The Strategist – Bill Sweetman says the speed, agility, range and stealth of an individual aircraft type are still important, but they’re no longer the whole story of air combat. Advances in sensing, processing and communications are changing military operations. The Chengdu J-36, the big Chinese combat aircraft that first appeared on 26 December, has been developed to exploit these changes and support China’s strategic goal: to establish regional dominance, including the ability to annex Taiwan by force.