China's secret Area 51 base

In a scorched and sand blasted salt lake on the fringes of the Gobi desert, barely a month seems to go by without a new building going up and more tarmac being laid. It’s a busy time to be at Lop Nur, China’s top secret test base. Both civilian and military observers of satellite images of the facility, however, were startled by what they saw there in August and September. On one day of each month a stealth jet sat in the afternoon sun waiting for a flight at the base known as China’s Area 51, a base specifically chosen for its distance from prying eyes in the remotest corner of remote Xinjiang. The delta-winged J-36, tailless and stealth-designed, and the J-XDS (also known as J-50), similarly shaped but slightly smaller, have emerged as China’s sixth-generation tactical aircraft, not yet operational but preparing to compete with the best of America’s most advanced fighter jets. If the planes that fly from the base are in direct competition and possible confrontation with the Pentagon’s finest, Lop Nur shares many similarities with Area 51, erected from a barren lake bed in the Nevada desert. Close to where China has carried out nuclear tests, Lop Nur has what is thought to be the longest runway in the world, over three miles long. Run by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), it is considered to be where China’s home for the equivalent of US air force “black” (classified) test flights, often using the most advanced aircraft. The CIA’s U-2 spy plane and the US Air Force’s first stealth fighter, the bat-winged F-117 Nighthawk, were test flown at Area 51, for example. In Nevada, notices near the perimeter of Area 51 warn that it is a restricted base and that guards are authorised to use “deadly force” against trespassers. Lop Nur takes this a step further, warning that anyone trying to steal secrets “will be killed”. Like Area 51, it is prohibited to fly over Lop Nur. But both bases, can be photographed by satellites. Why, then, would the Chinese military have its latest jets out on the tarmac when they can clearly be seen? In the Cold War days, in the Soviet Union, for example, any top secret aircraft would be quickly housed in shelters when the next US satellite was due to fly overhead. Today, there are multiple eyes in low orbit, including many US and commercial satellites. “Leaving these aircraft out in the open means the Chinese don’t mind them being spotted by passing satellites. It’s a way of showing off what they’ve got, even though Lop Nur base could well be described as an Area 51,” Douglas Barrie, an aerospace specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. The J-36 and J-XDS are part of what the Pentagon says is China’s ambition to challenge US air power in the Indo-Pacific. The J-36 is believed by US intelligence to have been designed to coordinate accompanying unmanned aircraft (drones) in a swarming attack, similar in concept to the Pentagon’s “Loyal Wingman” programme in which AI-operated drones would fly alongside the US Air Force’s F-35 stealth fighters. Lop Nur is just one of several remote bases where the PLAAF is developing and testing a next-generation fleet of combat fighters, bombers and attack drones. The military parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in September included an unmanned stealth fighter, the largest drone on display, although it could have been a mock-up rather than a fully-formed aircraft. While China’s most advanced drones under development are being tested at other bases, including Malan in the Xinjiang region, and at a high-altitude testing site at Ngari in Tibet, key flight tests of the new combat aircraft, J-36 and J-XDS, appear to be taking place at Lop Nur. “But there are plenty of other things which we know they are developing but have never been seen, such as a subsonic, low observable stealth bomber. That’s hidden away,” added Barrie. In the 1980s, the PLAAF was “a museum air force”, stuffed with old Soviet aircraft, he said. “So they’ve covered a lot of ground since then and now have military aircraft which are broadly comparable with the US, but the one thing they don’t have is combat experience. The last war they fought was in the 1970s in Vietnam.” However, China hasn’t totally caught up, particularly with carrier-borne aircraft. The PLAAF is developing the J-35 for its burgeoning carrier fleet. “China currently has a very old aircraft for their carriers, the J-15, which is terrible. It’s the heaviest and lowest thrust-to-weight-ratio carrier-borne aircraft in the world,” said Eric Heginbotham (CORRECT), a specialist in Asian security issues at MIT university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The US has the stealth F-35C on carriers, so we’re well ahead of China,” he said. “But what is concerning is China’s development of ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) drones which can be used to spot US carriers and other warships and send back coordinates for their huge stock of anti-ship ballistic missiles,” Heginbotham added. “They would act as the eyes and ears for missile launches. We know the Chinese are developing these on a large scale. The US is ahead of the Chinese in terms of ISR drones, but they are very expensive. The Global Hawk long-range drone which has just been retired cost around $120 million a copy, and the new RQ-180 ISR unmanned vehicle which is still under development is going to cost even more.” BUY AQGENT REDRUTH, MY NEW SPY THRILLER WITH A STRONG RUSSIAN THEME. CHECK IT OUT ON AMAZON, ROWANVALE BOOKS AND IN WATERSTONES