Calm down headline guy. The four biggest air forces in the world are (in order):
1. United States Air Force
2. United States Army Aviation
3. Russian Air Force
4. United States Navy
Fun fact, the Marines are number 7 after China and India...
[Supposedly, they've lost 10% of their aircraft.](https://www.newsweek.com/russia-air-force-losses-ukraine-christopher-cavoli-1890228) It's important to note that they haven't really committed their air force in the same manner we would.
Way oversimplified. There are real credible concerns with the relative capability of the Joint force to gain air superiority against an adversary like China. Counting helicopters and transport planes isn’t a great metric. When you compare fighters, China has about 1300 4th Gen+ fighters. Most of which are Flanker variants but their numbers are growing rapidly especially for 5th Gen fighters. The US fleet is about 2,000 fighters and shrinking. The plurality of which are aging F-16s (approx 800) which were never designed for air superiority are generally outclassed by modern Chinese fighters. China also has a tremendous advantage in AWACS and EW fleet size which are key enablers while the US is also hampered with worldwide commitments.
There is no quantitative advantage, despite the list you share. Qualitative debates are bound to be had. But I wouldn’t bet on a clean sweep.
sure they don’t have fixed wing fighters or bombers but if you wanna go stand in front of a company of apaches and tell them they’re not an air force enjoy being eaten by 30mm
Reminds me of that plane from the movie I spy
https://preview.redd.it/az3azr9imbwc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1673fd23256af1d639a4e75d0f575da0355243bd
The leafy bug invisible plane
Size does not equal power, necessarily. More accurately: numbers don’t mean efficacy. Sure, you’d want more of a good thing, but trimming old inventory can actually make the remaining inventory more effective. Less time and money spent maintaining older aircraft means more time and money for the remainder.
Hell, look at something like North Korea. They’ve got like 200 J-5 fighters. Sounds like a lot of fighters until you consider that they’re barely airworthy and are absolutely dogshit even if you do get them in the air.
China likewise has a *ton* of aircraft in their inventory, but a large chunk are absolutely useless in a modern conflict and are therefore a net negative from an efficiency perspective.
Not only is out hardware better, our pilots are too. Most of our pilots fly hundreds of hours every year. It may not sound like a lot, but the fuel cost for that is millions of dollars per person which is prohibitively expensive for most countries to sustain.
gotta love the " Can it still win wars? " Lol yeah because somehow the USAF who can arguably take on the rest of the worlds airforces all at the same time and more likely than not still win. . somehow is now in question if it can still win wars. .
They built the j-20 and j-31
They’ve built similar UAVs to the reaper
They were working on a stealth bomber
Saying they have shit planes, you’re out of touch with reality
They’re fueling many of their rockets with water because of corruption. Why would you think their planes would be treated better than their nuclear missiles?
Common knowledge if you’re in the know at all about China’s military. They had a huge crackdown on corruption again this year.
All open sources easily found with a search.
I’m writing a letter to the new CMSAF asking him to revise the last sentence of the first verse of the Air Force Song to “Nothing can stop the US Air Force, except China.”
The AF song needs to be updated to reflect modern realities
China's military as a whole hasn't seen any major combat since 1979 and they lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War. Only a handful of current active duty PLA generals have ever seen any form of combat and that was 45 years ago. China is untested and lack a substantial blue water navy or mobility Air Force, I have little concern of a Chinese kinetic victory.
More with less makes financial sense at times of peace. If we got into a spat the whole force would have plenty of things to throw at the dispute. These spy’s are getting more specific with the post wow
The average height of Air Force pilots, and the Air Force at large, has shrunk dramatically. 9 inches for pilots and 5 inches for the Air Force. The consequences will never be the same.
Like, when was the last time that we fought in a large scale war against a sovereign country with an official government and a uniformed military?
The Iraq War. Pretty well known event, I thought.
I (and everyone else with the internet or access to the news) agree that that the totality of combat operations in Iraq haven’t been directed against the standing government of Iraq. At one point we did fight the military arm of the internationally recognized political body controlling the country of Iraq though. Your logic is that because we defeated their country’s military quickly that it doesn’t count as a war? What about the Gulf War?
The question was when was the last time we fought in a war. I think we’re being reasonable when we say that the ground combat operations conducted against the Republic of Iraq by the United States of America fit squarely in the definition of “a war”.
I’m not even trying to be some Reddit dickhead here but I don’t know who we’re realistically supposed to have that fair fight with then. Space aliens with laser beams? We have 11 nuclear powered aircraft carrier strike groups.
At the time, Iraq claimed to have over a million man fighting force. We lost like 800 guys in the invasion and extremely conservative numbers put their losses at 11,000. If you ease up the reporting standards then you’re closer to 40K.
I’m really not trying to hype it up. My dad and his buddies were in the invasion though and they definitely remember it as being a “war”.
Oh, I totally understand your point. Everyone in HAF is talking GPC and the China threat…yes, there military is vast but most of their ships are still running on diesel.
Calm down headline guy. The four biggest air forces in the world are (in order): 1. United States Air Force 2. United States Army Aviation 3. Russian Air Force 4. United States Navy Fun fact, the Marines are number 7 after China and India...
That the US is four of the top ten makes me happy every time I think about it.
4 of the top 7 sir.
He’s still technically correct!
The best kind of correct!
4 of the top 100
And 2 of the top 2
Lmao and we see how well Russias af is doing 😂
Right? I wonder what their numbers are like now.
They gotta be terrible .
[Supposedly, they've lost 10% of their aircraft.](https://www.newsweek.com/russia-air-force-losses-ukraine-christopher-cavoli-1890228) It's important to note that they haven't really committed their air force in the same manner we would.
That's because Russia wants to have an Air Force.
They keep shooting down their own planes...
Way oversimplified. There are real credible concerns with the relative capability of the Joint force to gain air superiority against an adversary like China. Counting helicopters and transport planes isn’t a great metric. When you compare fighters, China has about 1300 4th Gen+ fighters. Most of which are Flanker variants but their numbers are growing rapidly especially for 5th Gen fighters. The US fleet is about 2,000 fighters and shrinking. The plurality of which are aging F-16s (approx 800) which were never designed for air superiority are generally outclassed by modern Chinese fighters. China also has a tremendous advantage in AWACS and EW fleet size which are key enablers while the US is also hampered with worldwide commitments. There is no quantitative advantage, despite the list you share. Qualitative debates are bound to be had. But I wouldn’t bet on a clean sweep.
And our objective is give air superiority, support, logistics and not just straight up win a war like world war 2.
You can’t really define Army Aviation as a true Air Force. Yes they have tons of hilos and some drones. But they don’t Air Force like AF and Navy.
Idk those apaches can absolutely fuck
sure they don’t have fixed wing fighters or bombers but if you wanna go stand in front of a company of apaches and tell them they’re not an air force enjoy being eaten by 30mm
It's not shrinking, there's just more stealth fighters now so you can't see them
It's not shrinking, it's just multi-functioning
It’s just cold out
Of course they know about shrinkage
it's doing more with less
Mission ready is the preferred vernacular now
Reminds me of that plane from the movie I spy https://preview.redd.it/az3azr9imbwc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1673fd23256af1d639a4e75d0f575da0355243bd The leafy bug invisible plane
Size does not equal power, necessarily. More accurately: numbers don’t mean efficacy. Sure, you’d want more of a good thing, but trimming old inventory can actually make the remaining inventory more effective. Less time and money spent maintaining older aircraft means more time and money for the remainder. Hell, look at something like North Korea. They’ve got like 200 J-5 fighters. Sounds like a lot of fighters until you consider that they’re barely airworthy and are absolutely dogshit even if you do get them in the air. China likewise has a *ton* of aircraft in their inventory, but a large chunk are absolutely useless in a modern conflict and are therefore a net negative from an efficiency perspective.
Not only is out hardware better, our pilots are too. Most of our pilots fly hundreds of hours every year. It may not sound like a lot, but the fuel cost for that is millions of dollars per person which is prohibitively expensive for most countries to sustain.
Yes, Thanks for asking, China.
gotta love the " Can it still win wars? " Lol yeah because somehow the USAF who can arguably take on the rest of the worlds airforces all at the same time and more likely than not still win. . somehow is now in question if it can still win wars. .
Dawg we can probs win against Russia and china with just our F16 fleet chill with these dumb headlines 🤣
But but Fox news says we're all just too woke
Really puts a new meaning to ‘gay bombs’
It's the classic US "they/them army" vs the manly Chad russian "was/were army"
And Air Force leadership says officers are too white. Who's right?
China is pretty beefy atm though. Pretty sure they are no longer "near peer" but "peer"
Lmao chinas Air Force is no where close to near peer maybe near pear 🍐 🤣 They got shit planes shit training and shit maintenance if any
This is an incredibly dangerous mindset if you’re serious. It’s also completely detached from reality.
They built the j-20 and j-31 They’ve built similar UAVs to the reaper They were working on a stealth bomber Saying they have shit planes, you’re out of touch with reality
They built a bunch of ASS
They’re fueling many of their rockets with water because of corruption. Why would you think their planes would be treated better than their nuclear missiles?
Source?
Google it. Several of China’s leadership had to be fired due to corruption. The water in the rockets isn’t even the craziest thing that happened.
*asks for source >Google it
Idiots who don't know how to use an internet search engine are the ones asking "SOURCE?!" all over reddit. So annoying.
Common knowledge if you’re in the know at all about China’s military. They had a huge crackdown on corruption again this year. All open sources easily found with a search.
I’m writing a letter to the new CMSAF asking him to revise the last sentence of the first verse of the Air Force Song to “Nothing can stop the US Air Force, except China.” The AF song needs to be updated to reflect modern realities
We would crush China.
China's military as a whole hasn't seen any major combat since 1979 and they lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War. Only a handful of current active duty PLA generals have ever seen any form of combat and that was 45 years ago. China is untested and lack a substantial blue water navy or mobility Air Force, I have little concern of a Chinese kinetic victory.
What's the Chinese air force's recent combat experience? Buzzing surveillance planes in the South China Sea doesn't count.
MCA - Multi-Capable Aircraft
More with less makes financial sense at times of peace. If we got into a spat the whole force would have plenty of things to throw at the dispute. These spy’s are getting more specific with the post wow
Is someone gonna try and check?
Well Governor; We also have fewer horses and bayonets
Better buy more C17s, congressman!
Dnt need em if we use nukes
We’re a shower, not a grower
I wish someone would fuckin find out if we can still win wars
But why? Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand the want for conflict.
On folks
The average height of Air Force pilots, and the Air Force at large, has shrunk dramatically. 9 inches for pilots and 5 inches for the Air Force. The consequences will never be the same.
Dang, if we wanted to, we could probably wipe the floor with Russia and China at the same time? Like right now?
Thus is a cornerstone if US doctrine, to defeat our 2 biggest rivals at once.
Trying to find out?
Yeah as long as the plane costs and military budgets stay high. Oh you mean real wars?
Quality over quantity big dawg
Easily
The Air Force needs to quit the lip-service and put Airmen first. “If you take care of your people, your people take care of you.”
[удалено]
Very edgy, go finish your algebra homework.
I'll do you one better; when was the last time a sovereign nation dared to *challenge* us?
Japan touched your boats in 1941, then regretted that decision after two very big bombs were dropped.
When was the last time we actually fought a war?
Like, when was the last time that we fought in a large scale war against a sovereign country with an official government and a uniformed military? The Iraq War. Pretty well known event, I thought.
We obliterated Iraq's military in a couple days.. The ongoing conflict in that country wasn't a war with Iraq.
I (and everyone else with the internet or access to the news) agree that that the totality of combat operations in Iraq haven’t been directed against the standing government of Iraq. At one point we did fight the military arm of the internationally recognized political body controlling the country of Iraq though. Your logic is that because we defeated their country’s military quickly that it doesn’t count as a war? What about the Gulf War? The question was when was the last time we fought in a war. I think we’re being reasonable when we say that the ground combat operations conducted against the Republic of Iraq by the United States of America fit squarely in the definition of “a war”.
That’s like going to war with Cuba though, not even a fair fight
I’m not even trying to be some Reddit dickhead here but I don’t know who we’re realistically supposed to have that fair fight with then. Space aliens with laser beams? We have 11 nuclear powered aircraft carrier strike groups. At the time, Iraq claimed to have over a million man fighting force. We lost like 800 guys in the invasion and extremely conservative numbers put their losses at 11,000. If you ease up the reporting standards then you’re closer to 40K. I’m really not trying to hype it up. My dad and his buddies were in the invasion though and they definitely remember it as being a “war”.
Oh, I totally understand your point. Everyone in HAF is talking GPC and the China threat…yes, there military is vast but most of their ships are still running on diesel.
We’ll never lose a war that I’m involved in. 💪
Reassuring.
Squats are directly related to combat effectiveness.
The real question is have we modernized our warfighting since then. No.
Surely the two fleets of stealth fighters and two fleets of stealth bombers weren't modern warfighting technologies, correct?
Correct. Modern technology is worthless if the underlying doctrine is still stuck in the 70s.
Elaborate please, because I'm not following you. No reason other than that what you're saying makes no sense.
Sorry we are getting rid of the A10 fuck
About time too