Liaoning Carrier Group Near Japan: J-35 Footage and the F-35C Landing Explained

On October 14, 2026, the Chinese Navy said a task group led by the carrier Liaoning had sailed into the western Pacific for routine training under its annual plan, which it said was not directed at any specific country. Japan’s Joint Staff first spotted the group on October 13 southwest of the Danjo Islands, and it passed between Okinawa and Miyako Island the next day. According to Stars and Stripes, the Liaoning launched and recovered an unspecified number of aircraft about 155 miles south of Ishigaki Island, within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, and Japan scrambled fighters and sent the destroyer Yugiri, a P-1 and a P-3C to monitor. USNI News reports that the group then headed toward the South China Sea, and the timing falls days before a major U.S.-Japan exercise.

The group is a substantial one. USNI lists the Liaoning with two Type 055 large destroyers, Anshan and Wuxi, and a further destroyer, Huainen. Military Watch also says a Type 075 helicopter carrier is part of the formation, but Japan’s reports on the group do not mention one, so I could not confirm that. The deployment follows more than 40 days of exercises in June, which Beijing accused Japan of harassing, an accusation Japan’s Joint Staff rejected. It also follows an incident last December in which Liaoning J-15 fighters locked their radar on Japanese F-15s twice southeast of Okinawa. Military Watch says that incident showed the “vast superiority” of the Chinese aircraft, but nothing in the reporting supports that. A radar lock is a risky act, not a measure of capability, and the Japan Times notes Tokyo says it will keep monitoring professionally.

The J-35 story is where the sourcing is thinnest. Military Watch says new footage shows J-35 stealth fighters integrated into the Liaoning’s air wing for the first time. That would matter, because the Liaoning and Shandong use ski-jump decks rather than the catapults on the Fujian, and the J-35 was designed for catapult launch. State media tested the aircraft aboard the Liaoning in 2024 and discussed ski-jump operations in May, so the idea is plausible. But I could only find the claim in Military Watch’s own report, there is no official PLA Navy statement, and an aircraft appearing in footage is not the same as an operational air wing. If it is confirmed, ski-jump launches generally limit fuel and weapons loads compared with catapults, though that is my own general analysis and not from the reports.

The American milestone, by contrast, is confirmed. On October 13, an F-35C from Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 made the first arrested landing by the type on a Ford-class carrier, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), off the U.S. East Coast, followed by the first catapult launch the next day. The Navy took preliminary acceptance of the ship on September 29, and USNI says Congress mandated this test because lead ship USS Gerald R. Ford could not operate the Navy’s newest fighter. The new Advanced Arresting Gear and weapons elevators were behind years of Ford-class delays, and Kennedy’s delivery has slipped from July 2025 to 2027. Those delays are a legitimate criticism of the programme.

The “a year behind China” framing, however, compares unlike things. The F-35C has been operating from the Navy’s Nimitz-class carriers since the early 2020s, so the United States has long had stealth fighters at sea. What happened on the Kennedy is a compatibility test on a ship that has not yet been delivered, and Military Watch’s own account of the Fujian’s J-35 is of touch-and-go landings and “operations” from 2026. It also says the Kennedy is scheduled for “launch” in March 2027, but the ship was launched years ago, and delivery is what is scheduled. The claim that China’s sixth-generation carrier fighters will arrive close to a decade before America’s is a projection, not a fact. As we noted in our post on Boeing’s F/A-XX award, the U.S. aircraft is still in development for the 2030s.

Ultimately, these are three different stories and they deserve different levels of confidence. The Liaoning’s deployment is confirmed by all sides, the F-35C landing is confirmed by the Navy, and the J-35 footage is plausible but unofficial. Three markers will show where this goes: an official PLA Navy confirmation that J-35s operate from ski-jump carriers, how the Liaoning group behaves around Japan and in the South China Sea, and the Kennedy’s delivery and first carrier operations. Until then, the safest summary is that both navies are working to put stealth aircraft on their carrier decks, and neither has yet shown it at full scale.

France Goes Alone on ACF Fighter After FCAS Collapse: What Comes Next

 

On October 14, 2026, French Air and Space Force Chief of Staff Gen. Jérôme Bellanger told the National Assembly’s defence committee that France will develop the successor to the Rafale as a national programme, as reported by Defense News the next day. The aircraft, called the Avion de Combat du Futur (ACF), follows the collapse of the joint Future Combat Air System (FCAS) with Germany and Spain, which France and Germany agreed to scrap in June after years of disputes between Dassault Aviation and Airbus over specifications and industrial control. Bellanger set a target of flying conventional missions in 2040. France remains open to cooperation, he said, but only in frameworks that will not be structural to the birth of the aircraft.

The 2040 date is driven by nuclear deterrence, not by the fighter itself. Bellanger said the Rafale’s successor must be able to carry the ASN4G hypersonic nuclear cruise missile in 2050, and working back from there means it has to fly conventional missions by 2040. Going national, he argued, is the way to meet that deadline. Before then, France needs a Rafale F5 standard by 2035 that incorporates the first components of the future aircraft, including the engine, the sensors and the Stratus RS missile designed to neutralise enemy air defences. In other words, the schedule is set by the deterrent, and the Rafale F5 is the bridge.

Bellanger insisted that the FCAS years were not wasted. Work had been divided into pillars that also included a new engine, with Dassault and Airbus working on the next-generation fighter at the heart of the system, and he said progress in the aircraft, drones, stealth, connectivity and combat cloud can now be carried forward on a national basis. Dassault CEO Éric Trappier has said that, with engine partner Safran and electronics group Thales, his company has the know-how to build a next-generation fighter for well below the €50 billion ($56 billion) budget attributed to FCAS. That is the company’s own estimate, and the article does not say how France will fund the programme, so the figure should be read as a claim rather than a plan.

The cooperation that remains is telling. Bellanger said France must absolutely continue working with Germany and other countries on the combat cloud, because interoperability between European crewed platforms will be vital, so that wars are fought together rather than side by side. He described a very good working relationship with his German counterpart and said both commanders want common operational requirements for the cloud. He also said the British-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) is working towards almost a strategic bomber, and that cooperation there is “not all roses”. Germany, for its part, has started receiving F-35s ordered in 2022, but it has no clear successor for its Eurofighters, which leaves the two former partners in different positions.

The most interesting part of the briefing is not the fighter at all. Bellanger said France will receive its first long-range one-way munitions in the summer of 2027, with MBDA’s Deluge drone forming the basis of its first squadron of bombing and reconnaissance drones, and the force is experimenting with interceptor drones, an area we noted in our piece on the Royal Navy’s new launchers. It also plans a very-high-altitude squadron using stratospheric balloons for communications relays and intelligence sensors. The concept he described for strikes into enemy territory starts with a first wave of many disposable drones to weaken air defences, including through jamming, saturation and deception, followed by reusable but expendable drones to open a breach for crewed and uncrewed deep strikes. That makes the 2040 fighter one part of a larger system rather than the centrepiece, a theme that also runs through France’s Hypairion project.

Ultimately, France is betting that it can keep a sovereign fighter industry alive without a partner, and the evidence for that bet is still thin. Three things will show whether it works: whether the ACF programme is formally launched and funded, whether the Rafale F5 reaches its 2035 target with the first future-aircraft components, and whether any partner, within the “different frameworks” Bellanger mentioned, joins later. As we noted in our post on France’s M51.3 missile test, French planning is built around the deterrent, and the same logic is now shaping the next fighter.