Last month, a new stealth fighter debuted under the cloudy skies of Zhuhai, China. As the small, gray aircraft cut tight turns and performed for an enthusiastic audience at the city’s biennial air show, it could have been mistaken for an American F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. But while the Shenyang Aircraft Company’s J-35 Gyrfalcon strike fighter looks like the F-35, it’s a jet designed and built in the People’s Republic of China.
The J-35 fighter bears a strong resemblance to the F-35, not only in appearance but in mission and other key parameters. It’s part of a worldwide trend as air forces around the world are working to field fifth-generation fighters, defined by their mix of stealth, weapons, networking, and sensors combined into a lethal, capable airframe.
Considering China’s storied history of stealing data and reverse-engineering American military technologies, that leaves a couple of question on the table. Is the Gyrfalcon a copy of the F-35? A wholly original design? Or is the truth somewhere in the middle?
The Origin Story
In the late 1990s, the U.S. military conceived of the F-35 Lightning II as a single aircraft to replace several aircraft types in service. The F-35A, the conventional takeoff and landing version, was planned as a replacement for the Air Force’s F-16 Fighting Falcon and the A-10 Thunderbolt II. The F-35B, capable of short rolling takeoffs and vertical landings, would replace the F/A-18A and F/A-18D Hornet fighters in Marine Corps service, as well as the AV-8B Harrier II. The F-35C, featuring an enlarged wing and strengthened to withstand aircraft carrier landings would replace the F/A-18C Hornet in Navy service.
Defense behemoth Lockheed Martin developed the F-35 under the Joint Strike Fighter Program. An early technology demonstrator called the X-35 took its first flight in 2000, and six years later, the first variant for the Air Force took to the skies. The F-35’s development was plagued with issues, though, including technical problems, delays, and cost overruns, the result of a requirement to develop three separate variants from a single, common airframe. The three variants each missed their fielding dates by a year or more, delays that rippled through air forces worldwide. That said, the aircraft has now achieved its original goals, though the plane still costs more to buy and more to fly than originally anticipated, and is available for combat less often than desired.
The 51-foot-long F-35 features an ogive-shaped nose, a single-seat cockpit, and twin air intakes flanking the cockpit. The aircraft was designed with stealth in mind, featuring a blended wing and body design. Instead of one large vertical stabilizer, or tail fin, perpendicular to the spine of the aircraft, it has two smaller stabilizers canted outward. The result is a lack of right angles—the most efficient reflector of radar energy back to the sender—resulting in an aircraft that is more difficult to detect. A single engine nozzle is buried between the tail fins, concealing that from radar, too.
After the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, the F-35 was just the second fifth-generation fighter to enter service worldwide. The F-35’s fighting style is best described as ninja-like, relying on stealth to execute attacks against aircraft and ground targets undetected, from beyond the horizon, using AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and munitions such as the JDAM satellite guided bomb, the new stand-in attack weapon (SiAW), and the GBU-53/B Stormbreaker glide bomb.
One of the most important features of the F-35 is the aircraft’s ability to act as a flying, networked sensor. The F-35’s AN/APG-85 active electronically scanned array radar is not only capable of detecting, tracking, and engaging air targets, it can also detect and track ground targets, jam enemy sensors, and detect and store enemy radio signals, including radars, for detailed analysis later. A ring of imaging infrared sensors, similar to those that provide night vision to the Abrams tank, is capable of detecting aircraft and even missile launches at a distance. Finally, the F-35 can take this sensor data and share it with other U.S. and NATO forces, something not even the F-22 Raptor can do.
Enter the Gyrfalcon
The Shenyang Aircraft Company’s 601st Design Institute developed the J-35 in the 2000s. SAC had previously built Soviet and later Russian fighters under license, including the Su-27 Flanker. The J-35 was Shenyang’s first all-new fighter and first stealth fighter. It was nicknamed the Gyrfalcon, after the bird of prey.
The Gyrfalcon was originally designed as a technology demonstrator. Although developed without any firm government orders, according to Chinese aviation authority Andreas Rupprecht, the Chinese Air Force eventually saw value in procuring “two different types that could complement each other,” with the larger, heavier, more capable, and more expensive J-20 “Mighty Dragon” fighter teamed with a smaller, lighter, and more affordable J-35. This mirrors the U.S. Air Force’s own fighter procurement strategy, which teams the F-22 Raptor with the F-35 Lightning II. Two different jets also helped maintain a healthy defense industrial base; as Rupprecht explains, using both SAC and CAC “does not create a monopoly at Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (developer of the J-20), so SAC remains capable in the fighter business.”
China’s three aircraft carriers, Liaoning, Shandong, and Fujian, operate the Shenyang J-15 “Flying Shark” fighter. According to Rupprecht, the Chinese Navy foresaw a need to eventually replace the fourth-generation J-15 with a “modern carrier-capable fifth-generation fighter” to compete with the F-35C. According to Rupprecht, the J-20 was “not considered ideal” due to its large size, leaving the J-35 to fill the role.
After an initial splash at the 2012 Zhuhai Air Show, the J-35 languished for nearly a decade due to the lack of suitable engines. The prototype aircraft was equipped with Klimov RD-93 engines that equipped the 1980s-era MiG-29 fighter. China did not have enough RD-93s to put the J-35 in production: Russia, which built the engines, prefers to sell whole planes, not just the engines that power them. China has now fitted the J-35 with domestically produced WS-21 engines, derived from the RD-93, and will eventually settle on an improved model, the WS-19.
The J-35 is approximately 55 feet long, or just over four feet longer than the F-35A. The similarity between the two jets is such that a description of one goes a long way toward explaining the other. One subtle difference is that while the F-35 smoothly blends top and bottom halves of the cockpit and nose area, the J-35 features splines on both sides, just under the cockpit, that come together, running horizontally along the length of the plane. Another is that the fuselage behind the F-35 cockpit is noticeably taller than the J-35, making more room for internal stores such as avionics, fuel, and weapons. Finally, the J-35 has two engines compared to the F-35’s one.
Still, the J-35’s capabilities are shrouded in mystery. Like the F-35, the J-35 is stealthy, has internal weapons bays, and a nose-mounted radar. Other than that, we have no clear indications of its capabilities. A reasonable assumption is that the jet takes its cues from its predecessor, the F-35. As the first fifth-generation fighter in its size and weight class, the F-35 set the standard in the categories of stealth, weapons, propulsion, and sensors, and engineers building a similar aircraft would naturally use the F-35 as their lodestar. However, due to modern China’s late start in the world of aerospace, the J-35’s technology in these categories can be reasonably assessed as inferior to America’s, though how inferior is an open question.
Clash of the Fighters
So, is the Chinese J-35 a copy of the American F-35? While the similarities between the two planes are not mere coincidences, simply copying the American fighter doesn’t explain everything either. After all, stealth aircraft must all follow the same laws of physics that allow them to evade radar, a factor that drives similarity between different national aircraft programs.
At the same time, the reality is that China has repeatedly hacked U.S. defense contractors, including the F-35 program, stealing valuable information. In a series of cyberattacks codenamed Byzantine Hades that took place in 2007, Chinese hackers breached U.S. security and stole F-35 secrets, as well as information on the F-22 Raptor, B-2 stealth bomber, and other programs. This information almost certainly was shared with China’s defense industry, which lags technologically behind the American military-industrial complex.
What China does with the information is less clear and does not automatically mean the J-35 is a copy. “No one denies China hacks and steals data,” Rupprecht says, “but does anyone really believe they stole the whole set of data to make the J-35’s own development just a copy and paste job?”
Rupprecht points out that other fifth-generation fighters worldwide, including the South Korean KF-21, Japanese X-2, Turkish Kaan, and Indian AMCA fighters are all similar to the F-35. He questions why only China is accused of stealing technology. “I do not deny that [China] stole data,” Rupprecht says, “and surely it may have benefitted the J-35’s development in certain areas, but not in the way and to the extent it is portrayed in certain Western media reports.”
Some features of the J-35 are almost certainly a copy of or inspired by features found on the F-35, though only its designers know for sure. It may even have features the F-35 does not.
Airshows aside, there is little chance that anyone will mistake the Chinese and American jets in combat. Aerial warfare has moved beyond the dogfight—where a resemblance could mean a fatal mistake—to a world where aircraft are identified not by the shape of their wings or the size of their tail fins, but by their radar and electromagnetic signatures. An aerial battle between a J-35 and F-35 would take place beyond visual range, by two aircraft struggling to detect, identify, and shoot down the other via sensors alone. Today, it takes more than eyes alone to tell fighter jets apart.
