Or we could put it like this.
"There is no radar - American or otherwise, modern or vintage - that can live through a targeted Chinese SEAD/DEAD campaign with hundreds of assets, like the one we saw. Nothing is surviving this.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
Or we could put it like this.
"There is no radar - American or otherwise, modern or vintage - that can live through a targeted Chinese SEAD/DEAD campaign with hundreds of assets, like the one we saw. Nothing is surviving this.
It already has happened
This was 4 years ago.
Mirages are old, poorly maintained, slow to get spares
F-16 are better maintained, but the A/Bs are 30 years old now
PLAAF also is using this attrition against JASDF
Only F-15J is long ranged enough to do intercepts, but they are 40 years old.
About 80-90% of the Taiwanese population lives within 30km of the Western Coastline.
There is no requirement for lots of helicopters for the mass transportation of Chinese troops inland
All of them have been upgraded to V standard. As I said the real concern are the brand new F-16V not yet delivered. The upgraded ones have issues with power generation for AESA radar and the airframes themselves are too old for intense maneuvers.
Are the airframe too old? Reportedly this specific airframe has 3,894 hours which isn't that much considering the original F-16s were designed for 8,000 hours while there are also extension programs to further extend life to 12,000 hours or even more.
I was not aware of the hours for this specific airframe. Either way the brand new F-16V with uprated engine will allow the airframe to unlock its true potential. As is the F-16A/B upgrades are kinda lackluster both kinematically and in BVR.
It's what the announcement said back in the day. I remember discussing it on r/LCD. Not only new frames, but the original F-16s being upgraded to the V standard for Taiwan. It's pretty impressive actually and one of their better procurement decisions.
Is the Taiwanese F-16V really one of the better procurement decisions?
It doesn't help the F-16s when they're sitting helpless on the ground.
Nor will it make much difference (if any) when facing significantly larger numbers of Chinese stealth fighters in the air
Taiwan's arms procurement program is essentially paying protection money to the United States while also generating hefty kickbacks for those in power; discussing the actual effectiveness of those weapons is meaningless.