Trouble is we really don't know the actual combat aircraft strength of the PLAAF, PLANAF, and the output of the combat aircraft production facilities. It is difficult to find verifiable open source data apart from what may appear in various US Congress reports. Even the SIPRI data is at best qualified. We could be underestimating or overestimating their quantity. Now as to Sqn strength km do they have a Sqn strength of 12 aircraft?
The PLA is following a western style of force structure and if you look at the PLA-GF they have a similar structure to the US Army. I would then very strongly suspect that the PLAAF will have a similar force structure to that of the USAF, so their fighter sqns could very well have upwards of 18 - 24 aircraft each. The PLA has definitely forsaken the Soviet Russian model ever since Gulf War 1 and probably the hiding that the Vietnamese gave them around 1979. The Vietnamese certainly wouldn't be able to do it now.
WRT their quality. They haven't been in real combat since the 1979 hiding, so any institutional memory is failing. The PLAAF and PLANAF don't have any modern combat experience that we are aware of. So they have had to read books, papers, watch videos, and obtain as much intelligence as possible, in order to obtain as much information that they can in order to simulate modern aerial combat. This includes C5ISR, everything and meld it all into a viable workable system. The real problem they have is that they don't know how well it will work in a real war situation. It could be really good, or it could be absolute rubbish. They don't have any friends who they can trust, who has real world air combat experience that would be able to help them.
That doesn't mean that they will be easy beats and it will one sortie then home for tea and medals. Far from it because the last thing we can afford to do is to underestimate them and disrespect their abilities. That's what caused MacArthur to lose the Philippines and the Poms to lose both Hong Kong and Singapore during WW2.
What the PRC is doing to Taiwan is grey war tactics designed to wear down the Taiwanese defenders, wear out their aircraft, and acclimatise them to PLA combat aircraft in the Taiwanese ADIZ so that it becomes routine. That will numb the Taiwanese into a false sense of security and the CCP is working on the principle that the world will sicken of the Taiwanese crying wolf all the time; until one day it's too late. IMHO the FVEY group and other nations should guarantee Taiwan's security, defence, and freedom to choose its own future. If the PRC don't like that, how sad, to bad, never mind.
