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Top 5 Fighter Planes Under development
1 F-35 Lightning II
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of fifth-generation, single-seat, single-engine stealth multirole fighters. After entering service it would be considered as the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world, performing ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions.
The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), integrates advanced very low observable stealth into a supersonic, highly agile 5th generation fighter. The capabilities built into the F-35 Lightning II provide the pilot with unprecedented situational awareness and unmatched lethality and survivability.
Some of its salient features are :
- Dominates all adversaries in the air or on the surface.
- Has the ability to survive and prosecute the most formidable threats expected to emerge beyond 2020.
- Conducts air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions simultaneously.
- Incorporates the most powerful and comprehensive sensor and mission avionics package
2 Sukhois T-50 PAK FA
The Sukhoi PAK FA is a fifth-generation jet fighter being developed by Sukhoi for the Russian Air Force.The current prototype is Sukhois T-50. The PAK FA, when fully developed, is intended to replace the MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker in the Russian inventory and serve as the basis of the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA project being developed with India. As a fifth generation jet fighter, it is designed to directly compete with Lockheed Martins F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II. The T-50 performed its first flight January 29, 2010.Its second flight was on February 6 and its third on February 12. As of August 31, 2010, it made 17 flights in total.Sukhoi director Mikhail Pogosyan has projected a market for 1,000 aircraft over the next four decades, which will be produced in a joint venture with India, two hundred each for Russia and India and six hundred for other countries.He has also said that the Indian contribution would be in the form of joint work under the current agreement rather than as a joint venture. The Indian Air Force will acquire 50 single-seater fighters of the Russian version before the two seat FGFA is developed. The Russian Defense Ministry will purchase the first ten aircraft after 2012 and then 60 after 2016.
3 J-XX Stealth Fighter
China has already launched its next generation stealth fighter aircraft programme, and Shenyang Aircraft Industry Co. (SAC) has been selected to head research and development of a new fighter for the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). According to the reports, development of the subsystems including the engine and weapon suite for the next generation fighter, which was code named by the Western intelligence as J-XX, has been underway for some time.
Images of the concepts show a twin-engine aircraft sharing some design traits with Lockheed Martins stealth F/A-22 Raptor multirole fighter such as the internal carriage of its weapons. Not too much public information about the programme is available at the moment. Sources within Chinas confirmed that the SAC is looking at a twin-engine, single-seat, single vertical tale fin design, but other design proposals has yet been ruled out. As China has developed close ties with Russias aerospace industry and has license produced many planes of formal Soviet designs, it can be predicted that the J-XX would include some, if not many Russian technologies and designs.
China has been offered a joint development and production of a new fifth-generation fighter by Russia -LFI. Russia has been trying to sell this concept both to China and India for some time, but neither of them has committed fully yet. Stealth and thrust vectoring are two must-have features in all aircraft being designed in the 21st century. It is not clear that how much progress Chinese designers have made in these areas, and Chinese aircraft industry may have to take Western/Israeli/Russian helps to make the J-XX truly fouth-generation (or fifth-generation using the Russian standards). Once introduced, the J-12′s immediate rival will be U.S. F/A-22, JSF and Indias MCA (Medium Combat Aircraft).
