(China's J-20 stealth jet.Chinese Military Review)

China's recent military parade included several new weapons systems and a flyover by the J-20, a stealth jet that many think incorporates stealth technology stolen from the US into a design built to destroy weak links in the US Air Force.

Russia has also been testing a stealth jet of its own that integrates thrust-vectoring technology to make it more maneuverable, which no US jet can match.

But the US has decades of experience in making and fielding stealth jets, creating a gap that no amount of Russian or Chinese hacking could bridge.

"As we see Russia bring on stealth fighters and we see China bring on stealth fighters, we have 40 years of learning how to do this," retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark Barrett told Defense News' Valerie Insinna at a Mitchell Institute event on Wednesday.

While China's J-20 seeks to intercept unarmed US Air Force refueling planes with very-long-range missiles, and Russia's T-50 looks like a stealthy reboot of its current fleet of fighters, a senior scientist working on stealth aircraft for a US defense contractor told Business Insider that other countries still lagged the US in making planes that could hide from radars.

The scientist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of their work, told Business Insider the J-20 and T-50 were "dirty" fighters, since the countries lack the precision tools necessary to painstakingly shape every millimeter of the planes' surfaces.

Barrett said of China's and Russia's stealth attempts, "There are a lot of stuff hanging outside of these airplanes," according to Defense News, adding that "all the airplane pictures I've seen still have stuff hanging from the wings, and that just kills your stealth."

Additionally, the US has stealth-fighter tactics down, while China and Russia would take years to develop a similar playbook.

(No weapons hang off these wings in the F-35's stealth configuration.Thomson Reuters)

Meanwhile, the US has overcome the issue of external munitions blowing up a plane's radar signature by having internal weapons bays and networking with fleets of fourth-generation aircraft.

Because the F-35 and F-22 can communicate with older, non-stealth planes, they can fly cleanly, without weapons hanging off the wings, while tanked-up F/A-18s, F-15s, or F-16s laden with fuel, bombs, and air-to-air missiles follow along.

The F-35s and F-22s can ensure the coast is clear and dominate battles without firing a shot as older planes fire off missiles guided by the fifth-gen fighters.

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