disconnectedradical wrote:F-22 range isn't bad and fine for European operations. When people say it has short legs it's more about Pacific operations, and compared to F-23. But for Pacific operations even F-23 range wouldn't be enough, so we need some big aerodynamic and propulsion innovations to make a fighter suitable for fighting in Pacific.
Looking at the unrefueled strike radius and ferry range across the Pacific the F-35A/C already has impressive reach and coverage for that geography. With higher thrust and better fuel efficiency for higher cruising speed and/or a CFT upgrade, F-35A/C should become an unbeatable force for decades to come in the Western Pacific's geography. The F-22A is likely to mirror F-35A reach.
The real problem is projecting a continuous VLO air presence over China. That is going to be much harder to establish or sustain for long. The propulsion development is moving in the right direction, so if you have better VLO with that and are prepared to settle for a slightly lower power-to-weight ratio than a USAF F-35A (in 2030), you could make a heavy fighter that's able to persist for a couple of hours over China's interior. Add escorted tactical VLO drone tanking over the littoral margins, to get fighters back to a full-sized tanker or a base, and contesting and holding the airspace over China's interior becomes doable.
Or perhaps a large PCA tanker refuels each PCA OCA fighter on the way out to RTB?
But when passive detection and targeting sensors combine with cheap high-energy solid-state laser networks, a VLO PCA or B-21 may not be able to survive over China for long. Recently there's this new emphasis on millisecond-level response to directed energy attacks on aircraft, but it's hard to see how this can overcome it being hit by multiple networked directed-energy types simultaneously. If anti-access 2.0 can thermally burn, damage and hole the skin or incinerate a sensor aperture the aircraft hit is going to be even easier to track and target from there (at which point SAMs may work). If China proliferates a cheap DAS-like IRST all over the country which can seamlessly scan the sky in overlapping hemispheric bubbles up to 70,000 ft, a robust passive-laser targeting system becomes possible without using satellites. Plus potentially provides early-warning and defenses against VLO cruise-missiles. They're bound to pursue that sort of mainland anti-access network, if they can 'master' (or steal) the technology. It's just a matter of when they get to that level and can field it.