Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Not sure if this has been posted or discussed yet but was curious what everyone thinks. Please see link [Link pending approval]

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Doesn't matter; this isn't COD. A real war with China would last about 30 minutes, literally. No cool air battles, no fleet actions, no bada$$ special-ops, just radioactive dust for all concerned. As far as limited, by-proxy war goes... we'd have to see.

1st503rdsgt wrote:

Doesn't matter; this isn't COD. A real war with China would last about 30 minutes, literally. No cool air battles, no fleet actions, no bada$$ special-ops, just radioactive dust for all concerned. As far as limited, by-proxy war goes... we'd have to see.

What if China were to help out the North Koreans if it all kicked off across the DMZ though? Afterall not all wars involving super powers, or near super powers end up in WW3, infact you could say that re-runs of the Korean war and Veitnam type situations are more likely than an all out confrontation.

And whilst I understand what the article is getting at I did notice there was no mention of China's current lack of stealth aircraft to confront US forces, just thought i'd point that out,

China had no nuclear weapons in the 1950s (Korea), and Vietnam was a different situation entirely (like I said, by-proxy).

1st503rdsgt wrote:

China had no nuclear weapons in the 1950s (Korea), and Vietnam was a different situation entirely (like I said, by-proxy).

I didn't imply that they did. Though Russia did and it got itself involved in the Korean war with its fighter pilots flying for the North Koreans and that conflict didn't go nuclear. My point was that China could potentially do the same and get itself involved, I sure wouldn't put it past them no matter what they may say about the North Korean regime at the moment.

I'm just not convinced the only way is nuclear, it makes no sense for anyone, especially the Chinese as they have far fewer ICBMs then the US.

( why is some of what i've written underlined??? Odd, oh, it's some Amazon thing it seems, never mind. )

fat_cat wrote:

Though Russia did and it got itself involved in the Korean war with its fighter pilots flying for the North Koreans and that conflict didn't go nuclear.

The Soviet fighter pilots/military advisers in Korea were there in secret (albeit an open one) and the USSR never entered the conflict... because of the likelihood of a nuclear war in the event of open confrontation.

None of your words show up as underlined BTW. In any case, congratulations on reading a book. I have a 4ft pile of thesis research on my floor here regarding cold-war nuclear tensions and how little it would take to touch everything off.

I personally believe that actions that effectively consist of deploying VVS/PVO fighter regiments to Nam, albeit in an advisory capacity, do in fact represent a direct US/USSR confrontation.

As far as China goes, I believe that the assumption is that Taiwan is the only thing the PRC would actually go to war over. In this case, use of nuclear weapons against the US would be utter idiocy, and only result in the mainland's utter annihilation. Both involved parties should have the common sense to know this and limit the propagation of the conflict as a result.

1st503rdsgt wrote:

None of your words show up as underlined BTW. In any case, congratulations on reading a book. I have a 4ft pile of thesis research on my floor here regarding cold-war nuclear tensions and how little it would take to touch everything off.

Well to me the words "fighter pilots flying" that I wrote in my post are underlined and when I hover the mouse over them it directs me to an Amazon link. That is what I found odd.
Also where on earth did ever I mention reading a book and why are you congratulating me on supposedly reading said book?

I think I shall to leave this discussion as its gone a bit strange and off topic.

Once again, I'd go slow on pin-pointing specific 'us vs them' assessments and scenarios in public eg 'fighting China, etc' as that can be extremely provocative and make various security situations even worse. Can one imagine US defense planners (or US Congress's) reaction if PLA came out with a publicly released report that it needed more offensive equipment to attack the US? Think. Keep things in generic strategic planning requirements with respect to normal modernization and natural recapitalization with the objective to maintain next-gen capabilities, balance of power and deterrence levels and you can deal with requirements a lot better off and with less excitement.

geogen wrote:

Once again, I'd go slow on pin-pointing specific 'us vs them' assessments and scenarios in public eg 'fighting China, etc' as that can be extremely provocative and make various security situations even worse.

I take it this is some sort of an attempt at humour? I just can't see what else it could be if it isn't.

Look, you don't need to publicly name names and call out specific nation states in order to justify that in an unfortunately uncertain world, the USAF still needs to continue modernizing and enhancing the deterrence capacity and capabilities of it's Tactical and strike force structure. Again, the public rhetoric and statements can actually cause more problems and negative consequences than one thinks. If eg PLA announced in a public statement that it is shifting it's strategic focus to Hawaii and Western US, can one imagine the alarm bells going off in Congress beyond that which normal and responsible strategic defense planning is required of Congress and DoD? You simply don't have to make such declarative posture statement in public releases while simultaneously justifying your recapitalization and modernization strategy. That's all.

With respect to the AEI study in particular, many would indeed concur that there should have been more than 84 +/- block 35 capable F-22s produced in the first place, that there should have been more than 20 B-2s procured, that the USAF should have focused more on longer-range strike such as a follow-on FB-22 as far back as the early 2000s and that the US should pursue UCAV strike capabilities as part of it's future mix.

Yet, one could very easily challenge AEI's conclusions that the USAF absolutely requires the planned F-35 acquisition (1,500+ units to allow maximal economies of scale) as a necessary part of it's overall next-gen recapitalization strategy. For one thing, it's contradicting to assess that the US is lopsided in shorter-ranged tactical assets and then in the next sentence advocate for a must-have F-35 dominated force structure (operating 1,500nm outside of a hypothetical future combat zone).

And another disagreement to AEI's conclusions would be with it's claim that at least in the interim period, LO stand-off munitions wouldn't be a cost-effective strike deterrence alternative to F-35 platforms armed merely with JDAMs. For example, in the medium-term, for the price of one blk III F-35A + 2 JDAM the USAF could likely acquire a new-build F-16 plus as many as 20 JASSM! You've not only just extended the capable strike range of your tactical force but have increased survivability of the platform. (instead of F-35s having to go down-town and hunt around for Air Defense traps as part of some hypothetical day-one type deterrence capability which AEI suggests to be more effecient and affordable). Just my views.

geogen wrote:

Look, you don't need to publicly name names and call out specific nation states in order to justify that in an unfortunately uncertain world, the USAF still needs to continue modernizing and enhancing the deterrence capacity and capabilities of it's Tactical and strike force structure. Again, the public rhetoric and statements can actually cause more problems and negative consequences than one thinks. If eg PLA announced in a public statement that it is shifting it's strategic focus to Hawaii and Western US, can one imagine the alarm bells going off in Congress beyond that which normal and responsible strategic defense planning is required of Congress and DoD? You simply don't have to make such declarative posture statement in public releases while simultaneously justifying your recapitalization and modernization strategy. That's all.

This happens to be one of the most ridiculous things i've ever seen written on the internet, you must live on a different planet than I do. I can't stop laughing.

fat_cat wrote:

geogen wrote:

Look, you don't need to publicly name names and call out specific nation states in order to justify that in an unfortunately uncertain world, the USAF still needs to continue modernizing and enhancing the deterrence capacity and capabilities of it's Tactical and strike force structure. Again, the public rhetoric and statements can actually cause more problems and negative consequences than one thinks. If eg PLA announced in a public statement that it is shifting it's strategic focus to Hawaii and Western US, can one imagine the alarm bells going off in Congress beyond that which normal and responsible strategic defense planning is required of Congress and DoD? You simply don't have to make such declarative posture statement in public releases while simultaneously justifying your recapitalization and modernization strategy. That's all.

This happens to be one of the most ridiculous things i've ever seen written on the internet, you must live on a different planet than I do. I can't stop laughing.

Your comment is neither pertinent nor respectful. I suggest you change it 'afore the mods come knocking.

southernphantom wrote:

Your comment is neither pertinent nor respectful. I suggest you change it 'afore the mods come knocking.

I'm not changing anything mate, it was a ridiculous statement and I found it highly amusing. If you don't like that then tough.

I don't get why they included the "or North Korea" part. North Korea is not exactly on China's level. We have more than one F-22 and three tons of B-2 payload for every mile of the border that our hypothetical war there would be about.

About China, I've been thinking for as long as I've paid attention to military issues that we don't have the power to beat them at war. This is not just because of how few stealth aircraft we've built or even our number of aircraft in general, but also other factors, like present and potential numbers of infantry, supply line length, and lack of political will. But this is largely dependent on the fact that any war between us and China would have to happen in that part of the world, not over here, because if you flip it that way, you find an even more drastic disparity. Both sides have home field advantage, but ours is a lot bigger.

Still, that article presents this alleged stealth plane problem as more drastic than it is, in a way. We have more stealth planes now than ever before, nobody else has any, and we have a lot more coming within the next several years, including both a strike-fighter that's already in production and the next long-range recon-bomber which we'll get a bunch of rather fast and cheap for what it is by importing technology from other recent projects. Once those are online, we probably still won't be able to beat China in and around China, but that's not a flaw in our stealth aircraft inventory because it's not a goal our government has really set for it to achieve.

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

Studies show AF lacks stealth aircraft to fight China