In the "Joint Sword-2024B" military exercise against Taiwan on October 14, the PLA Air Force dispatched elite combat forces to carry out military operations close to actual combat in the airspace near Taiwan Island, effectively dealing a blow to the arrogance of "Taiwan independence" elements. From the exercise footage released by the official media, we can see that the PLA Air Force dispatched core equipment such as J-16, J-10C, Su-30, H-6K and Air Police-500A, among which the fighters were mounted with live ammunition, which shows that the exercise is to test the PLA's joint combat capability with the standard of actual combat.
It is worth noting that the official media specially interviewed Wei Cao, a pilot of a brigade of the Air Force Aviation in the Eastern Theater, Wei Cao said that in this exercise, the core task of him and his comrades is to break through the "enemy" air defense alert system and seize regional control, and the background of the interview is a J-20 stealth fighter, so the PLA's most advanced J-20 also participated in the "Joint Sword-2024B" military exercise. The reason why the official media focused on the J-20 unit was mainly to let the other side know that the PLA J-20 had arrived close to Taiwan, and in order to be more convincing, the official media also exposed the video footage of the J-20 in the air in the same frame as Taiwan.
However, even so, the defense department on the other side still did not confirm the discovery of the J-20, and only used a very vaguely marked schematic map to prove that the Taiwan military tracked 153 fighters of the People's Liberation Army, without mentioning the existence of the J-20. Therefore, Taiwan regional media believe that the J-20 stealth fighter participated in the military exercise against Taiwan for the first time through the video footage broadcast by the mainland state media, and the J-20 has never appeared in the military exercise before.
However, the real situation is that since Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives of United States, visited Taiwan two years ago, the PLA J-20 fighter has been patrolling Taiwan Island on a regular basis, and we can get confirmation from many reports in the official media, but Taiwan has not released J-20 information so far, which can only show that the J-20 stealth capability is excellent enough, and the Taiwan military's air detection capability is too stretched.
As a fifth-generation stealth fighter, the J-20's primary combat mission is to use its excellent stealth capabilities and strong situational awareness to tear apart the enemy's air defense combat system and seize regional air supremacy. At present, the "Patriot" and "Sky Bow" series of surface-to-air missile systems equipped by the Taiwan military do not have the ability to detect stealth targets, but the Taiwan military has been clamoring that F-16V fighters can effectively fight J-20 fighters, and many Taiwan celebrities have also said that F-16V can detect J-20, and in order to cope with the PLA military exercises, the Taiwan Air Force has indeed traveled F-16V fighters to respond.
According to Taiwan reports, the Hualien Air Base of the Taiwan military dispatched a number of F-16V fighters to deal with the approaching PLA J-15 carrier-based aircraft, and achieved "results", F-16V fighters used the AN/AAQ-33 sniper pod to successfully capture a J-15 fighter, which made Taiwan media very excited. However, such an advanced F-16V fighter still has no trace of the J-20, so what is the problem?
According to public information, the current 141 F-16A/B fighters equipped by the Taiwan military have all been upgraded to F-16V, and the main upgrade of this fighter is to be equipped with a new AN/APG-83 active phased array radar and a new avionics system, with the ability to launch AIM-120C7 air-to-air missiles, and the situational awareness and over-the-horizon air combat capabilities have reached the standard of the fourth-generation and a half fighters. While upgrading the F-16V, Taiwan also introduced 18 AN/AAQ-33 sniper pods from United States, which became a combat power multiplier for F-16V fighters. It is precisely because of this that Taiwan believes that the upgraded F-16V can effectively fight the J-20 stealth fighter.
However, from the reality of the situation, the AN/APG-83 active phased array radar carried by the F-16V has a good detection capability for non-stealth fighters equipped by the PLA, but it is still unable to detect the J-20 at a long distance, which is an important reason why Taiwan has not been able to grasp the dynamics of the J-20. From the perspective of radar performance, the F-16V's detection capability of the J-20 is less than 30 kilometers, while the J-20 can lock on to the F-16V at a distance of 240 kilometers, which means that the F-16V cannot know the specific location of the J-20 if it is shot down.
Under the huge performance gap, the J-20 can completely defeat the F-16V on the opposite shore in over-the-horizon air combat and quickly seize regional air supremacy. However, in the actual combat environment, the main airports of the Taiwan military will be "taken care of" by the PLA's Dongfeng-15, Dongfeng-16 ballistic missiles and long-range rocket artillery, and it is still unknown whether the F-16V can take off at that time.