The year is 2018 and the Chinese J-20 stealth fighter gets its baptism of fire against the cream of the Japanese air defence force, in a new series of Red Pill screenshots released by Warfare Sims: http://www.warfaresims.com/?p=1379

Looks great and I'm really anticipating this game very much!

But nevertheless I disagree with one thing (only) regarding the J-20 performance in that game which is:
"More agile than the J-10 & J-11..."

Most aviation specialists seem to agree that this J-20 isn't very agile even because it seems that it isn't designed to be a very agile since by looking at the J-20 design we can see a very large fighter aircraft (one of the largest fighter aircraft in existance) which have a considerable small wing area compared to the overall size/area of the aircraft.
Most aviation specialists seem to also agree that the J-20 is designed to be either a Stealth long range interceptor (imagine a "Stealth Mig-25 or Mig-31") or a Stealth long range attack aircraft (imagine a "Stealth Tornado, F-111 or F-15 Strike Eagle) or both.

So according to this NO way that the J-20 can be more agile than a J-11 (which is the Chinese name for the Su-27, which we all know is a very agile aircraft) or even more agile than a J-10 (which is a Chinese variant of the Israeli IAI Lavi project which in its turn was based on the F-16).

Hi Ricardo, thanks for the much appreciated feedback.

It is indeed difficult to pin down the exact attributes of this aircraft as long as we are short of authoritative technical data. What info we do have (almost entirely derived from visual observation) can be easily interpreted in different ways. As an example, here is part of the feedback we received from a very knowledgeable person on Chinese developments:



On the other hand, we have the series of excellent posts by Bill Sweetman which tend to align more with your assessment:

China's stealth striker
J-20 - Denial is not an option
How not to think about the J-20
Party down at Chengdu
J-20 - The dragon gets airborne
From JAST to J-20

Therefore, it is our impression that the open-source aerospace/defence community has not yet reached an overwhelming consensus as to the strong and weak points of this aircraft.

Our DB authors are busy absorbing all the feedback we have received (including yours) from the publishing of the article and we should have a more refined model of the aircraft in the next iteration of the Red Pill databases.

Thanks again!

Well, it's great to know that somehow I'm contributing for this awesome looking game!

Yes I understand that since the J-20 is in a prototype stage that it's extremelly dificult to have a "near accurate" technical data regarding that plane and the vast majority of the technical data regarding the J-20 is a guesswork exercise.
But things such as aerodynamics trend to be "universal" and a combat aircraft that has a small wing area (proportional to the overall aircraft size) will or trends to be less agile than a combat aircraft that has a larger wing area (proportional to the overall aircraft size) and it seems clear that by looking into the J-20 airframe that its wing area is really small compared to the overall size of the aircraft - For example the Su-27 (J-11) which is also a very large fighter aircraft has a very large wing area (proportional to the overall aircraft size) hence the great agility that we all know that the Su-27 have. Other fighter aircraft such as the F-22 or the F-35 (or older ones such as the F-16 or F/A-18) also seem to have a larger wing area proportional to the aicraft's overall size compared to what the J-20 have.

So, regarding your quotation, I do not disagree with it (at least completly) - I agree that the J-20 may be faster and have a longer range than the F-35 and perhaps even than the F-22. But I do NOT believe that the J-20 will be more agile or even have a similar agility as the F-22 or even the F-35 have. Therefore I only disgree with the agility part, for the rest (speed and range) I would certainly "buy it". That's why I believe that if the J-20 is designed for air-to-air combat that it will be some sort of a "Stealth Mig-25/31" - A very fast and long range interceptor (but not a dogfighter)!