DIA on China's new fighter

Where have we heard that before?

Brings back a lot of memories of past arguments in this group. I
won't want to revisit them except for these last words.

1. There was once a History Channel series on the best fighters...
(WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam era and post Vietnam.) Every pilot who
ever flew a combat plane invariably praised his plane model as the
best. There were no lemons. I think it was two Tornado pilots who
said modern warfare is pretty much what I had wrote in my original
post. All the years of training and experience doesn't give much of
an advantage in aerial combat. The rookie who is first in a good
position to press the fire button has as good a chance to score as a
twenty year pilot. The other comment was, in a modern mission, once
you have dumped your bombs as per mission you get the hell out fast.
Its suicidal to hang around and search for targets of opportunity.

2. The Russians in WWII had adequate planes that were tough, cheap
and easy to build. Their pilots had to fight straight out of a very
elementary course in flying school. The Russians relied on numbers to
overwhelm the mighty German war machine and they took out even their
most experienced German fighter pilots. Bombers were shot out of the
sky. The Russian losses were enormous. But they had the manpower and
production capacity to replace their losses. The Germans couldn't and
lost the war. In mass battles numbers win every time over skill,
technical superiority, tactical superiority, etc. (provided we are
not pitching bows and arrows against a maxim.)

This is also a good place to remind all that the Germans lost over 85
per cent of their manpower and materiel in Russia. By the times the
Allies invaded France the Germans were essentially defeated. It is
remarkable the Germans managed to keep fighting on for almost another
year.

The unsaid assumption on discussions of fifth generation US aircraft
is that China is the only possible opponent. For any other enemy
third generation aircraft will be more than adequate.

China has too big a land mass and her war production facilities mostly
out of reach of conventional attack from outside China's borders. You
cannot knock out a city of one million with any number of conventional
strikes and there are more than 200 cities with more than a million
population in China. Terror bomb attacks won't work. China has the
materiel in surface based antiaircraft and anti shipping missiles to
defend herself. Her air force's tactic (my recommendation) will be to
harass any attacking planes but keep out of range, then close in when
the attackers are forced to return to base as they run low on fuel.
No one has learned how to defeat the law of gravity yet. This way
numbers count more than technical or skillset superiority. The US ace
may shoot down one or two Chinese defenders. PLAF number three and
four will get him anyway. Combat in any form means higher fuel
consumption. That's a mighty big ocean below even if no one shot him
down.