China's J-20 stealth fighters have started to patrol the East and South China Seas as part of routine training missions, state-owned media reported.
According to the Global Times newspaper, the announcement was made by Ren Yukun, head of the discipline inspection and supervision team and a member of the leading party group at the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).
In a press conference on 12 April, Yukun reportedly said that it has become a training routine for Chengdu J-20s to fly “combat patrols” in the East China Sea and “alert patrols” in the South China Sea.
He added that these patrols are being undertaken after the J-20 switched to using “domestically developed engines”.
The aircraft were originally powered by Russian-made Saturn AL-31FN-series engines. Janes previously reported that the Saturns are starting to be replaced by indigenously developed Shenyang-Liming WS10C turbofan engines from at least September 2019. The Chinese engine is said to offer superior thrust in comparison with the Saturns.
The announcement comes just weeks after United States Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, the commander of US Pacific Air Forces, said US F-35s and Chinese J-20s came into close proximity with each other over the East China Sea.
The East China Sea and South China Sea have both long been contested regions, with overlapping territorial claims by numerous countries.
China claims almost all of the vast South China Sea as its sovereign territory. It has been building up and militarizing its facilities there, turning islands into military bases and airstrips, and allegedly creating a maritime militia that could number in the hundreds of boats.
Meanwhile in the East China Sea, China claims sovereignty over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, also known as the Diaoyu Islands. In recent years, the US has reiterated its promise to defend the Japanese islands in the event of foreign aggression.
Experts say the deployment of the J-20s shows two things: China's increased confidence in its military abilities, and its warning to other countries with a stake in the territorial dispute.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has not disclosed the number of operational J-20s, but it is widely estimated that the number is around 150.
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has long touted the capabilities of its Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter since it was first introduced in 2011. The fifth-generation superiority fighter, which descended from the J-XX program of the 1990s, entered service in March 2017 while the first J-20 combat unit was formed just shy of a year later.
The J-20, also known as the Mighty Dragon, is just the world’s third operational fifth-generation stealth fighter aircraft after the United States military’s F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.
