For months, Western intelligence agencies had been tracking shadowy test flights over Chengdu. Triangular shapes in the sky. Unusual engine signatures. They always have the same maddening problem – never a clear view of what China was actually building.Then, in early June 2025, a single image emerged from the Chinese internet showing an aircraft unlike anything in the world’s arsenal.The aircraft sitting on that distant tarmac has a cockpit borrowed from a bomber, weapons bays that dwarf anything on existing fighters, and three engines where every other stealth aircraft uses two. Military analysts immediately recognized they were looking at China’s most ambitious aviation project – and perhaps its most dangerous.