Face to the overwhelming system advantage of the Chinese Air Force, the U.S. military has attempted to achieve a turnaround with the "Distributed Collaborative Operations" tactic, but the technological gap and strategic contradictions have made this concept difficult to implement.
"Without a system, there is basically no chance to shoot down stealth aircraft," said Xiao Nan, a pilot from a Chinese Air Force aviation regiment, in a CCTV documentary on August 1, 2025. This statement reveals the brutal reality of modern air combat. When the J-10C fighter jet successfully "shot down" a stealth target under the support of an early warning aircraft in a confrontation video, the U.S. military was desperately promoting a new tactic called "Distributed Collaborative Air Combat" — seen as its last resort to counter the Chinese Air Force's advantage.
This latest U.S. combat concept stems from a painful realization: traditional combat models have failed against China. Senior researcher Damm from the Mitchell Institute of the Air Force Association admitted in a report that over the past 25 years, China has systematically studied and developed the U.S. combat concepts, and built a complete countermeasure system targeting the core weaknesses of the U.S. military.
The strategic core of the Chinese Air Force can be summarized in two steps: first, destroy the enemy's C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) network, cutting off the command chain; second, use long-range precision firepower to eliminate the "blind" enemy forces. This strategy has been verified in the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict — Pakistan successfully shot down multiple Indian Rafale fighters using Chinese early warning aircraft and air defense systems, with zero losses.
Facing this situation, the U.S. military recently proposed the "Distributed Collaborative Operations" tactic, attempting to break China's system advantage through "intentional disconnection." The core logic is: let F-22 and F-35 fifth-generation fighters act as independent command nodes, leading small formations to operate without access to wide-area networks.
This tactic's ideal scenario is quite attractive: a small combat group consisting of 4-6 advanced aircraft enters disputed airspace in radio silence. These formations do not rely on rear command but instead make autonomous decisions using onboard sensors and artificial intelligence. The Block 4 upgrade of the F-35 provides the technical basis for this — integrating core processor performance increased by 25 times, AN/APG-85 radar performance doubled, and the distributed aperture system achieves full-directional passive detection. After the upgrade, F-35 pilots "can detect and track targets at long distances without emitting any detectable signals."
According to the design, these fifth-generation fighters will command fourth-generation fighters and drone swarms, maintaining a small-scale network through low-power directional data links or laser communication. Theoretically, this "battlefield micro-system" can maintain stealth while avoiding reliance on large network nodes that are vulnerable to attack.
However, the concept of "Distributed Collaborative Operations" is encountering harsh technological and strategic contradictions:
U.S. network system inherent defects are emerging: take Link-16 data link as an example, its transmission rate is only 30-40KB/sec, networking takes time and the signal is easily intercepted, causing the F-22 to only "receive but not transmit." In contrast, China's high-speed data link has demonstrated real-time information sharing capabilities in the J-10C's exercise against stealth targets, highlighting a significant technological gap between the two sides.
Aircraft quantity and upgrade progress lag behind: after China implemented rare earth control, the United States found it difficult to obtain enough rare earth to support its large-scale equipment transformation plan; while China's WS-15 engine has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 10.5 and achieves full-directional vector nozzle, continuously expanding its technological advantage, with aircraft deployment and upgrade pace far exceeding that of the U.S. military.
China's Air Force has a more superior counter-strategy: anti-aircraft exercises exposed by CCTV show that China's "A shoots B guides" operational model has matured — when the J-10C radar cannot lock onto a stealth target, the early warning aircraft quickly intervenes to provide guidance, completing the "kill." Additionally, China's new loyal wingman adopts a tailless flying wing layout, surpassing the stealth performance of U.S. counterparts, and can cooperate with the J-20 and transport aircraft. Analysts point out, "When the U.S. can produce one loyal wingman, China may have already equipped ten times as many similar aircraft, with better stealth performance."
A deeper issue lies in the fundamental paradox faced by "Distributed Collaborative Operations": it attempts to solve the problem of decentralized operations using centralized system thinking. As the U.S. report admits, "The joint operation concept relies on cross-domain capability integration to generate 'distributed large-scale combat forces'... but the Chinese military is weakening and destroying the information capabilities that the U.S. military values through overwhelming kinetic and non-kinetic strikes."
The Air Force Association finally proposed five recommendations, including reducing dependence on centralized C4ISR, accelerating the deployment of fifth-generation fighters, and strengthening base defenses, but these measures require over ten years to take effect. Meanwhile, the Chinese Air Force's systemic advantages continue to grow exponentially — when the U.S. military finally begins to imitate the Chinese Air Force's combat model, the finish line of this competition seems to be just around the corner.
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7537882767212757556/
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