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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

#201

Post by nradov »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96
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…

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 has already launched several mass strikes on Moscow.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/moscow-comes-under-one-of...

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russia...

Even if Russia sees a particular tactic or weapons system as an existential threat it's questionable whether they have the capability to escalate further. I mean they can threaten nuclear strikes on Ukrainian population centers but would anyone believe that the threats are credible?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#202

Post by dinfinity »

01100011 wrote: post #162
dinfinity wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> No one is fire-bombing cities yet

That was mainly the Americans, British, and the Germans, not the USSR.

Also, what makes you think they could in this war? Do you think they can send bombers over Ukranian cities and drop a shitton of ordnance?

The Russians aren't deploying nukes; that is the only actual 'restraint' to date.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#203

Post by _DeadFred_ »

dmix wrote: post #166
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.

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Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#204

Post by amluto »

Rover222 wrote: post #182
dmix wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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I would like to see the government (at all levels) have more in house capabilities and less absurd degrees of outsourcing.

I’m currently watching an 8-figure park remodeling project happening near home. Instead of hiring one or two competent construction managers for a few hundred thousand dollars, the city seems to be spending several million dollars for outside management to oversee this one project. (Never mind how much they’re overpaying for the actual construction.)

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#205

Post by ghaff »

scottyah wrote: post #198
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 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…

Given budgets and slipped timeframes, there was a lot of criticism of the F-35 unifying platforms as opposed to just letting every service do their own one (or two) things as had been the norm. But, at the end of the day, not clear it was a bad strategy.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#207

Post by credit_guy »

freediddy wrote: post #70
credit_guy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the opposite. Drones are subject to the tyrany of the rocket equation: they need fuel (or batteries) to fly, then fuel (or batteries) to carry the fuel, etc, in a compounded way. Which makes long range drone inherently more expensive than short range ones. Right now, the novelty of the technology means the offensive has an advantage. But long term it will be the defensive who will benefit the most from drones…

I described below how you could launch thousands of them from a single massive container that gets dropped by B2 bombers. You have to use your imagination, you're not limited by today's technology anymore.

I was answering to your comment in the current thread, where you explicitly said "long-range" drones. Long-range drones will always be more expensive than short range drones, and not in a linear way, in an exponential way.

Thousands of short range drones dropped from B2 bombers sound like an interesting idea, until you hear about JDAM bombs, of which the US has a virtually unlimited supply, which are cheap, and are incredibly powerful compared to anything one could attach to a DJI-sized drone.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#208

Post by carefree-bob »

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.

The Iran war is a skirmish by any reasonable measure. It does not exhaust either the US Navy or the Airforce, and the Army isn't even participating.

Now I understand it has a large impact because of oil prices and the closing of the strait of hormuz, but don't confuse the economic impact of the closing of shipping lanes with something that "exhausts" the US military.

Remember this is the military that spent two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq, using considerably more resources. Those were actual wars, followed by occupations that lasted two decades. And that didn't exhaust the US.

In terms of the Naval cost, it is occupying 15% of ships, with zero ships sunk or damaged. I believe there were 13 soldiers killed during strikes on bases in the area. Those bases have been manned for decades and have not exhausted the US Army. Let's maintain some perspective.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#209

Post by stevenwoo »

aftbit wrote: post #79
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…

I think the insight is that you need a high-low mix. Some threats call for top of the line capabilities (like early days of the Iran conflict with stand-off munitions and top-spec interceptors being used against Shahed drones and cheap cruise missiles). Some threats can be more economically serviced by a less capable, cheaper, and more available system.

Ukraine is using old school propeller trainer craft to shoot down some of the slower Russian drones. https://theaviationist.com/2024/06/26/ukrainian-yak-52-kill-... There's usually new footage of this every week on social media.

Don't really see or hear about the USA building or using propeller driven planes in military outside of special ops.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#210

Post by tdb7893 »

Rover222 wrote: post #182
dmix wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

I don't think aerospace is a good example of efficiency in the private sector. Lockheed Martin did the F-35 and it's main competition in the US is Boeing...

I'm not an expert but from my friends in the industry (including multiple at Lockheed and Boeing), it's definitely not a story about how good and efficient the private sector is. Boeing especially sounds like it's been a real mess with a lot of project management issues.

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