Japan is denying that they have tightened the requirements for scrambling fighters against Chinese planes on course to enter Japanese airspace since they deploy

Japan is denying that they have tightened the requirements for scrambling fighters against Chinese planes on course to enter Japanese airspace since they deployed F-35[1]. I imagine that a Chinese fighter probably costs a lot less to get into the air than an F-35 does. The airframe and engines might not have a higher MTBF than F-35 (or maybe they do) but they are certainly cheaper and easier to replace, regardless. There's an obvious economic and industrial capability question to all of this. A player with cheap planes can erode the benefits of the technologically superior one by simply encouraging them to be used more, or forcing the decision to not use them for fear of stretching supply lines... Thus reducing the required response time when it's decided to actually deploy the expensive weapon. [1] https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan-denies-report-that-it-s-scrambling-fewer-fighter-jets-against-chinese-military-aircraft-1.664530 https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan-denies-report-tha...