2012-11-10 — Was last week’s inaugural flight of China’s second stealth fighter linked to the ongoing 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party? Was President Hu Jintao demonstrating his relationship with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a powerful lever for elevating his protégés to the apex Politburo Standing Committee?
Several unanswered questions surround the October 31 debut of the J-31 Shenyang fighter, which the pathologically secretive PLA took unusual pains to publicise. Having already unveiled the J-20 Chengdu stealth fighter in January 2011, China is the only country that is developing two separate stealth fighters. The US is developing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, albeit in three versions; Russia is working on a single design, the PAK-FA, to which India has hitched its wagon. Separately, Japan is developing the ATD-X demonstrator.
Other intriguing questions include: Given the J-31’s close resemblance to the US F-35 fighter, has China reverse-engineered it from blueprints that Lockheed Martin had reported stolen in 2009 from the computers of six American aerospace subcontractors? Is the J-31 for export only, which would explain the publicity that the PLA is giving it? Or will the PLA use the J-31 as an air superiority fighter while the larger J-20 strikes ground targets, an allocation of roles that mirrors the employment of the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 by the US Air Force? Or is the F-31 a competitor to the J-20, with the better of the two designs destined to go into production?
But the question that most worries the Indian Navy is: does the sturdy landing gear that experts have spotted on the J-31 indicate that the new fighter will operate from Chinese aircraft carriers, giving the PLA Navy, or PLA(N), an aerial combat capability that would outmuscle India’s in the Indian Ocean?
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