Surviving heavy losses?

[PeterCrisp]

With new aircraft being so expensive and the west having relatively few (compared to WW2 for example) could that become a hindrance during a long drawn out conflict? I'm not going to pick on any real nation as the aggressor force but lest just say Bill Gates and his rich friends have built a super fortress in the Pacific and have enough Aircraft to go toe to toe with The US and Europe for some odd reason. The war has been going for 3 months and both sides have suffered heavy losses and most of the first strike aircraft have been shot down.
Would Bill Gates and his henchmen have more luck building 4th gen aircraft quickly to get into the fight or would the extra fire-power of 5th Gen aircraft overcome this (lets say they somehow have the same industrial capacity as the US and Europe).

I don't want this to become a which fighter is better type topic as I know those are not welcome just a discussion about what happens if most of our front line aircraft are taken out.

 

[Feanor]

You're talking about attrition. Modern war between powers with access to that technology is unlikely to turn into an attrition conflict.

 

[bren122]

except where there is a distinct technological advantage or overwhelming numbers involved all warfare is attritional by nature.

 

[Feanor]

I disagree. Post-WWI wars are fought not by killing or destroying enemy forces physically and directly, but rather by destroying supply lines, targetting the C4I chain, and nodes, or by achieving local objectives that lead to a political victory.

 

[bren122]

I disagree. Post-WWI wars are fought not by killing or destroying enemy forces physically and directly, but rather by destroying supply lines, targetting the C4I chain, and nodes, or by achieving local objectives that lead to a political victory.

after the early Blitzkrieg warfare of World War 2 both the Eastern and Western Fronts experienced long periods of Attritional warfare. the war of movement at the start of the Korean War in 1950-51 gave way to an extended period of attrition. Viet Nam could be considered an attrition war even during the French stage, much less the American stage. technological parity between Egypt and Israel before the Yom Kippur War meant that the early stages of that conflict were attritional by nature.
WW1 was the classic attritional war- there was simply no other way for it to be fought. the initial periods of movement was followed by the clash of armies to wear out the fighting will of one side or the other, followed by the collapse of one side and a return to a war of movement.