Invisible Threat

[SUBMAN1]

I hear ya to some degree. F-22 and F-35 I do not agree with you on. We need both of those for survival. The reason is not necessarily to take on China right now, but for survivability. The reason is not other aircraft per say, but new near impossible to evade Russian sams that are being sold the world over to anyone with money. SO you need a platform that can take on something akin to an SU-30 with thrust vectoring and forward canards (or possibly EF2000 since Europe wants to sell it to everybody lately) at the same time of being able to go into a hostile territory and come out again.

Our current aircraft can do it, but with an expected mass causality rate. Americans can't deal with casualties as evidenced with our almost unimaginably small 3000 dead in Iraq. 30 years ago, that would have been 50000 dead, but thats a whole different subject.

Basically, we need both aircraft badly. Look at Bosnia - that didn't go over so well either, but for some reason, the press didn't pick up on that much. Today, the threat is much much much worse.

-S

PS. I read the article with a grain of salt too, but he does have valid points. Milnet however is not focused on this type of article for the most part, so its always a good read when its owners have an opinion or two. Most of milnet is based on equipment capabilities.

PPS. THis is against older Sams and such. Imagine what would happen today? http://www.aeronautics.ru/natodown0524present.htm

PPPS. A Japanese zero with 1,929 mi range has farther range than any jet we have flying by the way!