Key Points and Summary – China’s state media revealed Shenyang’s J-35A/B final-assembly hangars, showing unpainted airframes and highlighting recent J-35B catapult launches and arrested landings from the PLAN carrier Fujian using EMALS and AAG.
-AVIC’s wider PR push also touted “sixth-gen” concepts.
J-35A Fighter at Le Bourget Air Show. Image Credit: Author/National Security Journal.
-Chief designer Sun Cong called the J-35 China’s first independently developed carrier stealth fighter with advanced sensor fusion and dispersed basing (CATOBAR and ski-jump capable).
-Critics dispute the “independent” claim, citing past theft of U.S. F-22/F-35 data; ex-PACOM intel chief Capt. James Fanell called it a “blatant lie.”
-The J-35 is pitched for air superiority, strike, and interception roles with a blended wing-body design.
J-35 Stealth Fighter Manufacturing Hangars Seen for First Time
WARSAW, POLAND – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) news media center has publicly revealed the manufacturing hangars for the Shenyang J-35A land-operated and J-35B carrier-capable fighter aircraft.
The event took place on Sunday, 5 October, on state-controlled media reporting and was also carried in the English-language edition of the Global Times, a daily newspaper published in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) .
The Global Times was first published in 1993, with its English-language edition launched in 2009.
The paper’s account on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) carried a short video of one of the J-35 aircraft still unpainted and in factory primer being rolled into one of its final assembly stations.
The event was also reported on Sunday by the China Military Bugle, an official media account affiliated with the PLA.
J-35 Fighter from China. Image Credit: PLAAF.
J-35 New Stealth Fighter from China
Also included in the short video transmission was repeated footage of the J-35B carrier-capable aircraft being launched from the newest PLA Navy (PLAN) aircraft carrier – and the only Type 003 “flattop” configuration that is also fitted with a catapult in the entire fleet – the CV 18 Fujian.
The Global Times “X” account footage showed unpainted J-35 aircraft in the last phases of construction in their hangars at the Shenyang Aircraft Company Limited (SAC), one of the main fighter design and production centers of the state-owned and operated Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).
Since August, this massive AVIC conglomerate has been on what – at least for the PRC – is an aggressive PR campaign to promote its latest accomplishments.
These include not only the two different models of the J-35, but also the Chengdu J-20 and two new platforms billed as 6th-generation fighters: the Chengdu J-36 and SAC J-50/J-XDS designs.
The latter have thus far only been seen in “unofficial” footage posted on PRC social media websites.
Even these designators for the aircraft at this point are not officially confirmed either.
Not an Original Chinese Invention
In the footage shown on X, Sun Cong, who holds the title of Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and who is also chief designer of J-35, briefly discussed what are being detailed as “the three core technologies” of the aircraft.
The J-35B, he says, is billed as the “first independently developed carrier-based stealth fighter jet.”
But there are PRC airpower and military affairs observers who have some intellectual difficulty with the “first independently developed” label.
This is due to the thousands of pages of documents on the US F-35 and F-22 programs that were stolen by a Chinese-Canadian businessman named Su “Stephen” Bin between the early 2000s and 2016.
In 2016, Bin pleaded guilty to what the US Justice Department described as a “years-long conspiracy” conducted in coordination with high-ranking PLA officers and research centers.
The focus of their activity was to steal US military secrets, and they specifically worked at hacking US Government computer systems containing information on the designs for advanced stealth fighters like the F-22 and F-35.
One of those who scoffed at the claim that the J-35 was an original Chinese invention is retired U.S. Navy Capt. James Fanell, an internationally recognized expert on the PLA and the former senior intelligence officer for all of what is today the Indo-Pacific Command.
He described the claim of the Shenyang design team that the J-35 was entirely designed at the Chinese aerospace firm as a “blatant lie.”
J-35 Technologies and Advanced Capabilities
Sun claims that J-35’s stealth design renders it “invisible” to enemy radar and sensor nets, and that “its highly integrated, compact structure supports advanced informatization capabilities.”
He also elaborated on the versatility of the carrier-capable model of the aircraft, stating that it can launch from a carrier either with a catapult-assisted take-off system and arrested recovery (CATOBAR) or from a carrier built with a ski-jump flight deck, as the first two PLAN ships – the CV 16 Liaoning and the CV 17 Shandong – are.
The J-35B has recently completed its initial flight trials launching with an electromagnetic launching system (EMALS) and landing using the advanced arresting gear system – both on the PLAN carrier Fujian.
The Global Times report goes into some additional details, describing the J-35 as having a “conventional layout with a single-seat, twin-engine configuration, a blended wing-body design, double-swept outward-canted vertical stabilizers, and all-moving horizontal stabilizers.”
As the aircraft is a “key component of stealth and counter-stealth combat systems, the J-35A is primarily designed for air superiority missions, with secondary missions for air-to-surface strikes.”
The primary missions for which the J-35 is designed are creating and maintaining air superiority, engaging enemy fighter aircraft, conducting strikes against ground and naval air defense systems, and intercepting hostile fighters, bombers, cruise missiles, and other aerial targets, according to the Global Times report.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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