I think a lot of people are missing the point of the article. It’s not about dogfighting. It’s not even about air superiority. It’s about cyber warfare and how a war can be lost without anyone dying in combat. It’s an new era of technological struggle and no one really understands what that means. The plane is a small part of the issue.
To succeed, cyber warfare has to degrade and defeat the enemy. You can do a lot of nefarious things with the personal info of tens of millions of people, but that alone won’t defeat a country.
Our enemies can degrade or destroy our critical infrastructure (power, gas, sewage, water, transportation, financial service) which could be a mortal blow if big enough.
Or they could disrupt all military communications leaving all ships, planes, and troops cut off and completely isolated. Those $300 million F35s would instantly be pretty useless.
The latter path might be the best. The recent OMB attacks could be dry runs to test our resolve as the author points out.
I disagree that it’s not about the planes. It’s about ALL of our defense systems as well.