On January 11, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) released a statement revealing that the J-20 fighter had participated in its first combat exercise at an undisclosed location (some reports [3] suggested it was in Inner Mongolia). According to the Strait Times [4], a Singaporean newspaper, the statement said that during nine days of drills, the J-20 faced off against its less advanced counterparts, the J-16 and J-10C. The PLAAF described the drills as realistic and said that the J-20 practiced beyond-visual-range aerial fighting maneuvers.
Xinhua News Agency, which is run by the Chinese Communist Party, added a few more details [5]. Specifically, it said the combat drills had included the Y-20 military transport aircraft and H-6K bombers alongside the J-20, J-16 and J-10C. The Y-20 is a massive transport aircraft [6] that was first delivered to the PLAAF in June 2016. Xinhua further said that the exercise “is aimed at improving the air force’s capability to win battles.”
The J-20 is a single-seat twin-engine aircraft developed by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Beijing first began exploring building what would become the J-20 sometime in the 1990s. Although the plane first flew in 2011, Beijing refused to acknowledge its existence until 2016. In September 2017, the Chinese military said that plane had been commissioned, but last week’s drills constituted the first time Beijing has acknowledged that it participated in combat drills.