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

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#651

Post by tim333 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:06 PM UTC

fc417fc802 wrote: post #386

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.

So Ukraine isn't a serious war then? And I take it you believe we failed to employ that strategy in Iran ... why, exactly? The alternative interpretation being that isn't how things work. Swarms of cheap drones are the new reality thus appropriate countermeasures are required on the front lines.

I was thinking that. For most of the last sixty years Russia / the USSR was the peer adversary usually mentioned for NATO to fight. I think they look weaker than they are because Ukraine has actually been pretty competent in the fight.

Re. no swarms of drones because the factories have been bombed, do people really think that'll work on China?

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#652

Post by rmb173rd » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

cjbgkagh wrote: post #340

calvinmorrison wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well yes you need to keep the aerospace and engineering pipelines full if you ever need to actually go to war. So boeing and all the other chumps making gravy is part of the deal in downtime

That is asinine, what do you think happens to those institutions when incompetence is what gets rewarded. The real threat to the US military is not the lack of weapons, or that the F35 is not as good or as cheap as it could have been, it's because it is a lumbering bureaucracy full of people who couldn't get better jobs elsewhere.

Respectfully, the problem is not incompetence or bureaucracy. There's plenty of each in the military but they are only symptoms.

I like the Stanford Beer quote - "The purpose of a system is what it does".

What does the current defense acquisition system reliably produce? Obscene amounts of money for the defense contractors, campaign contributions for politicians, promotions and well-paid private sector careers for the top military leadership. The quality and suitability of its weapon systems, though sometimes excellent, is secondary.

All people who matter in this system, the ones who built and sustain it, are rewarded by the status quo. It's working exactly as intended.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#653

Post by greedo » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #633

panick21_ wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has not found that out, they knew it, that's why things like lasers and other systems have seen so much development. Yes the war showed some new aspects, but relentless low capability drone attacks is not the same as flying an F-35 into enemy air space and bombing their critical resources with high accuracy thanks to sensors. Mass manaufacture and drones and such need to be take into account in the future, but…

> The US has not found that out, they knew it, that's why things like lasers and other systems have seen so much development. Yes, the US was not prepared. The laser systems were nowhere to be seen, and there are no interceptor drones on the field right now. Or at least not in the quantity needed to protect valuable targets (like AWACS planes). Also, lasers are just a waste of resources anyway. They only work when th…

Not to argue with most of your points (which I agree with), but the F-35 is really meant to be more of a fighter-bomber than a true air-superiority fighter. It's not really in the same class as F-22/J-20/Su-30/F-15EX kinematically, and that's fine because counter-air really isn't its role.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#654

Post by guzfip » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

rmb173rd wrote: post #652

cjbgkagh wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is asinine, what do you think happens to those institutions when incompetence is what gets rewarded. The real threat to the US military is not the lack of weapons, or that the F35 is not as good or as cheap as it could have been, it's because it is a lumbering bureaucracy full of people who couldn't get better jobs elsewhere.

Respectfully, the problem is not incompetence or bureaucracy. There's plenty of each in the military but they are only symptoms. I like the Stanford Beer quote - "The purpose of a system is what it does". What does the current defense acquisition system reliably produce? Obscene amounts of money for the defense contractors, campaign contributions for politicians, promotions and well-paid private sector careers for th…

Seems to be jobs program. I ended up in defense after a year of being out of work and while all the new grads were desperate and destitute, we were steadily hiring new juniors out of school.

I’ve heard stories from years ago about some of the waste being protected because it we weren’t producing tanks in excess of what we need, some small town in Ohio would lose a ton of jobs and their congressmen his job.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#655

Post by tim333 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #421

Animats wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine's top drone commander was interviewed by The Economist.[1] He used to be a commodities trader, and he looks at warfare from that perspective. His goal is to kill Russian soldiers faster than Russia can replace them, until they run out of young men. His drone units are currently doing this, he claims. They supposedly lose one Ukrainian drone unit soldier per 400 Russians dead. Material cost per dead Russian so…

christ, sounds like mcnamara. the americans killed north vietnamese faster than they killed americans, so how come they lost?

Different situation. The Americans were killing Vietnamese in Vietnam. There was a near unlimited number of those, including innocent ones.. The Ukrainians are killing Russian soldiers in Ukraine. There's a limited number and if they don't like it they could go back to Russia.

It's rough on the killed soldiers but that's really Putin's fault - I think he was basically the only one who wanted the war. Most Russians looked horrified.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#656

Post by tim333 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #595

8note wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can look into game theory and crisis bargaining to see when and when not nukes make sense. theyre very expensive to use, so the benefits of war have to be extraordinary to match

game theory assumes rational actors

Putin seems to fairly consistently do what is best for Putin. Using nukes would probably have him rapidly end up like Khamenei senior.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#657

Post by tim333 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

cineticdaffodil wrote: post #116

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one was going to launch mass strikes on Moscow. Russian nuclear doctrine would have treated that as an existential threat. The psychology of Ukraine's drone campaign as a response to Russia's original drone launches is very interesting. It's a classic boiling frog move. Drones are seen as an improvised amateur threat. Unlike a bombing campaign, which is seen as "proper war", drones are an annoyance. They're fragil…

I dont buy that anymore. We had that "escalation" yell at every stage, every new tech. Tanks, jets, everytime ukraine got help, the "moscow puppets" yelled about nuclear war and escalation. I m of the opinion we could have stopped 4 years of butchery if we had supported Ukraine decisevly from the start. The words of the peaceniks just dont hold value anymore. They lack predictive power so significantly those utteranc…

I basically agree and think it's a great shame that the US didn't say don't invade Ukraine or we'll have the USAF bomb the invading troops. Russia couldn't reasonably use nukes just because they were being stopped invading a country that they'd signed an agreement not to invade when Ukraine gave up its nukes. Many thousands or lives would have been saved.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#658

Post by tim333 » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

threethirtytwo wrote: post #488

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…

F-35 isn't a deterrent. Nukes are the deterrent. Iran and Venezuela lacked nukes. North Korea doesn't lack nukes. The F-35 is just peacocking but ultimately useless. If these war games were realistic the game ends on the first move which is asking the question "Do they have nukes." If the answer is yes, then the game doesn't even start.

Russia has nukes and there seems to be some game going on.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#659

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #633

panick21_ wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has not found that out, they knew it, that's why things like lasers and other systems have seen so much development. Yes the war showed some new aspects, but relentless low capability drone attacks is not the same as flying an F-35 into enemy air space and bombing their critical resources with high accuracy thanks to sensors. Mass manaufacture and drones and such need to be take into account in the future, but…

> The US has not found that out, they knew it, that's why things like lasers and other systems have seen so much development. Yes, the US was not prepared. The laser systems were nowhere to be seen, and there are no interceptor drones on the field right now. Or at least not in the quantity needed to protect valuable targets (like AWACS planes). Also, lasers are just a waste of resources anyway. They only work when th…

> tracking a small target over large distances requires highly precise machinery. Exactly something that you want on a battlefield.

Lots of things on the battle field now, would have been considered highly precise in the past. The current generation is more relevant for ships.

> F-35 is not designed to bomb critical resources. It's a fighter jet.

No it isn't. That's complete nonsense.

> launching salvos of hundreds of Shaheed drones into YOUR critical infrastructure that you can't protect.

And my point that you ignored was that technology to do mass shoot-down of Shaheed is much more likely to exists then technology to prevent F-35.

If its a poor economic war the question is if your interceptor can be cheaper then what its preventing. And drones while cheap are not as cheap as, bullets, lasers or smaller drones.

And you say, 'launch from greater distances' that also comes with longer time to intercept because these things don't have radars and aren't that fast. Plus launching ever larger drones at longer range also increases the cost per drone.

But they can't do and F-35 can is that they can go in and take out exactly the vital air defense and other points so that your other aviation assets have an easier time.

Any conception that war in the future will just be two mass manufacturing lines splinting drones at each other is silly, technology and stealth have a major roll to play.

> That's the whole point of the article.

I think the point of the article likely is to convince people that drones should get more funding in the full knowledge of that F-35 wont go away.

Its funny how some of the people who know a lot about this stuff are still going forward with other next generation planes despite cheap drones existing.

Cheap drones are new part of the battle field, but just like with most weapons, the old stuff doesn't go away. Tanks and rifles are still useful. And so is the F-35 and stealth jets.

Re: F-35 is built for the wrong war

#660

Post by cjbgkagh » Tue, Apr 21, 2026, 6:42 PM UTC

rmb173rd wrote: post #652

cjbgkagh wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is asinine, what do you think happens to those institutions when incompetence is what gets rewarded. The real threat to the US military is not the lack of weapons, or that the F35 is not as good or as cheap as it could have been, it's because it is a lumbering bureaucracy full of people who couldn't get better jobs elsewhere.

Respectfully, the problem is not incompetence or bureaucracy. There's plenty of each in the military but they are only symptoms. I like the Stanford Beer quote - "The purpose of a system is what it does". What does the current defense acquisition system reliably produce? Obscene amounts of money for the defense contractors, campaign contributions for politicians, promotions and well-paid private sector careers for th…

The poor incentive structure is what results in incompetence and bureaucracy. I personally would measure competence with respect to stated aims, not some unstated aim.

If we are to assume the unstated aim is long term wealth extraction then I would again suggest the current extent of short term wealth extraction is putting that long term at serious risk so I would not consider that competence either. I would consider it an emergent behaviour where two or more parasites have to compete against each other for resources from the host, each has the very strong intensive to maximise their personal take even at the risk of the killing host because to leave anything on the table is to allow the competition to have more resources which they will use to attack you with.

Perhaps if the intent is to undermine the US as part of some broader strategic goal, OK, maybe those people are competent, but I would hope that those people are a very very small number of those operating in the system.