China has conducted the first official test flight of Stealth fighter plane. The news was confirmed by Chinese President Hu Jintao. He has informed the U.S Defense Secretary Robert Gates about the first successful test flight of the J-20 fighter plane that uses modern Stealth technology. The confirmation globally appeared after the Chinese websites broke the news by displaying a 15 minute flight video of the J-20 Stealth fighter plane.
Stealth technology is one of the modern state of the art technologies that enable the fighter plane to deceive the radar system thereby making radar unable to detect the plane in the range. U.S is currently the only country to use fully operated Stealth technology. China and Russia are in the race. The event took place in correspondence to a very interesting visit.
Three day visit of Robert Gates to China, in concern against China’s rapid military growth was welcomed with the test flight of Stealth plane. On asking, the president of China Hu Jintao responded to the U.S Defense Secretary that the test flight had nothing to do with his visit.
The hype of this Stealth fighter plane started previously this month. The images were first leaked at Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute during taxi tests. According to unofficial sources the flight took place on Tuesday and flew for 15 minutes.
China is hopeful to launch a fully operational Stealth technology between 2017 and 2019. Though America’s role seems a little bit shaky, they have shown down concerns on the test flight and optimism of China. The Pentagon however believes that it will take more time for China to complete the technology.
The US Director of Naval Intelligence V.A David Dorsett said that the development and integration of the Stealth Technology into a challenging and combating environment will take time. China’s economy has indeed been a helper to it defense department and military budgets.
China has dominated the trade across the world and now seems to be near their dreams of becoming the super power. The race for Stealth has now taken a new turn. With Russia to follow, one can definitely look forward to an unbelievable future weapons technology.
The China’s military has observed a significant increase in its budget. The official military budget of China quadrupled in the years 2009 and 2010. This was preliminary due to increase in economy. The military budget in 2010 was estimated to be 78 billion dollars. But considering the fact the U.S has the largest defense budget in the world of approximately 700 billion dollars, the race can be quite different for China and the situation may change in the upcoming future with the emergence of Iran.