3150! A US general said that China's air force is the best in the world. The Indian Marshal question

Admiral Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently said that the Chinese Air Force is about to take the title of "the world's largest air force" and that its military aircraft has reached 3,150, which is about to surpass the U.S. Air Force. However, the Indian Air Force Marshal said that the Chinese Air Force is not that strong at all and is "deceiving" the Americans.

Is China's air force the largest in the world?

At a congressional hearing, Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said that the PLA will have the world's largest air force , and the degree, scope and scale of this security challenge cannot be underestimated, and everyone will face challenges.

Aquilino

The 2023 U.S. report on China’s military power states that the PLA Air Force has a total of more than 3,150 aircraft, excluding trainer aircraft and unmanned aerial systems, a figure that highlights the huge growth in China’s aviation capabilities. In comparison, the U.S. Air Force has about 4,000 aircraft of all types.

The number of J-20 has exceeded that of F-22

The Indian media "Eurasia Times" published an article stating that the total number of military aircraft of the Chinese Air Force will not immediately surpass that of the United States in the short term, but the substantial increase in the production capacity of Chinese fighter jets is a reality that cannot be ignored, especially in recent years, the production of China's domestically produced fighter jets has gradually increased, and the Air Force has been receiving more and more new aircraft at an increasingly faster rate.

The number of F-35s in service in the US military exceeds 450

The current strategy of the U.S. Air Force seems to prioritize reducing the overall strength of the Air Force, that is, retiring old aircraft to make way for more advanced new aircraft. By retiring a large number of old aircraft to save money, purchase new aircraft, and increase revenue and reduce expenditure.

Aircraft like the A10 will all be retired

But this also creates a problem. The U.S. Air Force currently maintains a critical numerical advantage over most of its adversaries. However, if the current trend of reducing old aircraft continues, the aircraft advantage faced by adversaries may be greatly reduced.

The new aircraft purchased by the US military are expensive. For example, the price of a sixth-generation aircraft may be as high as 500-600 million US dollars. The extremely high cost of new aircraft makes it impossible for the US Air Force to fill all the equipment gaps left by old models in the future. The decline in the size of its fleet is an irreversible trend.

China does not have the same problems as the United States. Its large number of advanced fighters are constantly replacing old fighters. For example, the PLA's most advanced J-20 fighter, according to foreign media analysis, will produce two brigades in 2022, but this number will at least double in 2023.

The production capacity of stealth fighters is catching up with that of the United States. Moreover, most of the stealth fighters produced by the United States are delivered to foreign allies, and only a few dozen are delivered to the US Air Force. The nearly 100 stealth fighters produced by China are all delivered to the Air Force. In the future, with the addition of the J-35 production line opened by Shenfei, the speed of receiving advanced fighters for the Chinese Air Force will further surpass that of the US Air Force.

Indian Air Force Marshal: How can the People's Liberation Army Air Force be so strong?

Marshal Chopra, a well-known Chinese weapons hater

However, the retired Indian Air Force Marshal Chopra disagrees with the US general's claim that the Chinese Air Force will soon surpass the US Air Force to become the world's largest air force. Chopra said that China's advanced fighter jets are all "blown up" by China itself, and the advanced fighter jets of the United States and France are far more technologically advanced than China's.

Taking the J-20 as an example, the performance of its active phased array radar and electronic warfare suite is questionable, and it emphasizes that China lags behind the West in avionics technology. Although the J-20 is touted as a fifth-generation fighter, it remains to be seen whether it can meet the technical standards of a fifth-generation aircraft.

Indian media said that the PLA mainly relies on its large missile force to weaken the main military bases of the United States and its allies, and the United States' advanced fifth-generation fighter jets (F-22/F-35) take off from these bases.

China's strategy, in wartime, aims to tip the scales in favor of the People's Liberation Army by targeting key U.S. air bases and rendering them inoperable. The Indian Air Force Marshal believes that in the event of a conflict over Taiwan, the deployment of a large number of fifth-generation fighters will be the key to overwhelming the Chinese Air Force.

In short, the total size of the Chinese Air Force is still far behind that of the U.S. Air Force. What makes the Chinese Air Force superior to the U.S. Air Force now is its entire fighter fleet.

Compared with the US Air Force's fighter fleet, it has an advantage in scale. The US Air Force fighter fleet now has a total of 1,731 fighter jets.

The size of the U.S. military's fighter fleet has been gradually shrinking in recent years.

Including 775 F-16C/D, 234 F-15C/D, 218 F-15E, 8 F-15EX, 186 F-22, and 310 F-35. It can be seen that all the US military fighter jets are fourth-generation and fifth-generation aircraft.

The Chinese Air Force fighter fleet has 1,774 fourth-generation and fifth-generation advanced fighters, slightly larger than the U.S. Air Force, with 300 J-20s, 300 J-16s, 550 J-10s, 350 J-11s, 124 Su-30/35s and 200 JH-7A.

It can be seen that the scale of the PLA's heavy fighter fleet, both in quality and quantity, is significantly larger than that of the U.S. Air Force. However, the total number of stealth aircraft currently owned by the U.S. Air Force is greater than that of the Chinese Air Force. It will take at least several years for China to catch up with the U.S. Air Force in this regard.

In addition, there is a large gap between the Chinese Air Force and the U.S. Air Force in terms of the size of its fleets of tankers, early warning aircraft, strategic bombers, and strategic transport aircraft.

Therefore, although the total number of military aircraft of the Chinese Air Force is getting closer to that of the U.S. Air Force, there is still a certain gap in quality, which will take time to make up. Now the U.S. Air Force is still the world's strongest army.

The Indian Air Force Marshal's remarks are clearly out of touch with reality

Of course, we can just ignore the ridicule directed at the Indian Air Force Marshal, because this Indian Air Force Marshal has a strange way of thinking and often makes remarks that denigrate China's military construction, and has even been severely criticized by Western military experts.

The strength of the Chinese Air Force's advanced fighter jets is obvious to all. Even senior US generals have to admit the technical level of Chinese fighter jets in recent years.

India still does not have the ability to develop stealth fighters on its own and relies entirely on foreign purchases. The fighter jets it produces itself still cannot achieve a localization rate of more than 50%. What qualifications does it have to mock and smear China?

What's more, his views on the Taiwan Strait conflict are even more ridiculous. According to Marshal Yin's point of view, the US military needs to deploy more stealth aircraft to win in the event of a Taiwan Strait conflict.

This means that the United States has to deploy most of its stealth fighters to military bases in the first island chain to ensure that its combat radius covers the Taiwan Strait.

Within an island chain, the major US military bases are the targets of concentrated fire from the People's Liberation Army in wartime.

However, doing so is equivalent to deploying a large number of US stealth aircraft within the range that the PLA can easily cover with firepower. Needless to say, in wartime, the PLA's long-range rocket launchers and a series of missiles will quickly destroy the US air base and directly block the US stealth aircraft's deployment route, and the US military will be defeated even more miserably.

Sources of some of the content in this article: 1. CCTV Military Media Weibo Account