Trump Accuses China of Stealing Designs for ‘Most Beautiful Fighter Jet in the World’

President Donald Trump accused China of stealing designs for the Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22 Raptor – “the most beautiful fighter jet in the world” – as he snubbed the regime during a media roundtable in Qatar on Thursday.

The jibe came as Trump touted that the U.S. was designing a new F-55 and that a Super F-22 redesign would follow. The president began:

We’re going to do the F-22, I think the most beautiful fighter jet in the world is the F-22. But we’re going to do an F-22 Super. And it will be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet.

Digressing for a snipe at China, with whom he’s been locked in a tariff trade war, Trump continued:

And I don’t know if you know it, but you know who copied it? China. They copied it. They said: ‘That’s the F-22.’ They copied our design, but they won’t be able to copy our engines too quickly or anything else.

So we’re going to be doing an F-22 Super, and this will be a plane like no- to me it’s the most beautiful fighter jet ever made. And so I want to do that.

China’s Air Force debuted two new stealth fighters, the J-20S and J-35A, in November, aimed squarely at rivaling the U.S. military’s top-tier F-22 and F-35 jets – one of which is designed to team up with drones in combat.

The J-20S, manufactured by the state-run Aviation Industry Corporation of China, is being touted as the world’s first twin-seat stealth fighter. It’s a variant of the J-20, China’s answer to the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 Raptor. The two-seat design could allow for advanced operations like manned-unmanned teaming, with a second crew member potentially controlling accompanying drones in real time.

Watch above via Fox News.