[Buckhead]

The unit cost death spiral is practically a law of nature. For many years the succeeding systems have had much higher unit costs and we have been constrained to buy fewer and fewer units. The same arguments were made about the F-15, 16 and 18 replacing F-4s, A-4s, A-7s, etc., etc.

The authors do not seem to accommodate in their argument the revolution in military affairs that has increased lethality and efficiency by orders of magnitude. The question is, does this increased capability compensate for the decrease in units? Here in amateur-land the answer seems to be yes. The accuracy of bombs and missiles has reduced the number of sorties required to destroy a target by several orders of magnitude. What required hundreds if not thousands of sorties to destroy in WWII now requires 1 or 2. That ought to count for something in their analysis.

Finally, unmanned systems are cheap enough to field lots of units, so we don’t see him complaining about that, do we?

[VOA]

The authors do not seem to accommodate in their argument the revolution
in military affairs that has increased lethality and efficiency
by orders of magnitude.

I'm a foolish never-served civilian.
But if it's true that improvements in explosives, coupled with
"smarts" mean that a single 200-250 lb bomb will accomplish what
a 1000 lb. bomb did only a few years ago...
that 2000lb load limit in the internal bay starts sounding
pretty lethal.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

There’s also the concept of concentration of force. Getting the right firepower to the right place and living to tell about it. High volume can actually cause problems. A bunch of junk clogging up the air fields, wasting fuel, bogging down repairmen, etc. At the end of WWII, MacArthur found thousands of grounded Japanese planes in need of minor repairs.

At the same time, low quality planes getting shot down, demoralizing the pilots. Wasted training on a dead pilot. That’s an ugly path to take for defense. I hope we never have to repeat the massive level of WWII. Sure, we could do it. And sheer numbers can terrify your foes, but I prefer quality myself.

[unspun]

The authors do not seem to accommodate in their argument the revolution in military affairs that has increased lethality and efficiency by orders of magnitude. The question is, does this increased capability compensate for the decrease in units? Here in amateur-land the answer seems to be yes. The accuracy of bombs and missiles has reduced the number of sorties required to destroy a target by several orders of magnitude. What required hundreds if not thousands of sorties to destroy in WWII now requires 1 or 2. That ought to count for something in their analysis.

Well said. Modern and future fighter planes are more like very fast flying destroyers than dogfighters.

[DesScorp]

"The authors do not seem to accommodate in their argument the revolution in military affairs that has increased lethality and efficiency by orders of magnitude."

And all that means nothing if you can't buy your weapons in sufficient quantity. You can have a pair of the most capable fighters in the world going up against a dozen Su-27's, and they're still going to lose simply because of the odds. We can get by with fewer numbers than enemies have, but not radically fewer numbers.

[AndyJackson]

The authors do not seem to accommodate in their argument the revolution in military affairs that has increased lethality and efficiency by orders of magnitude

Sprey, with Boyd, invented the RMA.