Quote Originally Posted by Cliff View Post
The F-18s will be closer... but again they have a short range (369nm legacy, 520 Super Hornet - and both of those are with 3 external tanks!). The better the Chinese Navy gets, and the more anti-ship ABMs become credible, the less help the carrier can be - because you end up spending more and more effort protecting the boat and less effort projecting power. CFTs on F-35 are unlikely as it would ruin the stealth.
Not sure legacy F-18C/D matter that much and believe ASBM can be defeated through a combination of multispectral smoke (littoral combat ship dispensing smoke in front of carriers?) and the same smoke over island bases in the Pacific on the outer edge of missile range.

http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/1...-of-Obscurants

Wonder if the USAF should look at the F/A-18E/F (or F-35C) for rotating Pacific island-basing and stateside homeland security. Use smoke to defeat ASBM radar/IR sensors, and jammers to locally disrupt Chinese-GPS to eliminate pinpoint targeting. Then employ concrete shelters over catapult launch and recovery to provide passive countermeasures to survive missile attacks while staying within reasonable range and escorting/augmenting KC-X aerial refueling. Marcus Island? Wake Island? Midway Islands? As you mention, up to 29,000 lbs of fuel can be transported internally/externally in a Super Hornet in 5 tanks which when added to KC-X top-off would leave a near perpetual fuel supply and protection escort for KC-X. Add a mini-boom to the F/A-18E/F and have 3 refuelers on station at a track or anchor.


Agree on the effects. Not sure on the numbers... China is producing F-10s, F-11Bs, and FB-7s... Our first IOC F-35s are in 2012, with the first deployment in 2014 at best...

I think there is a window of risk over the next 5-7 years. I think you are overestimating our advantage, and underestimating the work other folks have done.
Forgive my display of old-guy bias and I truly respect the mature/respectful arguments you are making. But a J-10, J-11B, and FB-7 are no more capable than an F-15/F-16/FA-18E/F and we already acknowledged how few of those have been lost in the past 30+ years...and the experience-level of the PLAAF or PLAN in the next 5-7 years is not likely to be considered near-peer.

While the 1970s-1980s military shared none of the austere repeated deployments and extraordinary ground risk of service today or in the Vietnam war, there was a far more extraordinary "window of risk" in the European theater with double digit thousands of Soviet tanks/BMPs more than capable of rolling over NATO. The related nuclear risk was far higher, as well. So when considering China, with much to lose economically and little to gain over the next 5-7 years by attacking Taiwan, it is hard for me to feel much concern.

And as much as we portrayed the Soviet air and ground threat as 10' tall back then, with the exception of numbers, they truly were not much threat (other than numbers far more in disparity than today's threats) to M1s, Bradleys, F-16, and F-15...but would have posed a serious threat to M60s, M113, and F-4s that were slowly being replaced. THAT was a window of vulnerability! Yet it was addressed with a 50,000 lb Bradley that also proved more than up to task in OIF before being uparmored at which point it remained only in the 60-70,000lbs range...so why does the GCV need to be 100,000-140,000 lbs? Why is it unacceptable for F-35s to take on Pak FA's that lack stealth? China will never own any because the Russians have gotten wise to their repeated attempts to backward engineer.

While respecting any Soldier's loss, find it hard to get very alarmed by the loss of 125 combined-arms rusty Israelis regulars and reservists against a determined Hezbollah foe that had years to dig in and prepare. Where was the smoke to defeat ATGMs/RPGs? CAS (was doing EBO)? Artillery prep? In most realistic future uses of U.S./allied heavy armor and airpower, we would be addressing a threat preparing to or in the process of invading someone else, therefore giving them little time to prepare a proper defense. In addition, the very act of invading would make it difficult to hide advancing armor in slow-go terrain, thus leaving them vulnerable to airpower and ATACMs, and Apaches.

Bradley/Stryker/LAV III survivability in OIF, current air-deployment of 25% of supplies to Afghanistan, the air movement of Strykers and M-ATV there, and the success of 60+ sorties in inserting armor/airborne forces into Bashur, Northern Iraq should be far more revealing to us than any lesson of Lebanon in 2006. Adding belly armor to a GCV should not exceed 80,000+ lbs to retain the key benefits of C-17/C-5M air-deployment of heavy-light mix air deployment facilitated by the current trend of placing HBCTs and IBCTs at many of the same division-home bases.