Have you forgotten, or do you choose to ignore, the place that deterrence has in this calculation? The point is not to prepare to counter any possible move a hypothetical antagonist might make, that is the way to insanity and bankruptcy. You have to ensure that the hypothetical antagonist has more to lose than to gain from starting anything.
Do you propose to prepare for every conceivable eventuality, no matter how improbable? That's going to be quite a task, given the budgetary realities involved.
There would have to be a whole lot more, and a fairly rarefied chain of events that would offer numerous opportunities for preemption and intervention, for what you fear to come to pass.
Of course there's a lot we don't know, though of course as well most of what we do know isn't going to be revealed. there's also a lot they don't know. They don't know, for example, how we might respond to a whole range of eventualities. They can't possibly know, because we don't even know. Strategic ambiguity is a useful thing.
The article previously referenced made the point that the performance of individual aircraft is only one part of what makes something effective: we don't do WW2-style dogfights any more.
I have seen nothing there about what we might do. I've seen a few references to things we might say, which looked to me unlikely to achieve any positive outcome. Saying isn't doing. In any event, making bold declarations about what we will or won't tolerate is not going to change any particular balance of force, except for the worse: belligerent talk on our side is likely to lead them to spend more faster, and it won't give us the capacity or the will to do the same.
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