Two J-20 stealth fighter jets attached to an aviation brigade of the PLA Air Force take off for a flight training exercise in early February of 2024. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Liu Weipeng)

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force is using an elite combat unit to train J-20 pilots amid deliveries of the stealth fighter jet to multiple units, a move experts said on Saturday will contribute to the fast generation of new combat capabilities which require pilots to not only fight, but also command.

As the first combat unit to commission J-20 fighter jets, the Wang Hai Air Group has verified and explored multiple capabilities of the aircraft in air combat, including creating the precedence of commencing combat missions under extreme weather conditions, China Central Television (CCTV) reported earlier this week.

The J-20 is China's latest domestically developed stealth fighter jet with complex combat systems involving multiple fields of study, and it was the Wang Hai Air Group's responsibility to explore how to convert the aircraft's new potentials into combat capabilities, CCTV said.

"[The J-20] is not only a fighter jet, but also a node of aerial command, so we should not train the pilots to become just combatants, we should train them to also be aerial commanders," Lieutenant Colonel Yang Juncheng of the Wang Hai Air Group said in the CCTV report footage.

After having equipped all of its pilots with J-20s, the Wang Hai Air Group established a system to train J-20 pilots. It has also helped many other units to train their personnel to fly and operate J-20s, becoming a talent reserve base of the PLA Air Force in terms of new aircraft training, CCTV reported.

As early as September 2022, the PLA Air Force announced that more and more J-20s were being commissioned, and the stealth aircraft had been delivered to all Eastern, Southern, Western, Northern and Central theater commands, CCTV reported at the time.

A large number of J-20s have likely been delivered since then, and many more will be built in the years to come, so it is important that the PLA Air Force has enough pilots that can handle the country's most powerful fighter jet, a Chinese military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times on Saturday.

Unlike the previous generation of multi-role fighter jets that focus on fighting, intercepting, attacking and tactical bombing, the J-20 has been given a new role, namely the early warning and control function, thanks to its advanced sensors, computing systems and avionics, the expert said.

This new role demands new capabilities from the pilots, and requires more intensive training, the expert said.