I call BS. The degree to which the F-22 surpasses everything in history is absolutely mind-blowing.
Bear in mind that the F-16 is untouched by the rest of the world. China has nothing that can compete on anything resembling an even footing with the F-16.
Now consider the dogfights between some of our very best pilots in F-16s against F-22s. A single F-22 takes down multiple F-16s without even being seen. In several cases, not only did the F-16s not see the F-22, not only did the F-16 not even get to register the radar lock in time to even attempt escape, but even after the “kill” the F-16 couldn’t see the F-22 until the F-22 flew over the top of the F-16 allowing the F-16 pilot to PHYSICALLY see him.
With a pair of F-22s, 10+ F-16s were toast. If memory serves me, a team of 3 F-22s is good for something like 18 F-16s without taking a sweat, or even having a single F-16 lock on.
The issue of speed or maneuverability or armament doesn’t even come into play, because the next most advanced fighter on the planet might as well be completely blind (the F-22 happens to do all the aforementioned things better, but it’s so unnecessary as to almost seem boring).
Oh and we haven’t even gotten into how much better the F-22 integrates with literally every support system we can think to link to it (JSTARS, AWACS, another half-dozen I’ve never heard of, and probably another couple none of us knows exists yet). So while being invisible, the pilot can see more sooner. Oh and it can network with other F-22s to form an ad-hoc AWACS system...so everyone on the team sees a combination of the best views.
This isn’t a matter of who wins, or even how big of a loss we would take while winning. The most legitimate question would be if even a single pilot would be in any real danger of being shot at, much less hit.
I don't enought to know just how good the F-22 is, but I do know that just being technically superior is not enough, if you are on the short end of long odds for a long time. The Germans produced some very fine weapons in WWII. The Panzer VI (Tiger) totally outclassed the Sherman, and routiunely knocked them out at a 5 or 6 to 1 ratio. But the Sherman had been specifically designed to be easy to mass produce, and the US Army could afford to trade 6 Shermans for a Tiger, and replace their losses faster than the German Army.
The list goes on. German cruisers and battleships were state of the art, with perhaps the best armor, damage control, and gunnery control systems in the world, but the British Navy shrugged off their losses when they fought, and sank, or chased into port, the German surface fleet.
The ME-209 was a superior fighter to the Mustang and Spitfire, but it was swept from the skies.
I'm more than a little concerned that in any war with China, our small number of F-22s would prove to be too few, whether they are shot down in air-to-air combat, taken out on the ground by missle attacks, or saboatged by a fuel addative.
The only thing that China has in their favor is the extreme range of their AAM’s that are in many cases double the range of ours.