"phil hunt" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 18:45:06 -0500, Kevin Brooks
wrote:

snip

Nobody (no one nation) is going to field that many advanced fighters of
the
Typhoon classs. And you are right in that the nations that *could* pose a
quality threat are not the ones that are in our "likely foe" category
(China
excepted, and I doubt, based upon the J-10 experience, they can manage it
in
the forseeable future).

You're probably right there, in the short and medium term. In the
long term, China is very interested in modern technologies, and has
a largish and rapidly growing economy, so they are bound to catch up
in aeronautical engineering.

But it appears likely that the cost of "catching up" may well be their
continued embracing of capitalism, and with it the usual attendant move
towards democracy--so by the time they get there, move them out of the
threat category.


China is unlikely to seek confrontation with the USA, but
a war between the two could break out by accident (as happened the
last time those countries fought each other), and in any case the
USA has an economy 10 times bigger so would always be able to
afford more planes (and other military cabability).

And fixed wing land fighter aircraft would be the least usable platforms
against the PRC threat; lack of basing being a biggie.

If China attacked one of its neighbours, that country would very
likely allow the USAF to base there.

If the PRC attacked one of its neighbors, none of which have exactly a lot
of geographic space to trade for the time to get US landbased tactical
airpower into the fray, so I'd be surprised to see US ground based aircraft
move into the nation in question. The only way the landbased tactical
airpower comes into play is from the periphery (i.e., Okinawa and ROK), and
then it is going to be limited mostly to the coastal region. In the end you
are going to confront a basing problem, so a six or seven squadron force of
F-22's would likely be capable of supporting the deployment of the two to
four squadrons you'd be squeezing into the available bases as your silver
bullet force.


The F-35 is a cheaper plane than the F-22, and having just one
fighter would provide savings on training, spare parts, etc, so it's
likely that for every F-22 not built the USA could afford 3 or so
F-35s.

Which would also require three more pilots (an increasingly stretched
commodity), and leave us without that "silver bullet" as insurance.

That's true -- over its lifetime, the F-35 may not be that much
cheaper than the F-22. (Having said that, I expect simulators could
make it cheaper to train good pilots).

Simulators will indoubtedly continue to help in such training, and grow in
terms of that capability. But you are still postulating a three-for-one
increase in pilots just to replace the "missing" F-22's. If you assume that
the F-22 is three times as good as the F-35 in the air-to-air role, you now
need another 600 F-35's *and* pilots, and you have to keep them proficient,
which means 150-200 hours of airtime per year per pilot, more O&M costs,
etc. So the replacement of those 200 F-22's would likely not be the massive
savings you might originally think it to be.


Now, it's certainly true that the F-22 is a omre capably fighter
than the F-35: it has a better power-to-weight ratio and lower wing
loadinmg, which means it will be more manouvrable. It's also got
room for more missiles. (It's proasbly less stealthy, since it's
alrager aircraft, thus probably has larhger radar and IR
signatures). Is one F-22 better than the 2-3 F-35s one could buy in
its place? I don't know.

You are missing the avionics advantage; F-22 was optimized as an anti-air
platform, so it will indeed be much more capable than the F-35, which is
optimized in the strike role, in that air dominance role.

So in the air-to-air role, how many F-35s is one F-22 worth, IYO?

I can't say, and I doubt anyone else could definitively answer that
question. But the key to the problem is this--if you are fielding the
reduced-force of F-22's as an insurance policy against the likelihood of any
potential threat fielding an aircraft that could defeat our capability of
acheiving air dominance over a chosen piece of real estate, and you instead
decided to merely field *more* less capable F-35's, you are still left with
the problem of not being able to acheive that air dominance, especially
since the USAF is NOT going to assume an attritionary stance and try to win
it at the cost of the hundreds of F-35 airframes (and pilots) that it might
take to win by numbers advantage alone.

I personally like the idea of reducing the F-22 force to that 200 ballpark.
It gives us that silver bullet capability and frees up some funding for
other vital requirements (i.e., tankers, ISR platforms, improved precision
strike capabilites, airlift, UCAV's, etc.). Military planners are used to
having to deal with two threat scenario categories--the most likely enemy
course of action, and the most dangerous enemy course of action. Minimizing
the F-22 buy makes more funds available to take care of the kind of
contingencies that fall into the former category, while still maintaining a
force of them large enough to handle forseeable threats that require the use
of the 24-karet solution means you have also addressed the latter categry.

Brooks


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