China Shocks World with New Test Flight: Is This a Purpose-Made Weapon?
Dec. 26 is the birthdate of Communist China’s first leader, Mao Zedong. Beijing loves to awaken the West from its Christmas slumber with a Boxing Day surprise in honor of the event, if they have one.
And boy, did they ever this year: the J-36.
What’s the J-36? Well, aside from it being a jet aircraft, we kind of don’t know; we don’t even know it’s called the J-36, even though several sources (including the Royal Aeronautical Society and military-centric outlet The War Zone are using the designation). We don’t know what it’s built for or what its capabilities are.
All we know is that it exists and that it’s supposed to have some level of stealth capabilities. And, while it’s likely to be inferior in technology to what the West has, it’s another sign of a country that has military and geopolitical designs on dominating the East and is realizing those designs step-by-step.
The video, according to Singapore’s Channel News Asia, first appeared on Chinese social media. According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, Chengdu-based Defence Times made an oblique reference to the leaf-like shape of the new plane, saying, “It really looks like a leaf,” with an image of a ginkgo leaf along with it.
Now, the question is whether this is cutting-edge technology or, like prior aircraft from China, an attempt to counter the West with designs that come up short of our best military offerings. It was shadowed by a smaller J-20 to emphasize its heft.
The question is what this is, since there’s no official announcement that this exists beyond the video we’ve seen of it. What’s clear is that it has three engines, one more than the J-20 fighter and that it has much longer wings than that craft, which has been in service with Chinese forces since 2017.
The Royal Aeronautical Society, which calls the plane “Boxer, ” wrote, “Boxer’s distinguishing attributes are stealth, speed, range, and weapons load. The J-20 does well at the first two, and does better at the third than other fighters, but it was designed to go after air targets — principally high-value air assets like airborne early warning and control aircraft, and intelligence and electronic warfare platforms — and its weapon bays are tailored accordingly.”
However, while others were calling this a “sixth-generation fighter,” their analysts didn’t think it fit the bill: “To call it a sixth-generation aircraft would be misleading, because, aside from the abuse that the ‘generations’ tag has been subjected to, you might think that Boxer is a fighter or some kind of analogue to the U.S. Next Generation Air Dominance program, whereas it’s something quite unique, and in no way a replacement for anything in service with the People’s Liberation Army-Air Force today.”
Instead, they compared it to the U.S. B-2 and B-21 programs, except designed for extremely high speeds.
“The stealth shaping is similar to the J-20, with canted plane surfaces. It has six planform-edge alignments. Extreme low observables it is not — unless China has made a breakthrough in materials, which can’t be ruled out — but this is also a stand-off, supersonic aircraft, and ELO is less necessary to survivability,” their analysis read.
“Why three engines? There has to be some very important benefit to justify the complexity of the Boxer configuration, with a completely different inlet design for the center engine, which also sees different aerodynamic conditions. The simplest explanation is that there is no extant Chinese engine large enough for a twin, but would that justify such a drastic impact to the shape?”
Part of the issue could be the lack of thrust on the J-20’s part, which — while it’s somewhat stealthy — also “hobble[s] the aircraft’s supercruise and maneuvering performance,” Aviation Week and Space Technology reported in 2021. Of course, something that would hobble maneuvering would be the lack of vertical surfaces for control, which the J-36 doesn’t have, much the same as the B-2 and B-21.
Northrop Grumman B-21 strategic bomber under development for the USAF part of the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRS-B) program, it is to be long-range, stealth to replace Rockwell B-1 Lancer and Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit by 2040, and possibly Boeing B-52 Stratofortress after that pic.twitter.com/DDjYBvxkAa
— Chris Bolton (@CcibChris) July 31, 2023
And given that the stealth shaping is roughly the same as the J-20, one would expect that this is similar to that craft in many ways — which would make all of the talk about this being a “sixth-generation” anything, particularly a fighter given its large size — somewhat problematic.
The B-21, produced by Northrop Grumman, is generally considered America’s first sixth-generation plane, while previous fighters like the Boeing F-35 and Lockheed Martin F-22 are considered fifth-generation fighters. Unless China has made a significant leap in stealth avionics that we don’t know about — and the three-engine layout for straight-up speed indicates that this isn’t necessarily the aircraft’s role — we know that’s probably not what it’s about.
Nevertheless, there’s a certain quality in quantity. The F-22, generally considered the most technologically advanced fighter in the Air Force’s fleet, had its run cancelled after 195 were built, less than the USAF had wanted to acquire. As for the B-21, the sixth-generation bomber some are comparing this craft to, Northrop Grumman said the USAF has plans to acquire somewhere between 100 and 200 of the B-2 replacement, which first flew last year.
Not that this will enter service tomorrow; the J-20 took six years from first flight to PLA entrance, and the fact that this was announced via social media leaks as opposed to an official announcement indicates there isn’t as much confidence as there was in that craft. Three engines and the complexities therein, along with a lack of vertical control surfaces, might make this a more difficult task to pull off than that aircraft was.
But make no mistake: When this goes into production, China has every intention of buying quite a few of these craft, certainly more than the B-21 if if turns out to be successful at its role. It may not be of the same quality, yes, but remember: quantity has its own quality, too, and the United States has underinvested in air superiority since the end of the Cold War. It’s time to start re-evaluating that position now that we consider what our chief adversary just unveiled.
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