technical superiority can compensate for lacking own numbers or numerical superiority of the enemy to only a certain mark - and not more. Already during the cold war, some fighter pilots put the assumption of western analysts and planners that Western superiority in technology could compensate for the Warsaw Patc's numerical superiority, into some reasonable doubt. Additionally the fact remains that with a smaller fleet of units you can only be present at so and so many locations, and not more. Finally, the fewer units there are and the more costly=precious they are, the more costly it becomes every single loss of theirs, and the more costly it becomes to replace it.
For these two reasons, I am critical of these extremly costly platforms, whether it be the Raptor, or the JSF - I am certain that the JSF's ordered number swill see massive cuts, too, like the F-22 has seen them. I cannot argue wqizth that - if you nwant to run a big military, your economy miust be able to finacially afford and maitain that, which simply is not the case, so the nu7mbers miust be reduced. But I wonder if it is wise to have such costly systems, but in so limited quantities like the F-22.
Stanislaw Lem once wrote a satiric book about "Weapons systems of the 21st century". He predicted that by the end of the century the US Air Force would be just three combat planes anymore, which are kept hidden in armoured bunkers and which never fly
, since it would be too costly to even lose one of them due to pilot error, accident, or hostile fire.
Finally, let's look at present wars: we see Taliban and El Quaeda and Iraqi rebels and Afghan rebels fighting with relatively primtiive weapons. still they prove to be capable to prevent vcitory to america and her Allies. Thing slike Raptors and JSFs may be nice if needing to deal with the Chiebnse air force, but in the ore liekly sefcnarios of war of the present and forseeable future - they do not help us one little bit, their job could as well be done with old F-4 and A-10 (no hairsplitting please, you get my idea). In asymmetric wars, technology helps you only so far, and not more. What you need is sufficient numbers on platforms and troops. I do not judge here how l.iekly a war with Russia or china is. But I dare saying that asymmtric wars are the wars which have the by far highest probability to form the wars we need to expect for the forseeable future.
In other words: extremely expensive platforms like F-22 and F-35 are giving our military not what it needs for these wars, but gives our armies an equipement that it does not really need, and the cost of more vital variables on which we fail.
And maybe this is a self-deception of ours that we even
do want to fall to.