As the remarks by US entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, founder of American defence technology company Anduril Industries, on the Chinese fifth-generation stealth fighter aircraft Shenyang J-35 triggered a war of words on social media, a Chinese military expert claimed that this only means the world is taking note of China’s advanced fighter jets.
Luckey, in a tweet, said he was “not convinced China’s J-35 measures up to the real deal.” A picture of him measuring an airshow model of the aircraft accompanied the tweet.
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Many of his followers appeared to agree with him and suggested that China may have tried to copy the US fighter jet.
However, Chinese military affairs expert Zhang Xuefeng claimed that Luckey was just doing a piece of performance art and argued that he lacked professional dedication.
In China, even a carpenter knows that a vernier calliper is needed for accurate measurements, he pointed out, according to Global Times.
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He said that using a tape measure to assess a J-35A model offers no meaningful insight into the fighter jet’s real-world performance.
Zhang claimed that Luckey used a tape measure, apparently attempting to gauge the J-35A’s length, wingspan, and other dimensions, and then extrapolate those measurements to estimate its full-scale size, including figures such as wing area.
“In reality, however, China has already publicly released some of these data with confidence, making his action completely unnecessary,” Zhang was quoted as saying.
According to him, while Luckey’s action may appear “ridiculous,” it also shows that foreign observers are paying close attention to China’s advanced fighter jets.
“They have already taken China’s advanced fighter jets as an object of research and comparison, and even a benchmark for learning,” the Global Times quoted him as saying.
