I know that a number of our antipodean cousins don't have any time for Dr Kopp, but I post this link as a point of discussion of the survivability of the F-35B/C in the pacific basin if the USN ever had to tangle with the PLAAF around Taiwan during the next 30 years.
What China's New J-20 Stealth Fighter Means for the F-35 JSF and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
.......Over the past few days, images have emerged of the new Chinese Stealth Fighter, the J-XX or the J-20. On the 29th January 2010, the Russians first flew the PAK-FA, and the Su-35S, which first flew on 28th February 2008, is expected to achieve IOC in early 2011. Meanwhile, back at the US fighter-farm, the JSF which first flew on 15th December 2006, has experienced continuing difficulties with the STOVL version and is likely to enter a substantial re-design programme in 2011, adding more years and even greater costs to the already frequently-extended development phase.
By the time the F-35 makes IOC (if it ever does) it will be, to use that well-known technical term, ‘toast’.
Even if an extensive redesign produces an aircraft that meets the March 2000 Joint Operational Requirements Document (JORD), the “Su-35S, PAK-FA, J-20 world” of 2015-2020 will be much different than the “Su-27S, MiG-29 world” that existed when the JORD was first released. Most astonishingly, when gross cost overruns forced a review of the program, the JORD specifications were not updated to encompass the 2015 - 2025 air combat environment. Instead, during the ensuing process that followed the Nunn-McCurdy Breach, the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) re-verified and re-validated the F-35 JSF Operational Requirements Document of March 13, 2000, as representing a capability “essential to the national security” (refer JROCM 078-10 dated May 20, 2010). And people wonder why some refer to the Nunn McCurdy process as the
“codification of silliness, if not mendacity and misfeasance”?
And if the F-35 is ‘toast’ that makes the F/A-18E/F ‘cinders’ – this 1985 ‘old wine in a new bottle’ aircraft has some fancy new electronics, but none that will save it from destruction in combat. Like the distracted car driver, the crews of the F-35 and the F/A-18E/F can be fully informed by watching the dancing digital displays, but they cannot avoid the inevitable crash...........