Forum: General F-35 Forum

I think in the most likely Taiwan defence scenario, one has to realize that there are over a dozen bases where an F-35 can operate from and reach Taiwan with only one refuel. Given the prevalence of allied BMD systems its nearly impossible for the Chinese to knock them out. In the next few years there will be over 20 Pac-3 missile defense sites in Japan alone, and eight SM-3 dedicated warships... with a nominal capacity of about 500 missiles. If there is some advanced warning, you're looking at the US military easily adding another 500 missiles within a week or so (THAAD, Patriot PAC-3, and Tico equipped SM-3s CGs are all very mobile.)

What you stated is probably very well known by the Chinese and I'm sure they are well prepared for this. They speak the same language as in Taiwan, so I think it would be VERY easy for a large amount of clandestine (Chinese Special Forces) teams to sneak into Taiwan and take out many of these BMD systems. Imagine a few thousand Chinese special forces roaming around Taiwan dressed as if they were in the Taiwanese military and speaking the same language in the same dialect. They'd create chaos. This might sound like a good reason to keep STOVL aircraft around, but given the fact Taiwan is so dang small, the forward operating bases would be tracked no matter where they moved by Chinese operatives. Now Japan would be almost an entirely different story.


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A few thousand Chinese special forces sneaking into Taiwan?

If they were lucky, they might get a few dozen in, undetected.

hb_pencil - the Japanese airfields are 400 mi to Taiwan, from Okinawa, and 700 mi from the mainland proper.

I think in the most likely Taiwan defence scenario, one has to realize that there are over a dozen bases where an F-35 can operate from and reach Taiwan with only one refuel.

The USAF will need tankers to operate out of Japan, that will decrease the possibility for base dispersion.

Furthermore, the approach route to Taiwan from Japan puts the fighters in range of easy Chinese interception for the entire route, unless the fighters want to dogleg out to sea, which will only add distance.

The JSF doesn't have the range to comfortably operate in the Pacific theater without substantial tanking support, unless you want to operate it from Taiwan, which is suicidal. The question then becomes, do the Chinese have a method of threatening the tanking support beyond ballistic missile attacks at the main airbases.

Though, I think this is immaterial in a way, if the Chinese cannot land substantial forces in the first 48 hours of a conflict, the war will be over. Thus worrying about surging units into the theater, dispersed operations, etc., seems to me to be beyond the point. The conflict will be decided within days of its initiation.

The problem with the F-35B is not that it has STOVL capability, it is that its STOVL requirement has tainted the rest of the program, most notably in the airframe. Had the F-35B been a separate program, one that ran parallel to the other two variants but with a different airframe, then the JSF program would probably have been better off. The STOVL plane could have been optimized to be STOVL, and the other two could have been better optimized for their roles. But that is the past, and the USAF/USN/USMC now get to live with the consequences of their decisions.

Who's to say there's not already a few thousand there. I bet they don't even sneak in, they wear suit and board a plane, then land in Taiwan. These people are smart. And Americans are getting dumber EVERY DAY.

About the missile threat, read this article. http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/74ed0fae-cc89-4a64-9d6a-5cf6985a6f33/China-s--Antiaccess--Ballistic-Missiles-and-U-S-- Essentially the author argues that the US cannot build enough missile interceptors nor does the US show any willingness to build enough missile interceptors to be effective against a Chinese missile attack.

Furthermore, using bases in Japan will dramatically reduce sortie number because of the range. And the Japanese won't be able to use their entire air force to clear a path to Taiwan, because of threats to the Japanese mainland.

We're also approaching this in a static sense. We have a very good idea what the USAF will look like in 15 years, we don't know as much about the PLAAF. For example, how many J-20s will be built and what will their role be? Will the Chinese get more tankers? If either of those two happen in significant numbers, any plan to operate fighters from Japan will be much more difficult. And the USAF doesn't have anything on the public development boards right now to fix that.

Enough interceptors = as many missiles as the Chinese shoot + 1. That's the problem with missile defense, the attacker always gets to choose how many munitions to waste on a target. Say the US splurges on PAC-3s, then China could choose not to build as many missiles. US wins, right? Wrong, US has just spent a large amount of money on a non-existent threat. Active defense is inherently reactive and always gives the attacker the initiative. Passive defense is better, in a sense, because it serves as a permanent decrease in attacker effectiveness for a wide range of threats.

If the Japanese have to position fighters to defend against Chinese attack, they won't be able to use those fighters to secure an air corridor southward. The Chinese can feint at the Japanese airbases, or even launch small scale attacks, and use those to pin down defenses. This is a consequence of the geometric location of the Japanese bases with respect to China and Taiwan and it cannot be overcome without a greater exertion on the part of the US and Japanese defense forces.

With respect to how fast the Chinese build stuff, remember, this is the country planning to build 2(!) carriers every five years. If they want tankers, which can just be re-purposed civilian airliners, the Chinese can probably build a force of them.

As to the J-20, the USAF has only 180 F-22s. The Chinese, with 200 - 250 J-20s, can use their interior lines to force the decision at a certain point. Remember, the J-20 appeared before the US government expected it to.

Now thing about this, how many other fighters have airframes that look like a STOVL aircraft? Not many. Furthermore, most other fighters don't have the luxury of relying on one of the most powerful engines ever attacked to a fighter's airframe to overcome aerodynamic drag. Therefore, those fighters need better aerodynamic optimization, or to put it in other words, they can't afford to loose as much aerodynamic performance.

Put those facts together and it becomes clear: the STOVL variant has affected the other two variants of the JSF, and that affect has probably been for the worse.