More 5th-gen fighter jets with China, more combat-hardened pilots in Russia: UK report flags what worries West

Since 2020, Russia and China have significantly improved their air power to the extent that China has tripled the annual production of fifth‑generation J‑20 fighter planes and Russia now has more combat‑hardened pilots, according to a report from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

While the United States remains the most formidable military power globally, President Donald Trump’s retreat from European and Indo‑Pacific theatres means that Chinese and Russian militaries now hold a stronger hand in these regions.

The improvement in Russian and Chinese air power has coincided with Russia’s intense aerial war on Ukraine since 2022 and China ramping up aggression across the Indo‑Pacific. The US intelligence community has assessed that President Xi Jinping has asked the military to prepare to invade and occupy Taiwan by 2027.

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Interestingly, even as Ukraine has dealt several blows to Russian air power —destroying bombers as well as air‑defence systems like the S‑400— Russia has not only replenished its fleet but expanded it as well, according to the report.

Russia has expanded air power amid Ukraine war

The Russian air force (VKS) is “a significantly more capable threat” for Western militaries than it was in 2022 despite all the losses incurred in the war with Ukraine, the report by Justin Bronk noted.

Bronk compiled data and found that while Russia has lost around 130 fixed‑wing aircraft in the war, it has added at least 150 aircraft to its fleet.

The bulk of the planes Russia lost were Sukhoi Su‑25SMs and Su‑24M/MR Fencers. He noted that while the Su‑25 would in any case have “little practical utility in any direct conflict between Russian and Nato forces”, the loss of the Su‑24 “does not constitute a meaningful reduction in threats for Nato forces”.

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In theory, the loss of the Su‑34, Russia’s primary tactical strike aircraft, would have hurt Russia, but Bronk highlighted that new production of the Su‑34 for the VKS has exceeded its losses during the four years of the war so far. Any losses have, therefore, been offset by new induction.

At the same time, Bronk noted that Russia has lost far fewer pilots than planes.

Furthermore, a significant proportion of Russian aircraft losses occurred on the ground during Ukrainian drone and missile strikes on airbases, as per the report.

In such cases, aircrew casualties were probably minimal, the report said.

“Where experienced crews have been lost, the impact on the overall capability of the VKS to pose a threat in a direct conflict with Nato nations has been more than offset by the huge growth in flying hours and combat experience across the VKS aircrew cadre,” the report noted.

The improvement among Russian pilots and aircrew began with the intervention in Syria but accelerated after the full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Since 2022, Russian pilots and other personnel “have built up four years of regular combat flying against a significant integrated air‑defence system (IADS) and the Ukrainian Air Force, involving regular live weapon employment against air and ground targets”.

The report said, “They have also gained hugely valuable experience in cooperating closely with VKS and Russian Ground Forces’ GBAD [ground‑based air defence] systems, and Ukrainian sources routinely report noticeably improved fighter‑GBAD integration, especially since early 2024.”

China dominates 5th‑generation battlespace in Indo‑Pacific

As Trump has sought to withdraw from other theatres like Europe and the Indo‑Pacific to be a hemispheric power, China has emerged as the dominant force in the fifth‑generation aerial‑warfare battlespace in the region.

Since 2020, China has massively expanded its fleet and improved the technological capabilities of its air force.

For comparison, whereas China had around 50 J‑20 fifth‑generation fighters in 2020, it now has at least around 320, according to Bronk.

China has increased annual J‑20 production from around 20 per year in 2020 to 120 per year in 2025, the report noted.

The trend suggests that around 1,000 J‑20s and 900 J‑16s will be in service by 2030.

China has also challenged the United States in the domain of electronic warfare. As a challenger to the EA‑18G Growler, China has developed land‑based J‑16D and naval J‑15DT/DH airborne electronic‑warfare aircraft.

Both aircraft are equipped with specialised internal sensors, wiring and mission‑specific cockpits, as well as two to four external pods per aircraft, and are indicative of how sophisticated the Chinese military has become in the last five years, the report noted.

Additionally, China has taken steps towards stealth and sixth‑generation fighter planes. Western analysts have dubbed an aircraft China demonstrated in 2025 as the ‘J‑36’ and another of the size of the F‑22 as the J‑50. Bronk noted that both are designed to incorporate advanced broadband stealth characteristics and are optimised for air‑to‑air missions at high altitudes and speeds.

The report said that the J‑36 in particular will probably have an extremely impressive range on internal fuel and a huge internal weapons bay capable of holding not only significant numbers of PL‑15 and PL‑16 long‑range air‑to‑air missiles, but also probably the larger PL‑17 missile, which is currently carried only externally by the J‑16 Flanker.

Even though these advanced aircraft are almost certainly still developmental prototypes rather than front‑line assets, Chinese production and operational capability timelines are likely to be faster than their Western equivalents. And that means the clock is ticking.

In conclusion, Bronk noted that while Western militaries may still manage to win in any confrontation with China in the Indo‑Pacific, such a victory would no longer be assured.

US‑led Western forces may still be able to win localised conflicts by leveraging greater operational experience; careful use of fifth‑generation F‑22s and F‑35s alongside legacy assets; high‑end training and exercise programmes; and rapid development and fielding of suitable combat‑control areas, but current Chinese capability growth is “sufficiently impressive and rapid that the traditional Western airpower edge is no longer guaranteed in the Indo‑Pacific”, the report said.