PLA bomber/strike doctrine force+composition discussion (non H-20)

Viktor Jav said:

You are missing the point here, it's not about how expensive the pilot cost to be trained, but rather how big is your available pool of people capable of being pilots is. No matter how one cuts in, in any nations there is only a certain amount of people who are qualified to be pilots, and you can't increase that number by any artificial means. No amount of money thrown will solve that matter. You can try and train as many as you like, but war attrition will see that those numbers get depleted fast.
And I don't see how my ww2 example is irrelevant, in the long term, price tags are always relegated to the sidelines in terms of man power.
Put it this way, the only limitations to a bomber is what kind of materials and effort you are willing to put into it. For a pilot, it is whether the guy is qualified in the first place and how many of those are born and are in the appropriate age bracket for you to recruit. And it is still an open question as to whether the guy would even be a good one.

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AndrewS said:

No, think about it.

China has a population of 1.3 Billion
China only needs in the region of 20,000-30,000 pilots. (The US military has 21000 as a comparison)
Finding just 1000-2000 people per year to become military pilots is not difficult.

The pool of people who are capable of being trained as pilots is far larger than this.
You know that being a pilot is one of the most coveted careers around.
There is so much competition that airlines and air forces can be extremely selective about who they select for pilot training.

So in peacetime, you want to size the air force according to the optimum cost of pilots versus aircraft.
But trained pilots are so much cheaper than their aircraft, and you can train as many as you need, as long as you have 5 years to do this.

In wartime with an airplane production rampup, every air force is going to find itself running short of pilots.
Even if the air force increased in size 10x, it would still be easy enough to find 10000-20000 people per year, who are capable of being pilots. But yes, it will take 5 years to train someone from scratch, which is a problem that every air force would face.

Unless of course, air forces go with large numbers of unmanned combat drones, which is what I think they will be forced to do.
On that metric, China is well-poised to succeed.

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Viktor Jav said:

Again, missing the point. It matters not that Mainland china is secure, but rather that they are forced to be launched from a predictable starting point with preloaded instructions that hampers their flexibility and effectiveness. also land based missiles will still need to be transported to an optimal launching site in order to maximize their range anyway.
Though I agree that this discussion is straying away from the topic at hand.

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Viktor Jav said:

You are mistaking coveted as being accessible, just because a pilot is a coveted job means that a lot of people are capable of being one.
On top of that there such a vast difference of being a civilian pilot vs a military one that qualification in the former does not automatically translate into the latter.
And even then, the optimal age of a military pilot is between 20-30ish where the mental and optical faculties of a person is at their highest. So there only a certain amount available at any given time.

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AndrewS said:

No, I'll repeat again, Coastal China and the 1st Island Chain are so close together that the launch points of land-based missiles don't matter.

They could appear almost anywhere along thousands of kilometers of Chinese coastline, yet still have enough range to fly convoluted paths like a bomber could.

What use is a bomber in launching land-attack cruise missiles against Japan or Taiwan?
Look for yourself at the possible bomber flight paths from China to their land targets, and you can see a cruise missile (1500-2500km range) can follow the same path.

Remember that a new non-stealthy bomber (as you argue for) will have to launch standoff land-attack cruise missiles from 300km+ anyway.
Those cruise missiles will be preloaded with instructions just the same as with a longer-ranged cruise missile.

So you might as well build a cruise missile with a larger fuel tank, so it can be launched from an inexpensive truck.

But bombers are particularly useful for targets which are:
1. beyond the 1500-2500km range of inexpensive land-based missiles
2. time sensitive like warships which move

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AndrewS said:

Look at the numbers.

Say 20000 pilots in total required by the Chinese military.

That means 1000-2000 pilots recruited every year by the Chinese military.
There are 8 million university graduates in China every year.

Are you seriously trying to say the Chinese military has a shortage of potential candidates, all of whom have the highest mental and optical faculties?

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Viktor Jav said:

Oh come on, just because one is a university graduate does not mean that one is capable of being a military pilot. If that is the case then I could put that on my resume.
It takes a certain mental and optical capability to be one that is certainly not to be discern in a university course.

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AndrewS said:

Yes, but it illustrates the point that there are more than enough candidates who could be suitable.

The US military basically expects absolute perfection from any of its pilots, because they know they can be that picky, because they have a small number of slots available.
Yet we all know that the pool of people who are capable of becoming amazing pilots is much larger than this.

I would use the experience of the USAF in WW2 as an example.
The USAF expanded from 2400 planes to 80000 aircraft.
But they still ended up with a surplus of near-perfect candidates for pilot training.
That surplus was sent to become infantry grunts.

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