Want to know just how far Chinese airpower has advanced over the past 20 years? The U.S. might need 15 times as many aircraft to defend Taiwan as it did in 1996.
That's the estimate of a RAND Corporation analysis of trends in China's air capabilities. Researchers examined two scenarios: A Chinese invasion of Taiwan and a Sino-American clash over the Spratly Islands, in four specific years—1996, 2003, 2010 and 2017. Using mathematical air warfare models, they calculated how many U.S. air wings—each of 72 aircraft—would be needed to achieve 24/7 air dominance over Taiwan and the Spratlys in the face of a massive surge of Chinese aircraft. They also looked at attritional scenarios to estimate how many U.S. air wings would be needed to destroy 50 percent of Chinese aircraft over those targets within 7 days and 21 days, which presumably would force China to call off its invasion.
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