The latest "J-20" fighter of the Chinese Air Force has made people's eyes shine. The two-seater J-20 fighter is considered to have entered service or is about to be delivered to combat units. So why now this "world's first fifth-and-a-half-generation fighter" needs two pilots?
Many people may ask, especially as avionics become increasingly intelligent. In fact, for modern fighters, the two-seat design has always had one of the simplest reasons: one pilot is too busy. Two-seater fighters are able to divide labor and cooperate in multi-role operations to improve combat efficiency.
But for fifth-generation aircraft, a two-seat design is not needed to maintain multi-purpose combat capability. The F-22 fighter developed by the United States proved that even a single pilot can have capabilities that are not inferior to those of the fourth and fourth generation and a half multirole fighters.
But the two-seat design of China's J-20 fighter has more meaning.
Xu Shuguang, a professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said that China's two-seat J-20 fighter was developed and designed to command "unmanned wingmen", which means that the two-seat J-20 will have one or more types of supporting UAVs in service, bringing a new combat system to the Chinese Air Force.
At the same time, the Chinese Air Force has higher requirements for "unmanned wingmen" than the US military.
The U.S. military believes that the "unmanned wingman" only needs to be a flying air ammunition depot, while China's "unmanned wingman" needs to have the task of expanding the situational awareness range of fighter jets, and also needs to have air combat capabilities, which requires complex maneuver route planning and command. These pressures are also transmitted to the fighter in charge.
Obviously, it is difficult for the single-seat J-20 fighter to do these jobs well, so the two-seat design has become an inevitable choice. The service of the two-seat J-20 fighter will bring powerful air combat capabilities, and its situational awareness and firepower will be significantly improved with the assistance of UAVs.
This ability of manned aircraft and UAV to cooperate is a direction for the development of sixth-generation aircraft in the future. Therefore, China's two-seat J-20 fighter can indeed be called a fifth-generation and a half-generation fighter in this field. This has also brought new changes and challenges to the combat system of the Chinese Air Force.
Now we can expect the Chinese Air Force to be able to exert more powerful and flexible combat capabilities in future operations.