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Comment by sgillen | Hacker News Reader

Worth noting, The J-20 compares favorable to the F-35, but what really gives America it’s air superiority is the F-22, which is still unmatched by China to my knowledge.

America actually sells the F-35 to other countries it likes, and there are a lot of them and they were supposed to be inexpensive. We’ve kept the F-22 to ourselves, it’s main job is taking down over planes and it’s really really good at it.

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>tt's really really good at it

Citation needed. To my knowledge the F-22 has downed exactly zero adversary aircraft in actual air-air combat.

Beyond that, they aren't made anymore, and require a land base. (Okinawa, for example.)

In a carrier v. carrier battle, the F-22 likely won't be a factor unless the chosen "ground" is in the operational vicinity of a land base. Granted, Wikipedia believes the avionics range for the F-22 is 250 miles.

That shows some of the advantages of China's South China Sea strategy (taken straight out of the U.S. playbook with Caribbean).

This is the closest "known" interaction:

U.S. F-22 stealth fighter pilot taunted Iranian F-4 Phantom combat planes over the Persian Gulf

https://theaviationist.com/2013/09/19/f-22-f-4-intercept/

This. It's really good at things because Lockheed Martin will spend $2 trillion building it and says it is.

That's a fair point, it's been very effective in "simulated combat", but I guess the military can make that say whatever you want.

J-20 downed zero aircraft as well, as far I as I know.

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