OFFSETTING CHINA’S STEALTH FIGHTER ADVANTAGE: AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
Alex Hollings | June 28, 2023
America’s F-22 Raptor is still widely considered the most capable and dominant air superiority fighter in the world, but as China’s J-20 production continues to ramp up, the F-22’s dominance now faces a significant threat. This threat isn’t necessarily in stealth or even aerobatic performance, but potentially in an even more important combat capability metric: volume.
The Raptor’s abbreviated production run, which ended in 2011 with just 186 airframes delivered, may have doomed the air superiority fighter to a short service life, but with the F-22’s replacement still to manifest, China’s air superiority advantage will almost certainly grow throughout the remainder of the decade and well into the 2030s. Even America’s other 5th generation fighter, the F-35, may not be enough to maintain a capacity advantage over the Pacific. While F-35 production in 2023 is expected to reach as high as 156 aircraft, this volume is distributed across more than a dozen national partners.
“Our commanders tell us that by 2025, the Chinese will have more fifth-generation stealth fighters on the front line than we do,” Senate Armed Services Committee member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said during a confirmation hearing Oct. 5, 2021.
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/offsetting-chinas-stealth-fighter-advantage-an-in-depth-analysis/
