The original problem that face Taiwan is to be landlocked at an alarming proximity of its military rival. However Taiwan is an island and how do you defend such island… By extending the fight out to sea. The British empire has done that for centuries and the present strategy still bear traces of this.
Taiwan should inspire itself and benefits from the investments made by the UK: the couple of aircraft and carrier that this country is fielding is an example to follow. Add a modern naval SAM system, from the US, Europe or one dev’d in coop with India and Israel, and you have a coherent batlle management system, military and politically that will offer resilience by extending the fight well beyond the Taiwan strait.

To expand on that, some strategically placed mine fields and the denial/destruction of harbour infrastructure would make the long term support of landed ground forces nearly impossible.

Remark to djcross:
I don’t think that any SAM system can radiate for minutes and then travel for Kilometers. You’ll need a very dense network to protect your territory that way as at any time a lot of system will be off on the road.
This is where the concept of mobile SAM meets its limit. Either you’ll need a topography that allow a quick concealment for a short travel time or a very long engagement range to increase your reaction time. And then you face the wall of cost, bulkiness, discretion etc… Such SAM are strategically effectives. They don’t lead to air dominance in an all-out confrontation.

You don’t need protection where your assets aren’t. Hence the protection envelopes were envisioned primarily to cover units moving around the forward battle area. Given the overlap that could occur with big systems such as the S-300 with smaller regions protected by Buk coordinated overlapping movement is certainly not difficult.

USAF or USAAF, it doesn’t matter. During World War Two the AAF had complete command and control of all aviation assets within the Army.

In its expansion and conduct of the war, the AAF became more than just an arm of the greater organization. By the end of World War II, the Army Air Forces had become virtually an independent service. By regulation and executive order, it was a subordinate agency of the War Department (as were the Army Ground Forces and the Army Service Forces) tasked only with organizing, training, and equipping combat units, and limited in responsibility to the continental United States. In reality, Headquarters AAF controlled the conduct of all aspects of the air war in every part of the world, determining air policy and issuing orders without transmitting them through the Army Chief of Staff. This “contrast between theory and fact is…fundamental to an understanding of the AAF

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Air_Forces

This is however not CAS at all as what costituite a prerequisite for such a mission is exactly a continue permanence over the battlefield.
It is this that made such a mission problematic when performed against a serious air defence, more than the type of armament used IMHO but also by the serious deence publication that I’ve talked about.

If you are going to talk about CAS, especially from western platforms, then you need to read the doctrine… Below is the US Joint Doctrine on CAS, updated 25 Nov 2014.

Close air support (CAS) is air action by fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft against hostile targets that are in close proximity to friendly forces and requires detailed integration of each air mission with the fire and movement of those forces.

https://fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp3_09_3.pdf

An article on af.mil website reads in part…
But remember, air combat is a team sport. There are no lone eagles.

100% agree. What separates the men from the boys in air warfare are the support assets like the AOC, weaponeering and intel, common operating pictures, AAR, naval cruise missile support etc.

The more you fligh high, the more distant ground based radar can spot you.
For the rest i didn’t see how penetration mission that were envisioned for B-2 can be performed at all against even actual defences, less even against the ones that we can expect to be operative for when the b-21 woud be ready, no matter how stealthy a future plane can be.

So what is the gap in knowledge between yourself and the USAF?

The USAF has determined that the B-21 will be survivable within a modern IADS based on their knowledge of the current battlespace, their projections based on analytical assessment of what will be developed, manufactured and introduced into service over the next 50 years. This knowledge and assessment is feed from the largest and most capable intelligence gathering program the world has ever seen. Your knowledge is based on your reading of some brochure material, websites from manufacturers and maybe a science degree?

I think it is foolish to underestimate the knowledge and experience that the only current operator of operational stealth aircraft has. It also belies the fact that other nations, including Russia and China, continue to develop stealth fighter designs and both countries have a desire to develop stealthy bomber designs. Surely then they must be doing the wrong thing as these designs won’t survive in a modern IADS? If so then what is the point of these programs?

It’s nonetheless far from being insignificant up to LRIP5 and still noticable up to LRIP8. The LRIP quantities already exceed the annual production of 4th gens by a fair margin and hundreds of aircraft will have been produced and as it seems a few billions being spent to compensate the concurrency. That puts Hopsalot’s statement…

…a bit into a different perspective!

So the overall cost is US$4.8 million as per Vnomad for the US Government, with LM taking a hit and probably paying about 2/3 thirds of that for all LRIP 5+ jets.

The actual question that needs to be answered is has concurrency brought the overall cost of the airframe down greater than the cost of concurrency mods? So did building more airframes early reduce the cost of each airframe enough to compensate for concurrency? Given the total concurrency cost as above, it is very likely that building twice the number of jets during the LRIP phase, or at the very least building to the original LRIP numbers, resulted in a greater than US4.8 million reduction in acquisition costs over the LRIP phase for each jet.

Your missing the bit about flying them less ~300hrs to ~250hrs… 17% less flying per year stretches out the planned maintenance and should reduce costs including a 17% reduction in fuel. your looking at an increase of 11% in flight hours (Source page 92 SAR 2016), you should see a net saving, see down below for reasoning.

No actually. You are attributing entirely too much value to the per hour cost and not to the overall cost to fly a fighter jet. For example, the RAAF F/A-18 hornet costs somewhere between 15-20k per flight hour, but the overall cost of operating the jet, including the flight hour cost, is upwards 70k.
https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/management-australias-air-combat-capability-%E2%80%94-fa-18-hornet-and-super-hornet

The flight hour cost is typically less than a third of the total ownership cost of the aircraft. Hence, a reduction in flight hours does not provide a significant saving compared to the overall cost of operating the jet, especially if that operation is stretched a further six years.

Try these figures From the SAR reports operational costs FY 2015 were $597773.6 ^ FY2017 are $620805.4 we are not seeing a decrease.

Because the difference in those figures is the F-35A being flown for six years longer…

The irony is the 2015 SAR shows a figure of 32.554k per flight hour, while the 2017 SAR shows a figure of 29.806k per flight hour. Low and behold, an approximate 10% reduction in the per flight hour cost. While as you say there are different estimations taken into that (low gas price, better engine performance and better hardware modification cost, it shows a clear trend that cannot be solely attributed to those changes.

Its a pity you didn’t claim that – You will find the Average Annual Cost Per Flying Hour have decreased to those sort of figures, but only because of the lowering of the flight hours per year and a 6 year increase in lifetime, those sort of things really help with that average figure, I’d expect to see 25% increase on those figures without those 6 years..
Read page 92, you’ll find the relevant details on the current cost ‘savings’ by including reducing the price per gallon of fuel from previous estimates, and using ‘contracted values’ instead of analogy and parametric estimating :highly_amused:
Simply put they only count the contracted values and not estimate the cost by comparison with previous projects or estimate against a set of fixed criteria, that means if it isn’t contracted yet it doesn’t count.
but the salient point is
Note the rising cost, also note the following:-
Now that’s interesting, the reliability isn’t meeting the expected reliability due to the learning curve, this is especially relevant when you read on.
Hmm so they are not meeting the current estimates and it will result in substantial changes to the costs, care to guess which way the cost will go
In short – Just listening to Bogdens sound bites will give you quite a different perspective that looking at the detailed figures on F-35 costs and progress..
Cheers

Again, you are completely missing the point. You are trying to compare the per flight hour operating cost of an airframe, in this instance the F-35A, that is not even IOC with its primary customer let alone the rest of the ordered nations, to others, that are in service and operational, with knowledge and learned maintenance in some cases of twenty plus years.

Given the current difference between the F-16 and F-35 is 4k an hour OR approx 18% I see no reason that gap will not close further to the 10-15% expected figure.

Anyway, back to Typhoon…

The commonality between F-35 is small ~30%, your in effect getting 3 fleets of dissimilar aircraft so don’t go counting all those F-35 in one.

Hold on, you compared to the Eurocanards. Given there are three of them that have little to no commonality between them lumping all three F-35 variants in together is fine given the commonality between them is greater.

It will certainly be cheaper than having to long term maintain a single airframe with less than a half, a third or even a tenth of the number in service. Just as economies of scale effect production, they also affect maintenance.

You also haven’t provided any evidence that the Eurocanards are cheaper to overhaul than the F-35.

While Concurrency issues will plague (cost) the F-35 for the next decade, its the maintenance cost that have risen that is a concern.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-fighter-idUSKCN0WQ2GD
.

Did you read the article instead of just blindly quoting the link?

The increased maintenance cost is due to the respective US Services indicating the jets will fly 250 hours per year instead of 300, and therefore be in service for 6 years longer if the fleet flies the full 8000 hour lifetime of the jet.

Compare this to a Eurofighter that has a 6,000 hour lifetime. From a cost perspective in the F-35 you get an airframe that can fly 25% longer for a similar price.

~additional 10% on the already 1.5 times the cost of ‘legacy’ fighters and much more for the C and STOVL.

Remember these costs are best estimates of LM….. and I think you know how that works out.

Actually your costing is wrong. At the Australian Senate Committee hearing, it was testified that in apples to apples comparisons the F-35A is expected to be between 10-15% above the F-16 in operating cost. Given it flies nearly twice as far and is significantly more capable when it does, that seems pretty fair increase in operating cost.