I wanted to move the discussion to another topic so this topic isn't polluted as it's offtopic... but It was brought to my attention any discussions such as these may not be allowed?!? Until I know more, I'll keep the replies here but I am really even more sure that this is all so very offtopic. Yet I don't know where to move it.
I reckon the Chinese Air Force could operate airborne tankers some 300km off the Taiwan coastline, which is only 600km from the Chinese coastline.
Remember there is likely to be a SAG or Carrier Group in the same area.
So establishing a continuous CAP (with J-20/J-15/J-11) at 1000-1500km from the Chinese coastline would be feasible.
Who knows where China could operate its tankers with impunity and for how long. 600 km from chinese coastline personally seems to far away, and too close to various possible bases in Japan. But i'm sure different people will have different ideas about that.
Establishing continuous CAP anywhere, by any air force, especially so far away from a base, 1000+ km is extremely costly. Perhaps a small group of planes could be maintaned on cap, depending on air force size. But realistically CAPs are not the way to control an area. A cap 1250 km away from a base, for example, needs one full refueling and roughly 3 hours of transit time as well as 3 or so hours of patrol time. Over a long time period, meaning weeks or more, a plane participating in such CAP would be able to do one sortie per day. So, for each one of those planes on CAP, there would have to be 8 planes in total available. For 12 planes on CAP, for example, one large tanker would be needed to support them, and 96 combat planes would be needed overall. To maintain a huge CAP of 100 planes, one would need 800 fighters. With 6 hours of flight per day, within a few months the fighters would get worn out enough that they'd need maintanenace that can't possibly be done within the 18 hours remaining between missions. So more fighters would be needed to upkeep such a CAP. Possibly even a 1000, to upkeep those 100 planes. Right now, entire Chinese air forces have roughly 1050-1100 decently ranged and decently modern fighters.
and what could be achieved? Bunch of fighters would be grouped and tied to one single area. Perhaps a circle with several hundred km radius. Leaving still a much bigger area unattended. Leaving Chinese airspace undefended. Leaving bunch of strike opportunity areas without fighter escorts. Basically, such a strategic move would defeat itself and hand the victory to the enemy.
Which is why I believe no side would really attempt to do long term CAPs with many planes far away from a base.
Note that 10 years ago, doctrine looked at F-22s operating from Guam to Taiwan.
That is 2800km outbound and would require 2 air refuelings. Then the same again inbound.
So Chinese J-20s operating 1500km from mainland China would be following a similar operating profile
But 1500km is only half the distance that the F-22 was planning on.
Also remember that the J-20 and F-22 are roughly the same size, but by most accounts, the J-20 has more fuel capacity and therefore range.
I'd personally say J-20 should be able to do 3500 km of ferry range, perhaps even a bit more. That still doesn't mean J20s would be operating far from Chinese shorts regularly. There's not many of them and there are not many tankers available. And certainly only a small portion of tanker capacity could go to J20s. So any J20 going to 1500 km away from Chinese mainland would be an exception, not a rule. With US tanker numbers, their planes could operate farther from their bases on a more regular basis. Though again probably not anywhere close to a near constant basis.
Moving a large tanker or bomber a few hundred metres is not going to help.
Guided munitions or cluster munitions are standard, and it only takes 1 bomblet to put an airplane out of service.
There are quite a few RAND/CBSA studies which look at the vulnerability of large aircraft when they are on the ground.
It takes hundreds or thousands of bomblets detonated to make sure that enough of them hit an aircraft and that enough of those hit areas where they would seriously damage the plane. Desert war had situations where planes regularly flew with dozens of small holes from various shrapnel.
So we disagree. Dispersing planes would definitely help as more munitions would be needed and there's not enough guided and stand off and cluster munitions in Chinese arsenal (or US arsenal, for that matter) to simply destroy most planes on the ground, regardless of the size of those planes.
Plus we are entering an era where satellites do provide near real-time surveillance. See below.
For one area, sure. For multiple, hundreds of targets at the same time, no. Plus there's cloud cover muddying up the picture. Over Tokyo, for example there's cloud cover roughly 50% of the days in the year. Then there's the issue of analyzing all those targets and the subtargets in each area. Getting the data to strike force. The force needs to do a mission plan, brief the pilots. The kill chain may've been brought down to under an hour for select high priority targets where a disproportionate portion of resources are following that target. But in a total war with so many targets, average kill chain time from detection to strike would still be many hours.
Which is that China will always have a lot more airbases and runways.
And that US/Japan will run out of medium-long range missiles first, whilst China will still have missiles to use against Japanese airbases.
Which means Chinese fighter jets and AWACs could conduct strike and air superiority missions, whilst the opposing airbases are being suppressed.
So again, why should Japan follow the USA in a war against China?
China will have many more bases and targets, sure. Which is why US can't really do much to mainland china by military means. But for similar reasons -
enough of targets, distance to targets, number of strike platforms and their range and number of missiles - China too can't really bomb Japanese targets into oblivion either.
Both sides would run out of their "big" missiles very quickly. While perhaps shutting down several dozen of targets for a limited time. It's hard to quantify really. A powerplant
can be shut down with several hits for several weeks in theory. A base with 3 runways would take probably 50+ missiles per day just to keep those runways shut down.
As mentioned before, China lacks range to even reach a sizable part of japan and shut down the airbases there with sufficient number of missiles. I would be repeating myself here so who is interested can check out my previous posts. Once again - would US be able to shut down Chinese airbases? Not by a long shot.
I don't know why would Japan follow US in a war. My whole assumption is that it would. And the whole discussion here started by a claim "IF Chinese military was twice the size of US and Japan's military then Japan would not help the US" I don't know if that'd happen. But given how such numbers ratio is not possible for the next several decades, we are left with the situation today, where Chinese military is far from such a ratio. Without Japan, US can't do much against China. So to make the whole discussion at least a little bit meaningful, I do assume Japan is all-in. As i don't believe there'd be half assed solutions. Limited involvement is very unlikely.
Remember, China doesn't actually need carriers to control the sea in the Pacific Ocean.
China's core objectives only require sea-denial in the Western Pacific.
They should be able to do this with land-based aircraft and missiles.
I do believe China can deny the seas to US/Japan out to the first island chain for unlimited time.
And even deny the islands and seas little farther out (a few hundred km more?) for a limited time, until the entire US war machine
relocates to the area - which should take a few months.
That still means that a large part of the seas between the two island chains would be contested at times and would not be an area where US can freely sail and move in all the time.
