On Mar 6, 1:33*pm, hcobb wrote:
On Mar 6, 8:35*am, Ed Rasimus wrote:

Today our real concern is total numbers. With the Raptor buy
apparently over, we really don't have a nucleus of a globally
effective operational fleet. 187 aircraft, minus not-in-commission
frames, minus training aircraft, minus periodic maintenance aircraft
leaves you with roughly a half-dozen squadrons.

You've got to have more airplanes and that means F-35 numbers in the
absence of F-22s. The flexibilty of the F-35 with A/G optimization and
reasonable A/A capability makes it the next iteration of F-16 paired
with F-15 air superiority.

Against which nation will the USAF require more than six squadrons of
Raptors to shoot down all of their high end fighters? *Either now or
anytime in the next two decades.

The F-16 comparison is apt. *The F-15 and the F-22 were designed for
the BVR long range high speed interceptor mission that the USAF has
never ever done. *The F-16 and the F-35 were designed for the swing
missions of dog fighting and ground support that have been very
common.

The T-50 is a stealth compromised airframe precisely in the way those
last generation engines are mounted onto that airframe. *The PAK-FA
can either go forwards with some RAM spackled onto that cow or start
from scratch and have a fifth generation fighter ready to build in two
decades.

The F-35 will not fly as high, as fast or as far as the PAK-FA. *It
won't out turn it and it won't be able to chase it down.

What will happen is that the F-35 will do its missions and when the
PAK-FA comes into range the only thing it will see are incoming
missiles mysteriously appearing from out of the blue. *Sometimes it
may even spot these in time to evade them.

-HJC

More you have to think of any mission/war in which the United States
will not be the attacking nation. The Pentagon has been looking for a
near-peer, a nation that might want to fight the U.S.. for about 20
years. There do not seem to be any. The F-22 and possibly even the
F-35 seem to be over designed for the real probable use, ground
support in a distant battlefield. Imagine the current situation in
Afghanistan with only those two aircraft for support. The FA-18 can do
that job, now.