China ripped off US military technology to manufacture an advanced high-tech jet fighter, and experts warn that more must be done to secure American weapons secrets and prevent Beijing from making such huge progress jumps in the future.
“What we know is that [China’s] J-20 is more advanced than it would have been otherwise, and that’s the crucial point here,” former Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Anderson told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Nonetheless, he stated that determining how the J-20 compares to the American F-22 Raptor “short of actual battle” is problematic.
According to the article, Beijing began development on the J-20 stealth fighter for the People’s Liberation Army Air Force in 2008 with the goal of developing a warplane capable of competing with US jets.
The J-20 took its first flight in 2011, and it entered service in 2017.
Yet, reports as early as 2015 pointed to parallels in technology and capabilities between China’s jet and US jets – and an Associated Press piece even suggested that “part of its technology, it turns out, may possibly have come from the US itself.”
The emergence of the J-20 fighter jet shows that China is beginning to bridge the technological chasm with the United States because of its ongoing intellectual property theft – a development that is garnering renewed attention amid tense relations between Beijing and Washington.
