China’s 6th-Generation Stealth Fighter Design and Technology Plan Look Like US “Copycats”

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington D.C.) A Chinese state-backed newspaper has published a first-of-its kind “tailless” design rendering of its now-in-development 6th-generation aircraft, revealing a design strikingly similar to several US 6th-generation aircraft designs.

China’s 6th-Generation Stealth Fighter Design and Technology – US “Copycats”

The largely secret US 6th-Generation aircraft is already airborne, and its design has not yet been visible to the public, likely for security reasons. Preliminary design renderings offered by several US industry jet-manufacturers hoping to compete for the US 6th-generation stealth fighter program show similar “tailless” flat, blended wing-body designs with no fins or vertical structures. Designs offered by both Lockheed and Northrop Grumman several years ago show a smooth, stealthy 6th-generation plane without tails or fins. 

Although the actual prototype or demonstrator design of the US 6th-gen fighter, called Next-Generation Air Dominance, is not known or publicly available, the Chinese design looks strikingly similar to those offered several years ago by US weapons manufacturers.

The Chinese state-backed Global Times newspaper cites a video in which the 6th-generation design appeared by the state-backed. Aviation Industry Corporation of China.

The paper goes on to describe the tailless, finless aircraft design as a “blended wing-body design” able to provide “higher lift, longer range and lower fuel consumption,” yet the largest advantage associated with the design is likely in its stealth capabilities. Vertical structures such as tails and fins do of course greatly help increase speed, maneuverability and an ability to vector, all with intent to reduce any radar return signature available to enemy air defenses. 

At the same time, protruding or vertical structures such as fins or tails, as well as contours of weapons hanging from external pylons or weapons pods, offer more shapes and structures detectable to electromagnetic pings from enemy radar which are then able to send a return signal or rendering by “bouncing” off of the shapes. Sharp edges and tails, for example, are more detectable to enemy radar than an entirely smooth aircraft, such as the B-2, would be. This is why stealth fighters such as the F-35 fly with an internal weapons pod to create a “smooth” exterior without weapons pylons likely to generate a return radar signature to enemy air defenses.