carriers; the military denied a similar report in 2006, but senior military officials have been more outspoken this year about China's desire to build the big ships. China could launch several carriers by 2020, the Pentagon stated in a 2009 report.
The military's nuclear deterrent, estimated by experts at no more than 160 warheads, has been redeployed since 2008 onto mobile launchers and advanced submarines that no longer are sitting ducks for attackers. Multiple-warhead missiles are widely presumed to come next. China's 60-boat submarine fleet, already Asia's largest, is being refurbished with super-quiet nuclear-powered vessels and a second generation of ballistic-missile-equipped subs.
And a widely anticipated antiship ballistic missile, called a "carrier-killer" for its potential to strike the big carriers at the heart of the American naval presence in the Pacific, appears to be approaching deployment. The head of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Robert F. Willard, told a Japanese newspaper in December that the weapon had reached "initial operational capability," an important benchmark. Navy officials said later that the Chinese had a working design but that it apparently had yet to be tested over water.
On that and other weaponry, China's clear message nevertheless is that its ability to deter others from territory it owns, or claims, is growing fast.
China, of course, has its own rationales for its military buildup. A common theme is that potentially offensive weapons like aircraft carriers, antiship missiles and stealth fighters are needed to enforce claims to Taiwan, should leaders there seek legal independence from the mainland.
Taiwan's current status, governed separately but claimed by China as part of its sovereign territory, is maintained in part by an American commitment to defend it should Beijing carry out an attack. Some experts date elements of today's military buildup from crises in the mid-1990s, when the United States sent aircraft carriers unmolested into waters around Taiwan to drive home Washington's commitment to the island.
Chinese officials also clearly worry that the United States plans to ring China with military alliances to contain Beijing's ambitions for power and influence. In that view, the Pentagon's long-term strategy is to cement in Central Asia the sorts of partnerships it has built on China's eastern flank in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
"Some Chinese scholars worry that the U. S. will complete its encirclement of China this way," said Xu Qinhua, who studies Russia and Central Asia at the Renmin University of China and advises government officials on regional issues. "We should worry about this. It's natural."
The Pentagon's official view has long been that it welcomes a stronger Chinese military as a partner with the United States to maintain open sea lanes, fight piracy and perform other international duties now shouldered -- and paid for -- by American service members and taxpayers.
But Chinese military leaders have seldom offered more than a glimpse of their long-term military strategy, and the steady buildup of a force with offensive abilities well beyond Chinese territory clearly worries American military planners.
"When we talk about a threat, it's a combination of capabilities and intentions," said Abraham M. Denmark, a former China country director in Mr. Gates's office. "The capabilities are becoming more and more clearly defined, and they're more and more clearly targeted at limiting American abilities to project military power into the western Pacific."
"What's unclear to us is the intent," he added. "China's military modernization is certainly their right. What others question is how that military power is going to be used."
Mr. Denmark, who now directs the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, said China's recent strong-arm reaction to territorial disputes with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors had given both the Pentagon and China's neighbors cause for concern.
Still, a top Navy intelligence officer told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that the United States should not overestimate Beijing's military prowess and that China had not yet demonstrated an ability to use its different weapons systems together in proficient warfare. The officer, Vice Adm. David J. Dorsett, the deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, said that although China had developed some weapons faster than the United States expected, he was not alarmed over all.
"Have you seen them deploy large groups of naval forces?" he said. "No. Have we seen large, joint, sophisticated exercises? No. Do they have any combat proficiency? No."
Admiral Dorsett said that even though the Chinese were planning sea trials on a "used, very old" Russian aircraft carrier this year and were intent on building their own carriers as well, they would still have limited proficiency in landing planes on carriers and operating them as part of larger battle groups at sea.
Little about China's military intentions is clear. The Pentagon's 2009 assessment of China's military strategy stated baldly that despite "persistent efforts," its understanding of how and how much China's government spends on defense "has not improved measurably."
In an interview on Wednesday, a leading Chinese expert on the military, Zhu Feng, said he viewed some claims of rapid progress on advanced weapons as little more than puffery.
"What's the real story?" he asked in a telephone interview. "I must be very skeptical. I see a lot of vast headlines with regards to weapons procurement. But behind the curtain, I see a lot of wasted money -- a lot of ballooning, a lot of exaggeration."
Mr. Zhu, who directs the international security program at Peking University, suggested that China's military establishment -- not unlike that in the United States -- was inclined to inflate threats and exaggerate its progress in a continual bid to win more influence and money for its favored programs.
And that may be true. If so, however, the artifice may be lost on China's cross-Pacific rivals.
"Ultimately, from a U. S. perspective it comes down to an issue of whether the United States will be as dominant in the western Pacific as we always have been," Bonnie Glaser, a China scholar at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a telephone interview. "And clearly the Chinese would like to make it far more complicated for us."
"That's something the Chinese would see as reasonable," she said. "But from a U. S. perspective, that's just unacceptable."
Chinese fighter jet rewrites power in region, says critic
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.
Peter Goon, a vehement critic of the F-35 joint strike fighter that Australia has committed to buying from the United States, says the Chinese J-20 is far superior to the American fighter and we must immediately adapt to the new status quo.
The Chinese tested the J-20 for the first time last week, on the day that the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, arrived in Beijing for defence-related talks. Although the Chinese said the timing was coincidental, Mr Gates expressed concerns about the military's motives.
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.
Peter Goon, a vehement critic of the F-35 joint strike fighter that Australia has committed to buying from the United States, says the Chinese J-20 is far superior to the American fighter and we must immediately adapt to the new status quo.
The Chinese tested the J-20 for the first time last week, on the day that the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, arrived in Beijing for defence-related talks. Although the Chinese said the timing was coincidental, Mr Gates expressed concerns about the military's motives.
A Lowy Institute analyst, Rory Medcalf, a recent visitor to Beijing, said it was possible that the military did not signal the testing as a way of expressing displeasure at Mr Gates's visit.
Mr Goon, co-founder of the Air Power Australia think-tank, said the US and its allies had been ''caught flat-footed'' by the J-20's maiden appearance.
The J-20 has been described by some analysts overseas as ''unimpressive'' and a ''mish-mash of Soviet and American design features''. But Mr Goon said it was clear from the images of the plane and other material that it 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?''
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.
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.
''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,'' Mr Goon said.
''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.''
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.
Following a recent Pentagon review of the troubled project, Mr Gates threatened to cancel the US Marines version of the fighter within two years unless the lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, ironed out problems with its structure and propulsion systems and lack of reliability.
The US Debt Commission has also recommended the Marines' F-35 be axed. Production on the F-22 jet was stopped by Mr Gates last year because it was too expensive.
Mr Goon, co-founder of the Air Power Australia think-tank, said the US and its allies had been ''caught flat-footed'' by the J-20's maiden appearance.
The J-20 has been described by some analysts overseas as ''unimpressive'' and a ''mish-mash of Soviet and American design features''. But Mr Goon said it was clear from the images of the plane and other material that it 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?''
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.
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.
''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,'' Mr Goon said.
''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.''
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.
Following a recent Pentagon review of the troubled project, Mr Gates threatened to cancel the US Marines version of the fighter within two years unless the lead contractor, Lockheed Martin, ironed out problems with its structure and propulsion systems and lack of reliability.
The US Debt Commission has also recommended the Marines' F-35 be axed. Production on the F-22 jet was stopped by Mr Gates last year because it was too expensive.
China’s stealth jet fighter sends signal about its military power
Until now, the U.S. military operated the world’s only operational stealth jet fighters, the F-22 Raptor.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended his trip to China Wednesday only a day after the Chinese military made its first test flight of a stealth jet fighter. The flight surprised military analysts, who said they did not know China’s military had become so sophisticated in its weaponry.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates ended his trip to China Wednesday only a day after the Chinese military made its first test flight of a stealth jet fighter. The flight surprised military analysts, who said they did not know China’s military had become so sophisticated in its weaponry.
The timing also appeared to have strategic value. Gates asked Chinese President Hu Jintao during a meeting whether the flight was timed to coincide with his visit. Jintao denied it, saying the flight of the J-20 was pre-planned, Gates told reporters.
It also comes a week before Jintao is scheduled to meet with President Obama at the White House. Among their topics scheduled for discussion is China’s growing military might and U.S. apprehensions about it. So far, negotiations between the two countries on limiting military expansions have stalled.
Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie said in interviews this week that U.S. proposals to negotiate strategic arms limitations would be “considered and studied.”
Until now, the U.S. military operated the world’s only operational stealth jet fighters, called the F-22 Raptor.
Military analysts said they are nearly certain the 15-minute flight at an airfield in the southern city of Chengdu, along with the extensive press coverage, were intended to send a message to the United States about China’s military capability.
U.S. Vice Admiral David Dorsett, who heads naval intelligence services, said he has been surprised by China’s military technologies.
“They’ve entered operational capability quicker than we frequently project,” Dorsett said in an interview posted on the Pentagon’s Web site. “We’ve been on the mark on an awful lot of our assessments, but there have been a handful of things we’ve underestimated.”
He also said China is becoming more willing to demonstrate its military power than in previous years.
“Over the years, the Chinese military doctrine was ‘hide and bide’ – hide your resources and bide your time,” Dorsett said. “They now appear to have shifted into an era where they’re willing to show their resources and capabilities.”
China appears to have speeded up its development of the J-20 after the U.S. military deployed F-22 Raptors to Guam over the past three years and used them during military training exercises with South Korea.
U.S. military analysts also speculate that China has developed tactical missiles that could strike ships at sea.
The J-20 appears to be an outgrowth of China’s decision to increase its military budget, which now ranks second in the world behind the United States, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The Chinese government announced last March it had increased military spending by 7.5 percent last year.
China had increased its military budget by at least 10 percent each year for the previous decade.
U.S. concern about China’s military budget coincides with disagreements over North Korea’s growing militarism toward South Korea and its nuclear weapons program.
Gates said North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons was becoming a “direct threat” to the United States.
China was the only country that refused to condemn North Korea for bombarding an island off the South Korean coast last month.
General Guo Boxiong, a top Chinese military leader, recently made a statement criticizing the “imperialist aggression” of the U.S. military for its support of South Korea.
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