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Gabriel Dominguez

China may be aiming to equip its sixth-generation fighter jets with laser weapons that experts say could help defend them against incoming missiles.
At the 14th China International Defence Electronics Exhibition, held in Beijing from September 15 to 17, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) Beijing Precision Engineering Institute for Aircraft Industry presented details of a “fighter aircraft laser-weapon tracking and aiming system”.
According to social media posts, the booth display said the system weighed less than 380kg (838lbs), although key performance figures were partly obscured.


Transmission power was listed as “*00kW” – implying at least 100kW if the asterisk concealed a single digit – while the system’s dynamic tracking accuracy, a measure of how precisely it could maintain its aim over time, was redacted as “* μrad (RMS)”.
Precision tracking is critical for airborne laser weapons, which must keep a beam fixed continuously long enough to damage or dazzle a target despite aircraft speed, vibration and manoeuvring.
The promotional poster paired the tracking system with an image of a large tailless aircraft which Andreas Rupprecht, an author and researcher on Chinese military aviation, has identified as the J-36.
J-36 is the unofficial name for the three-engined jet first seen flying over Chengdu in December 2024 and believed to be a sixth-generation fighter under development by Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, part of state-owned AVIC.
Rupprecht said the AVIC display gave the strongest public indication yet of the existence of such a laser system.
Mark Cazalet, editor-in-chief of international defence news organisation Warsight, agreed that the illustration appeared to depict a J-36 and said the aircraft “likely has sufficient space, weight and power” to accommodate a high-energy laser.
“Lasers are in many ways easier to implement on larger aircraft than smaller aircraft,” he said, with larger platforms more likely to have the space, weight and power available for the systems.
That could also make the systems potentially relevant to larger high-value aircraft, including bombers, transport aircraft and airborne early-warning platforms.
However, the expo display leaves important technical questions unanswered, starting with what the advertised weight covers.
Cazalet said the 380kg figure likely included the beam director, laser source and cooling system, but the poster did not make clear whether the weight applied only to the tracking-and-aiming unit or to a broader laser system, nor did it give details of its electrical power requirements.
There is also no public evidence that such an airborne laser system has been fitted to or flight-tested aboard a Chinese fighter aircraft.




Because their limited range restricted lasers in air-to-air combat, their main use on aircraft would be to destroy incoming missiles or damage and dazzle their seekers, Cazalet said.
Lasers could burn holes in physical targets only at short ranges – typically several kilometres – while they could damage or dazzle optical sensors at greater distances, Cazalet said.
He said that with the United States developing or fielding long-range air-to-air missiles such as the AIM-174B, AIM-260 and AIM-424, the emergence of Chinese systems that could potentially counter them was “not altogether surprising”, though many questions remained about how lasers would perform in reality.
China’s existing high-energy laser systems have largely been ground-based. Developing one for an aircraft as a form of active protection “represents a different challenge”, Cazalet said.
China has signalled interest in airborne lasers before. In 2020, PLA procurement notices sought suppliers for an “airborne laser attack pod” and control software for a “laser attack platform”, while a military programme affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV said China had developed a prototype airborne laser, citing academic research on energy storage and power supply.
The following year, a Chinese study used flight data from a transport aircraft to simulate how an airborne laser could remain accurate despite aircraft movement and vibration.
The US experience also illustrates the difficulty of turning the technology into an operational airborne weapon.
The US Air Force’s Self-protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator, or SHiELD, sought to show that a pod-mounted laser could defend fighters against incoming air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.
In 2021, programme manager Jeff Heggemeier cited wind speeds, turbulence and rapid aircraft manoeuvres as among the “hard problems” encountered. The project concluded in 2024 without a laser pod being mounted on a fighter test bed.


AVIC has previously disclosed field tests of other directed-energy tracking systems. A report in China Aviation News, an AVIC publication, in July said researchers at the institute had built and field-tested one system within a year.
The report described a trial in March 2024 in which the system kept a lock on a drone despite clouds, birds and increasing distance, and said later versions had been tested on multiple platforms.
However, it did not identify those platforms or link the work to the fighter-specific system.


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Beijing expo display offers strongest public hint yet that China is developing airborne laser systems for advanced fighter aircraft


Beijing expo display offers strongest public hint yet that China is developing airborne laser systems for advanced fighter aircraft.


Could China’s sixth-generation fighter carry a laser to defend against incoming missiles?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beijing expo display offers strongest public hint yet that China is developing airborne laser systems for advanced fighter aircraft

Beijing expo display offers strongest public hint yet that China is developing airborne laser systems for advanced fighter aircraft