{"id":15860907,"date":"2026-08-24T14:41:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T12:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/jetflights\/j-36-designers-warn-military-ai-hallucinations-avic-chengdu-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T14:17:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:17:21","slug":"j-36-designers-warn-military-ai-hallucinations-avic-chengdu-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/j-36-designers-warn-military-ai-hallucinations-avic-chengdu-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"China&#8217;s J-36 Designers Warn Against AI Hallucinations in Combat"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n\n<p>Ask a large language model for the combat radius of a foreign fighter and it will give you a number. Confident, specific, formatted like a fact. It may also be entirely invented.<\/p>\n\n<p>That is an inconvenience if you are writing a school essay. It is something else if you are designing a stealth fighter around what you think the other side&rsquo;s radar can do.<\/p>\n\n<p>Engineers at the institute that designed China&rsquo;s J-20 and its next-generation J-36 have now said so in print.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 22px;margin:24px 0\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;color:#333;font-size:17px\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px;text-align:left\"><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Who<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">Engineers at AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Named author<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">Zhang Xianzhe<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Published<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">20 June 2026<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Journal<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\"><em>Information Studies: Theory &amp; Application<\/em>, run by Chinese state arms maker Norinco<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Reported by<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">South China Morning Post, 19 August 2026<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">The problem<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">AI models inventing aircraft specifications and getting radar parameters wrong<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Why it matters<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">Defence intelligence is described as a high-stakes, low-error domain<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:6px 12px 6px 0;color:#666;vertical-align:top;white-space:nowrap\">Institute&rsquo;s products<\/td><td style=\"padding:6px 0;color:#1a1a1a\">J-20 stealth fighter; next-generation J-36<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The Warning, in Their Own Words<\/h2><p>The paper does not argue that large language models are useless for intelligence work. It says the opposite: they are genuinely good at mining large volumes of data and analysing weapons performance, tasks that used to consume enormous analyst time.<\/p>\n\n<p>The problem is what happens when they are wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;AI models can invent aircraft specifications &mdash; length, payload, weapons, speed, combat radius &mdash; and get radar scan ranges and frequency bands wrong.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Zhang Xianzhe<\/strong> &mdash; Engineer, AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute, writing in <em>Information Studies: Theory &amp; Application<\/em><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>And then the consequence, which is the sentence that makes this worth reading.<\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The so-called hallucination effect, where models produce plausible but false outputs, could have severe consequences in the high-stakes, low-error world of defence intelligence, possibly even causing strategic miscalculations.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Zhang Xianzhe<\/strong> &mdash; Engineer, AVIC Chengdu Aircraft Research and Design Institute<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Why a Fighter Designer Cares About This<\/h2><p>According to the paper, every fighter design begins with a picture of the enemy. What does the opponent&rsquo;s radar cover? Which frequency bands does it use? Where are the gaps?<\/p>\n\n<p>Those answers determine the shaping of the airframe, the coatings, the sensor fit, the tactics. Get the frequency bands wrong and you optimise a stealth design against a threat that does not exist, while remaining visible to the one that does. You would not discover the error until somebody was flying the aircraft in anger.<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img data-opt-id=1298716440  fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ml5psubhxdln.i.optimole.com\/cb:0e0_.b970\/w:auto\/h:auto\/q:mauto\/ig:avif\/https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/08\/j-20-formation-plaaf-stealth-fighter.jpg\" alt=\"Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters in formation\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">A J-20 formation. AVIC Chengdu designed the J-20, and is behind the next-generation J-36 now in flight test. (Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Xa8ThV-qKXw\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>This is why the warning is interesting coming from this particular address. It is not a think tank worrying in the abstract. It is the design institute responsible for China&rsquo;s front-line stealth fighter saying, in a journal published by a state arms manufacturer, that the tool everyone is rushing to adopt will confidently lie to you about exactly the numbers you need most.<\/p>\n\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">An Unusually Candid Thing to Publish<\/h2><p>China has spent the past two years promoting military AI heavily. The Zhisheng documentary series shown around Army Day showcased drone swarms and AI-enabled systems; Russia has just announced it will test combat AI on the two-seat Su-57D; the US Air Force is building its entire Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme around autonomy.<\/p>\n\n<p>Against that backdrop, a paper from Chengdu saying <em>be careful, the machine makes things up<\/em> reads less like caution and more like someone who has actually tried to use one.<\/p>\n\n<p>Nothing in the reporting suggests China is slowing down. The paper is a call for verification discipline, not abstinence. But it is a useful corrective to the assumption that adding AI to intelligence analysis is straightforwardly additive. A fast wrong answer is worse than a slow right one, and in this domain it can be considerably worse.<\/p>\n\n<p>One honest note on the picture at the top of this article: no photograph of the J-36 exists under a free licence, and the images circulating are unofficial. The aircraft shown is the J-20, the other product of the same design institute.<\/p>\n\n<p><em>Sources: South China Morning Post, 19 August 2026, reporting by Zhang Tong; Zhang Xianzhe, <em>Information Studies: Theory &amp; Application<\/em>, 20 June 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/pla-releases-first-official-footage-of-chinas-j-36-sixth-generation-fighter\/\">China Releases the First Official Footage of the J-36<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/chengdu-j-36-tailless-stealth-fighter-three-engines\/\">Chengdu J-36: The Tailless Stealth Fighter With Three Engines<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/su-57d-two-seat-combat-ai-drone-command-2026\/\">Russia Says Its Two-Seat Su-57 Will Fly Combat AI<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ask a large language model for the combat radius of a foreign fighter and it will give you a number. Confident, specific, formatted like a fact. It may also be entirely invented. That is an inconvenience if you are writing a school essay. It is something else if you are designing a stealth fighter around [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":15860245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[664,670],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15860907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-military-aviation","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>China&#039;s J-36 Designers Warn Against AI Hallucinations in Combat | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Engineers at the institute behind China\u2019s J-20 and J-36 warn that AI models invent aircraft specs and get radar data wrong, risking strategic miscalculation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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