Delivery of Tenth Batch of Chinese J-20 Stealth Fighters Confirmed: 19th Air Brigade Guards Beijing

Images released from the Changchun Air Show have confirmed that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force 19th Air Brigade has received J-20 fifth generation fighter aircraft from the tenth production batch, past the first 300 fighters to join the fleet. The brigade was first confirmed to have received J-20 fighters in February, but is thought to have done so some time in late 2023 or early 2024. The release of the first images of a J-20 from the 10th production batch follows the release of images in July confirming both that the twin seat J-20S variant of the fighter has also joined the fleet, and that an entirely separate second class of fifth generation fighter, the J-35, has also been brought into service in the Air Force. This has made China both the first country in the world to operationalise a twin seat fifth generation fighter, and the first to serially produce two fifth generation fighter classes in parallel. The operationalisation of the J-20 in February 2017 made the country the second in the world to field an indigenous combat jet of its generation.

The 19th Air Brigade is based at Zhangjiakou Airbase in Hebei Province, which is one of the closest facilities to the Chinese capital Beijing, and transitioned to the aircraft from the J-11B fourth generation air superiority fighter. As a direct successor to the J-11, the J-20 has replaced the aircraft across multiple units, including in the 1st Air Brigade based in Anshan, and in the 111th Air Brigade at Dazu. The J-20 boasts one of the longest ranges of any fighter class in the world, with its combat radius being approximately double that of its closest American rival the F-35. This allows the 19th Air Brigade to bear greater responsibility for operations as far as the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, including near potential hotspots such as the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands and the Korean Peninsula. Although J-20 production has been expanded considerably, the future of the program remains in question as China appears poised to bring more capable sixth generation fighters into service in the early 2030s, which could seriously compete with the aircraft for funding.