Rick Joe
On December 26 in the city of Chengdu, China, a new generation, stealthy combat aircraft made by Chengdu Aerospace Corporation (CAC) had its maiden flight. Images and videos emerged in near real time, showing the highly swept flying wing aircraft accompanied by a J-20S twin-seat chase plane. This aircraft generated significant furor on defense tracking internet and news sites, with questions surrounding its role, capability, maturity, and more.
For the community of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) watchers, this aircraft was not unexpected. I have published articles on Chinese next-generation fighter efforts over the last half decade. Indicators over the last year-and-a-half strongly suggested a new generation/sixth-generation air-to-air combat aircraft would emerge rather soon, and these hints accelerated over the past four months, with increasing details on the type of platform to expect.
The PLA watching community’s working designation of this new CAC aircraft is the “J-36,” in reference to its expected tasking as an air-to-air/air superiority platform, with “36” reflecting the visible serial number: 36011. I will refer to the aircraft as “J-36” as well, with the proviso that both its prefix and suffix are not yet definitive (I have previously used the term “J-XD” as a stand-in).
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