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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

#571

Post by pjc50 »

vogre wrote: post #257
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 Mostly because that's useless. Ukrainian weapon production and economy is located in Europe. Ukraine is basicaly western PMC now. If nuclear war starts, nukes would be falling on European cities and facilities, not Ukrainian.

Everyone keeps forgetting about the French independent at sea nuclear deterrent.

I wonder when Poland will decide it's time for them to have The Bomb?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#572

Post by pjc50 »

sobellian wrote: post #120
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…

The thing about the Russo-Ukrainian war is that it is a failure for both sides. The primary lesson from this war is, how do we avoid ending up like those poor guys? If the US Army fights a war with anyone, let alone China, on the doctrine that it should set up a static attritional front line with drone warfare, the joint chiefs should all be fired.

The US Army doctrine is "have more stuff". The US military budget is about 450% of Ukranian GDP. The F-35 is part of that. As are the nukes.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#573

Post by pjc50 »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #532
throwaway302340 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Somehow Iran is still in control of the strait. This sounds a lot like Russia declaring victory after three days in Ukraine.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#574

Post by defrost »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #532
throwaway302340 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The triumphant US have succeeded in reversing the pre-War Iranian offer to give up HEU and the pre-War state of the Strait being open to traffic.

They have also very possibly succeeded in upending the strength of petro dollar that has been bouying up US economic dominance for much of the past 50 years.

USA! FTW!

Talk about muddled goals.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#575

Post by watwut »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #506
kalleboo wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can see that in that it's very popular for export It's very popular for export since the US has been forcing their allies to buy them over any alternatives, this was shown in the WikiLeaks cables.

Nothing else is remotely as capable in the modern threat environment that most countries can actually buy. That's the cold truth. They can't buy anything else that compares and the best isn't for sale.

The pressure was not "because it was the best thing for those countries or war". The pressure was because it was good for USA manufacturer and economy. It was one of the perks of being a leader of a group of allies - you can pressure them to buy your stuff.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#576

Post by the_af »

greedo wrote: post #362
the_af wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. They could have standardized on a few rugged platforms -- and in fact, some in Nazi Germany advocated for that -- but their industry and engineering were generally self-sabotaging and a mess.

They actually did standardize pretty quickly. Panzer III and Panzer IV were the workhorses in Russia, paired up with the StuG (which used the Pz III chassis). I think that it's arguable that no production strategy could have led to German success. Had they tried to produce T-34 or Sherman type tanks (and the Panther was kind of intended to be that tank), they still would have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of t…

Agreed that arguably no strategy could have helped them against the Soviet Union, it was a major blunder going to war with them.

But the Nazis self-sabotaged constantly. The Panzer IV and the Stug III (with the outdated Panzer III chassis) were arguably the closest standard for armor, but they were constantly diverting effort to alternative platforms that were too complex to mass produce and maintain. And the same for other weapons.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#577

Post by ceejayoz »

8note wrote: post #451
nradov wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

that didn't cross the red line, and the US has a phone call to talk it over and that Russia's policy for using nukes hadnt been breached

Red lines have been crossed repeatedly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-Ukraini...

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#578

Post by bluGill »

phil21 wrote: post #408
bluGill wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes and no - they do make plenty of quality too - but they are most visible for the cheap junk.

I suppose visible is subjective. But they are also key component and raw material suppliers for essentially everything high value as well. The west simply does not have the heavy industrial or resource extraction base to account for anything else to be the case. Every time I’ve looked into literally any product China is at the start of the supply chain if lot much further into it. And yes, I am alleging outright frau…

The military is concerned about that and developing alternatives where there is real risk. The supply chain is global and china too has areas where they are missing something critical.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#579

Post by 15155 »

hedora wrote: post #497
dgroshev wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The development and production lifecycle _has_ to be long for a country not fighting a current war. Ukrainian munitions get used up almost immediately. They don't need to stockpile, they are in a steady state wartime production. On the contrary, peace time countries have to stockpile. A manufacturing line cannot be ramped up from zero to wartime, we need low volume manufacturing to retain the expertise and the supply…

Stockpiling doesn’t really do much vs. investing in manufacturing. Contrast the US in the civil war or wwii to the current situation. In both those wars, civilian factories were rapidly converted for the war and manufacturing capabilities were ramped fast. In Iran, we’ve burned through years or decades of manufacturing capacity and probably used up most of our top tier stockpile. That only exhausted/destroyed about 3…

> 33% of Iran’s cruise missile stockpiles

Which cruise missiles are you referring to?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#580

Post by jemmyw »

dralley wrote: post #111
Jtsummers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed. Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35, let alone maintain them, and the geographic distribution of the effort only makes that worse. And then they made it worse again by making many parts of the F-35 F-35 specific. You can't just drop in the same…

> Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35 This is completely wrong, though. It's cheaper to build an F-35 than it is to build a Eurofighter, Rafale or Gripen, which are significantly older and less capable platforms. And not even "a little" cheaper - quite a bit cheaper. Economies of scale are real

After reading your comment I did read up on the Gripen. Seems very interesting. Procurement is about the same as the F-35 but the running costs are about 1/4 so over its expected lifetime it'll be considerably cheaper. On the procurement front though Saab seems to offer factory set up as part of the deal, so you make back some of the cost into your economy. Being able to build and maintain them yourself seems like a big plus.

Capability wise the gap isn't as large as I thought either. The latest Gripen-E has similar radar, possibly better software, and they can be kitted out to fire the same air to air weapons. What they don't have is a stealthy airframe and they aren't designed for some of the same mission profiles. If you're a country that doesn't make your own aircraft then having access to both, or just the Gripen for interceptors would make some sense.

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