China’s progress toward military superpower status continues to accelerate. It already poses significant air and space power challenges to the U.S., but its expansionist strategies also affect all the adjacent countries, both in southeast Asia and farther north.
Every year, the Pentagon sends a report to the U.S. Congress on military and security developments in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). According to the latest one, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) now ranks as the third-largest air force in the world with 2,250 combat aircraft. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is the world’s largest, with 355 ships and submarines. Of course, numbers don’t mean everything, but the report noted that “the PLA is training to ‘fight and win’ through increasingly realistic combat training.”
The PRC spends more on defense than any other country apart from the U.S. The report notes its continuing aggressive push to master advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and advanced materials and manufacturing. It maintains a “Military-Civil Fusion” strategy to develop and acquire such dual-use technology for military purposes.
At the Zhuhai airshow last fall, some 15 J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighters flew in formation. Program officials issued bullish statements about its capability and progress and revealed that the J-20 is now flying with indigenous WS-10C engines. It first flew in 2011 and Russian Al-31s powered early aircraft. State-run media outlets have reported that no fewer than 150 J-20s have entered service with four regiments.
Meanwhile the smaller FC-31 Gyrfalcon, China’s other fighter with stealth characteristics, now seems destined for deployment on the country’s aircraft carriers. It has undergone development for 10 years, but export aspirations have gone unfulfilled.
The PLAN has two ski-jump carriers in service, the first a Russian design and the second indigenous. They are equipped with J-15 Flying Sharks, a close derivative of the Russian Sukhoi Su-33, itself a carrier-capable version of the Su-27. Construction has started on a third, which will feature a catapult launch. It will carry a new variant of the J-15, as well as the FC-31. A carrier-borne AEW aircraft similar to the E-2 Hawkeye has begun flight testing.
China builds more than 100 fighters per year. The PLAAF’s force now consists of more than 400 Sukhoi Su-27/30/35s and their Chinese J-11 derivatives. Another 400 indigenous fourth-generation multirole J-10 Firebirds are in service. The PLAN’s air arm has over 200 land-based, third-generation JH-7 fighter-bombers, all equipped with increasingly-capable missiles designed in China.
In years past, the H-6 bomber typified an unmodernized PLAAF, being based on the 1950s-vintage Soviet Tu-16 Badger. But China has continued its production with much modification, including new turbofan engines. The H-6G and latest H-6J version operate with the PLAN, carrying four to six supersonic anti-ship missiles. The H-6K version can carry up to six cruise missiles for long-range precision strikes. The H-6U is an air-to-air refueling tanker.
In late 2019, the H-6N became the latest version China revealed, with a modified lower fuselage that might carry and launch a spaceplane or a nuclear ballistic missile. Something resembling such a weapon appeared beneath an H-6 on a brief video that appeared last October on the Chinese internet, which government authorities closely monitor and control.
The first fully indigenous strategic bomber reportedly has entered development; it features a stealthy design with a likely range of at least 4,000 nm and a payload of at least 22,000 pounds.
Like the H-6, China took an old Soviet design—the An-12 medium airlifter—and developed it for various roles. The Y-8 and Y-9 for transport preceded three increasingly advanced AEW aircraft, the latest being the AESA radar-equipped KJ-500. The Y-8X and Y-8Q serve as maritime patrol aircraft. There are three ELINT versions of the Y-8/9 and an electronic warfare version.
For airlift, the PLAAF operates the Russian-built Il-76s and the more recent indigenous Y-20, both four-engine jets. A tanker version of the Y-20 has entered development to join a few Il-78s, plus the H-6Us, in that role.
China has designed a bewildering number of UAVs. Unlike most of the country’s military aircraft, they have enjoyed export success, particularly the armed examples offering an alternative to the U.S. MQ-9 Reaper. It has displayed a number of low-observable flying wing designs, more than one designed for high-altitude reconnaissance.
The PLAAF’s ground-based air defense capability still largely relies on S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems supplied by Russia. But with four long-range SAMs based on Russian designs in production, it appears only a matter of time before the indigenous HQ-19 gets deployed, possibly with anti-ballistic missile capability.
No fewer than nine ground-based offensive ballistic missile systems of various vintages and ranges have entered service. Some are nuclear-tipped intermediate or long-range weapons. Others serve conventional strike roles, and one could easily strike the U.S. base at Guam.
One of them features a configuration designed to strike ships at long range. Military analysts have long speculated about the vulnerability of U.S. aircraft carriers to attack by such missiles. But an aircraft carrier is a moving target, and a long-range anti-ship missile must have timely location updates to strike successfully. According to the Pentagon report, however, the PRC fired anti-ship ballistic missiles against moving targets in the South China Sea in 2020.
Meanwhile. China’s progress in hypersonics has astonished Western observers. The country has already deployed the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle as the terminal phase of a short- to medium-range ballistic missile. In 2020, a PRC-based military expert described as its main purpose the ability to strike foreign military bases and fleets in the Western Pacific. Then, last July, China apparently performed a one-orbit missile test flight ending in a re-entry and splashdown in the South China Sea. China pretended that it was a suborbital test of one of three spaceplanes under development in recent years. But U.S. intelligence believes it was a test of a potentially nuclear “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System.”
No Western country has successfully developed a hypersonic weapon. A U.S. Space Force general said his country “has a lot of catching up to do very quickly.”
All of China’s advances in defense technology might not present such a concern were it not for Beijing’s aggressive posturing towards its neighbors. It has increased flights along the Taiwan Strait with fighters, bombers, and ASW aircraft, deploying more than 900 last year, according to the Ministry of Defense in Taipei. They all entered Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone although not its airspace, which China does not recognize as sovereign anyway. The flights have continued this year, including an unprecedented 39 aircraft on January 23, consisting of formations of 24 J-16 and 10 J-10 fighters, two Y-8 ELINT and two Y-9 EW aircraft, and an H-6 bomber.
In the South China Sea, China has completed the expansion and occupation of the islands and reefs that serve to reinforce its claim to sovereignty over a huge area. Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam all dispute the claims. China has deployed AEW and ASW aircraft to the airfield it built on Fiery Cross Reef. Last May, China flew 16 transport aircraft over the Sea, prompting the Royal Malaysian Air Force to scramble BAE Hawk fighter/attack jets.
“The PRC has mobilized vast resources in support of its defense modernization,” the Pentagon report concluded. “Beijing seeks to reshape the international order to better align with its authoritarian system and national interests.”