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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

#531

Post by tucnak »

nradov wrote: post #464
dinfinity wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The base scenario in recent war games January 2023. Specifically focused on an invasion of Taiwan. And the analysis report hardly mentions drones. Not saying it isn't useful info, but it is in essence not much more than an educated (but outdated) guess. Using terms like "showed that" is thus highly unwarranted. > Those are substantial losses but assuming all the losses were f35(they were not) even at current non wa…

Which specific drone models are likely to be effective in a major air and naval conflict in and around the Taiwan Strait?

Sea Baby

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#532

Post by johnsmith1840 »

throwaway302340 wrote: post #505
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 techn…

US lost more planes to friendly fire and accidents than the enemy.

We've killed more senior leadership than total US deaths in the war.

Iran has not killed a single pilot or sailor.

That's a generational ass whooping.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#533

Post by sgt101 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #150
sgt101 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three stances that I can see in the debate at the moment. * Quantity has a quality all of its own. * Innovation and agility allows you to adapt and survive. * Low capability platforms often can't be used to deliver useful effect & commanders will try every option not to use them in a fight. When they get committed it can be disastrous. The first two clearly have merits, but every military professional I hav…

Quantity has a quality *if* it can get to the battlefield. The big stuff is for trying to keep the small stuff away from the battlefield. When you can't do that for whatever reason you need a bunch of small stuff of your own. But a frigate without sonar isn't inherently horrible--lots of places don't have subs.

>But a frigate without sonar isn't inherently horrible--lots of places don't have subs.

True, but it's one less mission that it can do. My fear (which I think will be 100% confirmed) is that we will only get a handful even though they are unit cost cheap, because they still cost money to crew and maintain. I need to spend some time modelling the economics of it I guess.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#534

Post by johnsmith1840 »

LastTrain wrote: post #456
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If US destroys Iran it will be the dominate energy supplier for the next 100 years. Iran will be in shambles for 50 years. If Iran surrenders US will be the dominate energy supplier for the next 30 years. Iran will be in shambles for 10 years. The former would cause a worldwide depression but the clear winner of that is the US by a very large margin. If Iran wants to destroy itself and its neighbors US would be happy…

It is almost like you think it is 1965.

Orange man seems to think so.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#535

Post by anjel »

MengerSponge wrote: post #503
pseudohadamard wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The polite way of saying that is "Its a jobs program."

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#536

Post by stackghost »

angry_octet wrote: post #494
stackghost wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oh yeah, did anyone mention how long it takes to integrate a new system onto the F-35? Fracking years. All of which has to be done by LM, forever. Because the F-35 is not a jet, it's a Master Contract. This is the new reality of military procurement and has been for years. Integrated Logistical Support contracts are preferred by senior leadership for lots of reasons that won't fit into an HN comment box, but the wav…

It's not just that uniformed (or DoD) engineers have no access, the subsystem vendor (e.g. Raytheon) also get no access. LM is incredibly obstructionist, even compared to the bastards at Boeing. This cluster** has led directly to initiatives for open (Govt open) architectures and vendor agnostic interfaces for talking between vehicles and components, and between component, between jets and drones and C2 etc. That has…

Oh, I know all about LM. I used to work on the Hercules when I was in the Air Force. Experimental flight permits, mods, block upgrades, the works. Greatest aircraft in history, if you ask me, but I digress.

Ultimately the F-35 remains Lockheed's intellectual property, which is what drives all this. They want to sell it to other countries, which they can't do if the USAF owns the IP.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#537

Post by PowerElectronix »

bigfudge wrote: post #63
PowerElectronix wrote: post #18

The F-35 is the best stealth aircraft you can have in a war against china. But it alone is not going to win that war. I wouldn't say it's the wrong jet for that war just because of that. If you put the f-35 along all the rest of the us military, the war can be won and the f-35 plays a critical role in that win.

There is no in winning a war between the US and China, even assuming it doesn't go nuclear. There would only be losers all over the world. It would make the current Iran conflict look like a tiny speedbump (albeit one which is likely to cause malnutrition and starvation for millions of people in subsaharan Africa within 6-12 months).

There is a win condition achievable in a US-China war. You leave the army in shambles and take over the political power structures, like with nazi germany or any other conventional country in the world.

It'd be hell, for sure, but it is a war that can end in victory for either side.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#538

Post by tennysont »

etempleton wrote: post #485

I see what the author is saying and I agree to some extent, but I think the F35 is mostly irrelevant in terms of the argument being made. I think it is needed and does it's job as a deterrent. The F35 means that that no one can really control the skies against the US. Iran was considered to have fairly robust air defenses and that was all but destroyed within days. So the F35, as the author states, is performing well…

I think that tech people presume too much overlap between their own domain knowledge and war. The analysis isn't particularly bad, it's just wildly overconfident. Replacing F-35s with drones is like replacing cell towers with bluetooth mesh networks. You can hate the F-35 and love drone swarms, but they aren't in the same niche.

Cheap (~1k USD) drones are easy to intercept, vulnerable to EM/GPS jamming, require nearby operators, break easily, and can't carry enough payload to make a difference. Try to fix any one or two of these and the price will go up. As the price goes, reliability becomes more important. Try to fix them all and you're going to reinvent the missile.

One comment in this thread argued that drone factors can be protected from F-35s by burring them underground, misunderstand that such logistical hurdles are what causes military hardware to be more expensive than civilian equivalents in the first place.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#539

Post by foota »

nandomrumber wrote: post #235
foota wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe parent is right, but satelites don't stay in one place unless they're on the equator, because otherwise they have to be moving. This means that you need many satelites to maintain coverage of a single spot. I don't know how many military satelites China has, but I would have assumed it would be sufficient to cover the pacific sufficiently to find an aircraft carrier. (the obvious caveat here being clo…

> but satelites don't stay in one place What? > unless they're on the equator What? > because otherwise they have to be moving What?

It was admittedly a bit sloppy. The more accurate version (IANAKSPP, I am not a kerbal space program player) would be that the only way to maintain a satelite in one position (without expending an infeasible amount of energy) is to position it above the equator and sync its speed with the Earth's rotation, allowing it to stay in a single position above the Earth. Satelites always have to be moving fast enough such that the centripetal force is sufficient to counteract the Earth's gravitational pull, otherwise they would fall back onto the planet.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#540

Post by ExoticPearTree »

wahern wrote: post #167
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 never looked good on paper. The only people who thought it would succeed were Trump and the cast of characters he surrounded himself with. I doubt if many congressional Republican chickenhawks thought it would succeed. The only way to oust the regime is with ground troops, ripping out the Revolutionary Guard and its tentacles. For all its corruption, Iran is far from a failed state, and there aren't fact…

> The Iran War never looked good on paper. The only people who thought it would succeed were Trump and the cast of characters he surrounded himself with.

Not to nitpick, but “looked good on paper” was an euphemism for “the powers that be think its doable”. Amd yes, yiu are right: Trump surrounded himself with “loyalist” this time that won’t go against hime like in the previous administration, but with the very undesirable effect of amplifying the echo chamber he lives in.

And like someone said in this thread, lots of hubris.

I am no expert on Iran, but all documentaries that I’ve seen about this reach the same conclusion: you don’t invade Iran using ground forces.

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