Opinion: Opinion | The '5-Piece' Set: China's Naval Air Power Is Growing Faster Than India Can Ignore

In June 2026, imagery from China showed a carrier-configured J-35 jet bearing the serial number 350030. It confirms that at least 30 airframes of this new naval stealth fighter have left the defence manufacturer Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC)'s production lines. The news of the industrial architecture underpinning this capacity emerged in August 2023, when a company notice from SAC announced its ambitions to invest a whopping USD 1.2 billion in a new aeronautical complex, likely the size of six football fields - roughly 370,000 square metres - with its own flight-test runway. With such a complex and massive new warplane production capability in place, Beijing gets to experiment with what its officials are now referring to as the new frontier of sea-based naval power: a 'carrier five-piece set' involving a stealth carrier fighter jet, a carrier-based fixed wing early warning aircraft, a carrier-based fixed wing electronic warfare aircraft, a multirole catapult-launched carrier-based fighter jet, and a carrier-based anti-submarine warfare helicopter.As China's Defence Ministry spokesperson Jiang Bin framed it, the induction of this five-part combination completes a Chinese carrier strike group's system-of-systems combat capability. Of the PLA Navy's three carriers - Liaoning, Shandong and Fujian - only the Fujian, commissioned in late 2025 with three electromagnetic catapults (CATOBAR) proven at sea, can operate the full set as designed. CATOBAR enables the carrier to have more airpower by allowing electromagnetically powered, catapult-assisted take-off for heavyweight aircraft on a short deck - a much better alternative than both steam-powered catapults and ski-jump ramp-based take-off (STOBAR) that relies on the aircraft's own engine. Till such a time, the matter of concern is not so much the J-35's active deployment, but the exports of its widely-produced variants, especially to Pakistan.Why China Went For A 5/5Understood piece by piece, the set is hugely inspired by a US carrier's air power wing. The J-35 is pitched as the competitor to the F-35C in terms of roles and capabilities, though the merits remain debatable. The J-15T heavy fighter, with its payload and combat radius built for a saturation attack, is the answer to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The KJ-600 - China's first fixed-wing carrier AEW aircraft, nicknamed the "air-sea command centre" in state media for its added warning time and interception efficiency - is framed as a counterpart to the E-2D Hawkeye. The J-15DT/DH electronic attack variants track the EA-18G Growler. The Z-20F, replacing the Z-18F for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operations, has been acknowledged by the Pentagon itself in its 2024 'China Military Power Report' to be similar to the US Navy's SH-60 family, and a "significant ASW improvement". These aircraft have become popular since they flew in formation at the September 3 military parade last year, even as new naval power elements such as the GJ-21 "Sharp Sword" Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle (UCAV) have subsequently joined the team.All of these elements of sea-based aerial power are manufactured by industry groups and complexes, which are all subsidies of one massive defence State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) - the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). It is the entity Beijing relies on to build modernised carrier combat power, even as various other AVIC-affiliated manufacturers help integrate capabilities such as sensing, jamming, striking and screening into a single system operating from a deck. Completing the set is thus a statement about what kind of navy China intends to field - one built to fight the way American carrier aviation fights, from catapults, with stealth, and at range. Not surprisingly, many of AVIC's subsidies are featured on the US's 1260H List, which restricts operations of "Chinese Military Companies," impacting AVIC's international standing across markets. But, not with Pakistan.Capacity and CapabilityChina is now the only state serially producing two distinct stealth fighter families simultaneously, with some estimates projecting that advanced-fighter output across all jet programmes could reach 300-400 aircraft annually by 2027. At the same time, the market is refining itself for China to leverage. Pakistan, reportedly seeking the J-35AE and a package including KJ-500 AEW&C aircraft and HQ-19 air defences, is potentially the first foreign operator of a Chinese fifth-generation fighter. The five-piece set is thus a defence-industrial story as much as an indigenous military-power story.The proficiency of China's air wing is yet to be tested. Not to mention, the US Navy's advantage was never just the CATOBAR capability but over 70 years of continuous catapult operations. Parades are not nearly enough to replace or compress the results of actual operationalisation, which are derived from deck-based operations by aircraft at sea, as well as their sorties, and the creation of a pool of both first-tour and experienced naval aviators. Hence, the actual capabilities of the J-35 must be analysed based on how they fare in training drills to begin with, but also, in large-scale military exercises, or, at the extreme, high-stakes maritime conflicts, in the near future.For India, there are three takeaways. The first is that SAC's production lines may potentially soon be feeding even further into Pakistan's air force, making any skirmishes with Rawalpindi a proxy contest with many more Chinese aircraft. The second is that, given the kind of edge quantitative output grants China, we may soon see the PLA Navy operate for prolonged periods in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) - to the extent that quantity supplements blue water capabilities. India's own twin-engine deck-based fighter and, in the near future, a naval-variant trajectory for the AMCA, may need genuine fast-tracking, especially if predominance in the IOR is to be preserved. Third, the five-piece framework exposes the need for India to roll out STOBAR decks and replace capacities with the contemporary north star in Carrier Battle Group (CBG) operations. It could likely mean looking at a third aircraft carrier with a clear-eyed assessment of the cost and timeline of CATOBAR. Because China has so far only highlighted the set and tested it in trials, integrated and far-distance air wing capability remains undemonstrated. If the powers that be take the cue, now is the time for India's carrier-and-catapult debate to evolve.(Anushka Saxena is a Staff Research Analyst, Geostrategy Programme, The Takshashila Institution, and a Doctoral Scholar, Manipal Academy of Higher Education)Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author