Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

19fortyfive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 218 posts

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#101

Post by dukeyukey »

wombatmobile wrote: post #96
cwp wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not like nobody has ever thought of that before. The best we've been able to do is deterrence, which requires developing advanced weapons like aircraft carriers, stealth fighters and nukes. I know this isn't what you had in mind, but the world is about to find out what it's like to not have superpowers interfering in their affairs. The US doesn't really have any need for troops abroad: the Cold War is over…

> Well, it's not like nobody has ever thought of that before. Naturally. What we haven't done before is invested in tools. We've invested trillions to make tools for advertising, but almost nothing to make tools for achieving peace. > The best we've been able to do is deterrence, which requires developing advanced weapons like aircraft carriers, stealth fighters and nukes. I'm not suggesting war or deterrence can be…

> We've invested trillions to make tools for advertising, but almost nothing to make tools for achieving peace.

I'd argue the European Union was an experiment in peace along these lines, to bind a war-torn continent so close together that war becomes unthinkable. And it's worked - war between France and Germany, or the UK and Ireland, or Denmark and Sweden is unthinkable.

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#102

Post by kybernetikos »

kukx wrote: post #52
wombatmobile wrote: post #49

War is in part an expression of technological competitive advantage. Nth generation weaponry is expensive because technology requires the best minds, materials, and facilities that money can buy. But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? For example, what could $2 trillion have bought in Iraq, Portland, or Jerusalem if it had bee…

Weapons are also tools for peace, an atomic bomb helped a lot in that regard.

I looked into this a few years back and the cost/benefit of the initial use of atomic weapons is not as cut and dried as many people believe. That's not really the topic here though.

It's absolutely true that weapons can be tools for peace, but I don't think that is how the projects in Afghanistan and Iraq played out. Even with the best intentions the fact that it is a military operation planned by military leaders and staffed by trained military personnel means that you're going to get particular kinds of approaches.

I think the suggestion is to approach these projects as an equivalently resouced mission with different aims and led by different people and to see if the balance of resources they would choose would be different.

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#103

Post by tblt »

toxik wrote: post #85
jabl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an European taxpayer, I'm certainly concerned that resources are wasted. OTOH, Putin has time and again proved that he's a belligerent crook entirely willing to expand his territory any time his neighbors show weakness. Much as I wish it were different, Europe must be able to mount a credible defense, with or without the USA.

You are surely aware that France and the UK have nukes. That seems like a pretty strong deterrent.

Is it a given that France or the UK would deploy their nukes in response to, for example, Russian aggression on Europe’s eastern flank, say Estonia? If not, their use as a deterrence there is limited.

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#104

Post by cnorthwood »

koonsolo wrote: post #98
wombatmobile wrote: post #49

War is in part an expression of technological competitive advantage. Nth generation weaponry is expensive because technology requires the best minds, materials, and facilities that money can buy. But what if for the same money, or less, we could buy something even better? How much does peace cost? Has anybody ever costed it? For example, what could $2 trillion have bought in Iraq, Portland, or Jerusalem if it had bee…

If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.

Sometimes people build things of value and want others to take it. For example, open source.

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#105

Post by [deleted] »

stedaniels wrote: post #100
koonsolo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.

That isn't "just how the world works", that's how a subset of people in the world behave.

[deleted]

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#106

Post by earthbee »

roenxi wrote: post #50
bserge wrote: post #4

So they don't actually know what direction to take aircraft in and decided on stealth. Seems reasonable, all else being equal, the party that is detected last has a higher chance of winning. What happens when a new detection method is developed that makes these planes not stealthy? Don't you then just have 4-5th gen craft that cost 2-10x as much? Guess it takes a real war to discover the actual winner of modern warfa…

> the party that is detected last has a higher chance of winning. Can that be what 'stealth' means? Sensing technology must be progressing faster than the ability to remain off-radar. Between satellites, internet connected mobiles and general improvements in radar technology I'm not sure that a stealth aircraft can be undetected.

Stealth isn't about being undetectable, stealth aircraft have always been detectable, the Serbs shot down a F-117 22 years ago, Iraqi search radars picked them up 30 years ago. But even though they are detectable they can make the enemy have to work harder.

Also, stealth should never work alone, it should work in coordination with non-stealth aircraft, drones and stand off jammers as a coherent whole. Detecting stealth aircraft is easy, detecting stealth aircraft against massive background noise from a wall of jammers while missiles and drones are going after your radars is a lot harder.

There's no hiding in space, US, Russia and China have all demonstrated abilities to destroy satellites. In a significant war between any of those three nations those satellites will be gone in a week, maybe even a day.

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#107

Post by the-dude »

willvarfar wrote: post #90
the-dude wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, most of the torpedos of the Western Allies of WWII failed. Did not work.

That is true, and there are great documentaries about how the US messed that up so badly. There was similar lack of faith in the British tigerfish in the 80s. But generally modern torpedos are expected to work effectively and are tested. Sweden is leading the way on the dronification of torpedos.

WWII is such a rabbit hole. What if the Western Allies had working torpedos?

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#108

Post by curuinor »

c048 wrote: post #99
curuinor wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you don't have hegemony, you have the balance of powers: if you don't have the balance of powers, you have hegemony. if we're getting out from hegemony we'll go into the balance of powers (you can sort of see this in the everyone-surrounding-the-prc's reaction to the prc: everyone gangs up together to balance out the putative new hegemon) you need total consensus down to the last man for pacifism to work. works gr…

Balance of power caused millennia of war in Europe. Forming a hegemony has lead to almost 80 years of peace. Large wars haven't been a thing since the dominance of the US and been pushed further and further to the periphery, especially since the end of the cold war.

bismark and metternich and so on managed to run around and mostly keep a general european peace with the balance of powers for 80 years from the 1820s on. too bad it all went to shit - but current events are not incompatible with the assertion that it's all going to shit this decade...

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#109

Post by DocTomoe »

jabl wrote: post #74
ganzuul wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so eager to throw our tax money into this pit.

As an European taxpayer, I'm certainly concerned that resources are wasted. OTOH, Putin has time and again proved that he's a belligerent crook entirely willing to expand his territory any time his neighbors show weakness. Much as I wish it were different, Europe must be able to mount a credible defense, with or without the USA.

As another European, I am in favor of aligning ourselves in a mutually beneficial economic exchange with Russia and China, which causes interdependence and a diminishing risk of military conflict.

Putin, repeatedly, has been shown to be a reliable, and predictable partner - something we cannot really claim about the US, and increasingly less so in recent years.

Re: 6th Generation Stealth Fighter: Joint Effort by UK, Japan, Italy and Sweden?

#110

Post by Engineering-MD »

stedaniels wrote: post #100
koonsolo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have something of value and you cannot protect it, someone will take it from you. That is just how the world works. So how will you protect yourself? You cannot just convert eveyone to zen buddhism. You will have to find a way to protect yourself, so you can say: here is the limit that you cannot cross. Peace can only exist when a powerful entity enforces it.

That isn't "just how the world works", that's how a subset of people in the world behave.

Unfortunately it is a selected for behaviour. The fewer who do it, the higher the rewards.
Post reply on HN