Warning: China's Airpower Will Equal the U.S. Air Force by 2030

Dave Majumdar

Security,

“We are not keeping up with that kind of technology development.”

China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) will be able to match or exceed the United States Air Force in the number of fielded combat aircraft by 2030. Moreover, while American forces will still maintain an edge, the technological gap between the two great powers will have closed significantly between now and then.

Right now, the PLAAF is slightly larger in terms of personnel, however the U.S. Air Force has a “couple thousand more aircraft,” Gen. Mark Welsh, Air Force chief-of-staff, told the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on defense on March 2. “At the rate they’re building, the models they’re fielding, by 2030 they will have fielded—they will have made up that 2,000 aircraft gap and they will be at least as big—if not bigger—than our air forces.”

But it’s not just sheer numbers, the PLAAF is rapidly fielding newer and much more capable aircraft. Some of those are completely new warplanes like the stealthy Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-31, while at least three more are upgraded versions of existing fighters like the J-11D and J-16 among others. Moreover, China continues to import advanced Russian-made fighters including the fearsome Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker-E.

“We are not keeping up with that kind of technology development,” Welsh said. “We are still in a position of—we will have the best technology in the battlespace especially if we can continue with our current big three modernization programs.”

Those modernization programs are the Boeing KC-46 tanker, Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the Northrop Grumman B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber. However, even then America’s technological edge will not be the vast gulf the nation has grown accustomed to since the end of the Cold War.