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

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#621

Post by hedora » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

dgroshev wrote: post #609

hedora wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being able to stockpile is not the goal, it's a pre-requisite. Having a serious manufacturing capability helps to scale, but you can't convert an iphone assembly line to ballistic missile interceptors, and especially when you don't produce the interceptors at some low rate. There is a lot of technology and know-how that goes into those capabilities, and both get lost if they aren't exercised. But that means either tr…

Why would you waste the factory output during peacetime?

It seems like pork spending to me. Put the factories to good use, and maybe have 1% of output go to prototypes; 10% to dual use.

Miniaturization of weaponry (like drones) makes this even more attractive. Also, a iPhone factory (if such a thing existed) could certainly convert to drone manufacturing in short order. Aluminum and glass aren’t great materials for drones, but aluminum is useful for things like machinery that manufactures plastic.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#622

Post by energy123 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:44 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #597

energy123 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ag…

The Iran war isn't over yet. Plenty of time for it to become attritional, especially if the people who want Big Gaza / "mowing the nuclear lawn" to become the status quo are in charge. After all, Afghanistan was a quick victory, 20 years of attrition, and eventual exit.

Without factories? I doubt it. I'm not saying the US is going to win (in the sense of achieving objectives), but it's not going to be an attrition war like in WW2 or Ukraine. Japan had factories. Ukraine has factories. You can't sustain a modern war without factories.

Afghanistan wasn't an attrition war (where the outcome is a collapse of one side). The CENTCOM commander explains best why the US lost, it's because of sanctuary:

> The core of the Taliban’s command and control was in the mountainous town of Quetta in southern Pakistan, and the most violent branch of the movement, the Haqqanis, were safely ensconced farther north, also in Pakistan. All were off limits to our forces. Occasionally, Pakistan would apply some pressure, but it was never enough to reduce their ability to operate. I came to see this as the absolutely critical failure of all our plans, and I grew to believe that there weren’t enough U.S. forces in all the world to establish order in Afghanistan, so long as Pakistan was open to the Taliban. It was a logical error in our approach to counterinsurgency that could not be papered over or compensated for.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#623

Post by hedora » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

carefree-bob wrote: post #476

hedora wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t decide if the economy has bifurcated or if these inflation stats are totally bogus. Diesel is almost $7/gallon here. All the stuff we buy (food, services, electronics) are up 30-100% since the beginning of last year, but federal inflation stats claim 3%.

Gas is certainly bifurcated. The west coast is paying up to $5.80 and Texas/midwest are paying $3.20 or so. NY and New England is paying a lot, but from Virginia on down, they are paying less. All the midwest is paying close to texas prices except Illinois, which is paying California prices. Some of that is differences in taxes, but some of it is due to getting gas from different sources. If we had a pipeline from Te…

For the national 3% average to hold, for the low end of my range (30%) to hold on the west coast, the rest of the country would have to be suffering from deflation.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#624

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

elihu wrote: post #507

benoau wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's crazy is there's lots of videos of Ukranians shooting drones from open-cockpit propeller planes that barely cost more than the drones! I think in a serious drone war we would just have fleets of Cesnas flying around with a person hanging out the door with a shotgun lol.

The Super Turcano is a prop-driven aircraft that's often suggested for this role.

I wouldn't want to field those around a bunch of FPV interceptor drones.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#625

Post by lenerdenator » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #418

lenerdenator wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> P.S. air dominance in Iran is meaningless in this conflict. Read e.g. the blog post I linked to for context. It's meaningless now . If the US, for some reason, decided to say, "For each drone or missile that you fire at one of your Arab neighbors or Israel, we launch an old-fashioned B52 raid on your industry or infrastructure. Come to the negotiating table." and actually carried out that threat, well, there would…

Bombing civilian infrastructure never works like this. As we saw in The Blitz (and in Vietnam, and in Ukraine), it just draws the bombed together, unifying them and hardening their resolve.

If you ignore Japan and Germany, this is absolutely true.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#626

Post by tehjoker » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

wredcoll wrote: post #429

tehjoker wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you keep your carriers out of striking range they are invincible! lmao

You don't need to be out of striking range if they can't find you, that's the entire point.

I meant the carriers striking range. They’re invincible but useless.

Iran pushed our carrier group far outside of striking range without midair refueling (very dangerous to do in an active war zone). This is because they can blow holes in the ships from the shore.

In the Vietnam War (“the resistance war against america to save the nation” as the vietnamese term it officially), American carriers were stationed 90mi off the coast at point yankee because there were not sufficient anti ship capability. This resulted in the horrific pounding of the country (Operation Linebacker I, II for example). Things have changed (for the better).

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#627

Post by dgroshev » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #621

dgroshev wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to stockpile is not the goal, it's a pre-requisite. Having a serious manufacturing capability helps to scale, but you can't convert an iphone assembly line to ballistic missile interceptors, and especially when you don't produce the interceptors at some low rate. There is a lot of technology and know-how that goes into those capabilities, and both get lost if they aren't exercised. But that means either tr…

Why would you waste the factory output during peacetime? It seems like pork spending to me. Put the factories to good use, and maybe have 1% of output go to prototypes; 10% to dual use. Miniaturization of weaponry (like drones) makes this even more attractive. Also, a iPhone factory (if such a thing existed) could certainly convert to drone manufacturing in short order. Aluminum and glass aren’t great materials for d…

That's because the modern weapon tech tree is vast and complex. It's not factorio, there are no factories that can switch from producing DSLRs to MWIR cameras. A playdough factory can't cast solid rocket motors. A Tesla manufacturing line can't just switch to welding 10cm steel slabs for tanks. Moreover, those military-relevant processes and techniques require know-how that gets lost if the processes are not run.

Small quad hype is just techbro delusion. Those quads have their place, but the vast majority of the defence toolkit needs to be much more sophisticated. For example, Ukraine is still struggling to manufacture a domestic ballistic missile four years into the war, despite having tons of funding, a ballistic program pre-war, and Western experts willing to help. If western countries stopped low-rate production that normally goes into stockpiles, the timeline to start manufacturing up would be similar.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#628

Post by johnsmith1840 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #556

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Funnily that's all utterly irrelevant. Like Vietnam showed, it doesn't matter how much better numbers than the enemy you have, because kill counts don't win wars. Iran is still the one closer to achieving its objectives (survival for the regime), because they don't need to do much for that to happen. Apply pressure to the Gulf states and global energy and fertiliser markets and at some point, the US will cave. The Am…

So, hypothetical.

If US lost public support then destroyed all oil and major iranian infra then left what would happen?

Think 20 years down the line what that would do.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#629

Post by datsci_est_2015 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 3:36 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #591

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's because it is a lumbering bureaucracy full of people who couldn't get better jobs elsewhere. I don’t think that they exploit the military industrial complex for personal job security and fortune makes it likely that they’re incompetent. In fact, as a society we seem to praise those who are exceedingly successful at such exploitation, and even elect them to the highest levels of government and hang onto every w…

you can just say "capitalism did this" -- no need to pussyfoot around it mate most of HN will downvote you for it

I was trying to draw more of a connection to rent-seeking behavior, which is I guess one of the failure modes of “free market” capitalism.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#630

Post by histriosum » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #568

cm2012 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of big words, but also inaccurate. If you compare the F-35 to basically any plane worldwide with similar capabilities, it's very reasonably priced. You can see that in that it's very popular for export, with pre-sales already sold out until 2035. There are plenty of articles out there on this for those who want to Google it.

Are those the right capabilities for the price, though? If it was the right plane, full stop, wouldn't Ukraine be fielding a wing of them? No, because they're extremely cost constrained.

Ukraine would love the F35. We won’t sell it to them at any price, though, because of the escalatory concern with Russia. We only just barely decided to allow them to have F16.