Posted on 02/09/2018 3:17:11 PM PST by cba123
China's J-20 stealth fighter has entered combat service, the country's armed forces confirmed on Friday, expanding the military's air power options as it presses on with a massive modernisation programme.
People's Liberation Army Air Force spokesman Shen Jinke said the deployment of the J-20 to combat units would "help the air force better shoulder the sacred mission of safeguarding national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity".
Shen said the air force was moving towards a modernised military service that could operate in all fronts, and had become an effective force to control, contain and win a war.
(please see link for full article)
(Excerpt) Read more at scmp.com ...
You put your finger on it. IF it sees the F-22 first. This competition is not about who is more agile, who is faster or who has the best missiles (although it's partly that). Modern air combat is all about "first look, first shot, first kill". If your radar is crap, or your stealth doesn't work, you're probably dead. Given that the Russians are more agile and have high-off-bore weapons, the US tactic is to line-up your stealthy F-22/F-35's in front of an AWACS (forming a sort of infantry skirmish line) and shoot the enemy in the face. If it gets to the merge, we are in a heap of trouble. Any of these MiGs or Sukhoi's are extremely dangerous.
I don’t know about that.
I think I remember the pre-production model, about a year ago.
How could we have allowed that to happen?
Oh, and just an aside... If it took the F-22 popping flares for the Sukhoi’s to ‘see’ the F-22, they were already dead. I don’t know if that was the case. I’m sure that is classified. But if it was, the Russians just learned something.
“AWACS “
The entire point of the J-20 is to kill AWACS aircraft. It has enough stealth to get in and make the shot.
1/3 the cost
less corruption
but give ‘em time
LOL
I sure did my calculus. Calc 1, 2, and 3.
Not at all. 21st Century Foxbats. Fly fast, hope to hit something.
All of it was stolen by Chinese spies.
I agree. But stealth aircraft are designed to be difficult to detect & track using certain portions of the RF spectrum.
They aren’t totally invisible, there’s or ours.
I’d have to think that the powerful radars aboard the AWACS are more flexible than the small arrays that sit in the nose of a fighter. Detection range is key. Plus the defending F-22’s aren’t emitting any radiation when an AWACS is about. They are using their datalinks. Am I comfortable with this? No. But that appears to be the tactical situation on Day #1 of the next major shooting war.
I think they'd have to do it with cannon fire. I've read about OPFOR aircraft being able to eyeball F-22's and F-35's but not being able to achieve infra-red or radar lock using their instruments. That's what differentiates American stealth platforms from all challengers - the Chinese ones can theoretically avoid radar lock (even though the jury's still out on this) but their old-fashioned engine exhausts mean achieving infra-red lock on them should be little different from what you'd encounter with a non-stealth platform.
One of the biggest problems people seem to have is understanding the nature of air combat today.
There is a lot of hot air and wailing about how a 40 year old design such as the F-15 can outfight an F-35 in a dogfight. It probably can.
But that isn’t what air combat is about now.
Sure, you need to know how to do it, and they do, but if you are in a traditional dogfight in a F-35 or F-22, you have discarded every advantage you have. It would be the same as squandering all of your energy.
And only a stupid F-35 or F-22 pilot is going to do that intentionally. It may happen due to a system failure or bad circumstances, but only a stupid pilot is going to do that intentionally.
One of the reasons the F-35 was performing so poorly early on is that the pilots were doing just what I described. They were strapping in, and heading up into the sky with the same mindset pilots have had since the 1960’s. Basically fighting their opponents as if they were still flying Phantoms or Tomcats.
It isn’t what F-35’s are made for. They had to develop and learn how to use new tactics with this new hardware and new computer and sensor systems. Last I heard, once they understood and embraced that crucial distinction, they began getting the kill ratios in exercises we are used to seeing...or better.
Just an anecdote: I knew a career military pilot, started off in the USMC, switched to the Air Force and then the Air National Guard. He had flown every fighter plane in the US inventory except the F-22, beginning with Phantoms and Skyhawks and ending up in the F-15 and F-16. He had all the plaques from the schools on his wall. When I asked him if he had ever flown an F-22, he said no, but he said he had flown against them.
I asked him what it was like to fly against an F-22 in an F-16 (the last plane he flew).
He said: “It was like being a Baby Seal.” And he said it with all seriousness and gravity.
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We should not underestimate the Chinese, not a bit. We underestimated the Japanese Navy after Midway, and they ended up cleaning our clock in the naval battles around the Solomons until we learned our lessons and began to give as good as we got. We underestimated their planes, ships, and fighting ability and we paid in blood for doing so.
We are soft and have lost our industrial base and technological edge. But having respect for their technology and industry doesn’t mean we should turn them into boogeymen either.
It is a stolen design. I know because it was my design. But it is the radar and avionics in this case that determines the aircraft match up. But far more important is the pilot and we have the best.
Quantity has a quality all it’s own.
“Quantity has a quality all it’s own.”
People tend to forget that even the US used that concept in WWII, as did the Russians.
The M4 Sherman tank comes to mind
We’ve 182 operational F-22’s where are you getting this number of 146?
Don’t assume a force on force of numbers in this game, our plans for warfare are never revealed until you’re a smoking hole in the sky. So theorize away, but you will be way off the mark when you do.
We’ve 182 operational F-22’s where are you getting this number of 146?
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No 182 is not correct - many of those are not combat ready, others are awaiting spare parts form others that have been cannibalized. There are only 146 that are operational and combat ready; the number grows small each day as things wear our and cannot be readily replaced. Sequestration ... no money.
The figure comes from an article by Tyler Rogoway at The War Zone. I don’t remember which article - there are a lot of them. Tyler, in case you don’t know, is something of an authority in the non-classified world on all things military - much of his info comes from first hand or from contacts within a given military area.
Much of what you call ‘theory’ is from doctrine and is in the public domain. Sometimes, in the classified world, things which those in that world see as classified are actually in the public domain. In that case, those people’s job is to not reveal that those things are actually classified by ignoring the writer or the speaker - do not call attention to the classified.
Battles and wars are not won on theory. They are won when the last person willing to fight and die for his cause is killed.
Quantity has a quality all its own. Wars are always about numbers. Sherman and T-34 tanks come to mind as recent historical examples.
Yes, 182 is correct. Its the number we have regardless of flight status as there is always a group of ANY platform in some phase of maintenance. The F-22 is not lacking for parts either, like others they may wait for them out of Lockheed Martin but there is not 142.
Doctrine is available, does not tell you the plan, it speaks more to the end state desired but not necessarily the jot and tittle of how we get to it.. ACSC and War College experts are but a few of the “thinkers” we have working these possibilities, there is also SAAS, efforts with our allied nations and war planning in many deep pockets of the Pentagon, some purple some not then there are the warfighting centers of excellence. Yeah, I bet you know that China, for all their theft, goes after our plans more than anything else, its that important, but doctrine they know...as we know theirs.
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