MiG-29SMT
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well everything is mission dependant, plus a fashion.The US had advance canard equipped experiments from the early as 1980's such as X-29:
X-31
Not to mention ACTIV:
View attachment 97919
They stick canards even to an F-4:
View attachment 97920
And yet none found its way to production fighters. The Russians likewise slapped canards on Su-27 and called it Su-30 then removed it later and called it Su-35. So canard is overrated in practical applications to fighters.
on the 6th generation very likely all aircraft are going to be tailess.
5th generation almost all are with aft tail and all have chines
Almost all the 4++ generation have canards
4th generation most of them have LEX and 2 aft tails.
Canards are used due to the very high pitch up tendency and vortex formation.
On J-20 that high pitch up tendecy was needed because they did not have TVC nozzles.
The canard brings a very strong lift vector ahead of the center of Gravity.
On a longitudinally instable aircraft like F-16 or F-35 the aft tail balances the nose up tendency by its lift, in order to pitch you kill some lift and the nose goes up.
On a canard is different to balance you kill canard lift, if you want pitch up the nose you let canard lift pitch up.
So they tend to have good instantaneous turn rate for the same size wing.
However LEX and LEVCONs can do the same, the LEX is not a control surface so in that yields to the canard that is the reason you have Su-30MKI; the LEVCON can be used as a canard so it is par on par with canards.
J-20 did not innovate anything in aerodynamics, it is basically a F-35 with X-36 and MiG-1.44 structure.
LCA and PAKFA/Su-57 are in that more innovative