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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

#161

Post by bayindirh »

wredcoll wrote: post #153
bayindirh wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every instrument (brass, woodwind, even a simple triangle), past a certain threshold is expensive, and their sound is different to their lower priced peers, and yes, you can't equip every violinist with a $2MM violin, just because. Also, saying that instrument X is higher caliber to instrument Y is completely wrong. They all needs immense workmanship to produce, and immense effort to play. This effort can't be compar…

> Also, just because viola, cello and double bass looks like a violin is borderline insult to all of them at once, and ignoring the other heavy lifters like clarinets, oboes and fagots. I don't think that last bit translated well. Beyond that, what on earth are you talking about. Frankly what is the grandparent talking about? $2m violins cost that much because they're rare and famous and have a story, not because the…

> I don't think that last bit translated well.

I don't think so. It's a good analogy how F-35 needs a good ground crew and logistics chain to keep it flying. Like how an orchestra needs these instruments to create subtle but extremely important pillars of sound, even if they're rarely or barely heard.

Also, not al $2MM violins cost that much because they have a story, but they're built by distinguished builders and built to order, for the person playing it, with old-stock woods and whatnot.

Yes, they don't cost that much, but you pay for the craftsmanship and the privilege. Price is an artificial construct after some point.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#162

Post by 01100011 »

dinfinity wrote: post #85
01100011 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I am sure people will take issue with this comment but look at the relative restraint of Russia in Ukraine [...] vs, say, WWII. They have been bombing civilian infrastructure, abducting children, torturing and executing civilians and POWs, executing deserters or wannabe deserters the entire fucking Ukraine war. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrain... Restraint, my unbleached asshole.

No one is fire-bombing cities yet, despite Ukraine pulling a WWII Japan and distributing weapons production amongst residences.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#163

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

jfengel wrote: post #143
vanviegen wrote: post #89

It concerns me how casual the article and some of the comments here discuss an actual war against China, as if that were a reasonable scenario. Of course I understand wanting to be prepared even for grim scenarios such as these. Military strategists should of course continually be refining such plans. But casual discussions like this, without even so much as a disclaimer about it being a hypothetical and extremely un…

A general war against China is impossible. But a "limited" war fought over Taiwan isn't beyond the realm of possibility. Which does take it into a kind of Schroedinger's realm. The US takes it seriously, so it develops technology for it, and China doesn't invade. But would China have invaded if the US hadn't prepared for that war? Quite possibly, but you can never know.

In the quite likely scenario that Iran goes on any longer, the US will become so war exhausted that we will be unable to provide any support for Taiwan.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#165

Post by fsckboy »

pharos92 wrote: post #109

America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents, mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility. U.S. weapons supremacy is increasingly exposed as a marketing facade. Despite a $1T annual budget, the industrial base is so brittle that strategic missile stocks were nearly depleted within a month of…

>America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents

America has not faced any wars in its own "theater", it's own backyard; rather, it has "chosen" to fight wars that seemed important enough to travel halfway round the world, bringing lots of stuff. One of the American military's strengths is logistics, both getting there and on the battlefield.

>mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility.

America pioneered and still leads in combined arms fighting doctrine and capabilities, and that basically requires air superiority as the first step. There's no mistake, it is creating uncontesed airspace (which starts with creating the capabilites) that enables victory at low casualty rates. It's not so much invincibility as "convincing vincibility" of opponents.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#166

Post by dmix »

jjk166 wrote: post #158

> Meanwhile, modern conflict, from Ukraine’s drone war to naval engagements in the Red Sea to Iran’s own mass missile and drone salvos, increasingly favors systems that can be produced at scale and replaced when lost. The F-35 is a masterpiece. But a force designed around a masterpiece is not designed for long, protracted wars, and U.S. adversaries know this. The problem is that the F-35 was intended to be the low co…

The same issues with fighter jets procurement infect everything these days. Public transit, space, government software, etc.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#167

Post by wahern »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #121
vanviegen wrote: post #89

It concerns me how casual the article and some of the comments here discuss an actual war against China, as if that were a reasonable scenario. Of course I understand wanting to be prepared even for grim scenarios such as these. Military strategists should of course continually be refining such plans. But casual discussions like this, without even so much as a disclaimer about it being a hypothetical and extremely un…

> It concerns me how casual the article and some of the comments here discuss an actual war against China, as if that were a reasonable scenario. The last few wars started by the US were based on scenarios that looked good on paper and in reality they did not went so well. Look at the Iran war: "we're gonna kill their supreme leader and the regime will fall". Almost two months later nothing changed in any significant…

The Iran War never looked good on paper. The only people who thought it would succeed were Trump and the cast of characters he surrounded himself with. I doubt if many congressional Republican chickenhawks thought it would succeed.

The only way to oust the regime is with ground troops, ripping out the Revolutionary Guard and its tentacles. For all its corruption, Iran is far from a failed state, and there aren't factions waiting in the wings, ready and willing to take over the government with force. (There are political factions, to be sure, but they're already integrated into the government, though without leverage over the Revolutionary Guard.) The only armed group remotely capable of even trying would be the Kurds, but the US and in particular Trump screwed them over in the past, multiple times. Even if they thought they could go it alone (which they couldn't), there was zero chance they were going to enter the fray without the US committing itself fully with their own invasion force (i.e. success was guaranteed), because failure would mean ethnic Kurds would be extirpated from Iran, and might induce Iraq and Syria to revisit the question of Kurdish loyalty to their own states. And, indeed, Kurdish groups took a wait and see approach, assembling some forces but waiting to see how the US played their cards.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#168

Post by dmix »

BobbyJo wrote: post #62
virtue3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is totally false. They have been getting replacement MiG-29s and Su-25s from allies and are starting to use f-16s from NATO nations. "A coalition of NATO countries, primarily the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium, are providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. The United States authorized the transfer and is providing training and spare parts, with deliveries having begun in 2024 to strengthen Ukraine's air…

"A significant number of jets it entered the war with" does not mean they haven't also gotten newer jets.

Pretty sure almost all of the functional ones were destroyed or were kept in such reserve for security they weren't being used.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#169

Post by dmix »

dessimus wrote: post #69
tpurves wrote: post #8

The 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 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 The irony, of course, is that the US military knew that back in WWII in how the Sherman tank was able to defeat the "better" German tanks for all the same reasons listed above.

Now the US has the same small set of defence contractors who are staffed by ex-government officials and no one asks any hard questions when every single project is 10yrs late and overbudget.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#170

Post by tempest_ »

wredcoll wrote: post #133
expedition32 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US not going full in on drones reminds me of the British ridiculing submarines. The Chinese are going to spam literally MILLIONS of drones all over the Pacific...

I don't know if you've looked recently, but the pacific is, likev pretty big. Maybe even bigger than that. The primary problem with killing carriers is, has been, and will be, finding the things.[1] Drone strikes on oil refineries work because, with few exceptions, the refineries rarely move. You can literally program a drone to go x miles in a specific direction and then drop a bomb. It's also considerably harder to…

A carrier battle group can easily be seen and tracked by commercial satellite constellations.

At minimum they travel with 6 or 7 ships and leave a wake a mile long and they only go tens of miles an hour, it isnt a speed boat.

Here is an Indian carrier (formerly Russian) on google maps and the US ones are large https://www.google.com/maps/place/14%C2%B044'30.3%22N+74%C2%...

I think people forget how many satellites are pointed at all parts of the planet. They are used for crop reporting and weather and all sorts of shit. It isnt the 1960s where only the super powers have them and they drop rolls of film.

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