Photos Show Mock ‘J-35’ Fighter Jet on China’s Fujian Carrier

News Snapshot:

A suspected mock-up of China's next-generation fighter aircraft has appeared on the deck of the Chinese navy's new aircraft carrier, the Fujian. Photographs, likely taken by commercial airline passengers overflying a Shanghai shipyard where China's third "flat-top" warship was built, showed an airframe resembling that of a "J-35" stealth jet parked at one end of the Fujian's runway, according to Andreas Rupprecht, a researcher and author of Chinese military hardware. The J-35 is what experts at the Pentagon and elsewhere call the carrier-based variant of the FC-31 or J-31 Gyrfalcon, a fifth-generation aircraft developed by China's state-owned Shenyang Aircraft Corporation...