U.S. Air Force
Business Insider: The US's military edge over Russia and China has come down to one plane
Since World War II, the US has dominated the skies in any region in which it wishes to project power — but recent competition from countries like Russia and China threaten to erode that edge, and only a small group of elite pilots maintain the US's edge in air superiority.
Russia has deployed powerful missile-defense batteries to Syria and its European enclave of Kaliningrad. The US Air Force can't operate in those domains without severe risk. US President Barack Obama himself has acknowledged that these missile deployments greatly complicate and limit the US's options to project power in Syria.
China has undertaken the breathtaking feat of building and militarizing islands in the South China Sea, outfitting them with runways and radar sites that could allow Beijing to establish an air defense and identification zone, the likes of which the US would struggle to pierce.
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Update: The F-22 Raptor Is the World's Best Fighter (And It Has a Secret Weapon That Is Out in the Open) (National Interest)
WNU Editor: There are only 180+ in the fleet. They better make eacj jet count.
The F-22 has always been my personal favorite, and its good to see it get the recognition it deserves in light of the F35 disaster. It's a damn shame that the US didn't try to improve upon the F22's design rather than rely on a much inferior plane.
ReplyDeleteEven the F-22, however, can't make an insane geopolitical policy, based on the notion that the US is the only superpower and won't put up with any thing it perceives to be a challenge to that status. That's been the underlying assumption of US foreign and national security policy since GW Bush, which was first announced by Cheney in the draft 1992 defense planning guidance. Such an outlook can only end in disaster for everybody, no matter how many F-22's we have.
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