In Serbia, history has come full circle. A Chinese stealth fighter jet, the J-35A, and the non-stealthy J-10C model were displayed at an arms exhibition in Belgrade. Ironically, the site is just a few miles away from the Chinese embassy that was bombed by a US stealth bomber, the B-2, in 1999.
Inducted just two years back in 1997, Yugoslavia was the B-2 bomber’s first combat mission, and the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade marked the most significant attack on a diplomatic building since the end of World War II.
However, the irony does not end here. Some reports hinted that the bombing of the Chinese embassy by the US Air Force (USAF) was not only intentional but was meant to stop China from getting its hands on sensitive US stealth fighter jet technology.
Thus, the embassy bombing was meant to stop and delay China from building its own stealth fighter jet.
Just days earlier from the embassy bombing, Serb forces had done the unthinkable, something that had never been done in history before, and has never been done ever since. They shot down a stealth fighter jet, the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, which everyone thought was literally “invisible”.
The F-117 Nighthawk was the world’s first stealth fighter jet, and to date, remains the only stealth fighter jet ever shot down.
Reports suggest that the Chinese embassy was collecting the parts of the downed F-117 Nighthawk to smuggle them to China, so that Beijing can advance its own stealth fighter jet program and also develop countermeasures to track it.
The embassy bombing, thus, was intended to destroy the wreckage of the F-117 Nighthawk that the embassy staff might have collected.
Indeed, the story of the much-coveted stealth fighter jet technology and the global rivalry over it is incomplete without this bizarre incident, even though more than a quarter of a century has passed since then.
This is a story that has not been told in a long time, but is every bit worth recounting.
China Displays J-35A In Belgrade
China is showcasing multiple aircraft at the ongoing defense expo in Serbia, including the J-35A, J-10CE, Y-20 large transport aircraft, the Z-20 multirole helicopter, and the L15A advanced trainer aircraft.
Serbia’s 12th International Fair of Armaments and Military Equipment, PARTNER 2025, kicked off on Tuesday at the Belgrade Fair.
According to a news release from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), a Chinese national delegation participated in the event, which included the China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation (CATIC) under AVIC, as well as other Chinese firms.
The Wing Loong-2D and the Wing Loong-1G drones were also present, according to the AVIC release.
This comes after two types of Chinese air defense missiles, the HQ-22 and HQ-17, as well as several Chinese missiles, made their appearance at a Serbian military parade on Saturday.
However, what caught people’s attention was the display of the J-35A, China’s second fifth-generation stealth fighter jet.
Indeed, this is the first time that a stealth fighter jet has been displayed in Serbia, which has the unenviable distinction of being the first country to be bombed by the stealth bomber B-2, to be the first European country to be attacked by stealth fighter jets, and remains to date, the only country to have shot down a stealth fighter jet, the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.
In 1999, when the former Yugoslavia was unraveling under ethnic clashes that were attaining dangerous proportions, by some accounts bordering on genocidal dimensions, NATO authorized a bombing campaign of Yugoslavia.
This was the first time since the end of World War II that a European country, Yugoslavia, including its capital, Belgrade, was bombed by NATO warplanes for over two months. The USAF’s F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter and the newly inducted stealth bomber, the B-2, were extensively used in the bombing campaign.
It was during one of these bombing campaigns that the Serb forces were able to shoot down an F-117 Nighthawk on March 27, 1999. At the time, the Nighthawk was widely regarded as one of the most advanced pieces of US military equipment.
The wreckage of this downed F-117 Nighthawk is still proudly displayed at the Belgrade Museum of Aviation.
In fact, during the 78 days of the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, during which NATO forces organized over 38,000 sorties, the combined Operation Allied Forces lost only two fighter jets, one F-117 Nighthawk and one F-16 fighter jet.
So, how did Serb forces manage to hit and take down a fighter jet that was widely believed to be invisible?
How Did Serb Forces Hit A Stealth Fighter?
According to a USAF aerospace engineer, Chris Morehouse, the Serb forces were able to hit an F-117 Nighthawk through a combination of “Complacency, Strategy, and Luck”.
Complacency and overconfidence on the part of the USAF, and strategy and luck on the part of the Serb forces.
“First, the Complacency. This was on the part of the US Air Force and the joint allied forces. The routes used by the F-117s during the shoot down had been flown previously multiple times,” Morehouse said.
“Perhaps this was due to overconfidence in their equipment and air superiority. During the NATO air campaign, it was standard operating procedure (SOP) for all strike missions to be accompanied by electronic warfare aircraft, the EA-6B Prowlers.”
“These aircraft flew with strike missions to detect, jam, and destroy enemy radar installations…Unfortunately, on the day Vega 31 (the downed F-117) would be taken out of the sky, the Prowlers were grounded due to weather. The decision was made for the F-117s to fly their strike mission unsupported.”
However, due to the Yugoslav intelligence network, the Serb forces already knew that the Prowlers were grounded and that the F-117s were flying unsupported.
Determined to hit an F-117, the pride of the USAF, the Serb forces lined their air defense missiles on the bombing route.
“For these ambushes, they employed two radar systems. First, the P-18 ‘Spoon Rest D’ early warning radar. This radar is a Soviet Union radar system that operates at the VHF frequency. Typically, it can detect a fighter aircraft out to 200 nautical miles.
“The Serb’s discovered that by setting it to its absolute lowest frequency, and thus largest bandwidth, they could detect the F-117As. However, at these settings, the radar cannot provide very good information on the F-117s, and the ‘early warning’ radar could only detect them within 15 miles. This is a very poor detection range indeed; however, if you just so happen to know the route your enemy is flying, it is enough to let you know when they are getting within range of your other systems,” Morehouse wrote.
“For their anti-aircraft weapon system, they had the S-125, or SA-3 Goa, to NATO.”
“The P-18 radar detected the F-117s when they were about 15 miles out. The Serbs activated their S-125 radar.”
They failed to pick the F-117. However, since they knew that no Prowlers were in the air, they were able to keep the radars on longer without fearing a hit.
“Meanwhile, aboard Vega 31, the Air Force pilot was preparing to drop his ordnance. His weapon bay doors opened, exposing his very radar-reflective bomb bay interior.
“The S-125 radar detected the F-117 five miles distant. We should point out that this strike mission had 3 F-117s in it, and they were only able to target one of them. This reinforces the fact that they were able to do so because at that time, Vega 31’s weapons bays were open.”
Thus, through the combination of strategy and luck, the Serb forces were able to down the stealth F-117.
However, this downing of the stealth fighter led to a series of steps that ultimately ended with the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Chinese Embassy Bombed
On May 7, 1999, a USAF B-2 Spirit stealth bomber launched a Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) satellite-guided bomb over Belgrade to destroy the office of the military attaché in the Chinese embassy.
There were 27 casualties, including three deaths. This marked the most significant attack on a diplomatic building since the end of World War II.
Though the US always maintained that the bombing was accidental and the result of a series of mistakes, many analysts believe that the USAF deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy.
In 2017, writing for The National Interest, Kyle Mizokami said: “It’s difficult to imagine that the vast U.S. military and intelligence apparatus could mistake an embassy with a traditional Chinese green tiled roof for a military logistical hub.”
The Observer, citing a range of sources including multiple serving officers from NATO colonels to intelligence officers and a general, concluded that the Chinese Embassy was deliberately attacked.
A. B. Abrams, writing in The Diplomat last year, suggested that the bombing was linked to the downed F-117 fighter jet.
“Western security experts reported that the military attaché’s office had gathered parts from a U.S. F-117 stealth fighter shot down by Yugoslav forces 41 days prior at the embassy, with the intention of sending them to China for study.”
“U.S. intelligence viewed it as imperative to prevent these highly sensitive technologies from reaching Chinese soil. At the time, the F-117 was the first and only stealth fighter class operational anywhere in the world, and access to the remains of its airframe could provide both support to China’s own then-ongoing stealth fighter development while also accelerating its forces’ progress in developing means to counter such aircraft,” Abrams said in his article.
In 2019, the BBC noted, “It’s widely assumed that China did get hold of pieces of the [F-117] plane to study its technology.”
The bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 marked the height of the Unipolar world, when NATO could bomb a European country for 78 days and even attack the embassy of a strong country like China.
However, that bombing might have spurred China to fast-track the development of its own stealth fighter jet program.
Nearly 12 years after that bombing, China conducted the first flight of its own stealth fighter jet, the Chengdu J-20 (also known as the Mighty Dragon).
Currently, China is the only the second country to have two stealth fighter jets.
Nearly 26 years after that fateful bombing, China is showcasing its stealth fighter jet, the J-35A, in the same Belgrade where the USAF had bombed its embassy.
History has come full circle. Meanwhile, the Unipolar world dominated by the US is now a thing of the past.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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