AF Secretary and Chief of Staff Dismissed

[Tacitus]

And I guess I don't get the rationale that if we get into a fight with China or the others we'll have "much worse worries", as if that means we don't have to pay attention to winning the air superiority battle. Is it better somehow to make it even worse by ceding control of the the air as well?

Fascinating thread.

I'll let Ski answer for himself what our much worries might be besides whether we have air superiority in a war with China, but before it deteriorates to that point, I'd expect:
1. China to have presumably dumped their holding of US currency reserves on the markets. That's about $1.756 trillion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_exchange_reserves
Confederate money, for its novelty value, may be worth more than the $US dollar at that point.

2. Oil finished trading today at $136 or so. Ready for $1,000 per barrell-- who knows if it would even be trading at that stage.

This list could go on. Would such economic catastrophes induce saner heads to come to some kind of negotiated solution?

I only bring this up because others are citing the economic costs of this equipment. The economic costs in a runup with a war with China would give some a crash course in basic international economics. A diplomatic compromise might look alot better when confronted with this.