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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

#501

Post by MaxHoppersGhost »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #163
jfengel wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think the US will become too war exhausted for another war. We just got out of one and we're back in one again. Taiwan would get politicians and people fired up.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#502

Post by discodave »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #328
peterfirefly wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a network of hydrophones can track submarines, why can't they also track carriers?

The oceans are unreasonably large, you would need an astronomical number of hydrophones to get any type of coverage. Hydrophones are primarily placed in choke points for this reason.

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

Both the US and China have newer more advanced capabilities than a 50 year old system...

> [SOSUS] was the primary cuing system that antisubmarine forces used to localize and potentially destroy targets for over forty years, but secrecy largely kept that fact from the fleet. The lack of strong fleet support was a factor when budget cuts after the Cold War fell heavily on the surveillance program.

Driving cars down every street in every advanced country to take photos seems ridiculous, but Google did it (StreetView) and the US DoD has more money than Google...

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#503

Post by MengerSponge »

pseudohadamard wrote: post #490
cjbgkagh wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The program was intended to make money and it did. My university has ties to the military and I was talking to people working on the Joint Strike Fighter about ways to reduce software bugs, I was told candidly that software bugs are job security and they’ll be riding that gravy train all the way to retirement, which they did.

The F-35 is built for exactly the right defence contractors and pork-barrelling. As for war, can we get back to you on that?

The F-35 is a perfect pork-barrel example: by using subcontractors distributed in many house districts, the project owner ensures its political viability. By my count, only Louisiana, Wyoming, Nebraska, and North Dakota show less than $1MM in "economic impact".

https://view.ceros.com/lockheed-martin/f35-domestic-impact/p...

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#504

Post by hedora »

peterfirefly wrote: post #179
sobellian wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about the Russo-Ukrainian war is that it is a failure for both sides. The primary lesson from this war is, how do we avoid ending up like those poor guys? If the US Army fights a war with anyone, let alone China, on the doctrine that it should set up a static attritional front line with drone warfare, the joint chiefs should all be fired.

Don't have Germany be so dependent on Russian gas. Don't tear down nuclear power plants, build more of them instead.

Electrifying the economy with renewables (and I’ll count nuclear as renewable) is the single most important thing countries can do right now to ensure their own military and economic security.

Distributed solar and wind are more difficult to bomb than nuclear, so they’re probably a slightly better choice (especially if they’re built to island / work off grid).

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#505

Post by throwaway302340 »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #287

So none of them lost on ground in Iran. No US ship was to my knowledge even hit by a drone/missle. Iran has been prepping forever for this with Russian/Chinese equipment. This sounds identical to previous arguments I saw of how hard it would be for US to beat Iran in open conflict. China is different but comparing theoretical ability with reality is different also. The only reality we have as of now is that f35 compl…

> So none of them lost on ground in Iran.

Do we really need to play these semantic games?

An F-35 was confirmed successfully targeted and hit by Iranian Air Defenses.

The pilot was confirmed (by the DoW) to have been injured.

The plane in question seems to have been able to make its way back to friendly territory.

Every other detail about this incident is cloaked in fog of war with Vietnam-era narrative stealth technology and semantic evasive maneuvering. Since it didn't crash in enemy territory the Americans claim it wasn't 'downed' by the enemy. But did the F-35 actually land? like on its own wheels on an actual runway or was it a 'hard landing' (i.e. crash) as NPR's sources claim. Did the pilot eject? What is his condition? What is the condition of the airframe?

>No US ship was to my knowledge even hit by a drone/missle.

Again if one was, would we every know? Would we be told? The f-35 incident has been broadly emblematic of this entire war. Lot of bluster and downplaying and covering up losses. Its like Russia in the Ukraine War; Frequently having to check with Iranian sources to corroborate claims made by the Americans. Whether it is with satellite imagery, or on the true status of the Hormuz or control of Iranian airspace.

https://www.twz.com/air/usaf-f-35-makes-emergency-landing-af...

https://x.com/gbrumfiel/status/2034972525222838351

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#506

Post by jandrewrogers »

kalleboo wrote: post #492
cm2012 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> You can see that in that it's very popular for export It's very popular for export since the US has been forcing their allies to buy them over any alternatives, this was shown in the WikiLeaks cables.

Nothing else is remotely as capable in the modern threat environment that most countries can actually buy. That's the cold truth. They can't buy anything else that compares and the best isn't for sale.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#507

Post by elihu »

benoau wrote: post #224
spongebobstoes wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$25k per flight hour is a lot more than what drones cost

What's crazy is there's lots of videos of Ukranians shooting drones from open-cockpit propeller planes that barely cost more than the drones! I think in a serious drone war we would just have fleets of Cesnas flying around with a person hanging out the door with a shotgun lol.

The Super Turcano is a prop-driven aircraft that's often suggested for this role.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#508

Post by carefree-bob »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #458
marcus_holmes wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bombing civilian infrastructure never works like this. As we saw in The Blitz (and in Vietnam, and in Ukraine), it just draws the bombed together, unifying them and hardening their resolve.

Can you use an example that doesn't prove the exact opposite? Bombing absolutely worked in Vietnam so much that the south didn't actually lose the war until 2 years after the USA left. The war becoming a political nightmare is why the USA left not because the horrendously effective bombing stopped working. Ukraine is really weird to put in here because Russia has fail to establish any effective air superiority so I c…

That is a unique view of what happened in Vietnam.

But let's look at a more modern example that makes your case: Syria. The US starved that country, seizing the food and oil, funding/arming terror groups - not just the kurds but also Al Nusra and other islamic terror groups, invading portions of the country and placing military bases there to give air support to terror operations and maintain control of the oil wells, blowing up pipelines, for over a decade. Finally after years of starvation and hyperinflation, the government collapsed as the generals were bribed by Qatar (or the Qataris were just intermediaries, we don't know) to lay down their arms and let the Jolani regime take over. When you are convinced your nation doesn't have a future, suitcases of cash and exit visas to mansions in London do wonders.

So yeah, you can punish a nation so much that it is easy to take over.

But, can the world survive 10 years of the straight of Hormuz being closed? I doubt it. Syria was a small country and it held out for a decade. Sure, it had help from Russia and China, but so does Iran now. When the US was strangling Syria, we already controlled the oil and food producing regions of the country. But there is no such arrangement in Iran, and Syria was not able to close off a major shipping lane like Iran can.

So I am skeptical that the US can outlast Iran and inflict enough misery on them to overthrow the region before this Iran adventure is brought to a close by world oil prices and US domestic political unrest.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#509

Post by hedora »

breve wrote: post #423
carefree-bob wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

China’s selling cheap cruise missiles. They come in unmarked shipping containers, so they can reach any target globally, as long as it is within a few hundred miles of a shipping route.

Now, consider how many drones can be manufactured in garages using a shipping container full of components and 3d printer filament.

(Doing it that way means the drone designs improve continuously and with minimal manufacturing lag after tactics shift.)

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#510

Post by NooneAtAll3 »

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…

Ukraine fighters are operating out of long-term soviet-era reinforced concrete hangars, while transport aviation is operating out of Romania and Poland which makes striking them a political issue

both solutions are a lot less relevant in case of USA remote-from-home conflicts

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