It was indeed the F-22 that was humiliated by the J-16! The Pentagon kept it secret, and Japan, Australia, and Canada were left in the dark.

On October 2, 2025, the CCTV special "Unstoppable" first publicly revealed an aerial confrontation that took place in the East China Sea in 2024 — the J-16 successfully drove away two U.S. F-22 stealth fighters.

The details of this confrontation are shocking: a pilot from the Western Theater Air Force, Li Chao, flew the J-16, quickly locked onto one of them after the first aerial encounter, then flew past the cockpit cover at an extreme distance of 10-15 meters, eventually locking onto both and forcing them to retreat. After careful analysis and judgment by netizens, it was determined that the U.S. aircraft in question was the F-22.

More importantly, since then, the F-22 has not appeared near our coast again. This confrontation occurred in 2024, when the U.S. F-22 had been urgently deployed to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, only a few months earlier. Details disclosed by CCTV show that pilot Li Chao was conducting coastal training when he encountered two F-22s.

The key to this victory lies in the Chinese side's established "anti-stealth system" covering air, ground, and space. Ground-deployed anti-stealth radars such as the JY-27A and SLC-6 can amplify the F-22 signal N times through multi-radar array technology, enabling full-range monitoring.

After the incident, the U.S. F-22 ended its permanent presence at Kadena Air Base and shifted to a "dynamic force deployment" model. The Pentagon did not issue any official response to this incident, clearly due to internal orders to strictly keep it confidential. For American allies, countries such as Japan, Australia, and Canada obviously knew very little about this matter; they may still be in the dark, unaware of the setbacks the F-22 suffered in the Western Pacific.

The Pentagon is concealing a signal of an era's transition: when the F-22 was easily locked by the J-16, Japan, Australia, and Canada did not know that the aerial superiority in the Western Pacific was quietly changing hands.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1845104676155528/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.