New Chinese fighter jets appeared on social media on Dec. 26 in a flurry of photos and videos showing them in flight, revealing two new examples of China’s emergence as an innovator in the aerospace industry.

A new aircraft surfaced in social media posts, revealing a large, three-engine fighter jet with a cockpit and diamond-shaped wing without vertical stabilizers. Yaw control appears to be controlled by Northrop Grumman B-2 style split rudders.

The engines are fed by a single dorsal inlet and two ventral inlets, the latter using caret-shaped inlets. The dorsal inlet features a diverterless supersonic inlet that improves stealth, but the ventral inlets do not.

The aircraft’s large ventral fuselage section likely accommodates an internal weapons bay. The main landing gear has two wheels each, a hallmark of heavy fighter-bombers such as the Sukhoi Su-34.

The apparent test flight over a populated Chinese area included the appearance of a Chengdu-made J-20S fighter, possibly flying a chase.

“Its size and layout preliminarily suggest that this is the long-awaited J/H-XX ‘regional bomber’, intended to provide a low-altitude, observable, high-altitude precision strike capability against bases and potentially ships throughout the Indo-Pacific,” said Justin Bronk, Senior Research Fellow in Airpower and Technology at the Royal United Services Institute. “However, it remains possible that this prototype represents China’s well-known 6th generation fighter aircraft program.”

Hours later, additional social media posts revealed images and videos of a second new Chinese fighter jet that was also undergoing flight testing.

The images show a more traditional fighter design with a cranked arrow planform and possibly folding tail fins. It wasn’t immediately clear when these images were taken, but one post marked the image with a timestamp of December 22, 2024.

The mysterious fighter jets appeared on the 13th anniversary of the introduction of the J-20 stealth fighter, which came 13 years after the first flight of the Chengdu-made J-10 in March 1998. December 26th marks the 131st birthday of Mao Zedong, the late founder of the Chinese Communist Party.

It is not immediately clear what role each aircraft would play. No Chinese government or industry outlet has acknowledged the images on official channels, but it also appears that internal security services are making little effort to censor the content posted by dozens of local people.

According to the US Department of Defense’s annual China Military Power Report, China has developed the H-20 long-range stealth bomber and the JH-XX medium-range fighter-bomber. Chinese industry officials have also confirmed that work is underway on a sixth-generation fighter jet.

-Tony Osborne contributed to this article from London.