> The Navy’s P-8 Poseidon aircraft is its premier asset for anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare. Made by Boeing, the Poseidon is also 737-sized, with a flight crew of two plus a team of seven to manage the sensors and other mission equipment on ten-hour flights. [emphasis added]

That bit I emphasized made me chuckle. The P-8 Poseidon is 737-sized because it's derived from the 737. This is not unusual for US military aircraft. Boeing already has the ability to build 737s, modifying one to meet particular mission needs is much cheaper than doing a total redesign and custom build (it will still be heavily modified, of course).

Better a drone be shot down than a crewed P-8 no?

This calculation is a bit naive, you should at least take into account the capabilities and crew training and operation cost. That's before you start thinking about the cost of crew rescue missions. It seems to fly way higher than the poseidon, so I guess it covers more ground as well.

Guess we can add that to the billion dollars worth of missile defense radar we lost in one afternoon...two units out of twenty.

Both pale in comparison to the amount of precision-guided weaponry that was burned through blowing up fishing boats and attacking oil tankers, and then bombing Iran.

It was estimated that in the first day alone the US burned through half its stock of some precision munitions.

The supply chain for those is years long.

If you were China, what would you be thinking right about now? Say, a vacation in Taiwan?

There's jack shit the US could do about it.

When America lost in Vietnam it was at least an honorable defeat: both the USSR and the PRC invested vast quantities of materiel and military advisors into the war. For decades. It was fought with stuff that was designed for WW3.

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