I'm not sure if it's worthwhile doing tallies of every country's aircraft inventory. The fighting isn't some abstract battlefield; it's in the Western Pacific so the aircraft that are in theater or can be flown there will matter.
First, we can get rid of Australia. Not only is it impossible for Australian planes to deploy to the Western Pacific, but there wouldn't be any basing for them, and there's no chance in hell that Australia would get themselves into a war with China. Next, we can mostly ignore Japan as well. The fight against China is far enough that it'd be very hard to get many planes into action. And of those, only the F-35s will be able to contribute meaningfully. I also can't see Japan running their Izumo class carriers into Chinese missile range - it's far too much risk and far too much gain.
I personally think that the US wouldn't get involved either as all of their procurement choices and other signals point towards noninterference. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that they decide to commit whatever they can towards the Taiwan scenario.
Conventional wisdom is that American forces won't be able to make it to Taiwan until D-Day+7, so we can separate the fighting into two phases, before and after. In the early phase, PLAAF and PLARF are going to do their best to knock out as much of the ROCAF as possible. It's likely that any planes not withdrawn from combat will be either knocked out by Chinese fighters or artillery. What can the Americans contribute to the first few days? It's probably just whatever they have based in Okinawa or Luzon. Any other bases are a little too far from the action so they will have to be moved to forward bases first. There are no F-22s or F-35s stationed in these bases, so the only fighters available will be F-16s and F-15s and whatever F/A-18s that might be stationed there. Committing these planes against the full force of the PLAAF is staight up suicide so it's a Hobson's choice or either doing just that, or letting the ROCAF get slaughtered without helping.
So when can American 5th gens get into action? Personally I don't think that there is a practical way of getting USAF F-22s and F-35s into the Western Pacific at all. The distances are just too great and there just isn't any place to base them. Given enough time, the US could build new airbases, but I doubt that either Japan or Philippines would be all that enthusiastic about it, and it'd take weeks to months to pull it off anyways. So the only 5th gens that will see action will be the ones on the American carriers. So how many carriers can the Americans move into action? I think that 5 supercarriers is a complete fantasy, but let's just say that they can get 3 supercarriers and 4 LHAs into theater. With the standard complement of 14 F-35Cs per supercarrier and a standard loadout of 6 F-35Bs per LHA, that gives us 66 F-35s total. This force is going up against at least 300+ J-20s and another 600+ 4.5 gen fighters, if the J-35 hasn't been inducted in numbers yet. Also they will be flying with vastly inferior AWACS support and the Americans will be at the end of a very long logistics train. It's just a massacre waiting to happen.
First, we can get rid of Australia. Not only is it impossible for Australian planes to deploy to the Western Pacific, but there wouldn't be any basing for them, and there's no chance in hell that Australia would get themselves into a war with China. Next, we can mostly ignore Japan as well. The fight against China is far enough that it'd be very hard to get many planes into action. And of those, only the F-35s will be able to contribute meaningfully. I also can't see Japan running their Izumo class carriers into Chinese missile range - it's far too much risk and far too much gain.
I personally think that the US wouldn't get involved either as all of their procurement choices and other signals point towards noninterference. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that they decide to commit whatever they can towards the Taiwan scenario.
Conventional wisdom is that American forces won't be able to make it to Taiwan until D-Day+7, so we can separate the fighting into two phases, before and after. In the early phase, PLAAF and PLARF are going to do their best to knock out as much of the ROCAF as possible. It's likely that any planes not withdrawn from combat will be either knocked out by Chinese fighters or artillery. What can the Americans contribute to the first few days? It's probably just whatever they have based in Okinawa or Luzon. Any other bases are a little too far from the action so they will have to be moved to forward bases first. There are no F-22s or F-35s stationed in these bases, so the only fighters available will be F-16s and F-15s and whatever F/A-18s that might be stationed there. Committing these planes against the full force of the PLAAF is staight up suicide so it's a Hobson's choice or either doing just that, or letting the ROCAF get slaughtered without helping.
So when can American 5th gens get into action? Personally I don't think that there is a practical way of getting USAF F-22s and F-35s into the Western Pacific at all. The distances are just too great and there just isn't any place to base them. Given enough time, the US could build new airbases, but I doubt that either Japan or Philippines would be all that enthusiastic about it, and it'd take weeks to months to pull it off anyways. So the only 5th gens that will see action will be the ones on the American carriers. So how many carriers can the Americans move into action? I think that 5 supercarriers is a complete fantasy, but let's just say that they can get 3 supercarriers and 4 LHAs into theater. With the standard complement of 14 F-35Cs per supercarrier and a standard loadout of 6 F-35Bs per LHA, that gives us 66 F-35s total. This force is going up against at least 300+ J-20s and another 600+ 4.5 gen fighters, if the J-35 hasn't been inducted in numbers yet. Also they will be flying with vastly inferior AWACS support and the Americans will be at the end of a very long logistics train. It's just a massacre waiting to happen.
