TallarnDesertRaider
Registered Member
Oh, in the future? Maybe. The problem IMO is doctrinal going forwards. They really should, as you say, have any aircraft at all squirreled away almost permanently underground. But whatever they would procure should be practical for their overall theater strategy. I'm not sure getting 5th or 6th gen planes really fits in that, honestly. They'll be really expensive and complicated to manufacture but for unclear tactical gains.You took it wrong, I was talking about beyond 2027-28 when 60 or so SU-35S are supposed to arrive and are shoved inside underground bases to fight regional wars in future.
Overall, there is no airforce on earth except Chinese (and Russian to some extent) may be that can survive against USAF/USN/Israeli AF combination. They will destroy the fleet on ground within a week if not in air.
In the event that they achieve their maximal demands in this war, going forwards in context of a regional conflict with no external actors, what would a plane costing 10-100x what a missile does achieve? ISR honestly can be conducted using cheaper drones. Precision strikes? Combine them with drone ISR. In Ukraine we've seen Molniya/Orlan drones marking and guiding targets for Lancets. Could guide missiles the same way, potentially. And training a drone operator is far cheaper than training a fighter pilot, and the pool of available candidates is also comically larger.





