How Many J-20 Stealth Fighter Will China Build? Top Expert Predicts over 1000

Since the first technology demonstrator of China’s <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/new-phase-single-crystal-blade-ws15" target="_blank">J-20 fifth generation fighter</a> was unveiled in December 2010, considerable speculation has arisen as to the possible scale on which the aircraft could be produced. Fighter production scales across the world have decreased significantly with each generation as aircraft became more costly, and further decreased sharply after the end of the Cold War in the Western world and the Soviet Union in particular. While the United States and Russia were able to sustain significant scales of production for their primary heavyweight fighters after the end of the Cold War, the respective F-15 and the Su-27, by exporting the majority of the aircraft produced to foreign clients, China made no efforts to export its own larger and more capable fighters abroad, with the J-20 itself being prohibited from foreign sales. The large size of China’s fighter fleet, however, and the fact that no other fifth generation fighters appeared to be being developed for the country’s air force, raised the possibility that J-20 procurement would be pursued on a scale unprecedented for any fighter class worldwide since the end of the Cold War.&nbsp;<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/03/24/article_67e0da2498e3d1_08684086.jpeg" title="J-20 First Technology Demonstrator Airframe ">In May 2018 the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was informed by senior experts that production of up to 500 J-20s was expected. The speed at which the scale of production grew in subsequent years, however, led to a new consensus emerging among analysts in the United States that well over 700 would be produced. As observed by leading expert on Chinese next generation fighter programs, and author of the book&nbsp;<a href="https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Chinas-Stealth-Fighter-Hardback/p/50764">China's Stealth Fighter: The J-20 'Mighty Dragon' and the Growing Challenge to Western Air Dominance</a>,&nbsp;Abraham Abrams, regarding the estimate of over 700 fighters: “This would place the J-20’s production run in the same range as initial projections for the F-22, which was to see production peak at over sixty airframes per year and have 750 aircraft produced before budget cuts and performance issues reduced this by over seventy-five per cent. The rapid and significant expansion of J-20 production facilities provided an important early indicator of a very large intended production run.” He further observed: “the high requirement for fifth generation fighters as a result of pressure on China’s defences from the tremendous numbers of F-35s that were set to be deployed by its potential adversaries, with over 2000 F-35s expected to enter service even if cuts were made, which made a small J-20 production run appear unlikely.”&nbsp;<img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/03/24/article_67e0db1fb3d9d9_19633939.jpg" title="J-20 Fighter From First Production Batch Seen in 2016">By 2023 reports that production of the J-20 would reach 100-120 aircraft pear year fuelled a new consensus that the fighter’s production run would reach well over 1000. The fighter’s annual production numbers were unprecedented for a post-Cold War Chinese fighter, or for any post-Cold War twin engine fighter, with Abrams observing: “This was a major landmark in Chinese aviation history, as the last fighter produced on any remotely comparable scale had been the J-6 – an early second generation design which first flew in 1952 and was under a quarter the size of the J-20.” Regarding what this indicated regarding the extent to which the Chinese fleet could come to depend on the J-20, Abrams observed: ‘With the J-6 having formed close to three quarters of Chinese fighter units in the 1980s the J-20’s massive production scale indicated that it could be intended to similarly equip close to half, if not a majority of Chinese fighter units, which no class since the J-6 had come close to doing.” The J-20’s reported major advantages in both performance and cost effectiveness over other fighters such as the J-16 made the possibility of the fighter being procured in such numbers highly possible, with the roles the stealth jet is expected to fill likely to widen as the numbers in service grow.&nbsp;