How many cheap-ass drones could you buy for the cost of one F35. 100k? A million?
If Iran launched 10000 Shaheds towards Isreal, you can be sure quite a few would get by.
Maybe Ukrainian drone interceptors can be made cheap enough to be good enough against massed Shaheds.
We are still early in the new paradigm, there will be significant developments.
Why would the opening salvo be ICBMs?
Of course, China wants to be able to fight those F35s in the air - to mitigate the damage they can do to them (while the F35s still have airfield/carriers to land on) - also in order to make it easier to sink those carriers.
Still, you can bet that all US nearby airfields would be peppered very early in the conflict.
China also is not stupid, and no matter how much they posture, they won't invade Taiwan.
No one is invading China. Coupled or de-coupled is a completely irrelevant consideration. People think MAGA are crazy, but no one is suicidal. A war with China would be over in a matter of hours. And anyone who did not manage to get to Africa or extreme South America before the outbreak of hostilities would have a great chance of dying. The only question is will death be quick in a blast, or slow as you try to walk out of the US.
Maybe one of these days we'll see a B-52 take off with JDAMs and not JASSMs but probably not, kind of scary to try and drop gravity bombs on a country that your stealth fighters can't fly over.
https://theaviationist.com/2026/03/23/b-52s-launching-from-r...
