I've been listening to various USAF talk recently about how they plan to defeat China in a West Pacific scenario. Specifically to deal with China's missile threats and air defense system. Most of them is kind of similar like this
That one does seem to be a joke to me. In reality, their plan is more like having each F-22/35 control several XQ-58A loyal wingman. The concept is sending stealthy, attritable and cheap UCAVs in more dangerous areas to weaken defences for the manned aircraft. So far, the idea is having these systems to overwhelm air defense with a lot of EW pressure and saturate the air defence system. This would allow air defense to be defeated with less risk for the higher valued manned aircraft.
I think it's important to talk about how China could launch similar attacks and to break up these type of attacks.
For the former, we have seen GJ-11, CH-7 and FH-97 thus far. The CASC UCAVs are likely just for the export market, so I don't think CH-7/FH-97 will join service with PLA. It's pretty easy to see how GJ-11 and follow-on class could be used to launch saturation attacks against enemy air defense/military base/naval ships. Having very stealthy flywing type of UCAV could allow them to get close enough to a carrier group, start jamming/confusing/spoofing naval radars and then launch PGMs or ARMs against high valued naval ships to take out the sensor/VLS systems on them. Between something like GJ-11 and XQ-58A, I would much rather have GJ-11, since the former would have better stealth, range and payload. On top of that, the flywing design also allow carrying larger conformal electronic antennas to perform ISR tasks and EW missions. While it would be interesting for them to develop something like FH-97 for domestic use, I don't if it would have any advantage over GJ-11.
For the latter, I think there needs to be continued investment in 3 areas: EW, AEW and interception. For the first one, that could come in the form of having even more EW aircraft in the air. That could be either manned or unmanned. Any manned/unmanned teaming solution would lose a lot of its effectiveness if the UCAVs lose communication with the manned aircraft. USAF has talked about operating F-22/35 without communication in a really competitive high intensity environment. I'm not sure how something like XQ-58A would far in such an environment.
Secondly, I think they will need to continue investing in procuring more manned (like KJ-200/500) and unmanned (like Divine Eagle) AEW solutions. If there are more targets coming that are stealthy, then you also need more AEW platform in the air to detect them and coordinate interceptions. In order to cover China's very long air space, quantity really matters.
Thirdly, how do you intercept more attacking aircraft? The most obvious suggestion would be expanding their brigade/bases sizes to have more J-20s and J-16s in the coastal areas. They are already doing that. It should be very easy for a modern manned aircraft to shoot down a first or second generation UCAV. Aside from that, could they develop more A2A type of UCAVs? Such a UCAV would have lower cost, maintenace and longer endurance than a manned aircraft. They'd be more attritable. They could be used to attack UCAVs and helicopters and larger aircraft. As AI continue to improve, such UCAVs will also become more capable. Although, I don't think they will be able to defeat manned fighter jet anytime soon. We've seen something like Anjian UCAV. That looks to be what I would imagine an A2A UCAV would look like. I'd be curious to see if PLAAF gives funding to put that concept into a real program in the near future.