New stealth fighter jet to play 'crucial role' in nation's defense

China's new stealth fighter jet, the J-35A, will play a major role in the country's air defense network in a "coordinator" or "organizer" role, and extensively strengthen the system's operational capability, according to its project leader.

Wang Yongqing, the J-35A's chief researcher at Aviation Industry Corp of China's Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily that the radar-evading combat plane was created to act as the backbone of the People's Liberation Army Air Force's efforts to neutralize high-level threats, especially hostile stealth aircraft.

Moreover, the J-35A is also needed by the Air Force to establish a "considerable scale" fleet of affordable, powerful stealth jets, he said at the institute's headquarters in Shenyang, Liaoning province.

"Our adversaries will definitely use their stealth aircraft or low-observable cruise missiles to penetrate our air defense networks," Wang said.

"And if those hostile craft succeed in infiltrating our defense lines, they will outperform our conventional countermeasures in terms of detection capability and range, which means they can spot us from hundreds of kilometers away but at the same time we can't find them. That means our defense units will not be able to survive such an encounter."

Wang said the defense network needs a plane that can "see" hostile objects and track and intercept them. More importantly, the J-35A will empower and coordinate other assets in the network.

"It can lock on the targets, share the targets' position with other weapon systems, such as surface-to-air missiles, and even use its own radar to guide other weapons to bring the targets down. This is called 'systems coordination' or 'multi-domain coordination'," he explained.

The Shenyang institute is China's first aircraft design organization and also one of the only two Chinese research bodies capable of designing manned fighter jets. It is known for developing a number of combat planes that have been widely deployed in the Chinese military such as the J-8 and J-11B, as well as the J-15, the country's first carrier-borne fighter jet.

China Daily's interview with Wang, one of AVIC's top jet designers, was the first time he has elaborated on the J-35A's functions in an air-defense system.

The country's newest type of stealth fighter jet, the J-35A made its public debut in November at the 15th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, shortly after it was declassified by the Air Force.

Its overall design is based on the J-35, a stealth naval fighter developed for deployment in the near future on the PLA Navy's aircraft carriers and for cooperation with the J-15 in carrier-based air operations.

China will become the second nation after the United States to have two families of stealth fighter jets in active service after they are commissioned.

Currently, the PLA Air Force has deployed a large fleet of J-20 heavy-duty stealth combat aircraft, that went into commission in late 2016. The J-20's basic configuration has evolved into several variants including a twin-seat version.