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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

#441

Post by nradov »

greedo wrote: post #268
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 Booker was a perfect fit for the Army reqs, and filled a genuine need. But it didn't have a sponsor that was willing to pay for it. The Armor Branch didn't like it, and the Infantry Branch, which is the real user couldn't muster enough support in the DoD. The Connie is a good ship and the two under contract will be fine vessels when they're commissioned. Frigates are no longer "cheap" ships, and the sticker shock…

The Constellation class frigates had no mission. Just like the failed LCS classes before them, they aren't survivable in a modern high-threat missile environment: weak radars, small magazines. And if they can't survive themselves then they're useless as escorts.

I guess they can be put to work intercepting smugglers in the Caribbean Sea or something.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#442

Post by 8note »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #397
nradov wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

TBF a proxy of one of the nuclear superpowers (ie Ukraine using US arms) is quite different from a run of the mill non-nuclear country retaliating against an invasion using conventional arms manufactured at home. The former invites MAD while the latter is predictable and boring. Seeing as they are the substantially larger aggressor presumably they can pull out of this war of attrition whenever they feel like it.

you can look into game theory and crisis bargaining to see when and when not nukes make sense.

theyre very expensive to use, so the benefits of war have to be extraordinary to match

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#443

Post by carefree-bob »

Thaxll wrote: post #440
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure Iran didn't plan on being obliterated. Why did they have a navy if this was their only plan? Also blocking the straight is funny because the only people it hurts is everyone in the world but the US.

I'm sure Americans are finding it funny to pay for $3+ a gallon. The entire economy suffers from it.

$3 a gallon is less than a dollar per liter. Do you live in Saudi Arabia or a gulf state?

Here are historical real (inflation adjusted) gas prices for the US. You can decide how terrible this is:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1UWwx

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#444

Post by kiba »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #340
calvinmorrison wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well yes you need to keep the aerospace and engineering pipelines full if you ever need to actually go to war. So boeing and all the other chumps making gravy is part of the deal in downtime

That is asinine, what do you think happens to those institutions when incompetence is what gets rewarded. The real threat to the US military is not the lack of weapons, or that the F35 is not as good or as cheap as it could have been, it's because it is a lumbering bureaucracy full of people who couldn't get better jobs elsewhere.

These capabilities don't stick around for free. A corporation isn't going to keep around design staff doing nothing. Even if you move the design staff to the military stuff, you still need to give them work or their skills atrophy.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#445

Post by bpodgursky »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #415
gpt5 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point above - the F35 has enabled complete air dominance over Iran, and ability to perform any operation with impunity over Iran's land. Iran is leveraging its geography and asymmetrical warfare against civilian ship (as done by its proxies), but if the US has build tons of cheap attack drones, that wouldn't have changed anything about this equation. The US already has the ability to strike anywhe…

Your definition of "complete dominance" is different from most people's. If you completely dominate your enemy, you prevent them from being able to affect the situation. Iran is maintaining a blockade over a major shipping lane that the USA does not want them to. The USA's inability to prevent this shows that they are not "completely dominating" Iran.

No, "air dominance" is a well recognized term, it means you can fly your planes basically anywhere you want, to take out whatever target you want, without risk from AA. They are using it exactly how anyone familiar with warfare terminology would understand it.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#446

Post by doodlebugging »

PearlRiver wrote: post #410
fc417fc802 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Ukraine isn't a serious war then? And I take it you believe we failed to employ that strategy in Iran ... why, exactly? The alternative interpretation being that isn't how things work. Swarms of cheap drones are the new reality thus appropriate countermeasures are required on the front lines.

America does not want to prepare for that kind of conflict. It wants B2 bombers because those look cool when they fly over during the Superbowl. Ukraine is a real war and it is about men and women crawling in the mud constantly terrified of getting blown up. It is literally battle of the Somme again. How do you recruit college kids for that?

You don't recruit them, you draft them.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#447

Post by nradov »

Sabinus wrote: post #216
kansface wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because he hasn’t pulled the trigger doesn’t mean there isn’t an actual red line.

The red line is an invasion of Moscow or a strike on Russian nuclear capabilities. Everything else is just an order for preemptive suicide.

Ukraine already executed a successful strike on Russian nuclear capabilities. In 2025 Operation “Spider’s Web” completely destroyed several irreplaceable nuclear-capable strategic bombers.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/how-ukraines-spider-web-operat...

There is no "red line".

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#448

Post by bdangubic »

doodlebugging wrote: post #446
PearlRiver wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America does not want to prepare for that kind of conflict. It wants B2 bombers because those look cool when they fly over during the Superbowl. Ukraine is a real war and it is about men and women crawling in the mud constantly terrified of getting blown up. It is literally battle of the Somme again. How do you recruit college kids for that?

You don't recruit them, you draft them.

Bone spurts will take care of that draft (I’ve read that in the President’s Biography…)

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#449

Post by jawiggins »

Thaxll wrote: post #387
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…

You completely oversell Iran capability, I guarantee you that f35 would go down in a war with a country with decent anti air such as Russia or China. Iran never invested in such technology, they put all their money in drones and ballistic missiles which were extremely effective, we are a month in and the strait is still close. Their strategy was never to try to sink us ships, it was disruption in the region to extend…

> I guarantee you that f35 would go down in a war with a country with decent anti air such as Russia or China

How many F-35s went down due to the Russian and Chinese anti-air systems in Venezuela and Iran?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#450

Post by 8note »

einpoklum wrote: post #222
eek2121 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the folks on the front lines, along with folks on both sides, military or not, who have had to deal with it. Russia would never nuke Ukraine to begin with. They know that by doing so, most of the world would unite against them, and many, including Putin, would be on the chopping block.

> Russia would never nuke Ukraine to begin with. Russia is not fighting Ukraine, it is fighting NATO in Ukraine. And, IIANM, it has the capability of hitting non-Ukranie NATO targets in various places around the world - with cruise missiles and such. The assumption that "oh, Russia will never do this" is actually quite reckless and dangerous; and I don't just mean dangerous to whoever would get attacked, but dangerou…

however, nato is fighting the full might of china, russia, iran, and north korea. the whole set. and china is fighting for both ukraine and russia at the same time. why arent you worried about nato randomly attacling china so china stops supplying russia with drone materials? or north korea so they stop providing shells and soldiers?

russia isnt going to attack nato because it knows it isnt currently fighting nato, and bringing nato into the war will be worse for russia than keeping nato as an arms supplier only.

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