I think cheap missiles and drones changed a lot of things. One could see this in Ukraine; more recently in Iran. USA is primarily focusing on heavy impact and expensive wars. This may be a more effective strategy, but it does not seem to be very realistic. I can't help but feel that this is especially much the case with regard to Iran, because the USA, despite what the orange bolo is saying, does not seem to be that eager to intensify the war (e. g. no ground invasion - and that's very telling if you remember the Iraq or Afghanistan invasion).
F-35 is built for the wrong war
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Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#42It's a camel designed by committee. On paper it looks cool. In practice it was /never/ the right plane. The contractors knew and didn't care.
I think it's more contractors were responsible for providing only their deliverables. The program design as a whole is done by the DoD when they bid out their requirements.
Yeah, military pricing isn't because of it's good quality, it's because it's compliant, and they are usually at odds with each other.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#43The primary purpose of something like the F-35 program is not producing a bunch of jets that we can use to win wars. Similar to how NASA's purpose is not to make large rockets that send things to orbit for cheap. It is to investigate new technologies (i.e. how do we control a thousand drones) and preserve domain knowledge in a large number of engineers spanning multiple generations. If all these engineers go work at…
> When we have to fight the next serious war, we are not going to primarily use F-35 jets, it's going to be something built on a similar platform in larger numbers to specifically address challenges of that era. If it can not be made cheap enough, whatever contractors involved are going to be nationalized.
That is, to some extent, what the F-35 is; the mass-produced plane that incorporates what we learned from the F-117 and F-22 and whatnot. We've already made 10x as many as the F-22's production run.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#44The premise that it is built for the "wrong war" is two fold. Design by committee didn't help the aircraft and made cost overruns and timelines worse but, the bigger premise or problem doesn't take to account that we still have other aircraft that fulfills other roles. Also, the collaborative combat aircraft is being developed with the F22 and F35. Arguably though the collaborative combat aircraft is a bigger challen…
The F-35 is currently about the same price to procure as Gripen, a 4th generation non-stealthy fighter.
Anyone making claims about cost has a lot of work to do because the F-35 program is actually extremely cheap per unit now for what it is.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#45Huh?The F35 has flown.more missions against the Palistinians than perhaps ANY aircraft that has ever been use in war, and the F35 is central to commiting genocide on the Palistinian people, and there is very very little they can do about it, so by the logic of obsenity, does war have another?, it plays the "tune" in the keys of screams and horror.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#46The F-35 was specified when the Joint Strike Fighter program began in 1995, with the development contract awarded in 2001, and the first flight in 2006 or thereabouts. Of course it was built for a different war... the use of drones didn't proliferate until after the 2010s and really more since the 2020s with Russia/Ukraine. So, thanks Captain Obvious and arm-chair quarterback, for the insightful article.
People forget just how old the F-22 and F-35 actually are, mostly because they are still the current state-of-the-art. That is 1990s tech.
The 6th gen platforms currently in testing address many of the issues raised with the 5th gen platforms. Which you would expect since they weren't designed in the previous century.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#47He keeps citing China but the US isn't at war with China. For the wars that the US is fighting, i.e. against Iran and similarly equipped adversaries, the f-35 seems to be performing well.
A potential Chinese-American hot war is the conflict that today’s USAF and USSF should be preparing for.
Winning sub-peer conflicts is fine for projecting hard power (when it works...) and protecting allies (when you have them...) but it doesn’t really budge the needle on national security.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#48theres a lot of things to critique about the us, but the f35 isn't one of them.
Over the past few years we have seen it operate with impunity over multiple countries. It astounding to me that in the 12 day war and the iran conflict there hasn't been issues from maintance alone.
We dont know how well the F35 holds up against patriots or s400's, but what we do know for certain is that against virtually everything else it unstopable.
More so when you realize the us has 600 and is making another 200 a year, and in a real war, you would lose some but theres rough parity between the number of s400 systems that exist, and the number of f35s that exist, and all those s400's will never be in teh same war or same place.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#49I think ultimately the real weapon of mass destruction will be long-range drones the size of a DJI drone, each holding a small but extremely powerful explosive. And then send millions of them, with specific single targets. Each AI controlled to target single weakpoints in buildings, bridges, or even specific people. You can't stop a million of them even with EMPs because you can just end a million more. You can destr…
You could also just write "magic" and say we should invest in wizards.
No DJI sized drone using any available or near future technology is going to have a range of more then whatever 20 to 30 minutes of well-below subsonic flight time can get you.
Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war
#50The insight here is, that in current warfare, quantity is the quality that matters. And with quantity, cost of replacement needs to be low, platforms expendable, cheap to maintain and resupply. It, and it's support infrastructure, need to not easily be detected and targeted by drones while on the ground. F35 is not these things. It's powerful but brittle, and like many US platforms, too much value packed into too few…
The ideas that I as a civilian was sold over the past decades don't appear to hold up any longer.
As someone a while back put it, Russia lost several Bundeswehrs worth of equipment and keeps on grinding. Neither side is able to mass large forces, in a large part due to drones. And Iran can punish the US despite being comically outgunned.
Modern equivalents of Sherman and T-34 tanks over burdensome Tigers and a population willing to support heavy losses.