America’s F-35 Stealth Fighter vs. China’s New J-31: Who Wins?

America’s F-35 Stealth Fighter vs. China’s New J-31: Who Wins? Recently revealed details concerning China’s Shenyang J-31 fighter suggest that the aircraft not only looks like the Pentagon’s Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), but it also offers comparable aerodynamic performance. But the real question is how far along Beijing has come in the development of subsystems like radars and engines. Moreover, there is the question of how well Chinese industry can integrate all of those disparate technologies into an operational aircraft. On the surface, the J-31 looks very much like a twin-engine F-35 clone—and there are plenty of reasons to believe that the Chinese jet was based on stolen JSF technology—and could eventually be more or less a match for the American jet. “I think they’ll eventually be on par with our fifth-gen jets—as they should be, because industrial espionage is alive and well,” a senior U.S. military aviator told me last year. written by Dave Majumdar