Luftkrieg im 21. Jahrhundert

[Quintus Fabius]

revan:

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The hope that the plethora of existing warplanes could be economically replaced by a single airframe was deeply misplaced; the operational costs of new F-35s will exceed that of older aircraft for quite some time. The F-15, F-16, F/A-18, and A-10 remain more than capable of accomplishing most missions that the F-35 will conduct. Indeed, for many of the missions associated with the modern practice of airpower, A-1 Skyraiders and F-4 Phantom would perform perfectly well. The best hedge against failure of the F-35 program would have been investment in modernized versions of legacy aircraft, which could perform the traditional missions that do not require the specialized capabilities of the F-22 or F-35.

Konkrete Frage:

Brauchen wir gegen Syrien, den Irak, Lybien, gegen Mali oder die Zentralafrikanische Republik oder gegen Afghanistan F-35?! Die Antwort ist nein. Hier wären kostengünstigere Systeme sinnvoller.

Brauchen wir gegen die VR China die F-35? Gegen einen Staat der aktuell gerade mal ca 130 Flugzeuge aufbringen könnte die US Flugzeugen gefährlich werden können? Wo selbst diejenigen welche die VR China militärisch hochjubeln davon ausgehen, dass die J-20 und J-31 im besten Fall 3 : 1 gegen die F-35 bestehen können?

Bei ca 2000 F-22 und F-35 bedeutet dies, dass die VR China nicht weniger als 6000 Stealth-Kampfflugzeuge J-20 und J-31 bauen müsste. Wann sollte das je realisierbar sein, wo man jetzt bei einem Prototypen und 130 4,5Gen herum eiert?!

The F-35 has been developed under fundamentally dissimilar conditions; the F-15 and F-16 have not failed, but we are trying to envision how they might fail in the future, in order to solve problems that are necessarily conjectural.

The point is that the F-35 will likely be used under conditions that its developers do not currently envision. It is, if anything, a second-order peacetime aircraft, designed primarily around an imaginary -- if plausible -- vision of what future air combat might look like.

The F-35 will have a future. A different question is whether the type of warfare embodied in the F-35 will ever become central to U.S. strategic interests. High-intensity combat against a peer competitor opponent, or into the teeth of an advanced anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) system, may not occur within the lifetime of the airframe.

In retrospect, the United States should have hedged by devoting more attention to the F-22 (a position that this author, to his discredit, opposed at the time) or to legacy platforms. But the future of air warfare is hard to predict, and the F-35 may yet do extraordinary things.