Most Advanced Fighter Jets in the World: 5th vs. 6th Generation

The most advanced fighter jets flying today are the American F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II, followed by China's J-20 and Russia's Su-57. All four are called fifth generation, which in practice means stealth shaping, weapons carried inside the airframe and sensors that feed one fused picture to the pilot. No sixth-generation fighter is in service. The U.S. F-47 and F/A-XX, China's unconfirmed J-36 and J-50 prototypes and the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP jet are all still in development.

This guide explains what those generation labels mean, compares the fighters that actually exist and shows where each next-generation program stands in late October 2026. Figures come from manufacturers, the Congressional Research Service and defense trade reporting. Where a number is an outside estimate, it says so.

What Does "Fifth Generation" Actually Mean?

Generations are shorthand, not a standard. The term took hold in the 2000s as the F-22 and F-35 arrived, and it came to describe a bundle: a low radar signature, internal weapons bays, high performance, advanced radar and a data link that shares what one aircraft sees with the rest of the formation. Fourth-generation jets such as the Eurofighter Typhoon, the Rafale and the Su-35 can still be dangerous in a fight. What they cannot do is hide from radar the way a stealth jet can. That is why a Su-35 is not a fifth-generation fighter, whatever the sales brochure says, a point that came up again when Ethiopia took early delivery of 12 of them.

Sixth generation is looser still. Nobody has agreed on a definition. Most programs promise some mix of better stealth, drones flying alongside the crewed jet, far more onboard computing and new engines with more power and cooling. Andreas Rupprecht, a well-known analyst of Chinese military aircraft, has pointed out that the phrase simply has no fixed meaning.

The Most Advanced Fighter Jets in Service Today

Four aircraft make up the fifth-generation club that matters most: two American, one Chinese and one Russian. They differ sharply in how many exist and how much is publicly known about each.

F-22 Raptor: The Air-Superiority Benchmark. Production of the F-22 ended in 2011 with fewer than 200 aircraft built. A September 2026 Congressional Research Service report counts about 185 in the Air Force inventory, with roughly 143 of them combat-coded and most of the rest used for training and testing. The Raptor's reputation rests on two things: it can cruise faster than sound without afterburner, and its thrust-vectoring engines make it extraordinarily agile for a stealth aircraft. It has never been sold abroad because U.S. law has barred exports since 1998.

The jet is old by fighter standards, and the Air Force would like to retire its oldest Block 20 trainers. Congress has refused to let the fleet shrink below set levels through September 2027, and the House-passed defense bill would extend that protection to 2032.

F-35 Lightning II: The Fighter That Won on Numbers. No other stealth jet comes close to the F-35 in volume. Lockheed Martin lists more than 1,375 deliveries across three versions: the F-35A for air forces, the F-35B short-takeoff and vertical-landing model flown by the Marine Corps and several allies, and the F-35C built for Navy carriers. Its real strength is sensor fusion. Radar, infrared and electronic-warfare data merge into a single display, and the jet passes that picture to others, so it works as much as a flying network node as a shooter.

Cost is the sore point. The F-35 Joint Program Office puts the average flyaway price of an F-35A in production Lots 18 and 19 at about $92 million, up from roughly $82.5 million in Lots 15 to 17, Breaking Defense reported in September. The B and C models run closer to $121 million and $111 million. Those two lots cover 296 aircraft for about $24.3 billion. The program also has a delivery problem rather than a flying problem: delays to the new AN/APG-85 radar mean the U.S. has been accepting some jets without a radar installed.

J-20: China's Numbers Play. Chengdu's J-20 first flew in 2011 and entered service in 2017. China publishes no inventory, so every count is an estimate. Rupprecht, as quoted by The War Zone, put deliveries at about 500 by mid-2026, and RUSI has estimated output of about 120 a year. If that is close, the J-20 fleet already outnumbers the combat-coded F-22s several times over. Its large size suggests long range and room for big air-to-air missiles, which Western analysts believe are meant for tankers and surveillance aircraft. Engines have historically been its weak point, and how far the domestic WS-15 has matured is hard to judge from outside.

Su-57: Capable on Paper, Scarce in Practice. Russia's Su-57 flew in 2010, but serial production did not begin until about a decade later and has stayed small. Moscow has never published a fleet total. Open-source counts range from about 16 airframes identifiable by tail number to roughly 30, depending on who is counting and what is included. Rostec, the state conglomerate, regularly announces new batches and describes them as upgraded; the February 2026 delivery was one example, and another small batch was reportedly handed over in September. Algeria is the reported first export customer. Russia says the jet has flown combat missions over Ukraine. Those claims are hard to verify independently, and nothing public shows it matching the F-35's production scale or sensor package.

Who Else Is Close? A tier of newer and upgraded jets sits just below the fifth-generation line. Türkiye's KAAN is a stealth design still in prototype testing, South Korea's KF-21 is a 4.5-generation fighter entering production, and China's smaller J-35 family is aimed at carriers and exports. France's Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon remain among the best non-stealth fighters in the world.

Fifth-Generation Fighter Jets Compared

The fleet figures above mix official data with outside estimates, so treat the J-20 and Su-57 rows as ranges, not facts.

What Is a Sixth-Generation Fighter Jet?

A sixth-generation fighter is a jet still on the drawing board, or at best in prototype form, that is meant to replace the F-22, F-35 or Su-35 class in the 2030s and 2040s. The common thread is a family-of-systems approach: the crewed fighter acts as a quarterback for drones, carries more advanced electronics and flies farther than anything today.

F-47: America's Air Force Program. Boeing won the Air Force's Next Generation Air Dominance contract in March 2025, and the aircraft became the F-47. It is in engineering and manufacturing development, with first flight now slated for 2028. The Air Force has said it plans at least 185 jets and has talked publicly about a top speed above Mach 2 and a combat radius beyond 1,000 nautical miles. Congress was told to expect about $3.5 billion in fiscal 2026 and a request of $5 billion for fiscal 2027. Service entry is expected in the early to mid-2030s, and nearly everything else is classified.

F/A-XX: The Navy's Carrier Fighter. On Sept. 29, 2026, the Navy picked Boeing over Northrop Grumman to build the F/A-XX, in a full-scale development deal estimated at more than $20 billion, according to USNI News. The aircraft is meant to replace Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers in the 2030s. Details remain classified. With that award, Boeing now holds both U.S. sixth-generation fighter programs, the F-47 and the F/A-XX.

China's J-36 and J-50. Two tailless designs, first seen in December 2024, have fed the talk of a Chinese sixth-generation jet. The larger one, informally called J-36, has three engines and at least four or five prototypes by analysts' counts. The smaller one, nicknamed J-50 or J-XDS, is a twin-engine design with at least three. Beijing has not confirmed either designation, a service date or a mission. Both are prototypes, and flying a prototype is a long way from fielding a fleet.

GCAP and Europe's Split. The UK, Italy and Japan are building GCAP together through the joint company Edgewing. A £4.6 billion, 18-month contract signed on July 3, 2026 completes the concept phase and funds detailed design, according to the UK government. A demonstrator is due to start flight testing from early 2028, and the target service date is 2035. Whether other countries join is an open question: Germany's interest has already raised worries about delays.

The rival European program has fallen apart. France and Germany ended the joint FCAS effort in June 2026 after years of disputes over workshare and leadership, and the project had been in trouble for months before that. France is now pursuing its own Avion de Combat du Futur, with a target of around 2040 and an upgraded Rafale F5 filling the gap in the mid-2030s.

Sixth-Generation Fighter Programs Compared

So Which Is the Best Fighter Jet in the World?

There is no clean winner, because the answer depends on the mission. For pure air-to-air combat, most analysts still rate the F-22 first. The F-35 is the most capable all-rounder in the real world because it is networked, widely exported and built in large numbers. China's advantage is volume: if the J-20 estimates are right, it can field far more stealth aircraft than the Air Force's roughly 143 combat-coded Raptors. The Su-57 has the most unanswered questions.

Caution is warranted because no fifth-generation fighter has yet fought another one. What public evidence exists is thin: Israeli F-35s have flown combat missions, an F-22 shot down a Chinese balloon off South Carolina in 2023 and Russia reports Su-57 use over Ukraine. Rankings are therefore based on specifications that are mostly classified, and on the quality of radars, missiles and pilots, none of which show up in a data sheet.

Fighter Jets FAQ

What is the most advanced fighter jet in the world? For air-to-air performance, the F-22 Raptor is usually rated highest. For overall capability and numbers, the F-35 Lightning II leads. Both are American, and no sixth-generation jet is in service yet.

How many F-35s have been built? Lockheed Martin reports more than 1,375 deliveries as of October 2026 across all variants. Its quarterly filing put the total at 1,387 production aircraft delivered through Sept. 27, 2026.

Does a sixth-generation fighter exist? Not in service. China has flown prototypes that outside analysts call sixth generation, though Beijing has not confirmed that. The U.S. F-47 is due to fly in 2028, and GCAP is targeted for 2035.

Is the Su-35 a fifth-generation fighter? No. It is a heavily upgraded fourth-generation design, often described as 4++. It lacks the stealth shaping and internal weapons bays that define fifth-generation aircraft.

Which country has the most fifth-generation fighters? The United States, by a wide margin, counting about 185 F-22s and the largest share of more than 1,300 delivered F-35s. China is second on analyst estimates of roughly 500 J-20s, and Russia is far behind.

This explainer was last updated on Oct. 29, 2026, and will be revised as programs change.