Chinese J20 Stealth Fighter: Time To Freak Out?

The Chinese rolled out a fighter jet designated as the J-20 for a test which is fueling speculation about whether this is their fifth generation stealth fighter. While nobody can answer that definitively, it raises a pretty important question. If it is, then what are we going to fly against it? We have canceled our air superiority fighter the F-22 and we won’t have built very many of them. I think it is a safe bet that each one of ours is capable of taking out one of theirs, but they can build quite a few and that could be a problem.

With the Raptor gone, that leaves the F-35 as our main plane. We don’t know enough about the new Chinese fighter to know how the F-35 will stack up against it. But we are betting our security on coming out on the top of that exchange. For that to be a good wager we need to build and field enough of them and that is far from certain.

We have a huge and growing debt and budget deficits that are driving everyone in Washington to look for places to cut spending. It’s no news to note that there are many who see the Defense budget as an unnecessary evil. There are many calls to cut the number of planes we are going to build and we need to stop those who want to balance the budget by busting our security. That Chinese plane is hardly the only threat we face, and we need to be able to look beyond the current economic crisis to make sure we have what we need to face it.