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"  China&amp;#039;s J-31 Stealth Fighter (Credit: All Photos Getty Images) The world got its first look at China&amp;#039;s concept twin-engine stealth fighter, the Shenyang FC-31, when the plane flew this week at Airshow China 2014 in Zhuhai. Intended for export and based on the domestic J-31 development program, the FC-31 is billed as an advanced, fifth-generation fighter. But aviation experts doubt that the jet can keep pace with the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The airframe of the FC-31 does resemble that of the F-35, and some suspect that&amp;#039;s a result of Chinese cyber espionage. However, there&amp;#039;s more to stealth than the shape of an aircraft. As defense analyst Reuben F. Johnson has noted, other important factors include the materials, the location of the engines, and the design of the exhaust nozzle section. The FC-31 can&amp;#039;t measure up when it comes to performance, either. The Chinese export fighter employs (for now) two Klimov RD-93s, a Russian engine used on the late Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum. &amp;quot;This tells us three things: One, this new export campaign is an export of an export; two, they don&amp;#039;t have the technology themselves; and three, they&amp;#039;re relying on Russian engines, which are no great prize,&amp;quot; says Richard Aboulafia, VP of Analysis at the Teal Group Corporation. 17 Bizarre Aircraft We Love, and the Stories Behind Them      He also has numerous questions about what&amp;#039;s inside the FC-31. For example, how advanced are the jet&amp;#039;s active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, electronic warfare systems, and sensor fusion? &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s a big capability\u2014fusing all the sensor inputs together into an air combat management picture for the pilot,&amp;quot; Aboulafia says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s huge. It&amp;#039;s one of the key enablers in fighter technology.&amp;quot; He doubts there&amp;#039;s much of a foreign market for the FC-31, especially not in China-leery East Asia. And while the Chinese could begin serial production of their own J-31 fighter in five years, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s not really clear what they get out of that,&amp;quot; he says. By the end of the decade, the United States would have already rolled out hundreds of Joint Strike Fighters, which, development problems aside, will be superior planes. Of course, all this assumes that the J-31 would be used the same way as the F-35, or that the Chinese need parity in air-to-air combat against the super-expensive Joint Strike Fighter. In fact, they probably don&amp;#039;t: Because these planes are so much cheaper than American fighters, the Chinese wouldn&amp;#039;t need a 1:1 kill ratio. They could afford to lose fighters, where the U.S. could not.  FC-31 stealth fighter concept revealed at Airshow China 2014.     "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a13182/chinas-new-stealth-fighter-isnt-great-but-it-may-not-need-to-be-17426657/>