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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

#581

Post by M95D »

denkmoon wrote: post #438
dgroshev wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a serious war drone factories are getting bombed (by F-35s) and there is no need to handle a never-ending stream of drones. The war in Ukraine is special because neither side is capable of air supremacy. Note that the original article doesn't say anywhere that F-35-like capability is not needed.

In a serious war why would an adversary like China not put their drone factories deep underground, deep in the territorial interior?

Drones can be made in ordinary civilian houses and apartments. It's too expensive to dig an underground factory just for that, and even if they do (let's assume an abandoned mine could be used), they would still have vulnerable power supply and vulnerable transport. Power plants, transmission lines, rail tracks, bridges are part of the targeted infrastructure. The further they are from the front, the more a logistical nightmare it becomes to move them to where they're needed.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#582

Post by 999900000999 »

FpUser wrote: post #130
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.

Civilian to military casualty ratio is 1:20 for Russia-Ukraine war and 2:1 for WWII. The difference is huge. Whether this is actual restraint I have no knowledge but if it quacks like a duck ...

The uncomfortable truth is that is absolutely restraint.

For the areas of Ukraine Russia controls, the Russians have distributed food and in some cases identifying documents.

From what I can tell Russia’s goal is to assimilate, not annihilation.

After all is said and done, I suspect some Ukrainians will become Russian citizens or be granted the opportunity to leave.

Or the war will continue forever

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#583

Post by shmeeed »

wredcoll wrote: post #420
tempest_ wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure any single one but there are many companies, some with hundreds of satellites in orbit at any given time who will point it where ever if you pay them enough Which is why you get things like this https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/05/satellite-firm-planet-labs-t... An aircraft carrier is not that fast, if you see it once you know roughly what radius of circle it is going to be in for a while (ignoring the fact that the…

This is literally the point: it's easy to tell them to point a satellite at beirut and get pictures every 3 hours or whatever, it's much more difficult to tell them to point at a location in the middle of the pacific ocean... because you don't know the location in the first place. Beirut doesn't move around a lot. Carriers do. While there are a lot of satellites pointing at the earth at any one moment, this isn't som…

>because you don't know the location in the first place

Do you seriously think China doesn't track US carrier movements?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#584

Post by fsagx »

thephyber wrote: post #489
dgroshev wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a serious war drone factories are getting bombed (by F-35s) and there is no need to handle a never-ending stream of drones. The war in Ukraine is special because neither side is capable of air supremacy. Note that the original article doesn't say anywhere that F-35-like capability is not needed.

The US doesn’t have air supremacy in Iran. We have air dominance, but shoulder mounted infrared guided (bypasses stealth paint to go after engine exhaust) AA is still taking out the occasional F35 and A10. RU/UA is special because RU completely screwed up the first 3 weeks of the war (likely because of the culture of sycophancy Putin has, similar to Trump) and was driven out of central UA. Russia is too proud to admi…

>They have hundreds of office / home locations where the parts are printed / assembled

This shouldn't be a big surprise to Russia or anyone else, as it has precedent. German aircraft production peaked in 1944 at the height of allied strategic bombing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_aircraft_production_dur...

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#586

Post by rasz »

smcin wrote: post #557
rasz wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a serious drone war a neutral cargo ship off your coast will open hidden flaps and unleash 10K drones all at once erasing couple bases before they even know whats up.

Wouldn't that be the war crime of perfidy, similar to when the US used a secret plane painted as a civilian aircraft to sink one of the Venezuelan boats 9/2025?

Like that tens of times unaffiliated cargo ships dragged anchor for tens of kilometers to dredge fiberoptic cables in the Baltic.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#587

Post by vasac »

M95D wrote: post #581
denkmoon wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a serious war why would an adversary like China not put their drone factories deep underground, deep in the territorial interior?

Drones can be made in ordinary civilian houses and apartments. It's too expensive to dig an underground factory just for that, and even if they do (let's assume an abandoned mine could be used), they would still have vulnerable power supply and vulnerable transport. Power plants, transmission lines, rail tracks, bridges are part of the targeted infrastructure. The further they are from the front, the more a logistica…

I would guess that there's a big difference between assembling a drone (which can easily be done in a kitchen) and mass-producing parts such as batteries and gas engines for drones that have to fly more than a few dozen kilometers.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#588

Post by ethbr1 »

mghfreud wrote: post #563
krige wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have already lost two in the first real conflict. Doesn't seem like it's all that capable.

Designing for zero loss in a major war is way more expensive than we can undertake.

I mean, we did that too. That's why there are only 19 operational B-2s (21 built).

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#589

Post by ethbr1 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #411
hkpack wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2000 shaheds are just a regular week in Ukraine. 90% of that are destroyed far away from targets and the other 10% do cause some damage, but it is usually far from being devastating as the drone is far from being very precise. A single F35 which could penetrate air defense and go into the country would be a real problem. If Russia has 10 of them, I think it would significantly alter the current equation of power as i…

I think that "air superiority" thinking is part of what's changed. USA/Israel forces have air superiority over Iran. That doesn't stop Iran being able to fly drones or missiles.

It does stop Iran from being able to launch a huge number of drones and missiles.

That they were able to launch >0 after losing air superiority is a testament to how much work is in the last mile.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#590

Post by ethbr1 »

hkpack wrote: post #308
gozucito wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what would you rather have? 2000 Shahed/Lucas drones or a single F35? Same cost for both. The saying "Quantity has a quality all of its own" is not obsolete in 2026.

2000 shaheds are just a regular week in Ukraine. 90% of that are destroyed far away from targets and the other 10% do cause some damage, but it is usually far from being devastating as the drone is far from being very precise. A single F35 which could penetrate air defense and go into the country would be a real problem. If Russia has 10 of them, I think it would significantly alter the current equation of power as i…

> A single F35 which could penetrate air defense and go into the country would be a real problem.

The difference here is an F-35 + precision weaponry + intelligence to locate high value targets.

It's always going to be cheaper / easier to use shorter-range munitions, which means the launch platform has to be higher / closer.

But without strategic intelligence (what high value targets exist, and what are they supporting?) and targeting intelligence (where are they right now, and where will they be?) neither of the other two capabilities are valuable.

Logistics and command inevitably trend towards centralization, because it's inefficient and expensive to decentralize everything (and at some point the tyranny of compounding logistics makes it impossible).

Where there is centralization, there's a high value target, and that's a job for the F-35 and exquisite standoff weapons.

Should forces be a mix of high-low? Of course! That's something the US realized in the 80s and is why we have the F-16! (still flying, being built, and exported!)

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