Reposted from China Defense Blog.
Only a couple of weeks after the first photographs surfaced on the Internet, the People’s Republic of China’s newest combat aircraft, the Chengdu J-20, is making headlines in the U.S. press. Conversation on the J-20 in the press (see here) has largely focused on what the J-20 may or may not be able to do. And yes, the J-20 does look impressive. It’s a big, hulking aircraft, estimated to be about 75 feet long and weigh in at 75,000 pounds or so (significantly larger than the U.S. Air Force’s F-22). It also sports a variant on the ominous Firefox paintjob and oversized red stars on its control surfaces, and must have congressional staffers buzzing.
While it’s fun to talk about jets, I actually wanted to talk more about how this story emerged and what that means to the business of intelligence. I got my first glance of the J-20 from a post by David Axe on warisboring.com. Like many others, my opinion, stored forever on the warisboring.com servers, was a sort of surprised skepticism. “That cockpit geometry sure looks like the F-22’s. Hard to believe it’s real though,” I opined. But alas, it is real — the New York Times says so.
And that’s the interesting part for me. How did we get information from the blogosphere to real news?
For years, many have conjectured that China was building a fifth-generation combat aircraft, something akin to the US F-22 and F-35, or perhaps more in league with the French Rafale or Eurofighter. Aviation enthusiasts and China defense watchers have speculated about a stealthy next-generation Chinese jet, dubbed J-XX, for years. There’s been a J-XX page on Wikipedia since 2005. Most people who think about China’s defense capabilities had good reason to believe that China would eventually develop something beyond its fourth-generation fighter, the J-10.
So where did the pictures of the J-20 come from? The first photograph to be seen was allegedly taken at the airfield of the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, which is located in Chengdu, a massive city of some 11 million. This is an interesting break with tradition. It used to be with the Soviets and a few of our own military aircraft projects, the goal was to keep everything a big secret. Sure, our intelligence services would snap pictures from orbit and they knew the score, but nobody could get into the research facilities of either Cold War superpower without risking arrest or worse.
The folks at Chengdu rolled their new jet out into full view and within days, initial hazy photographs were augmented with high-quality shots that allowed study by defense journalists like Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman. In the days surrounding Christmas, the blogosphere delivered raw information to competent analysts, both professional and amateur. And, in parallel, this analysis has ended up in proprietary sources, such as defense publishing firm Jane’s aircraft directory and also Wikipedia — both on the same day, Dec. 29. Interestingly, both Jane’s and Wikipedia’s entries on the new jet are similar in many regards. For instance, the Jane’s article assumes the presence of a digital fly-by-wire control system, while the Wikipedia editors interested in the aircraft state absolutely that such as system is present until I, as a member of the Wikipedia community, changed it to say such a system was “likely” present.
The revelation of the Chengdu J-20 is an interesting study in the business of intelligence in the Internet age. Photos from the Chinese blogosphere went global and led to peer analysis and validation that China does indeed have such an aircraft and it will likely fly soon. In the Cold War, if we wanted up-close pictures like the J-20 images now circulating of some piece of Russian military hardware, we’d have to try to sneak around and get them or pay a local to do the job. It was either that, or depend on satellite cameras. Now a community of military enthusiasts in China snaps pictures and posts them on the Internet, proud of their country’s achievement.
But why now, why these pictures? That’s probably pretty simple. Defense Secretary Robert Gates heads to Beijing for talks with his Chinese military counterparts next week and Chinese President Hu Jintao will be in Washington mid-month. I’m betting the J-20 will fly sometime before those visits have played out. That should send a pretty clear message to the Western Pacific as well as Washington. China’s military is no joke, but how China plans to use its growing reservoir of hard power is anybody’s guess.
Christopher Bronk is the Baker Institute fellow in information technology policy. He previously served as a career diplomat with the United States Department of State on assignments both overseas and in Washington, D.C.