Rising dragon, slumbering Sam

Last week was one for the books. US President Donald Trump rebranded the Department of Defense as the Department of War. And China held a remarkable parade and flyover in Beijing. It was clearly intended to drive home the fact that China’s armed forces had at least attained technical parity with the United States and possibly surpassed it.

The message was not lost on the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute think-tank, which rolled out a report on Friday comparing US Air Force capability with the Chinese air force. The doleful list of comparisons—including the usual complaints about the USAF’s aging fighter force and an assessment that China is producing 120 heavyweight Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters per year—ended with a call to boost F-35 production for the USAF to 72 per year.

Fat chance. The week closed with a Politico report that an in-work strategic review would focus on domestic threats and the Western Hemisphere and downgrade the importance of deterring China.

China’s 3 September display indicated an active lack of interest in being deterred. It was the Beijing debut of the Shenyang J-35, China’s second stealth fighter, in both land-based and carrier-based versions. The new two-seat J-20S and the upgraded J-20A also made their debut, as did the Xian KJ-600 airborne radar and control platform, a faithful reproduction of the 60-year-old Northrop Grumman E-2. Three Xian Y-20B transports showed off China’s first indigenous high-bypass-ratio engine.

At ground level, airborne weapons included the massive and unique JL-1 air-launched ballistic missile, to be carried by the specially configured Xian H-6N bomber, and a range of unmanned combat aircraft designs, with very different configurations ranging from conventional to entirely tailless.

The individual hardware items were interesting enough, but the messages were more so. This was not just Soviet-style muscle-flexing but a signal of progress, an outline of strategy, and a display of innovative thinking.

For example, most of the fighter formations were led by support aircraft: China sees air power as an integrated enterprise where those aircraft are as important as the fast jets. Air Force groups were led by tankers, two types of airborne early warning aircraft (the KJ-500 and the Shaanxi KJ-200) and signals intelligence and maritime reconnaissance aircraft.

A navy group of J-15s carrying mockups of the PL-15 long-range air-to-air missile trailed the KJ-600, and both the air force J-20 and J-35 formation and the navy J-15 and J-35 group were led by electronic attack variants of Shenyang’s family based on the Sukhoi Flanker.

Operationally, this supports a system where KJ-series aircraft using active, electronically scanned arrays (AESAs) are not just providing early warning but battle management and missile guidance support, and where heavily loaded electromagnetic-attack aircraft give up little in speed and agility to better perform their mission.

The J-20S is important because, according to Chinese commentators, among its missions is integrating drones with manned formations. The fact that the various unmanned configurations on show were recoverable—not throw-away—suggests that the Chinese military is leaning in that direction. But for China, these don’t present the same problems of deployment and sustainment that they do for the US. Not only does China have a vast land mass, but the old days massive but poorly equipped forces, including hordes of bootleg MiGs, have left it with plenty of infrastructure.

The H-6 bomber is different. The basic design is as old as the B-52, but it’s still in production—in greatly updated versions with modern systems that can carry cruise missiles or the outsize JL-1.

The trio of Y-20Bs emphasised another development: the long campaign to develop high-performance indigenous engines is bearing fruit. This has been a challenge for more than purely technical reasons: since the 1970s, year by year, Western military engines have relied more upon a massive supply chain sustained by the airline business. China hardly has a civil engine industry. But it’s making progress in military aircraft propulsion, anyway.

And as we’ve seen, innovation in China’s aerospace is accelerating. Apart from sheer resources and national commitment, there are two prime reasons for this.

One is that China’s military appears to have a good grasp on technological development. No one project has been allowed to monopolise resources, and stealth technology hasn’t been constrained to two approaches as it has in the US (the Lockheed Martin concept derived from the F-117 and the Northrop concept dating to the B-2).

Another reason springs from that. Since the 1990s there has been a wide variety of military aircraft programs in China. Even copies and upgrades provided valuable experience for the engineers who graduated during China’s emergence from Maoism and now hold responsible positions.

J-20 designer Yang Wei was appointed director of design at Chengdu at 38. He had headed development of the JF-17 fighter and worked on the J-10. And clearly he has had many talented students.

Meanwhile, the Mitchell Institute—dominated by retired USAF officers—is recommending the USAF go all-in on the decades-old F-35 design and (once again) commit to just one new fighter program, the F-47. Does that look like a good idea?

 

* Bill Sweetman is a veteran, award-winning journalist and aerospace industry executive. He is the author of Trillion Dollar Trainwreck: How the F-35 hollowed out the US Air Force.

Source: https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/rising-dragon-slumbering-sam/