PLA's Mystery Jet Defeats 17 Other Fighters in Combat Drills

A mystery jet operated by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), likely the J-20 fighter, triumphed in a war game where it was pitted against 17 other fighter jets.

Chinese media was abuzz with reports of a PLA pilot, attached to Wang Hai Air Group, flying a jet and coordinating with his teammate to take down 17 opposing fighter jets. He switched to flying the new type of warplane only recently and had only flown it for 100 hours, PLA Daily reported today.

China began equipping Wang Hai Air Group with J-20s last year. It is the first in the PLA to have now fully switched to using J-20 jets. In January, the group reportedly began conducting real-combat scenario exercises. So it is likely that the PLA pilot used J-20 to defeat the jets.

“Even though the PLA Daily used an illustration of Su-30MKKs in the report, given the capability of this kind of fighter jet, it cannot win this kind of landslide victory,” Xi'an-based defense magazine Ordnance Industry Science Technology reported Monday.

If the speculation is true, the exercise once again demonstrated the overwhelming advantage the J-20 has over its previous generation counterparts, Fu Qianshao, a Chinese military aviation expert, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

“China's current training is real-combat oriented, and if the J-20 can score an overwhelming advantage in mock battles, it will do the same in real combat,” Fu added.

Mocking India’s Rafale jets, the report, citing military experts, the report categorized it as a “third-plus generation (or fourth-plus generation in Western classification) fighter jet.”

“This will result in a generational gap with the J-20, and will find it very difficult to confront a stealth-capable fourth (fifth) generation fighter jet like the J-20,” the experts claimed.