A new fighter plane built by China is drawing more snickers than raves from aviation experts, and the People’s Army is now saying the jet was really ticketed for export all along.
The J-31 “Falcon Hawk,” likely designed by reverse-engineering a downed U.S. stealth fighter, was supposed “to become China’s next generation of carrier-based aircraft” and take its place next to the U.S.-made F-35 Lightning II as the gold standard in air force weaponry, according to a report last month in People’s Daily . But now it looks like China, which has exactly one aircraft carrier, has scaled back the hype and will peddle the aircraft to second-tier air forces like Brazil, Pakistan and some Middle East countries.
“It’s probably likely that the technology was not originally created for export but built for their own use and it did not work out too well,” Stephen Biddle, a political science professor at George Washington University and senior defense policy fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations told FoxNews.com. . .