The year 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the first flight of China’s J-20 fighter jet, and the Chinese military has just replied to the question of whether the J-20 fighter has been widely installed in its forces and formed operational capabilities.
Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesman Wu Qian said at a press conference on Jan. 28 that the development of complex aviation platforms has its objective rules, and it takes a process from the first flight to the formation of combat capabilities. The J-20 aircraft of the Chinese Air Force has been in service for 10 years since its first flight on January 11, 2011, and its operational capability has been gradually tested and has begun to be commissioned in the army.
J-20 stealth fighter is China’s independently developed all-weather, medium- and long-range, heavy supersonic stealth fighter with excellent air-to-air combat capability and good ground-to-sea precision strike capability.
January 11 marks the 10th anniversary of the first flight of the PLA’s fourth-generation fighter – J-20. At this juncture, a Chinese military flight recruitment propaganda video revealed that J-20 with the Chinese domestic engine WS-10C has been commissioned.
WS-10C engine uses Full Authority Digital Control (FADEC) technology to improve the pressurized combustion chamber, with a maximum thrust of more than 130 kN, which can meet some of the targets set by the J-20A when the project was established.
It is worth noting that China Aviation Industry Corporation (CAIC), the developer of the J-20, has released the latest promotional video of the aircraft on its official microblog “Aviation Industry”, in which four two-seater J-20s, called “J-20BS”, are shown for the first time. If realized, this is the world’s first two-seat stealth fighter. The U.S. F-22 had a two-seat version planned, but it was canceled later.
For the J-20, the military journal Ordnance Industry Science Technology, a journal sponsored by the Shaanxi Science and Technology History Society, recently published an article pointing out that the three-dimensional digital design and manufacturing of the J-20 fighter is stronger and faster than that of the U.S. F-22 fighter. And the U.S. F-22 warplane took about 6 years from the design and manufacture of the prototype to its first flight, while the J-20 demonstrator project took only half the time of the U.S. F-22 warplane from its design in 2009 to its first flight in 2011.
In addition, the empty weight of J-20 is successfully controlled at 15 tons, which is much smaller than the empty weight of 19.7 tons of the U.S. F-22 fighter shown in public information, which makes J-20 have a larger available load and the combat potential greatly exceeds that of the U.S. F-22 fighter.