Sam Roggeveen
For most of my career, first as an analyst in Australia’s intelligence community and then in the world of think tanks, I have watched and written about the modernisation of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). On every step of that journey, China has offered surprises. In fact, my experience in both the intelligence community (which, it should be emphasised, is now 17 years past) and open-source PLA analysis is that the pace of change and scale of ambition are generally underestimated.
But even by that standard, 2025 has been a year of major revelations. In fact, I cannot recall a more dramatic year in my time as a PLA watcher.
If we cheat slightly by starting our survey in the final days of December 2024 rather than on 1 January 2025, then we can include the first photographic evidence that China has not one but two “sixth generation” fighter programs underway. These aircraft promise to outperform fifth generation fighters like the American F-35, the leading Western design now being procured by the United States, Australia and other Western partners. As 2025 progressed, higher quality images of the prototypes emerged, including this one of a tailless stealth fighter unofficially designated as the J-50.
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