How Dangerous is China’s New 6th-Gen Stealth Fighter-Bomber?

The following piece first appeared on Warrior Maven, a Military Content Group member website.

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Could China have built an unprecedented 6th-generation hybrid-type stealth fighter-bomber? There is certainly no shortage of speculation following the social media appearance of what looks like a Chinese 6th-generation attack aircraft.

Images of the aircraft’s design surfaced on social media, showing glimpses of a new stealth aircraft’s shape, structure, and underneath areas being escorted by a Chengdu Air Corporation People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force J-20 stealth fighter.

Interestingly, two Chinese 6th-generation aircraft models were captured on social media, described by Forbes Magazine as a Chengdu design escorted by a J-20 and a “Shenyang type” flying alongside a “Sukhoi Su-27 clone.”

Shenyang Aircraft

According to mysterious photographs emerging on social media, the Shenyang aircraft appeared similar to previously released defense industry renderings of the US Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) 6th-gen aircraft.

The Shenyang aircraft also looks like 6th-generation images of a new Chinese aircraft released by the Chinese state-owned Global Times newspaper. This 6th-gen rendering, published by the Global Times several years ago, was written about in Warrior Maven in an essay in February of 2023. This image of a 6th-gen fighter published in the Chinese paper looked similar to previously published defense industry renderings of the US Air Force’s 6th-gen NGAD.

The actual configuration of the USAF NGAD fighter is not known or released for security reasons, yet demonstrators of the USAF secret aircraft were flown more than a year ago. It’s not exactly clear that the “Shenyang Type” 6th-gen aircraft emerged from the PLA Air Force’s previously released image of a 6th-gen stealth fighter, yet the mysterious new aircraft does look like the rendering published in 2023.

Chengdu Model

The Chengdu aircraft appears to have a similar blended wing-body and horizontal stealthy configuration, yet observers are raising questions about whether the Chengdu is a new hybrid 6th-gen fighter bomber.
Observers know very little about the propulsion, mission systems, weapons, computing, thermal management, and materials of the fighter-bomber-like Chengdu model, yet the shape of the new aircraft raises critical questions to the naked eye.

The most immediate feature most will recognize is the tailless, finless, fully horizontal blended wing-body closely resembles earlier US defense industry renderings of 6th-gen aircraft. The Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance platform is a bit of a paradoxical mystery because it has flown, yet the program is now lingering in a haze of uncertainty regarding its future existence.

US 6th-Gen vs PLA 6th-Gen

The tailless, triangular, stealthy shape shown in renderings of the US 6th-gen fighter indicates that aerial maneuverability, drag, vectoring, and speed technologies have now broken through to paradigm-changing levels.

Can a stealth fighter maneuver without vertical tail and fin structures? Since the NGAD was widely discussed as an F-22 replacement, the discussion has centered upon a high-speed, stealthy air-supremacy fighter, yet the images show a fully horizontal, tailless airframe. Could the US Air Force have built a stealthy, high-speed, maneuverable fighter jet with bomber-like stealth capabilities? This would seem to be a distinct possibility.

Can the same be said of China’s new aircraft? Is it intended as a breakthrough kind of high-speed, lethal stealth fighter jet? Or could it be a hybrid aircraft designed to operate like a stealthy “tactical bomber,” suggested in several interesting news reports in 19FortyFive, such as one from Kyle Mizokami?

Mizokami points out that the Chengdu model appears large and built with significant internal weapons bays for a wide range of missions. It is also large and has a rounded, well-sized fuselage. This indicates that the aircraft could function in a high-altitude bombing capacity.

Fighter-Bomber Hybrid

This raises the pressing and significant question of whether this new Chinese 6th-generation aircraft is a “hybrid” of some kind, meaning it can function as both a stealth bomber and a high-speed maneuverable stealth fighter. These missions would seem somewhat at odds, as one is built for high-speed maneuvering air supremacy and the other for high-altitude stealth bombing, yet the new Chengdu platform looks like both a fighter and a bomber simultaneously.

The airframe is almost entirely horizontal, suggesting it is maximizing stealth, as the absence of vertical structure minimizes the kinds of protruding angled shapes likely to generate a clear radar return signal.

In this respect, the platform appears similar to a US Air Force B-2 or B-21 bomber, the stealthiest planes in the US force. A B-2 or B-21 bomber is designed to appear as though it is a small bird to enemy radar, yet the new Chengdu model also appears as a fighter jet, so there is likely much to be learned about this new aircraft.