New Views Of China's Next Generation Fighters
TWZ has previously published a highly detailed analysis of both the J-36 and J-XDS/J-50, which readers can find here.
There are no clear indications that the latest pictures and videos of the J-36 and J-XDS/J-50 have been fabricated, but this remains a possibility, albeit a very small one. Versions of some pictures of the aircraft that have been deliberately enhanced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to try to glean more details are known to be circulating online. Many phone cameras now produce images that are similarly 'smoothed' by default, as well.
The newest views of the J-36 in a video and associated still images, seen in the social media posts below, which are said to have been shot in the city of Chengdu. The Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, which has its main plant there, is responsible for the aircraft.
Finally got my hands on this video! Crystal-clear footage of Chengdu's 6th-generation fighter jet soaring over Chengdu Airport. Absolutely amazing!
#Chengdu6thGenFighter#MilitaryTechpic.twitter.com/Mmuz8kQA9h
— GaoFrank
(@gaofrank75) April 23, 2025
Wow! I hope this latest image of the J-36 is legit but usually @琴石2022 on Weibo is quite credible!
pic.twitter.com/zkPLBZaku4
— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) April 23, 2025
As noted, the new rear aspect view of the J-36 gives the clearest look we've seen at the engine exhausts for its trio of engines, which is already a highly unusual feature of the aircraft. As seen below, we can now see 'petals' extending out over the top of the exhaust trenches that sit inward of the aircraft's tailing edge. This only underscores TWZ's previous analysis about the J-36's exhaust configuration and its major similarities in form and function to that found on Northrop's YF-23. The YF-23 also notably featured an exotic intake design with boundary layer pores to help improve airflow, as you can learn more about here.
As we have previously written about the J-36's exhaust arrangement in general:
'This is a clear low-observable play both for radar and infrared signature management. Recessing the engine exhaust before the aircraft's upper trailing edge is a classic low-observable design element that Northrop largely pioneered with Tacit Blue, B-2 Spirit, and YF-23. The ejected exhaust is spread out and has the potential to be actively cooled by this upper deck area. Above all else, this provides very limited line-of-sight to the engine exhausts themselves, which helps significantly in minimizing infrared signature, as well as radar cross-section, from most aspects.'
The J-36 video also offers a new view into the aircraft's cockpit. Since the aircraft first emerged publicly, there has been speculation that it may have a two-seat cockpit with side-by-side seating. The imagery we have now is still inconclusive on this detail, but the possibility that two distinct heads-up displays may be visible has been raised by Andreas Rupprecht, a longtime Chinese military observer and contributor to this website.
No, it clearly looks like two HUDs pic.twitter.com/SCvVvfc2DS
— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) April 23, 2025
Additional pictures and videos of the J-XDS/J-50 from the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation have also been circulating online in the past week or so.
And the same one in cut-out form …(Images via @Captain小潇 on Weibo by OPPOFind 8) pic.twitter.com/15axXJCbc8
— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) April 23, 2025
Original image pic.twitter.com/bPi7XBpa3j
— John Jones (@nibelogn1996) April 17, 2025
Another set of images showing SAC's J-XDS prototype with its landing gear down and from the side … unfortunately still very small & blurry!(Images via @琴石2022 from Weibo) pic.twitter.com/L1FeFV6b6s
— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) April 23, 2025
A test flight of
Shenyang's sixth-generation aircraft took place today. It is clearly visible that the aircraft's swiveling wingtips are rotating. https://t.co/ROHRjHAo1Rpic.twitter.com/PFKFSUffPs
— 笑脸男人 (@lfx160219) April 23, 2025
As mentioned, most interestingly, a bay of some kind with a pronounced bulge at the front is now plainly visible on at least the right side of the fuselage behind the air intake. It is also positioned right in front of the main landing bay on that side of the aircraft.
Whether or not the J-XDS/J-50's bay may be for weapons or intended to serve some other purpose is unknown. Questions have already been raised about whether there is enough internal space in this part of the aircraft to hold a relevant munition. It is worth noting here that China's J-20 stealth fighter has weapons bays in roughly the same location, which also have a novel configuration wherein the missiles inside pop out fully along with their launch rails before firing, as you can read more about here.
We also have much clearer views of the J-XDS/J-50's unique swiveling wingtip control surfaces. TWZ has previously assessed that these wingtips most likely help provide additional stability for the tailless aircraft, and has explored the advantages and disadvantages of such a design decision in detail.
No idea yet, but also interesting what looks like massive actuators … pic.twitter.com/9fGMn1GbY6
— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) April 23, 2025
Though any new details about the J-36 and J-XDS/J-50 continue to draw particular attention, they represent just a portion of significant military aviation development efforts known to be ongoing in China, as well as additional work assumed to be going on outside of the public eye.
Also today, a satellite image available through Google Earth began circulating online showing a curious object with a stealth fighter-like appearance, including a modified diamond-like delta platform, canards, and twin vertical tails, on the apron in front of the passenger terminal at Jining Qufu Airport in Shandong Province in eastern China. Additional satellite imagery from Planet Labs that TWZ reviews shows that it has been there since at least September 2024. This is all doubly curious given that Jining Qufu Airport, which had been collocated with the People's Liberation Army Air Force's (PLAAF) Jining Air Base, was officially closed in December 2023.
What the 'airframe' is unclear, but it seems very likely to be a mock-up of some kind. It shows some rough similarities, but also significant differences to the Baidi Type-B, also known as the 'White Emperor,' an entirely fictional 'space fighter' design that the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) displayed at the 2024 Zhuhai airshow.
Comparisons have also already been drawn to vaguely J-20-esque 'shapes' that emerged at the remote Lintao Air Base in north-central China in 2022. However, the structure of the wings and the nose of the object at Jining are distinctly different from those previously seen at Lintao, which may also be mock-ups or decoys.
A video is also now making the rounds on social media that has prompted questions about whether yet another new Chinese advanced military aircraft has emerged. What can be gleaned from the video is limited given how far away the aircraft is in the footage and its overall quality. Its provenance is also not immediately clear. What can be seen does not immediately appear to directly align with any known Chinese designs. Its overall shape also does not fit with a still-unidentified tailless fighter-like airframe that emerged at Shenyang's main plant in January, which TWZ was first to report on.
China is reportedly testing a third platform in northern China, according to the latest visuals that have emerged on social media.The aircraft appears to be different from the two previously known tailless designs currently undergoing testing.It is still too early to… pic.twitter.com/9SsfoHPsAi
— International Defence Analysis (@Defence_IDA) April 23, 2025
Yes and as I noted here I'm confused …
https://t.co/s5MNby9ZBlHowever it is so much blurry. The best guess would be some sort of UAV/UCAV. We simply need to wait for more. pic.twitter.com/SqHTBwxf8J
— @Rupprecht_A (@RupprechtDeino) April 23, 2025
At the same time, it would hardly be the first time a new advanced Chinese aircraft design has emerged suddenly. The dramatic appearance of the J-36 and J-XDS/J-50 flying on December 26th last year, despite no imagery having previously emerged of either aircraft, is a prime example.
Ongoing testing of the J-36 and J-XDS/J-50 is certainly continuing to reveal new details about those designs. We had previously predicted that reasonably high-resolution images of the two aircraft would emerge by early summer in line with the pattern of past Chinese rolling 'leaks.'
If other advanced Chinese military aircraft are now flying or are otherwise progressing into the latter stages of development, additional details may well begin to emerge about them, as well.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
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Instead, I think that these longer time horizons are way more interesting of things that humans feasibly could not have the time to get around to, that these could actually start to reveal a whole bunch of areas of life where we might actually be able to come up with solutions that just ... And it sounds very old school, Silicon Valley hopium in a lot of ways, but these are things that people didn't think they could do before or you would just give up way earlier. Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. And I feel like it's a good example of humans and AI working together. In this example, you really do need both. You need the drones to take the images, you need the AI to process them, and then you need humans to figure out what to do with that information. So I think it's an example of AI augmenting what we can do rather than necessarily replacing us all together. 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Also, just getting a much more immediate sense of some of these ambiguities we've been talking about around what is woke AI and what better way to get an actual iterative understanding of what that is for your business than by working with the federal government directly. And then the longer term amplifications that I think are just interesting from a federal workforce DOGE perspective of to what extent is arming federal employees with these tools, kind of having them dig their own graves? Not for all of them by any means, but how may this end up turning into a years long experiment into what type of work at which agencies can be automated more effectively and in which areas are people going to be needed for the longer term? Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. I mean, I think it's really clear from how DOGE, Trump, Elon Musk in his day were talking about federal employees, that it doesn't seem like they have a lot of respect for the people in these roles. Jake Lahut: No. Zoë Schiffer: And this is my conjecture, but would be happy to automate away a lot of these positions. I have so many questions about how this is actually going to play out in practice, and we're definitely going to keep reporting on it. But one aspect of this, and I'm really curious to get your take on it, is just Sam Altman's place in these negotiations. Because again, like we said at the beginning, he's been a fixture in the tech billionaires lineup of the current administration. He's announced the data infrastructure project Stargate alongside Trump earlier this year, and that project actually was started under Biden. But we know from talking to sources close to the project that OpenAI strategically kind of framed the announcement as being kind a Trump initiative and allowed the President to get up in front of the country and kind of talk about it, announce it officially for the first time as if it was something that he had done, which seems like a classic Sam Altman maneuver. He is such a politician, and this is something you hear from everyone close to him, but I'm curious if it'll work because unlike Elon Musk, Sam and Trump just seem like very different people, almost like oil and water in a way. Jake Lahut: I was going to say oil and water also. Yeah, I mean, I think Sam Altman's really interesting to compare to someone like Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, where the NVIDIA CEO seems much more comfortable complimenting Trump, kind of glazing him appropriately and doing that song and dance in a way that doesn't seem too forced from him. And if you're Sam Altman, and if you're Jensen Huang, you have just these absolute juggernauts in your companies and your comp, and you're one of the most powerful people in the world by being CEO of these companies. So to what extent do you need to worry about political messaging and comm strategy? Fair point, maybe not much at all, but I think the learning curve with Sam Altman is not as much it seems from the behind the scenes maneuvering and trying to position himself well. It's more of like, you are going to remain the face of this company, and now you're going to have these closer and closer ties to the Trump administration. How are you going to talk about it if you're going to keep going on podcasts and stuff and try to do your chill, laid back bro routine, and someone asks you about masked men disappearing people off the street, are you going to give an answer like, "Oh, it's actually kind of really complicated?" Well then no, you got to do better than that. Zoë Schiffer: Totally. Yeah. It's been really interesting to watch this play out in real time. One thing I heard from a couple of sources who are quite close to basically all of these tech billionaires is that at the inauguration, they didn't actually know that they were going to be positioned directly behind Trump for that photo op until the photo was being taken. Jake Lahut: Yeah, that's crazy. Zoë Schiffer: And there was a moment of panic where they were like, oh, I don't know. Do we want this to be ... And then it was happening, and I think everyone was just like, "No, we're going in. We have no choice." Jake Lahut: And it's history. Zoë Schiffer: Exactly. Jake Lahut: It just lives forever now. Zoë Schiffer: But you can just imagine, I think there were these opportunities to be like, do we distance ourselves? Do we not? And I'm sure they feel like they have no choice because they ultimately want their companies to win, but clearly they have made the call that there's almost no concession they aren't willing to make with the Trump administration if it means their firm comes out on top. Jake Lahut: Yeah, it's just too key of a window for these companies of this next three to five year span and who is going to be in leading position. And also they should just be aware. This is a move in Trump's playbook. If you remember the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, when she was in the Oval Office and covered her face with a folder because she didn't know that she was going to be in there with the whole White House press pool, Trump and his people know this move really well. They basically just trap ... They set a trap for you and you can't leave at that point. And then you have quite literally a visual reminder of their association with you. And that gives the Trump administration and Trump himself more leverage over you in the medium and long term. Zoë Schiffer: Right. I mean, ultimately it seems like it doesn't really matter for them. Maybe they'll get critiqued, but people are probably still going to use their tools. But an even bigger thing that they are getting, a bigger concession they're getting from the Trump administration is that, for example, we heard Trump recently talk about fair use and say really, really publicly in a press briefing in front of the nation, like, "Oh, you can't expect these AI firms to pay for every single piece of content that they're training on," basically in real time, trying to redefine the definition of fair use, which is currently being adjudicated in the courts. But we had the President coming out and saying, "Really firmly I side with the AI companies on this, not necessarily the content creators," which is a huge win. I mean, this is an existential issue for them if the President felt the opposite way. And so I think they're willing to put up with a lot because of that. Jake Lahut: Totally. Just too much money to be made and Trump hates books too much. Zoë Schiffer: That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is about why premium chatbot subscriptions are suddenly priced around $200, and whether they can actually live up to this hype. Adriana Tapia produced this episode, Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode, Kate Osborn is our executive producer, Condé Nast Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon and Katie Drummond is WIRED's Global Editorial Director.
