Tomorrow’s fight will NOT be that.
All of our wars since Vietnam (after, but arguably during) have benefitted from largely uncontested airspace. That's been the case for over 40 years, and through many conflicts.Why should we expect otherwise? The only conflict the U.S. might be engaged where that wouldn't be the case is an an all-out war with Russia or China, either on their territory or, like in Korea, an awkward proxy war where we're unable or unwilling to control airspace. (Hopefully we don't ever repeat the mistake of Vietnam, where we refused to control either the ground or airspace in North Vietnam for flimsy political reasons.) It seems pretty dumb to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on such a theoretical conflict, especially given that so far the nuclear powers have managed to avoid such direct conflict. In every last one of our conflicts with substantial American ground troops in the past half century, we've always controlled the airspace in short order. If it's ever the case where we won't be able to control the airspace, we'd have bigger problems than bike shedding this sort of technology. Any difference between the F-35 and the cheaper alternative (Super Hornet, A-10, etc) would be negligible. I just don't understand wasting the money. I understand the principle is to plan for the next war, not the previous war. But after a half dozen previous wars with identical circumstances, and several similar on the horizon, at some point not taking _reality_ into account seems grossly short-sighted. Yes, MANPADS may be getting better, but there are more effective and cheaper solutions to maintaining effective control of the airspace (excepting the above exception) than the F-35 or similar platforms. |