Doubling the current Air Force stealth fleet to 500 is critical. Such a force is needed to effectively deter China and counter its aggressive expansionist aims.
By Kris Osborn, Warrior
The current Pentagon plan calls for constructing a force of at least 185 F-47s and 100 B-21s, yet any realistic or credible effort to deter or counter China would require nearly twice as many combined stealth fighters and bombers … according to a recently published Mitchell Institute paper called “Strategic Attack: Maintaining The Air Force’s Capacity to Deny Enemy Sanctuaries.” The research says a force of at least 500 stealth fighters and bombers would be the very least amount of aircraft needed to successfully “scale” a force capable of countering the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
“The Air Force will soon field new, long-range stealthy bombers and fighters that can deny sanctuaries to PLA forces wherever they are located—if it can acquire enough of them. Multiple studies have recommended procuring at least 200 B-21s to meet operational demand for penetrating strikes. Stealthy F-47s and F-35As are also required at scale, but delaying or truncating their acquisition for budgetary reasons would create a future force that cannot take the fight to China,” the study writes.
The argument for a large, impactful force of stealth fighters and bombers is well fortified in the research with strategic, tactical and technological evidence indicating that long-range ground-and-surface-fired weapons would not be sufficient to meet or counter any kind of major Chinese threat in the Pacific
For example, the research paper argues that merely stopping a rapid “fait accompli” take-over of Taiwan through immediate intervention from the air, surface and undersea would be woefully insufficient as a deterrence platform from which to contain China. The U.S. already forward positions Carrier Strike Groups, 5th-generation aircraft, attack submarines and long-range missiles throughout the Pacific theater and the first island chain, in large measure to ensure responsive U.S. and allied forces are in-place to prevent a surprise Chinese take-over of Taiwan.
“Fait Accompli” Take-Over
The concept of Fait Accompli, as often discussed in the Pentagon’s annual China report, would be for the PLA to seek to acquire Taiwan suddenly and establish a “presence” on the island before any U.S. or allied force could respond. The idea would be to simply make it too costly in human lives and military effort to “extricate” an embedded Chinese force from Taiwan. However, the Mitchell scholars maintain that preventing a “Fait Accompli” through the forward positioning of war assets and military alliances with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines would not be “enough” to contain China in any kind of a large-scale conflict.
The reason efforts to prevent a rapid Taiwanese surprise takeover are not enough to contain China overall is because the PLA deliberately locates massive amounts of weapons and military assets hundreds of miles inland inside mainland China. These Chinese military assets, platforms and weapons, the Mitchell Report maintains, cannot reliably be destroyed purely through the use of medium and long-range stand-off weapons such as ballistic missiles or ship-fired cruise missiles. Instead it seems clear that the Mitchell authors believe the U.S. must operate an aerial fighter and bomber force sufficient to “penetrate” and “dominate” air space over mainland China, in part to hold its inland military assets at risk from the air.
“A U.S. force design that is overly reliant on stand-off strikes will not be capable of directly attacking critical sources of the PLA’s long-range combat power. This is because U.S. conventional stand-off munitions lack sufficient range to reach many high-value targets and military assets that China has purposefully located hundreds of miles in its interior. Fighting on China’s distant periphery would allow the PLA the freedom to generate air and missile attacks from secure locations inside China that could fatally stanch U.S. operations to defeat Chinese aggression,” the Mitchell study writes.
Tactical Need for Stealth Bombers & Fighters
This argument spells out a clear “tactical” basis upon which the Air Force needs to rest its request for a larger fleet of bombers and fighters. Mass in terms of hundreds of F-47s and B-21s would not only be necessary to counter any kind of Chinese attack in the air, but would also be critical to any successful effort to disable the PLA’s forces embedded within mainland China.
There is yet another tactical variable associated with this need for a large, stealthy U.S. force of bombers and fighters, the Mitchell authors maintain, and that is that many high-value targets dispersed throughout interior portions of mainland China are likely to be “buried,” hidden or obscured from stand-off targeting and attack capabilities. Indeed there are likely many critical targets within mainland China, such as ICBM silos, mobile missile launchers or weapons locations which could only truly be destroyed by attacks from air platforms, a dynamic evidenced by the June 2025 stealth bomber strikes over Iran.
“Stand-off weapons cannot deliver enough kinetic punch to defeat very hardened and deeply buried targets. This is why the DoD chose to use stealthy B-2 bombers in June 2025 to deliver the world’s most capable penetrating weapons against deeply buried and fortified nuclear installations in Iran,” the study states.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University