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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

#421

Post by modzu »

Animats wrote: post #240
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fragil…

Ukraine's top drone commander was interviewed by The Economist.[1] He used to be a commodities trader, and he looks at warfare from that perspective. His goal is to kill Russian soldiers faster than Russia can replace them, until they run out of young men. His drone units are currently doing this, he claims. They supposedly lose one Ukrainian drone unit soldier per 400 Russians dead. Material cost per dead Russian so…

christ, sounds like mcnamara. the americans killed north vietnamese faster than they killed americans, so how come they lost?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#422

Post by wredcoll »

nerdsniper wrote: post #178
wredcoll wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

China is putting containerized missile launch tubes and drone launch systems on their container ships. If these get widely deployed at some point, there could come a time when there will be weapon systems already on-location in all of the major ports of China's adversaries. Most naval facilities have civilian ports nearby. Despite the nuclear reactor, aircraft carriers won't stay in the fight long if their supply lin…

> China is putting containerized missile launch tubes and drone launch systems on their container ships. If these get widely deployed at some point, there could come a time when there will be weapon systems already on-location in all of the major ports of China's adversaries. Most naval facilities have civilian ports nearby.

Why not just put a nuke in their instead? Like, how is this supposed to work, china just has a totally not suspicious container ship sitting in every major port not moving or carrying cargo or letting anyone inspect it and nobody notices that its full of weapons???

> And also it's not likely that a carrier group could fend off a wave of 10,000-20,000 drones launched from a container ship that happens to be sailing near it.

If there's a state of war, you don't get to just sail your container ship next to a carrier, that's uh, not how that works.

Like, if this was a tom clancy novel maybe china could do some kind of super clever first strike where they attack a bunch of carriers at the start of a war with their super secret attack ships, but at that point why don't they just sneak their ninja assassins on to the carriers and take them over for the glory of china.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#423

Post by breve »

carefree-bob wrote: post #171
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...

Drones have a limited range and limited capacity to inflict damage. Yes, they are effective at hunting infantry, but you can't reach across an ocean and strike the US with "millions of drones". Relatedly, aircraft carriers are great for beating up on small powers, but they are vulnerable and would not be effective at reaching across the ocean and bombing China. Plus, both nations have nukes, so the idea of either Chi…

> Drones have a limited range and limited capacity to inflict damage.

This drone has greater range than an F-35 and is cheaper to make:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-28_Ghost_Bat

https://www.boeing.com.au/products-services/defence-space-se...

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#424

Post by wredcoll »

dinfinity wrote: post #399
jandrewrogers wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the navy they call long-range underwater drones a "torpedo". It has been assumed to be a primary threat against ships for a century. Modern navies have many systems purpose-built to deal with that threat.

That's like equating a cruise missile with an aerial drone (which is nonsensical). Now I'm not saying defense against UUVs is impossible, but plenty of defenses against torpedoes don't work against them. Note also that part of the approach of drone warfare is sheer quantity. Stopping 1 may be trivial, stopping 5 may be doable, but stopping 20 simultaneous ones might already be too hard to do consistently and repeated…

And what platform do you imagine is launching these dozens of torp-- drones?

This is the thing everyone fails to understand about carrier warfare: anything you can use to attack the carrier can be outranged by the carrier because it can just employ the same weapons but from airplanes that fly closer to you.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#425

Post by daft_pink »

I just wanna say that it’s not realistic to think that the United States defending Taiwan is anything but a bluff. Westerners aren’t willing to die for a small crummy island a few hundred miles off the coast of China that’s 5000 miles away for most other western countries. It’s just not practical. They will sanction China and make it a pariah state if they invade and call it a day. The idea that we would actually risk our lives or nuclear war to defend them is ridiculous.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#426

Post by hyperific »

"If we all reacted the same way, we'd be predictable, and there's always more than one way to view a situation. What's true for the group is also true for the individual. Over-specialize and you breed in weakness. It's slow death." - Major Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#427

Post by defrost »

modzu wrote: post #421
Animats wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine's top drone commander was interviewed by The Economist.[1] He used to be a commodities trader, and he looks at warfare from that perspective. His goal is to kill Russian soldiers faster than Russia can replace them, until they run out of young men. His drone units are currently doing this, he claims. They supposedly lose one Ukrainian drone unit soldier per 400 Russians dead. Material cost per dead Russian so…

christ, sounds like mcnamara. the americans killed north vietnamese faster than they killed americans, so how come they lost?

Because the North Vietnamese were not bombing and destroying American home soil schools, apartment blocks, utilities, etc. on a daily basis.

Lacking any real home soil peer citizen engagement the US saw the Vietnam War as a costly pointless loss of money, resources, and life on the far side of the planet.

The Ukrainians are somewhat more engaged.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#428

Post by nalekberov »

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.

You are talking as if war in Iran is a natural process that people have no involvement.

Having such articles in 2026 is a shame to begin with.

“A piece of equipment” is used to attack living bodies, if you don’t get the point, well.. there is no point to argue with you.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#429

Post by wredcoll »

tehjoker wrote: post #141
wredcoll wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, if you keep your carriers out of striking range they are invincible! lmao

You don't need to be out of striking range if they can't find you, that's the entire point.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#430

Post by wredcoll »

defrost wrote: post #417
carefree-bob wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus these things have a range of about 50 miles. It's not like if you are a carrier floating in the pacific, you will be swarmed with a thousand torpedoes. To launch one requires a submarine, and while one may hide, it's not so easy to penetrate the defenses of a carrier group in the middle of the pacific. Ukraine has had success against mostly unarmored and a few lightly armored Russian ships (and let's face it, th…

> To launch one requires a submarine Torpedoes cannot be launched from manned / unmanned surface vessels? Wow. Good job China isn't getting into water surface drone swarms. Still, easy to see why close waters near Iran keep the US carrier groups away.

> Torpedoes cannot be launched from manned / unmanned surface vessels?

They're getting close enough to target the carriers without being sunk.. how exactly?

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