Developments in the area of USPACOM, Pacific Theatre

[Smitty-48]

If you didn't have F-35 coming online, you could still take them, but you would suffer heavy casualties due to IADS saturation, Triple Digit SAMs and Super Flankers, but with F-35, it becomes Boom and Buh-Bye without any attrition to US forces at all, they never see you coming nor going.

Don't even need the F-22's, you'd just have to let them go shoot down some Flankers so they didn't feel left out.

[kybkh]

I thought future of air power was drone swarms followed by B-52 War Wagons?

[Smitty-48]

I thought future of air power was drone swarms followed by B-52 War Wagons?

Fully autonomous drone swarms are a ways off yet, optionally manned ACM is 6th Generation; 2040's and beyond, wouldn't need them to beat the Chinese in the China Seas anyways, 5th Generation more than gets the job done.

Even the most bleeding edge drones you have are not fully autonomous in denied airspace, the processing power to make them so is prohibitively expensive/difficult to produce, man in the loop for military application in denied airspace is exponentially cheaper and more reliable for some time yet.

You'll get to Gen5.5 before you get to Gen6, the F-35 will be optionally manned first, as the bridge to full on Gen6, Gen6 will take thirty years to field in any operationally relevant sense.

For all intents and purposes operational, the F-35 is already the Swarming Stealth Drone, that's how they roll, the man in the loop is just there to make it affordable and reliable with currently available milspec denied airspace capable tech.

F-35: 50% more expensive than an F-16C, but only 1/10th the price of a fully autonomous drone fighter.

[ssu]

China does not submit to UNCLOS resolution enforcement and neither does the USA, moreover, UNCLOS does not supercede Fredoom of Navigation to 12 mile limit in any case, so International Law is not a real issue, China's assertion of the SCS/ECS as being Chinese internal waters will never be upheld by UNCLOS, doesn't meet the letter nor spirit of UNLCOS, it's an entirely specious and in fact spurrious claim by the Chinese,

The claims can be spurious, but still. And If you have an island that a sovereign owns, there's also the 200 nautical mile economic zone. This is for example what make the Senkaku Islands in some view interesting, as otherwise there are worthless rocks.

which is not actually backed up by anything, since the Chinese can't back it up without inciting a shooting war, which the Chinese would lose and lose badly.

China; Paper Tiger.

Again comes to play assymetric warfare thinking that you are forgetting. Your thinking of a head on fight and similar thinking as during the Cold War. It's not about the Chinese going 1-to-1 with the US Navy in a huge sea battle. It's about asymmetric warfare, area denial, not China seeking a full head on confrontation and hoping to destroy the US Navy in an epic sea battle. It's about making a war simply too costly for the US. It's about making some puny thing, like the goddam little Senkaku islands, a flashpoint that is simply not worth the risk to endanger a US carrier battle group... or the US to engage an all out war with China. It's not like the Chinese will attack Pearl Harbour, it's more likely that some of these minor incedents between China and Japan or the Phillipines can blow up in a crisis and the US ally calls for help.

The earlier documentaries which I referred to tell it well. If a carrier battle group costs well over 10 billion and a Chinese Missile 1-2 million and it just takes one or two to get through and there's a huge mess. You can easily have those mines and missiles to deny access, even if you yourself cannot have the area totally under your control.

The Chinese "asymmetric" response is something like the DF-21, not trying to build your own huge Supercarrrier fleet to take on the US Navy. Seen here a mass firing of.



Here about the Chinese DF-21 with comparison to Russian Brahmos:

[Smitty-48]

Meh, more Red Scare hysteria from our resident Finnish Pogue, the Chinese are a Paper Tiger symmetrically and assymetrically as well, "assymetrical" is just a fancy euphemism for "losers".

[TheReal_ND]

All this stuff is above my pay grade, but as long as Smits is good with "boom and buh-bye" I'm not too worried.

Same. Yay Ukraine

[Smitty-48]

All y'all need to know about "Cold War Thinking", is that all pronouncements of "America's Doom!" by way of "Ten Foot Tall Communists!" armed with "Nigh Incvincible Wunderwaffen!" are of course breathlessly exagerrated to the point of absurdity, who knew?

Who is the "Cold War Thinker" here? Yeah, that would Finnish "Red Scare" Pogue; ssu.

[TheReal_ND]

Actually I've learned the MSM's tricks so well that all I have to do is look at the cover of their magazines to find out what angle they are pushing next.

[Smitty-48]

"ZOMG China!!!": Domino Theory all over again.

[Fife]