Janes: China May Have Begun Series Production of J-20 Stealth Fighter

Maiden flight of new J-20 prototype no. 2015

There has been much speculation about China’s progress in developing its J-20 stealth fighter jets as China has recently turned out more J-20 prototypes and conducted 60 test flights of such prototypes.

Britain’s Jane’s Defense Weekly believes that new J-20 prototype no. 2011 may be an initial engineering sample. Its emergence may signal the commencement of small batch production of J-20 in 2015.

The new prototype is equipped with active phased array radar and photoelectric tracking system for accurate strike. In addition, there is new improvement in the tail of prototype no. 2015 that conducted its maiden flight at the end of 2014.

According to Russia media’s speculation, flight training of J-20 will begin in 2015 the earliest. The fighter may be commissioned by 2017 and begin to be combat worthy by 2019. It obviously has some problems compared with US F-22 and Russian T-50, however, it proves China’s unimaginable speed in developing aviation science and technology.

Source: Global Times “Foreign media guess that series production of J-20 has begun: speed of development beyond imagination but J-20 is still no rival to US F-22” (summary by Chan Kai Yee based on the report in Chinese)

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