China's stealthy military leap

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• December 29, 2010 6:55am 

CHINA has crept up a rung on the world stage, with blurry pictures revealing its first stealth fighter.

The unofficial pictures appeared on Chinese internet forums over the Christmas weekend, before being pulled by censors.If real, the large combat jet presents a new challenge to the power of the United States which has heavily cut the number of new generation stealth fighters it is planning to put into service.Aviation Week magazine spotted the pictures......

But indications are they may be real - with a variety of pictures of the same aircraft appearing within days of each other.Aviation experts speculate these are the first hard evidence of the Chengdu J-20, China's stealth-fighter prototype.The aircraft pictured has many stealthy characteristics, chiseled edges, triangular wings and angled tail-planes. The suspected prototype appears to have a front section modeled on the U.S. F22 Raptor stealth fighter, and a body and tailed based loosely on the Russian T-50 stealth jet.

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