Earlier this month, the U.S. Air Force released its latest draft defense budget, revealing the main directions for future aircraft and announcing the abandonment of 32 F22s, a decision that attracted widespread attention. Many believe that the reason why the United States took this action is mainly to deal with China's J-20 fighters. It is an objective fact that the Pentagon has made it clear that the F22 has lost its superiority in modern air combat.
The J-20 fighter has made significant progress, and China's CCTV confirmed the news of its regular patrols in the East and South China Seas, indicating that the J-20 has formed a full combat effectiveness. It is worth noting that despite the cruise, the J-20 was never actively detected by Western air defense systems.
There are reports that a J-20 pilot has carried out missions around Taiwan and even visually discovered key locations in Taiwan. However, the Taiwanese side did not perceive the existence of the J-20. Over the years, the United States has sold Taiwan a large number of advanced Western air defense systems, including new phased array radars and air detection radars, which are similar to the models used in active service by the US military. Therefore, the stealth performance of the J-20 has aroused great interest among international military experts.
Often, stealth coatings are one of the key factors in evaluating whether a fighter has a leading edge. In regular cruising, stealth coatings need to withstand extreme conditions such as high temperatures and high-speed flight. If the stealth coating cannot withstand the challenges of these extreme environments, the stealth effect of the fighter will be affected. In contrast, the stealth coating technology used in the J-20 is far ahead of the F22, because the coating technology of the F22 has lagged behind for more than 20 years, and the surface of the paint even cracks.
Taking all these factors into account, the F22 has lost its strategic value for the US Air Force. As a result, the Air Force took decisive action this year to eliminate 32 F22s, which were among the BLOCK20 of earlier models. The Pentagon believes that upgrading the F22 does not make much sense, because it cannot compete with stealth fighters such as the J-20.
In order to bridge this gap, the United States gave more strategic tasks to the F35, but domestically, it has been suggested that the F35 is not the best alternative, because the J-20 has supersonic interception capabilities, and the F35's performance in this regard is relatively average and can only be considered a stopgap measure.
In order to gain an advantage in the confrontation with the J-20, the US military not only chose to abandon the old fighter, but also planned to launch a new fighter with more strategic value. According to the latest draft defense budget, the United States has allocated huge funds to prepare for the development of sixth-generation fighters.
In general, the real target of the US Air Force is a sixth-generation fighter, the NGAD project. Funding for the project amounted to $19.33 billion, indicating that the U.S. military is accelerating the program to quickly build up combat capability. At the same time, the United States is also accelerating the development of six generations of UAVs, planning to purchase 1,000 unmanned combat aircraft, each NGAD can command 2 UAVs. In order to cooperate with the operation of the sixth-generation fighter, they also plan to launch the next generation of air refueling tankers, and the investment in these related projects has reached $4 billion.
The PLA is not taking this lightly, and they are also accelerating the development of domestic sixth-generation fighters, aiming to put them into service by 2030 and reach combat capability in 2035. On the whole, China and the United States have entered the same track, the competition will be more intense, and the PLA needs to remain vigilant to ensure the security of the country. The outcome of this arms race will have far-reaching implications in the future international landscape.