It's pretty clear that the Sukhoi Flanker derivates in the service of many Asian countries, especially PRC, far outclass all enemy fighters except for the few F22. The Australian blog
has extensively written on the topic. While I consider them too F-22-centric, their assessment of the aerial situation and capabilities seems quite correct to me.
brings the current advantage of the numerous PRC Flankers vs the few US F22, JSF and discounting legacy fighters to the conclusion of US loss of air supremavy in the PACRIM. Thus China is currentyl very safe and will be even safer in the future with the J-20 when her potential enemies opt for the JSF (some Chinese netizens complained about powerful potential enemy fighter-bombers too close to their bedsteads, I hope they can sleep better now).
So there appear several obvious questions to me:
Why is the moderately stealthy
not a business success?
Why doesn't the JSF get F-22nized to become a more air combat capable version? There seem superficially enough common design features to allow for these steps.
Why is South Korea the only country with some potential military clash (North Korean logistics would collapse early on in any fighting) in the PACRIM that briefly had a PAK FA acquisition idea that came to no fruition?
India's PAK FA derivate, HAL FGFA, seems the most sensible thing to bolster their defenses with the money they have. Why don't others follow, like Australia that is almost as unlikely to clash with India and Russia as it is to clash with Spain (Canberra-class) and faces numerous Flankers in their volatile north.
And from my European German perspective, I think the Eurofighter might be a not so good idea now. But it seems they learned from Russian design philosophy and are upgrading this thing with thrust vectoring, STOL, carrier capability and hopefully some real stealth concept that goes beyond the current coating effect. Having this "cheap" aircraft at the moment has a lot to do with the peace dividend for other other projects because in Europe we are a conflict backwater right now with might and mayhem concentrating somewhere else. But there's always hope because EADS and UAC (the manufacturer of all Russian aircrafts) swapped stocks.
For a very strange reason the Shanghai Cooperation technocomplexes, associates and allies seems to take a fighter and ranged fighter-bomber lead over the old NATO technocomplexes and associates that seem willing to cease that ground. This is unlike the Warsaw Pact time, because there's no deadly dual conflict, but it seems that there are two major technocomplexes competing with each other and I don't quite understand why the US, that has always been top dog, lets things slump that way while sinking money into a JSF that can't accomplish the mission or is way overbred for the environment where it can do something. Any ideas what's going on or is it the usual that missile trucks are just enough because we know where you are through our super-surveillance systems?
