F-16 Replacement

[Cole]

That is $190,000 each. It would buy you something that is completely useless against an enemy who can match your numbers and technology. Preds cost a lot more than that and Reapers cost rather more than Preds. And both of those are completely useless against an enemy who can match your technology.

Carl, it was this month's NationalDefenseMagazine and General Cartwright. He was probably referring to the F-35B STOVL engine which is $38 million according to Aviation Week. A Shadow 200, used by the Marines and Army costs around $300,000 for the air vehicle itself. The Marines are arming there's. Admittedly it's not as potent as an F-35.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.o...17;Drones.aspx

Acquiring more F-22s may be costly, as may be hardening the bases to put them on, but if the only thing that will be able to stop the J-20 from killing any old thing it wants to is an F-22. Once those 187 or so are used up, so are we.

China has over a thousand tactical ballistic missiles. TBM have become the new cost-effective alternative to an effective air force. According to Wikipedia, an F-35A in 1965 dollars was $1.9 million. Adjusted for inflation that is only a bit over $13 miilion today. That tells you that the cost of a competitive fighter has risen much, much faster than the 640% inflation rate from Jan 1960 until today.

The result is that most potential adversaries cannot afford competitive fighters in great numbers. Heck, we can't afford them if they are F-22As. The F-35 is a more cost-effective compromise just as the F-16 was. The Russian and Chinese aircraft are cheaper, but not so cheap to sell many to any one rogue nation (with a sub $10 billion defense budget), and they remain unproven in actual combat. We know our pilot's are experienced. We know their's are not. We know nothing about J-20 capabilities other than that nations seldom advance decades in military know-how overnight.

I am guessing an airbase can be hardened. Underground aircraft hangers, underground facilities, runways spread wide apart, copious amounts of engineers and repair materials; all these things might make it hard to knock out a base. You could also do what the Swedes do, use specially hardened road sections and spread your airplanes around the countryside. All these things would make it hard for a handful of new bombers to take out enough bases for long enough to make any difference. We won't have anything more than a handful of new bombers and I doubt we would get this handful prior to...oh say, 2030.

We will have many hundreds of cruise missiles and JASSM-ER, and we still have penetrating capability with B-2, F-22, F-35, and future UCAV/MC-X. At night the primary threat to these aircraft would be SAMs that we can jam or avoid. Agree that we could harden some bases further away from China, but Japan and Korea are too close. Let them pay to harden their own bases for their own aircraft.

The Chinese will perfect the J-20 and if they build them in large numbers we will be faced with an extremely serious problem. There will be no inexpensive way around that problem and once the F-22s run out there may be no way around it at all.

Why would we go to war with China. Why would they bomb our Walmarts? We both have nukes and MAD deterrence. Taiwan is getting friendlier with the mainland everyday. The ones who should have any inkling of worry are Japan, Korea, and Australia. They can all buy F-35s (not F-22) and Patriot missiles to assume more of their own aerial defense with our back-up.

A recent Australian study claimed a lowly 6:1 loss-exchange ratio between Chinese aircraft and our own. IMHO, that is ridiculously inaccurate considering how old most Chinese aircraft still are. Did that consider F-35s? Navy and shore-based SAMs also attrite threat aircraft. It is unlikely Pak FA or J-20s will be anywhere near as stealthy as our aircraft or that S-300/400/Chinese SAMs would withstand EA-18G and next generation jammers.

The sky is not falling versus China or Russia. We still have MAD keeping both sides happy. The sky could fall on some American, European, or Israeli city if attacked by a state-supported terrorist nuke. Irrational individuals don't consider that their nation will be destroyed if they are insane, think they can hide any connection, believe they have nothing to lose, or have some religious belief creating a martyrdom complex. Focus on those more likely threats by deterring rogue states and developing TBM defenses, befriending/helping states that reject terrorism, and by killing potential terrorists where we actively find them. Rapidly deployable and forward-deployed ground and naval forces, nukes, 186 F-22s, 2000+ F-35s, new bombers, and UAS are more than adequate to preclude miscalculation by major powers.