Recently, the official media conducted an exclusive interview with the "Wang Hai Brigade," the first of the Air Force to be equipped with the J-20, and in the report, Yang Juncheng, the pilot of the "Wang Hai Brigade," said that our pilots have always taken the initiative in many contests with foreign military aircraft. This sentence means that the J-20 of the "Wang Hai Brigade" has always been in the initiative in the contest with foreign fighters.
Although Yang Juncheng did not give a further explanation of the foreign fighters he said, it is not difficult to find clues from a series of reports. According to comprehensive official media reports, in recent years, the "Wang Hai Brigade" has successfully completed a series of major tasks in the airspace of the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the Miyako Strait, among which the airspace of the East China Sea is most likely to encounter foreign fighters.
At the Okinawa Air Base facing the East China Sea, the US military has deployed a large number of F22, F35, F15, and other advanced fighters, which often enter China's air defense identification zone in the East China Sea to provoke. "People's Liberation Army Daily" reported that in July 2022, Yang Chunlei, a pilot of the brigade of the "Wang Hai Brigade", piloted a J-20 fighter to identify and verify the foreign aircraft that entered the air defense identification zone in the East China Sea. The advantages of using J-20 identification and verification are obvious, and you can make full use of its advantages to surprise foreign aircraft.
What kind of fighter is the foreign aircraft that Yang Juncheng is talking about? Since it is a US fighter that can compete with the J-20, the non-** fighter F15 that is a generation behind is not worth mentioning here, therefore, the foreign aircraft that Yang Juncheng said obviously refers to the fighter of the same level as the J-20, which can only be F22 or F35.
That "always take the initiative" obviously refers to the fact that the opponent has not been able to detect the J-20 first, and it is not until the J-20 warns it that the F22 or F35 knows that they are being targeted, and the deterrent effect brought by this is very large. Because in real combat, this means that the F22 or F35 has been shot down without anyone noticing.
This suggests at least two things:
First, neither the US military's early warning aircraft nor ground-based radars can detect the J-20 in a timely manner at a long distance. This has been proved by the fact that the Taiwan military has not been able to discover the J-20 operating around the island, and you must know that the Taiwan military has an E-2K early warning aircraft and an MPQ53 65 radar, but it still cannot find the J-20, which shows its excellent stealth performance.
Second, the PLA's AWACS aircraft or ground-based radars detected F22 or F35 in the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone. This is not difficult to understand, the use of J-20 for identification and verification also needs to be guided, because even the J-20 is not comparable to AWACS in terms of situational awareness, and even compared with ground-based radar, there are shortcomings.
This is because the Air Police 500 uses a very advanced digital array radar, with a high degree of digitization, which means that the detection performance of the Air Police 500 can be continuously improved with the progress of technology, not to mention that the Air Police 500 is also optimized for the detection of the best targets. As the commander of the Air Force of the US Pacific Command, Wells**, said, the Air Police 500 and the J-20 form a very powerful "kill chain". In addition, our army has been equipped with a large number of various types of meter-wave radars, and in the face of the detection network composed of the air police 500 and meter-wave radars, the stealth performance of F22 and F35 has been greatly reduced.
Third, the detection range of the J-20 sensor is greater than that of the F22 and F35. In the process of identification and verification, the J-20 is not on the radar, and is commanded and guided by early warning aircraft or ground-based radars, since the J-20 can take the lead in finding the traces of F22 or F35, it shows that its EOTS (electro-optical tracking and targeting system) and EODAS (electro-optical distributed aperture system) The detection range exceeds that of the opponent.
Due to the premature design age, the F22 does not have built-in EOTS and EODAS, and can only rely on the infrared pod or ARL94 passive detection system to search for the J-20, but in the case of the J-20 without radar, the latter obviously cannot play a role, and the external infrared pod will seriously affect the stealth performance of the F22.
As for the F35, although it is equipped with EOTS and EODAS, it is only a single-engine fighter after all, which is smaller than the heavy fifth-generation aircraft J-20 in size, resulting in a small aperture of its EOTS and EODAS, and it is not difficult to understand that it is inferior to the J-20 in terms of detection range.
In addition, it should be pointed out that as the first unit of the Air Force to be equipped with J-20, the "Wang Hai Brigade" is still equipped with the J-20A with Russian engines, due to the small thrust of the engine, the thrust-to-weight ratio is weak, and the power supply capacity of the J-20A is not very good, which affects the energy supply of its EOTS and EODAS, but even in this case, the J-20A can be in the active position, not to mention the improved J-20 equipped with turbofan 10C and turbofan 15.