Military section in NI is rubbish.
This article is nonsense. I think the F-15 can still be dominate against the best Russia and Chinese jets.
Simple answer. No.
Even if the Russians develop a Gen5 fighter they do not have the resources to build enough of them to survive US air superiority for long enough to make a difference in a conflict (that is, if the US remains committed to the conflict).
Now the Chinese may be different story. They have far greater resources and most of their tech has been provided by us at the approval of previous presidents, starting with BJ Clinton.
Just my $.02.
Isn’t the next air ace going to be Droney VonDronofen?
The real question is can the F-35 -bomber- operate in an S-400 environment in a general war.
If this administration does not sell our secrets we can move ahead of the competition.
If I was a Tesla fan, I would just brag about the SU53’s 0-600 time.
It would prove I know nothing about Aircraft.
High - Low mix is the stated Pentagon objective.
There are F-15s that will fly into the 2030s.
The difference between US forces and those of China/Russia is that we will fly a much greater number of real stealth aircraft, and the high/low mix will be FULLY networked and networked with ships, AWACS and multiple other sensor platforms.
Within a decade we will field armed stealth drones which will also be part of the extended network.
A true point and shoot 360deg view of the battle space.
All the pilot has to do is look at the target and depress their thumb, without regard to which platform releases the missile.
Ping.
The US has a lousy doctrine of anticipating threats and saving pennies when they should be spending dollars. The cancellation of the F-22 program was gigantic blunder rife with political short sightedness for example. The dithering over replacing aging F-15 airframes with the F-15X is a close second. The numbers of active squadrons with viable air superiority capability has been constantly shrinking since the Gulf War.
Russian and probably Chines doctrine is weak when it comes to command and control centralization. Their battle fleet will be an all-in -one surge to obliterate us in a first (and likely surprise) strike. After the warfare devolves into small unit air to air combat, the article pretty accurately describes the probable outcomes.
The biggest US strength is training and tactics. Our military trains using dissimilar aircraft and known enemy tactics which should be a big advantage if going head to head.
Still the outcome could be based on quantity instead of quality. A very capable platform like the F-22 becomes an airliner once it expends it's ordnance. If the pilot kills 6 of opposing 22 enemy aircraft, he will be an ace but he didn't win the battle.
I read Dan Petersen’s book and I am of the opinion that whichever craft can gun it up toward space the fastest will prevail. Then bring the hammer down in pairs.
Maybe in a dogfight. Not when they get shot down before they even see us.
And that’s the problem for Russia and China... can they successfully amortize the development & manufacturing costs over sufficient units to be able to AFFORD to buy their own 5th Gen aircraft in sufficient numbers? The question is will they have enough airframes that they can:
1. Develop tactics, and
2. Train air crew.
If the answer is that they can’t buy more that a few squadrons of mostly hangar queens then all they’ve done is spend a lot of money. And this is exactly the experience that we have had with the F-22, and why we chose to build the F-35 with an allied consortium.
The Russians and Chinese are ‘hoping’ that they can attract enough foreign sales after developing a flying prototype or after low-rate-of-initial-production has been reached. That’s not not a successful business model for this latest generation of combat aircraft.
Outside India, who do they think can afford these jets? Meanwhile the unit price for the F-35 has dropped to $80M in the latest contract because the customer base was built in at the beginning of the project.
Just recently a couple of our F22 raptors ran off an SU35 over Syria.