Foreign Media: By 2030, China Will Have 1,300 Stealth Fighters? The Expansion of J-20 and J-35A Squadrons Directly Challenges U.S. Air Superiority

According to a report by the Asia Defence and Security website (DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA) on February 12, 2026: China is expected to deploy more than 1,300 fifth-generation stealth fighters before 2030, including about 1,000 Chengdu J-20 "Vigorous Dragon" and about 300 Shenyang J-35A variants. This marks a structural transformation of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), which may re-adjust the balance of air power in the Indo-Pacific region and directly challenge the United States' long-standing air dominance.

Professor Justin Bronk, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and an air power expert, made a severe assessment of this trend, warning: "The trend shows that by 2030, the Chinese Air Force will have approximately 1,000 J-20/A/S and 900 J-16 in service." He emphasized that this is a "significant increase" in China's capability to compete with the West in regional and strategic air power.

The expected fleet expansion is not only a surge in numbers but also a turning point in China's operational concepts and industrial manufacturing—combining large-scale production of stealth platforms, mature domestic engines, network-centric integration, and long-range air-to-air missile capabilities to build an integrated anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) system extending from the Taiwan Strait to the Western Pacific.

It has been reported that the annual production of the J-20 has reached 120 units, equivalent to billions of dollars in value annually (possibly exceeding 12 billion dollars). China's aerospace industry has demonstrated the ability to sustainably produce fifth-generation fighter jets, matching or even surpassing the West in some indicators.

This surge will enable the Chinese Air Force to operate the largest fleet of stealth fighters in the world, far exceeding the 187 F-22 Raptors of the U.S. Air Force, and allow Beijing to concentrate fifth-generation fighters in key hotspots such as the First Island Chain, thereby compressing the U.S. response time and increasing the complexity of allied force deployment.

As Bronk observed: "Compared to 2020, the threat level of China's air power to the U.S. traditional air dominance has undergone a fundamental change." He attributed this shift to the combination of large-scale deployment of stealth fighters, advanced sensors, long-range munitions (such as the PL-15), and increasingly realistic joint force training.

Integrating these aircraft into a broader joint operations system—connecting the J-20 and J-35A with the KJ-500 early warning aircraft, space-based intelligence and reconnaissance assets, long-range Rocket Force, and maritime strike capabilities—marks China's transition from single-platform modernization to system-of-systems warfare aligned with its "intelligent" combat concept.

Therefore, the projected inventory of over 1,300 fifth-generation fighters by 2030 is not only a procurement milestone but also a deliberate geopolitical signal indicating Beijing's intent to achieve credible air parity, and even local air superiority, in key hotspots such as Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Western Pacific theater.

This expansion also reflects Beijing's confidence—the domestic aerospace supply chain (covering advanced composites, microelectronics, turbofan engine metallurgy, and precision-guided munitions) has reached a level of resilience sufficient to withstand potential Western sanctions or export controls, allowing the fifth-generation fighter production line to remain unaffected by geopolitical shocks.

Strategically, the scale and pace of this buildup indicate that China is no longer merely pursuing quality parity, but deliberately seeking numerical advantages in stealth aviation to ensure that the Chinese Air Force can maintain continuous sortie rates and endurance in any prolonged, high-intensity conflict scenario, capable of overwhelming even technologically advanced adversaries.

Statement: The above equipment data comes from reports by the Asia Defence and Security website.

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Original: toutiao.com/article/1856908396548169/

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