F-35 is built for the wrong war • Hacker News Board

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#511

Post by hedora » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:09 AM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #133

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...

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…

What is the carrier for if the jets it carries cannot stop swarms of drones?

The only thing I can come up with is “war crimes”, but, as Iran pointed out, if you can afford an aircraft carrier, you have trillions of dollars of easily hit civilian targets, so you pretty much automatically lose if the other side retaliates in kind.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#512

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:09 AM UTC

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 US is converging on a single class of combat ships, which is whatever DDG-X turns into. It converges what was previously destroyers, cruisers, and frigates. It is more capable and has a higher displacement than any of them despite being called a "destroyer".

Much of the distinction separation historically was that ship category reflected command officer rank. They have been decoupling that, which honestly makes sense.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#513

Post by hedora » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:12 AM UTC

rurp wrote: post #263

carefree-bob wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decad…

Reports are that the US has exhausted certain key capabilities such as high end missiles and interceptors. We've likely used more interceptors in a month against a fourth rate power than Ukraine has in their entire war against Russia. That's extremely damning and irresponsible from a strategic perspective. Exhausting key functionality like that will absolutely lead to major losses of things like manpower and ships ag…

We were burning a year worth of global patriot manufacturing capacity every day at the beginning of the war. Math says we slowed down and are also running out.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#514

Post by hedora » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:14 AM UTC

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #461

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would dispute the depletion of expensive munitions, but I still believe that is largely irrelevant next to political exhaustion. I do not think most Americans would care to defend Taiwan, even against the China boogeyman. The practical realities of losing Chinese goods would be a devastating reality few are prepared to face.

I think people are pointing out how little it actually takes to wage this war against Iran and that there are basically zero costs to the USA to do so. A classic "political exhaustion" requires some degree of meaningful hardship on the USA and a slight gas price increase just isn't enough.

Wait until the fertilizer shortage hits food prices, and the helium shortage actually shuts down semiconductor manufacturing.

Those things should be hitting just before election season.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#515

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:15 AM UTC

dinfinity wrote: post #475

jandrewrogers wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A drone of this type and a cruise missile are literally the same type of thing, they just occupy different points on the capability spectrum. You assert "plenty of defenses against torpedoes don't work against [UUV]". Based on what? What is this hypothetical property of a UUV that is superior to a torpedo? A UUV with sufficient range and warhead is going to be big and heavy. Long-range torpedos weigh 2 tons each for…

> A drone of this type and a cruise missile are literally the same type of thing, they just occupy different points on the capability spectrum. You have a "this type" in your mind. I do not. Even then you're wrong. A drone can loiter and is thus not "literally the same type of thing" as a cruise missile or torpedo. > What is this hypothetical property of a UUV that is superior to a torpedo? [...] It still has to cros…

Are you oblivious to the fact that cruise missiles can loiter? You are making a distinction without a difference.

All of this reads like you are not familiar with modern military capabilities.

Longer ranger UUVs is equivalent to "even bigger torpedoes". Do you not understand the subject matter? There is a lot of evidence in this post that you do not. You are making up magical scenarios where your UUVs have properties that can't be replicated by any other real system that is literally supposed to execute the same mission.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#516

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:20 AM UTC

discodave wrote: post #502

jandrewrogers wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 survei…

Yes but the scope limits coverage.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#517

Post by hedora » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:27 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #237

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It concerns me how casual the article and some of the comments here discuss an actual war against China, as if that were a reasonable scenario. The last few wars started by the US were based on scenarios that looked good on paper and in reality they did not went so well. Look at the Iran war: "we're gonna kill their supreme leader and the regime will fall". Almost two months later nothing changed in any significant…

The iran war - for all it was a bad idea eliminated a lot of iran's war capacity which seems to be the real goal - near as anyone can tell what they were. Regime change would be nice, but needs more than the us was ever gave indication they would do. the followon effects like the closing of the straight were obvious which is why few Iran hatehs thought it was a good idea

The estimates I’ve seen say they lost/used 33% of their conventional capacity, 33% was rendered inoperable but recoverable.

I’d guess with the ceasefire, they’re probably back to 40-50% online.

The nuclear capability story is even worse: they were mostly mothballed prewar, suffered partial refinement damage and minimal stockpile loss. Refinement will be back online sometime in the next few years (unless this is a forever war), with weapons following shortly after that.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#518

Post by energy123 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:30 AM UTC

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…

That's a stale insight from an old era of warfare. The purpose of quality is to remove quantity. Iran is the case study. A large stockpile of munitions counts for something, but once the factories are gone, you're on a 3 month clock. Factories being deleted can only be achieved with quality (expensive stand-off munitions + F-35s for SEAD, then missile trucks with cheap JDAMs to take out the factories).

30-50 years ago you just couldn't do this kind of warfare, the technology and intelligence didn't exist. Now you can. People haven't updated on this paradigm shift.

People are over-learning the wrong lessons from Ukraine. That is a unique war with air parity. That's why the Ukraine war is shaped the way it is. Not because this is how wars ought to be fought.

This is not to discount quantity. But you can't have only quantity unless you want to fight an attritional war for 10 years (or worse, lose your own industrial production to an enemy that achieves air superiority over your skies because they had the foresight to invest in quality).

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#519

Post by angry_octet » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:47 AM UTC

fooker wrote: post #258

jandrewrogers wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quantity has been replaced by precision. In WW2 the US would send a 1,000 bombers to hit a target and still miss. That's why they needed so many. Now a single attack jet can hit multiple targets with very high probability.

Maybe you should read the article? Quantity is back in the game again thanks to drones, right now we would lose without escalating to a nuclear war.

Exactly, drones enable quantity and precision. Geran type drones can easily fly 1000nm, and that kind of range needs wide area sensing and patrols to intercept, really expensive at present.

I don't know that a loss right now would be likely, probably a stalemate which would be ruinously expensive for everyone.

Drones favor defenders by making movement costly, there is a considerable advantage to being dug in. Air dominance no longer guarantees being free from low altitude aerial threat. Long range drones require basing further away, which means A2A refuelling, or a massive innovation in drone defence (cheap missiles, autonomous drone interceptors, sensor nets).

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#520

Post by dwd » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 5:49 AM UTC

I'm just happy the Australian Government invested in the MQ-28 Ghost Bat program. Unit cost is currently estimated to be USD$8-10m according to Boeing and we get a "loyal wingman" platform to force-multiply our small fleet of F-35s and F/A-18 Supers. It can also be remotely directed from the E-7 Wedgetail.