New Delhi:
A startling new estimate now makes India’s well-known capability gap with China in the crucial area of stealth fighters an all-out operational emergency. Veteran China military watcher Andreas Rupprecht, writing in US defence journal The War Zone, has estimated China may already have around 500 operational J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighters, its most advanced jet.
If true, that is more than double what many believed were already in frontline service.
Even more significantly, it suggests China has scaled up production of one of the world’s most complex combat aircraft to a level that appears to surpass even the United States.
For India, this is a serious operational alarm bell.
Why? Because Delhi’s operational stealth fighter inventory today stands at exactly zero.
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NDTV has reported before that at least some Chinese J-20 units have been deployed in Tibet, not far from India’s border. These aircraft are designed to evade radar, penetrate heavily defended airspace, strike first, and survive.
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In modern warfare, stealth fighters are battlefield shapers. They enter contested airspace first, hunt enemy fighters and air defence systems, strike high-value targets, and open the door for the rest of the air force to operate.
Operation Sindoor reinforced one unmistakable lesson – air power is central to the way India intends to fight future wars.
Yet answers to China’s stealth revolution remain frustratingly distant.
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The AMCA, India’s in-development stealth fighter, is still a decade from operational service. The Russian Su-57 is neither an ideal stealth fighter nor necessarily the best use of India’s resources, yet could be the only emergency import available to us.
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Aside from that, there is long-term interest in joining Europe’s FCAS sixth generation programme. But that is a project for the next decade, not for a war that may break out tomorrow. But the truth is by the time the AMCA enters service, China could have close to a thousand J-20s, many significantly upgraded, alongside two sixth-gen fighter fleets already taking shape.
This is not to say India would be defenceless against such a threat.
Measuring the challenge purely by counting stealth fighters is only part of the story.
India is investing in more capable stealth-specific air defences, sensors, and detection networks, which are designed to erode some of the advantages stealth aircraft enjoy, and partially offset the absence of an equivalent fleet of its own.
But numbers matter in a fight. And by that metric, India is starting from a zero point.
This is not a criticism of the Indian Air Force, which understands the challenge better than anyone.
The real problem is decades of delayed decisions, inconsistent planning, and an inability to build advanced combat aircraft at scale. That has created an industrial gap that is now becoming a serious operational gap.
The question is no longer whether India needs stealth fighters. It absolutely does.
The question is whether this latest reality check finally injects the urgency, imagination and out-of-the-box thinking needed to close a gap that is widening far faster than India is moving to bridge it.
