F-22 VS J-20, China’s J-20 Challenges US F-22 aptor, 5th Generation Fighter War?

 

China increasing its military drills around Taiwan, the risks of a face-off with the US are high. After China employed its fifth-generation J-20 stealth fighter for the first time in the ongoing drills, it could lock horns with one of its prime contenders in the US Air Force arsenal – the F-22 Raptor.

Who Wins – F-22 or J-20?

The J-20’s speculated weakness in dogfighting assumes that the Chinese not designed it for that purpose. China’s perception of the future war being information intensive is reflected in its ‘intelligentized warfare’ concept, where the pilot uses information with enhanced data-linking and situational awareness, Artificial Intelligence in an observe-orient-decide-act loop in the air combat decision-making.

“Intelligence becomes the deciding factor” the J-20’s designer Yang Wei wrote in a paper published in the Acta Aeronautica Sinica, a Chinese defense journal. Chinese military aviation expert Rick Joe says in The Diplomat, “Its kinematic performance even with interim engines must be considered with its aerodynamic design, and its overall combat role must consider its stealth, sensor fusion, data-linking, and weapons.”

The difficulties with the WS-15 engines will have been solved by then, with the J-20 matching the F-22 Raptor or even Su-35 in kinematic performance. General Kenneth Wilsbach, Commander of the Pacific Air Forces, saying he was “impressed with the command and control associated with the J-20” when US F-35s happened to get relatively close to the J-20s in the East China Sea. The F-22 Raptors will not hunt alone. They will have heavy-duty F-35 ‘flying computers’ with them, which gives US Air Force a massive advantage over other powers.

F-22 ‘Raptor’ Vs. J-20 ‘Mighty Dragon’

Developed by Lockheed Martin, the Raptor came into service in 1997, with the final delivery in 2012, with around 187 built. It is a pure, full-stealth air dominance fighter with less ground attack capability. This was during the height of the US’ global war on terror, where there were no air-to-air missions.

The F-22 is smaller at 62 feet and has thrust-vectoring Pratt and Whitney F-119-100 engines with rectangular slits as exhausts. They can push it to Mach 2+ speeds; fly for 799 kilometers without external fuel drop, and 2,962 kilometers with refueling while reaching a maximum service ceiling of 50,000 feet.

The Pratt and Whitney engines are some of the best in the world that give the Raptor super-cruise capability, where it can reach supersonic speeds without engaging afterburners.   

It has three weapons bays concealed with retractable doors – one large main bay at the bottom of the fuselage along the centreline and two smaller bays aft the engine intakes. While it can carry its primary air-to-air missiles like the AIM-120D Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air missile and the AIM-9X sidewinder in all the bays.

It has a 160 kilometers range AN/APG-77 solid-state Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, superb sensor fusion, and data links. But it’s gold-standard is maneuverability and kinematic performance, bringing it at par with Russian Sukhoi jets in dog fighting.

J-20’s Advantage Over F-22 Raptors

On the other hand, the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation’s J-20 is a delta-wing fighter. It is poor in kinematic performance. It was initially powered by the Russian AL-31F turbofans and the WS-10C engines later. Larger at 69 feet and without a powerful engine and thrust-vectoring nozzles, many believe the J-20 cannot perform the gut-wrenching tight maneuvers in a dogfight, which cedes the advantage to the F-22 in this domain.

However, what the J-20 lacks in kinematic performance and speed is believed to make up for even advanced electronics, which indicates that even J-20’s actual stealth features are not yet known. It has two more advantages that the F-22 lags in – a helmet-mounted display for pilots and the range of its Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missiles.

The J-20 carries the PL-15, the world’s longest range BVR that can reach distances over 300 kilometers. Its HMD also provides its pilots with an ergonomic advantage of not having to keep looking at the screen displays in the cockpit as all the readings are directly beamed onto their helmet visor. Moreover, the F-22 is also missing an Infrared Search and Track (IRST) that cued to the radar can aid medium-range detection. A program to integrate an IRST onto it was kicked off only earlier this year.