Comment by slibhb
11 hours ago
He keeps citing China but the US isn't at war with China. For the wars that the US is fighting, i.e. against Iran and similarly equipped adversaries, the f-35 seems to be performing well.
11 hours ago
He keeps citing China but the US isn't at war with China. For the wars that the US is fighting, i.e. against Iran and similarly equipped adversaries, the f-35 seems to be performing well.
Yeah, but the war drums are beating for it.
USA is shifting focus to china in lots of their policy documents
China is massively building up arms
Lots of talk about a potential invasion of taiwan at some point.
Its clearly something war planners are worried about.
A potential Chinese-American hot war is the conflict that today’s USAF and USSF should be preparing for.
Winning sub-peer conflicts is fine for projecting hard power (when it works...) and protecting allies (when you have them...) but it doesn’t really budge the needle on national security.
Fighting a war against China (presumably over Taiwan) doesn't seem like it would have much to do with national security.
That aside, people are simply not able to model how the next peer conflict will be fought ahead of time. All sides will be learning as they go. Building complex systems like the F-35 seems like a good way to maintain engingeering/technology culture that can be adapted when the time comes.
Also, I'm fairly skeptical of China's military. They keep purging people, and the human element in war seems underrated.