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F-35 is built for the wrong war

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Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#91

Post by XorNot »

freediddy wrote: post #68
XorNot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could drop them from B2 bombers and they could fall to the ground en masse at hundreds of miles an hour and then the propellers could open up as they get closer to the ground. Or you could launch them in massive containers like in Infinity War and these containers filled with thousands of them would land on the ground and open up and release the drones. You're just not imaginative enough to solve the problem you…

So you know. Glide bombs. Which already exist and are already used and have a range of about 130km for a high altitude launch and a lot payload.

Or some absurdly heavy ballistic missile...which would be worse then existing ballistic missiles and is the type of target for which Patriot is specifically designed for (along with a number of other systems now).

This is an amazingly unserious post to the point I hope you're trolling. Or just twelve.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#92

Post by subw00f »

01100011 wrote: post #21
softwaredoug wrote: post #7

Increased defense spending actually makes the US less, not more, safe. Everyone we're going to fight is prepared for an asymmetric, cheap war. We're vulnerable in how much they can make us spend to wage that war. A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone, etc.

I agree to a point. But also look at Ukraine. They are punching well above their weight with asymmetrical tactics, but Russia is not defeated . Drones and other autonomous, cheap weaponry changes a lot. Smaller states and non-state actors can inflict much more serious and expensive damage now more than ever. Large weapons still matter though. If we ever were to enter an existential battle you would quickly see how bi…

You think “morality” is what’s preventing the US or Russia to drop atomic bombs on their smaller targets?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#93

Post by ceejayoz »

fooker wrote: post #67
ceejayoz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-…

Mass produced means something very different when it comes to wars between comparable powers. There are barely more than a thousand F-35s, the number of US aircrafts used in WW2 was about 300,000. If China produces 100 times or 1000 times their current numbers (and they can), marginal differences in capability are not going to matter.

> If China produces 100 times or 1000 times their current numbers…

They get sanctioned and/or hit by B-2s long before the factories to do so are even completed, let alone producing a hundred thousand fighter jets.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#95

Post by mr_toad »

nradov wrote: post #73
Sol- wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used. See for instance the Iran war. Quite pointless by all accounts and wouldn't have happened if the US didn't have aircraft carriers to send around the world. So perhaps thriftiness in defense spending would also invite a prioritization in actual defensive capabilities?

Even in a hypothetical situation where the USA had no aircraft carriers our military probably would have conducted some raids to delay Iran building nuclear weapons. The initial strikes against nuclear facilities were done with B-2 bombers launched from Missouri.

Not to mention US air bases dotted all over the Middle East, the near East, Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean the Arctic…

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#96

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

varjag wrote: post #20

Somewhat ridiculous piece. Ukraine, 4 years after, still operates a significant number of jets it entered the war with. This is despite hundreds of attempts to eliminate them on the ground with airstrikes, drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. And naturally F-35s on that theatre would have been a game changer making mass strikes on Moscow possible. For all the dysfunctions of American military industrial complex it…

No one was going to launch mass strikes on Moscow. Russian nuclear doctrine would have treated that as an existential threat.

The psychology of Ukraine's drone campaign as a response to Russia's original drone launches is very interesting. It's a classic boiling frog move.

Drones are seen as an improvised amateur threat. Unlike a bombing campaign, which is seen as "proper war", drones are an annoyance. They're fragile, cheap, unglamorous, unsophisticated, easy to shoot down, and wasteful, because you need tens or hundreds to make sure a few get through.

That gives drone campaigns a huge advantage. You can do a lot of damage and your enemy doesn't quite get what's happening.

Psychologically, there's a Rubicon-level difference between someone dropping bombs on Leningrad from a plane and a drone swarm attacking the same targets.

In practice the threat level is similar. Drones have absolutely become an existential threat to Russia.

But psychologically, they're not seen as such.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#97

Post by hurubaw »

XorNot wrote: post #44
zitterbewegung wrote: post #19

The 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.

Seems like the life cycle costs for F35:s are about double compared to that of a Gripen E/F, with straight up procurement cost about a third more.

https://ekonomickydenik.cz/app/uploads/2023/09/20230905-awn-...

The F35 is very, very impressive, just maybe not very suitable for a long war of attrition.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#98

Post by cyberax »

varjag wrote: post #20

Somewhat ridiculous piece. Ukraine, 4 years after, still operates a significant number of jets it entered the war with. This is despite hundreds of attempts to eliminate them on the ground with airstrikes, drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. And naturally F-35s on that theatre would have been a game changer making mass strikes on Moscow possible. For all the dysfunctions of American military industrial complex it…

Neither Ukraine nor Russia are using manned aircraft in any significant ways. They are at most used to lob gliding bombs from far behind the front lines.

> And naturally F-35s on that theatre would have been a game changer making mass strikes on Moscow possible.

And then what? Kyiv has been under relentless strikes from drones and missiles for 5 years. And Moscow was hit by Ukrainian drones several times.

You'll need to suppress all the anti-air defenses first, and it will likely be too costly.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#99

Post by smcameron »

freediddy wrote: post #68
XorNot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could drop them from B2 bombers and they could fall to the ground en masse at hundreds of miles an hour and then the propellers could open up as they get closer to the ground. Or you could launch them in massive containers like in Infinity War and these containers filled with thousands of them would land on the ground and open up and release the drones. You're just not imaginative enough to solve the problem you…

Ukraine, in operation spiderweb, has already launched drones from containers deep within Russia to damage "... one third of Russia's strategic cruise missile carriers, estimated to be worth $US7 billion ..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#100

Post by jandrewrogers »

freediddy wrote: post #31

I 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…

Explosives don't scale in the way you seem to think they do. Below a certain threshold of warhead mass, you won't do much more than scratch the paint. The effects aren't linearly additive. The warheads required to penetrate military targets are incredibly heavy; you won't be loading them on a DJI drone nor traveling far even if you could.

A thousand sparrows does not an eagle make.

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