See China's new fighter jet in action

[Skybird]

The mhigher advanced general technology levels become, the smaller the tech gap between leading and trailing powers becomes.

And the more irrelevant pilot quality becomes. In WWII and Korea, dogfighting skills and team tactics were of paramount importance. With the ground-launched SAMs and plane-carried missiles, this importance already suffered a blow in Vietnam. Retraining pilots and adapting to the new thgreats, restablished that to some degree, but today missiles have a fail-safe quota and manouverability where human bodies and minds cannot compete anymore. Tehcnical adaption became even more important in defense against thgese wepoaons, but the more high tech gets distrubvuted on the globe, the lesser the advantages of those who technologically adapted first will be, and will shrink. The relevance of stealth fighters is niot as big anymore as it once was, thre advantage the Us had with these, is not as big anymore now that potential enemies have adapted to that in radar and missile technologies claimed to be potent enough to find stealthed aircraft (Russia).

I dare to make two predictions.

First, the decive wepaon of the next big wear will not be stealth aircraft and stealth ships, but RC-drones, cyberweapons, maybe even already autonomnous drones by then. The current fith egneraiton of fighter aircraft developed, possibly will be the last manned fighter aircraft ever being developed.

Second, the charm of superior numbers will become more important once again: the question who can suffer bigger losses without getting knocked out by them, the ability to replace losses, to be present in several places simultaneously - in physical, battle-potent presence. Tech advantages can compensate inferior numbers only to this or that degree, and not beyond that. And only if the tech leadership is sufficient enough. The smaller this lead is, the more relevant numbers become again.

(And numbers mean money. And money means the fiscal system and the messy state it is in. I think the forces needed to be victorious against China, the West will find impossible to fianbnce, since these forces must be buzild in peace times when the attractiveness of doing that is low - during war, the losses will increase rapidly, due to the lethality the next war will be fought with, and the aggressiveness).

The - I agree: very uncomfortable - conclusion? Logic demands that if this war is seen as inevitable anyway, we should launch it now while we still have a minor chance to win it. In the future we will find it impossible to win, most likely. If then we would not fight war and accept defeat, and we anticipate that already now, we agree already now in the porsent moiment to accept defeat and to give it all up and accept enemy's victory. Or does anyone believe China will hold back their ambitions? I once did, many years ago. I do not believe that anymore.

Life can be a bitch. But I am just stating the obvious conclusion.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Didn't Stalin say that quantity was a quality in itself?

They do say so, not to say that the T-34 didn't have a quality of its own, it was a damn fine tank, especially the 85mm version, and part of its excellence was the ease of manufacture. Same goes for the Sherman, you guys could crank those babies out in the thousands, and they weren't terrible tanks, despite what Wehraboos will say.
Ultimately what it boils down to is production, manpower and logistics. Get those three right and the odds improve.

Of course, that's only in a conventional war...

[Reece]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Probably full of Vacuum tubes (Thermionic valves)

They can make some good quality gear, they just sell their crap to us!!

I loved the old valve radio's, they had a good sound and plenty of beef!!

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Or does anyone believe China will hold back their ambitions? I once did, many years ago. I do not believe that anymore.

It's a tough one to consider, it's not easy to get into the mindset of the men of Beijing, but current attitudes seem to indicate no desire for a global military expansion, but more regional. Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, even perhaps Australia would be viable targets, to basically push the US back to Hawaii and perhaps beyond.
In a way, I think China seeks to recreate the Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere...although if you said that to anyone in Beijing you'd be summarily executed.
The same goes for Russia, I don't see a desire in Putin to drive all the way to the Channel, but certainly he wants a buffer zone of pro-Russian states between Moscow and Berlin, and that's a very Russian viewpoint which comes from centuries of being the whipping boy for Europe.
That being said, there are some geopolitical strategic points which either China or Russia might be willing to go out of their comfort zone to engage in. For Russia that would be Syria, because of their investments in the area, and for China I think that would be Africa, because of resource gathering.

Ultimately, there are, I think, three or four factors that will spur conflict in the coming centuries.
The climate. Some argue that this was the spark which ignited the Syrian civil war. Droughts, flooding, that kind of thing, is going to prompt some governments to do things that they would not ordinarily do. The potential for North Korea to do something stupid because of a catastrophically bad harvest leading to internet unrest cannot be downplayed.
Resources. Not just things like oil, which some argue is a major factor for western decisions in recent years in the Middle East, but more basic things like water and land for farming. Also potentially base metals if we don't start mining outside the planet.
Social changes. We are running into a time where there are going to be a lot more people than there will be jobs for them to go into. That is unsustainable and is going to cause a lot of conflict, most likely not international conflict, but intranational. When you throw in other factors, such as wealth divide, racial division and of course our old favourite, religion, it's a nice tinder bed for people to kill people.

The nature of such wars will be as you have already said, an increasing bias towards machine based technology.

I would be hesitant though to suggest that it would be prudent to strike now. It is rare that any good comes of an empire trying to prolong its dominance through pre-emptive warfare. If anything it could hasten our decline.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Commander Wallace

By the way jim, the sparrow missile is a Aim-7. it's a medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile.

It sure is, I was trying to give an example of the ground-launched SAMs and plane-carried missiles.

[Commander Wallace]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

It sure is, I was trying to give an example of the ground-launched SAMs and plane-carried missiles.

Considering your " Man Cave " has glass display cases filled with every combat aircraft imaginable, including helicopters, It would follow you would know about the weapons they carry as well.

The RIM-7 Sea Sparrow is based on the sparrow AA missile. The sparrow didn't perform well in Vietnam. The Sparrows have been continually improved with upgrades since then.

Thanks for the clarification Jim.

[Jimbuna]

No problem matey

The Meteor:

https://warisboring.com/the-best-air...fa8#.9957xowo3

[em2nought]

Didn't copy the F-35? Those Chinese are darned smart! They probably don't have any Osprey clones either.

[Von Due]

As for copying, well, that's been a thing since day one, hasn't it? In avation, it started in WW1. In 1944-45, everyone and their dogs had an me-262 clone in their hangar. With the F-15 on the drawing board, suddenly USSR saw the brillancy in dual engine-tail fins, Concordsky gave it it's best go, the Sabre against the Mig-15.

All this talk about 5th gen fighters and their use in BVR engagements though, is something that has me wondering. It appears that BVR might not be as useful as computer games would like to have us believe.

Various sources point out weaknesses in BVR. Weaknesses that ultimately means dogfights will still be what fighters will find themselves in. 3 of those weaknesses are
-There is still no technology available for long range ID of a target with sufficient reliability
-The weapons' tracking capabilities need to reach a level still not present in any weapon system
-The range and maneuverability of long range weapons means that
1) Outside the no escape zone, the target can with relative ease outfly the missile which has a very limited energy available
2) The no escape zone is close to, or within visual range.

It makes me wonder how successful heavy, not-so-agile (relatively speaking) fighters will be, whatever generation they may be, up against older more nimble designs more suited for close air duels.

Sources
http://navy-matters.blogspot.no/2012...it-useful.html
https://defenseissues.net/2013/04/27...of-bvr-combat/

Now, read those sources any way you want but it's food for thoughts.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by Commander Wallace

By the way jim, the sparrow missile is a Aim-7. it's a medium-range semi-active radar homing air-to-air missile. I'm sure it was a typo.

Jim may correct himself if I misunderstood, but I think he was referring to AIM-7 Sparrow and RIM-7 Sea Sparrow. These have been mostly replaced by AIM-120 AMRAAM and RIM-162 ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) respectively.

EDIT: Nevermind. Missed the second page...

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by em2nought

Didn't copy the F-35? Those Chinese are darned smart! They probably don't have any Osprey clones either.

Crud. That was our strategic plan all along. I guess they were too smart to fall for that one.

There is still a chance they will fall for "Big Data" and "The Cloud".

Fingers crossed

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Platapus

"The Cloud".

Don't worry, Beijing has gone for "The Cloud" in a big way: