Oh, I'd say when measured by capacity. I had the opportuniy several times to watch them in action - their toys are impressive - here are a couple of examples:
1) US F-16s up against Australian F-18s. In principle it should be a relatively level battle, but there's an important difference between the two aircraft - the F-16s are carrying AMRAAMs, whilst the Aussies had AIM9 Sidewinders. The AMRAAMS had standoff range - the F-16s could literally fire, and then turn tail and run, without ever entering the Australian missile range. The only successful way to engage them was to take them in a pincer movement, but that meant splitting your forces, they'd just turn and engage one group, which was now at half strength, and overwhelm with firepower...
2) Again, Oz vs US, the Aussies defending a site from attack. The radar was tracking the US aircraft coming in until they were about 200km away, at which point instead of just one flight of aircraft on the radar screen, we suddenly had three flights, each one performing seperate manoeuvres. They weren't just jamming the signal, they were generating alternative signals in real time, and basically feeding our antenna a pack of lies. We had to call in support from our over the horizon radar, just to figure out which was the real attack group... Of course, by the time that was done, they were already inside the defensive perimeter, so it was game over...
The point to all of this being that when the USAF is on the ball, it is an unstoppable machine. From ECM, to stealth to missile tech, to surveillance, they are leaps and bounds ahead of the rest of the world. Their aircraft can act pretty much with impunity wherever they want in the world, whenever they want. Their only error is thinking that Air Supremecy automatically translates to political victory on the ground...
Ugh. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to discuss effective engagement ranges and such - it's classified information. Suffice it to say that the Australian AIM9 was modified to work a bit better than the standard AIM9 when in an enhanced environment (access to other radar system information in the local area etc). They weren't particularly short-range missiles, but the F-16s had stand-off range on them. I'm assuming that is why they chose AMRAAM as their armament for that encounter, because I know they use AIM9s elsewhere on their F16s...
Anyway, this story is about 12 years out of date now :-/ But I'm sure the technological gap between the US and the rest of the world still exists - it was after all Rummy's hobby horse.
