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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

#351

Post by greedo »

wredcoll wrote: post #159
fooker wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (and they can), marginal differences in capability are not going to matter. If china somehow learnes magic and produced 10,000 f16 equivalents and got into a major non-nuclear shooting war with the united states... they'd lose 10,000 planes. At some point there is such a qualitative difference that numbers don't really matter.

You are aware that China is producing two fifth gen stealth fighters, and is flight testing two sixth gen platforms? And that Chinese AAMs are world class? Read up on how Pakistan crushed the Indian Air Force recently flying fourth gen Chinese fighters using their current AAMs.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#352

Post by cm2012 »

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…

A lot of big words, but also inaccurate. If you compare the F-35 to basically any plane worldwide with similar capabilities, it's very reasonably priced. You can see that in that it's very popular for export, with pre-sales already sold out until 2035.

There are plenty of articles out there on this for those who want to Google it.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#353

Post by ardanur »

F-35 is a stealth vehicle that works, but when you are withholding munitions from the war that can bring it to a close it becomes far less useful.

Every F-35 is capable of carrying multiple nuclear bunker busters each of which is far more powerful than the GBU-57A/B MOP.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#354

Post by lmm »

defrost wrote: post #310
chung8123 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pilot is pretty expensive.

In convential modern terms, sure. In WWII terms they come as a function of aircraft production capability as the stategy was to keep putting fresh young faces in trainer cockpits and advancing everybody that didn't crash after a quick run down of controls and a couple of paired instructor flights. I had a couple of aunts that were both members of the UK/AU Women's Auxiliary Air Force (1939 - 1949) and they each had r…

> I had a couple of aunts that were both members of the UK/AU Women's Auxiliary Air Force (1939 - 1949) and they each had rudimentary training for spitfires, heavy bombers, jets, etc that came down to mere hours and "see how you go".

Worth noting that their mission was delivery flights with the produced aircraft (a handful of them saw combat, because if you're flying a fighter plane into a warzone your guns might as well be loaded, but it wasn't the main aim). Those who were intentionally flying into combat got a little more training AIUI.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#355

Post by platinumrad »

celsoazevedo wrote: post #195
platinumrad wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course HN would downvote this.

I didn't down/up voted anything, but the title/article/thread is about piece of equipment not being a good fit for a war that happens in 2026, not if war is good/bad or right/wrong. It's like saying that war is bad in a discussion about developing biplanes before WW2. Yes, war is bad, but that's what people are talking about.

WW2 happened. It is not a foregone conclusion that there will be a WW3.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#356

Post by greedo »

gherkinnn wrote: post #50
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 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 popula…

While Iran has faired better than I expected, it's a reach to say they've punished the US. The US losses are comically small. Of course wars aren't won solely based on battles...

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#357

Post by KylerAce »

gozucito wrote: post #215
scottyah wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 is a massive success. It is a common design that brought together what would have been three to five different planes into one. Costs doubling is further proof of how amazing it is- inflation has basically outpaced that. Cost per flight hour has more to do with data analytics and the Socialism within the DoW (it's a jobs program) than actual need. A lot of delays were quasi-on purpose. It has crazy supply ch…

But what would you rather have? 2000 Shahed/Lucas drones or a single F35? Same cost for both. The saying "Quantity has a quality all of its own" is not obsolete in 2026.

youd want some number of both. The ideal defense net against shahed type drones looks very different from the ideal defense net against f35s. Namely, shaheds require very cheap and numerous interceptors and radars, and f35s require very expensive radars and interceptors (and a dream). Anything that works against an f35 would be an egregious waste against a shahed and anything that works against a shahed wouldn't against an f35

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#358

Post by s5300 »

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…

[dead]

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#359

Post by CMay »

dinfinity wrote: post #118
bawolff wrote: post #66

In the intro: > 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. In the conclusion: > The lesson of the Iran campaign is that the F-35 performed superbly in exactly the kind of fight it was built for. The lesson for force designers is that the next war…

> I have no idea but the article didn't really make any convincing arguments about it. It did. It pointed out that the bases from which the F-35s would have to operate in a war with China would be very vulnerable: "The concentration of high-value equipment and personnel at each operating location makes the F-35’s basing problem qualitatively different from that of simpler aircraft. The loss is not just one jet but th…

I don't think that's the key message.

He says basing is a problem, but doesn't mention that we have answers to basing problems. He says F-35 production doesn't scale. Then he says F-35 production doesn't need to scale.

The F-35 is a multi-role jet. It wasn't built for what it's doing in Iran, it's just that it can do it. There are other older jets doing similar things in Iran just fine. Compared to past jets we lose fewer of them, so that has to be factored into the overall cost.

If we say, ok, let's just put fewer of them on this base to reduce concentration. They are still there. He didn't get rid of the F-35s, he didn't get rid of his argument that bases are vulnerable. So what is the point? Now if a successful attack gets through and takes out some F-35s....you now have less spare F-35s to do the critical mission you wanted, because you put fewer there to start with.

We have other solutions for this problem, but in peace time it's more efficient to concentrate things. The nature of escalation tends to mean you have some time to reorganize before the real battle comes.

We're still going to have F-35s _and_ drones _and_ missiles. If the enemy has anti-missile and anti-drone defenses, it won't necessarily be the drones and missiles taking those out.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#360

Post by defrost »

greedo wrote: post #356
gherkinnn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 popula…

While Iran has faired better than I expected, it's a reach to say they've punished the US. The US losses are comically small. Of course wars aren't won solely based on battles...

> The US losses are comically small.

Just international respect, potentially the loss of the petrodollar, trust of allies, etc.

Small beer stuff really - although the kinds of things that feature in historical retrospectives published 50 years after turning points.

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