> Meanwhile, modern conflict, from Ukraine’s drone war to naval engagements in the Red Sea to Iran’s own mass missile and drone salvos, increasingly favors systems that can be produced at scale and replaced when lost. The F-35 is a masterpiece. But a force designed around a masterpiece is not designed for long, protracted wars, and U.S. adversaries know this.<p>The problem is that the F-35 was intended to be the low cost, mass produce-able workhorse for long protracted wars against technologically inferior adversaries where extremely high performance would be unnecessary. Yes it incorporates advanced stealth and electronics that make it a very capable aircraft, especially when it's going up against F-4s, but these weren't driving the cost. The US had already developed these technologies, and once you have them putting them on another aircraft isn't too expensive. And in particular the main focus was on lifetime cost - keeping flight hours reasonable and maintenance down compared to a higher performance aircraft like the F-22. This plane was designed around exactly this sort of conflict.<p>The problem was horrific project mismanagement. Building factories before the design was complete, delays due to development operations being done in parallel, making essentially 3 different aircraft with radically different requirements use a common design - the initial program cost skyrocketed and the only way out was to keep upping the order quantity to keep unit costs low. Cost per flight hour was supposed to be $25k, it's now $50k. Engine maintenance time was supposed to be 2 hours, it wound up being 50. And the issues didn't stop after initial development - with each successive iteration there have been new issues resulting in further delays, with airframe delivery on average still being 8 months behind schedule. None of that had anything to do with the F-35's core capabilities. For comparison, the F-35 has lower production costs than the non-stealth F-15EX which is based on a 50 year old airframe, but it has a 30% higher flight hour cost, and the program cost is 100X for 20X airframes.<p>This sort of botched procurement has caused terrible issues for multiple military projects, such as the Navy's failed Constellation-class frigate program, or the Army's immediate cancellation of the M10 Booker. These aren't masterpieces built for the wrong war, these are failures at producing what was intended. One has to wonder how you can mess up Epiphone guitar production so bad you accidentally wind up with a Stradivarius. It does not bode well for the orchestra.
The same issues with fighter jets procurement infect everything these days. Public transit, space, government software, etc.
Reminder that half of our government (Republicans) have had an ongoing policy for over 40 years of starve the beast, cause damage to the government/make it ineffectual and incapable to operate, all in order to sour the public on government because that party puts their anti-government policy/agenda higher than the health of our nation. They are also the ones who push the huge military budget/complex spend.<p>I'm not sure how you get a better outcome when half of the government would rather actively and explicitly sabotage government in order to meet a political agenda than chose making the country better. When Republican policy is to intentionally spend us into so much debt that the debt cripples our government (perhaps via their favorite and our nations largest budget appropriation the military). Republican spending/oversight/leadership on the military is just implementation of starve the beast strategy of deficit spending + tax cuts until we can't afford the style government republicans can't defeat electoraly.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast</a>
Yet so many people clamor for govt to take a larger role in industries and wipe out the evil billionaires building highly efficient companies.
I don't think aerospace is a good example of efficiency in the private sector. Lockheed Martin did the F-35 and it's main competition in the US is Boeing...<p>I'm not an expert but from my friends in the industry (including multiple at Lockheed and Boeing), it's definitely not a story about how good and efficient the private sector is. Boeing especially sounds like it's been a real mess with a lot of project management issues.
I would like to see the government (at all levels) have more in house capabilities and less absurd degrees of outsourcing.<p>I’m currently watching an 8-figure park remodeling project happening near home. Instead of hiring one or two competent construction managers for a few hundred thousand dollars, the city seems to be spending several million dollars for outside management to oversee this one project. (Never mind how much they’re overpaying for the actual construction.)
A lot of people believe the gov't <i>can</i> do a good job when it is not being actively subverted by people who ideologically want it to fail, and grifters. The only thing that has proven more expensive than having the gov't do something is having them partner with private industry to do it.
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$25k per flight hour is a lot more than what drones cost
The F-35 is a massive success. It is a common design that brought together what would have been three to five different planes into one. Costs doubling is further proof of how amazing it is- inflation has basically outpaced that. Cost per flight hour has more to do with data analytics and the Socialism within the DoW (it's a jobs program) than actual need. A lot of delays were quasi-on purpose.
It has crazy supply chain logistics, and has greatly strengthened ties with our allies, and helped boost their engineering and manufacturing capabilities.
But what would you rather have? 2000 Shahed/Lucas drones or a single F35? Same cost for both.<p>The saying "Quantity has a quality all of its own" is not obsolete in 2026.
Given budgets and slipped timeframes, there was a lot of criticism of the F-35 unifying platforms as opposed to just letting every service do their own one (or two) things as had been the norm. But, at the end of the day, not clear it was a bad strategy.
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.<p>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 remains a fighter without peers (unless you count F-22) or serious AD threat.
No one was going to launch mass strikes on Moscow. Russian nuclear doctrine would have treated that as an existential threat.<p>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.<p>Drones are seen as an improvised <i>amateur</i> threat. Unlike a bombing campaign, which is seen as "proper war", drones are an annoyance. They're fragile, cheap, unglamorous, unsophisticated, easy to shoot down, and wasteful, because you need tens or hundreds to make sure a few get through.<p>That gives drone campaigns a huge advantage. You can do a lot of damage and your enemy doesn't quite get what's happening.<p>Psychologically, there's a Rubicon-level difference between someone dropping bombs on Leningrad from a plane and a drone swarm attacking the same targets.<p>In practice the threat level is similar. Drones have absolutely become an existential threat to Russia.<p>But psychologically, they're not seen as such.
Ukraine has already launched several mass strikes on Moscow.<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/moscow-comes-under-one-of-ukraines-largest-drone-attacks-as-fighting-rages-in-kursk-eastern-ukraine" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/moscow-comes-under-one-of...</a><p><a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-drones-target-central-moscow/#drones" rel="nofollow">https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russia...</a><p>Even if Russia sees a particular tactic or weapons system as an existential threat it's questionable whether they have the capability to escalate further. I mean they can threaten nuclear strikes on Ukrainian population centers but would anyone believe that the threats are credible?
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.<p>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.<p>Russia is not fighting Ukraine, it is fighting NATO in Ukraine. And, IIANM, it has the capability of hitting non-Ukranie NATO targets in various places around the world - with cruise missiles and such. The assumption that "oh, Russia will never do this" is actually quite reckless and dangerous; and I don't just mean dangerous to whoever would get attacked, but dangerous for people all over the world, as we may find ourselves in a nuclear exchange with multiple blasts in multiple locations with radioactive matter spread far and wide.<p>Regarding the drones - definitely agree with you that drones have completely reshaped the experience on the front lines of this war. I understand that in a recent exercise with NATO forces, a Ukranian unit of drone operators essentially "took out" a couple of battalions:<p><a href="https://www.krone.at/4046529" rel="nofollow">https://www.krone.at/4046529</a>
I don't think the world would unite any more than it already has or that Putin would get any less popular in his country. The reason Russia doesn't use nukes is because either they don't have any working ones, or they're aware that it would be an immediate existential threat to Europe and then all bets are off.
> Russian nuclear doctrine would have treated that as an existential threat.<p>They claimed that with basically every little sprinkle of new aid for like two years, until everyone realized it was a bluff.<p>Putin is many things, but actively suicidal looks like a no.
Just because he hasn’t pulled the trigger doesn’t mean there isn’t an actual red line.
Russian stated nuclear doctrine has been treated by the Russians as an existential threat to Russia if followed through on.
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 utterances seem delusional at time. Quite frankly if sb marches into a peaceful neighbor country, they dont get to call for the referee the moment they kick the shit out of them.
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That is totally false.<p>They have been getting replacement MiG-29s and Su-25s from allies and are starting to use f-16s from NATO nations.<p>"A coalition of NATO countries, primarily the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, and Belgium, are providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. The United States authorized the transfer and is providing training and spare parts, with deliveries having begun in 2024 to strengthen Ukraine's air force against Russia."<p>So yes, they still have an airforce. They're just getting re-supplied.<p>Also the Ukrainian airforce was ULTRA conservative about sorties to make sure they conserved as many fighters as possible.
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.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia are using manned aircraft in any significant ways. They are at most used to lob gliding bombs from far behind the front lines.<p>> And naturally F-35s on that theatre would have been a game changer making mass strikes on Moscow possible.<p>And then what? Kyiv has been under relentless strikes from drones and missiles for 5 years. And Moscow was hit by Ukrainian drones several times.<p>You'll need to suppress all the anti-air defenses first, and it will likely be too costly.
> They are at most used to lob gliding bombs from far behind the front lines.<p>You write that, and literally quote my point about F-35 making deep strikes against dense air defense possible in the very next sentence.
It remains to be seen how well F-35s actually perform in that role against an adversary with modern anti-air defense and with modern drone-based tactics.<p>Both Russia and Ukraine learned to avoid concentrating forces, so what are you going to strike? Use an F-35 to attack a single Jeep with a mounted machine gun? F-35 has limited range and carries very limited armament, so you can't just carpet-bomb everything. At some point, you'll need to use much less survivable heavy bombers.
Strike the stuff that can't move: government offices, factories, bridges, dams, power plants, ports, logistics hubs. The heavy B-2 bombers are themselves quite survivable, and were in fact used in the initial strikes.
It's like watching salami slicing happen in real time. It also forces a dilemma on Russia. Every move of GBAD to Moscow to defend against drone leaves an airfield uncovered. Move some to airfields and it leaves a refinery open. And on and on.
The US not going full in on drones reminds me of the British ridiculing submarines.<p>The Chinese are going to spam literally MILLIONS of drones all over the Pacific...
Drones have a limited range and limited capacity to inflict damage. Yes, they are effective at hunting infantry, but you can't reach across an ocean and strike the US with "millions of drones".<p>Relatedly, aircraft carriers are great for beating up on small powers, but they are vulnerable and would not be effective at reaching across the ocean and bombing China.<p>Plus, both nations have nukes, so the idea of either China or the US "winning" a war against the other side is easily cancelled out.<p>What you are left with, is a lot of posturing about superpower wars which is a waste of time. All sort of people thumping their chest, wargaming things out, as if any of this nonsense isn't immediately squashed with the nuclear trump card.<p>There will be no superpower wars.<p>There will, however, continue to be wars against smaller states, and the F35, aircraft carriers, etc, are really effective at those kinds of things. That is, effective at waging the wars that will actually happen. Nukes and the pacific ocean stop any war of consequence against China.
When did Britain ridicule submarines?
I don't know if you've looked recently, but the pacific is, likev pretty big. Maybe even bigger than that.<p>The primary problem with killing carriers is, has been, and will be, finding the things.[1]<p>Drone strikes on oil refineries work because, with few exceptions, the refineries rarely move. You can literally program a drone to go x miles in a specific direction and then drop a bomb.<p>It's also considerably harder to hide things like drones in big empty spaces.<p>If loitering drones became a serious threat (as opposed to the, you know, literally super sonic missiles the navy has spent the last 40 years planning for) itms pretty easy to imagine anti-drone planes/ships/drones sweeping a large radius around your carriers.<p>[1] Satellites can definitely do things, but they're not magical and people can track where they're looking and just... sail in a different direction. Also if someone was actually using satellites to target american carriers with munitions the americans would probably just destroy the satellites.
A carrier battle group can easily be seen and tracked by commercial satellite constellations.<p>At minimum they travel with 6 or 7 ships and leave a wake a mile long and they only go tens of miles an hour, it isnt a speed boat.<p>Here is an Indian carrier (formerly Russian) on google maps and the US ones are large <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/14%C2%B044'30.3%22N+74%C2%B006'37.9%22E/@14.7417429,74.1095604,512m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d14.7417584!4d74.1105396?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQxNS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/place/14%C2%B044'30.3%22N+74%C2%...</a><p>I think people forget how many satellites are pointed at all parts of the planet. They are used for crop reporting and weather and all sorts of shit. It isnt the 1960s where only the super powers have them and they drop rolls of film.
> Satellites can definitely do things, but they're not magical and people can track where they're looking and just... sail in a different direction<p>I know nothing about this really, so forgive my ignorance.<p>Assuming a carrier is found and tracked by a satellite in the ocean, how could it possibly escape the satellite's detection before being targeted by a drone or some other type of munition? If the ship starts sailing in a different direction, the people (or AI) tracking via satellite would notice and adjust, right?
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.<p>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 clouds, which are fairly common over the ocean)
The JWST has a 6.5 meter mirror. The largest (known) spy satellites have a mirror of ~3m diameter. At GEO (geostationary orbit) that would provide an imaging resolution of about 7 meters. An aircraft carrier is about 337x76 meters. So from geostationary altitudes, a satellite similar to a KH-11 would see an American aircraft carrier as a blob of about 48 "pixels". This is probably enough signal to track all aircraft carriers around the globe in real time. It would have a field of view roughly the size of Houston (50x50 miles) and would have enough electricity from solar panels to power reaction wheels to stay pointed at carrier groups indefinitely. (~15-year lifespan would be limited by xenon supply for ion thrusters that keeps the satellite in GEO orbit)
I believe satellites are usually in an orbit. They
can’t follow an carrier for example. The satellites may be in a constellation that can track the carrier. That is why anti-satellites weapons have been developed. E.g., a jet fighter flies straight up and then fires a long range missile.<p><a href="https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Types_of_orbits" rel="nofollow">https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ty...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-satellite_weapon</a>
Some quick Googling implies China has satellites capable of tracking shipping via radar from geostationary orbit. I'm not really convinced that aircraft carriers can hide these days?
If a network of hydrophones can track submarines, why can't they also track carriers?
China is putting containerized missile launch tubes and drone launch systems on their container ships. If these get widely deployed at some point, there could come a time when there will be weapon systems already on-location in all of the major ports of China's adversaries. Most naval facilities have civilian ports nearby.<p>Despite the nuclear reactor, aircraft carriers won't stay in the fight long if their supply lines are disrupted. And also it's not likely that a carrier group could fend off a wave of 10,000-20,000 drones launched from a container ship that happens to be sailing near it.<p>At the end of the day, we rely more on nuclear weapons and MAD to deter these kinds of major hostilities between powerful countries. Talking about how conventional weapons match up is a bit of a red herring. The only thing that would change that would be <i>very</i> reliable nuclear missile/warhead interception systems - and I don't think any country even has a roadmap to such a thing.
Yes, if you keep your carriers out of striking range they are invincible! lmao
In the intro:<p>> Meanwhile, modern conflict, from Ukraine’s drone war to naval engagements in the Red Sea to Iran’s own mass missile and drone salvos, increasingly favors systems that can be produced at scale and replaced when lost.<p>In the conclusion:<p>> The lesson of the Iran campaign is that the F-35 performed superbly in exactly the kind of fight it was built for. The lesson for force designers is that the next war may not be that fight.<p>What a weird article. It starts out by saying f-35 is not fit for modern war. Concludes by saying it works perfectly in modern war.<p>The middle part talks about combining f-35 with drones to get the best of both worlds, but isn't that what people already are doing? Iran war allegedly had lots of drones on both sides.<p>And of course blowing up iran is going to be totally different from some hypothetical war with china. Will the f-35 work well in a conflict with china? I have no idea but the article didn't really make any convincing arguments about it.
> I have no idea but the article didn't really make any convincing arguments about it.<p>It did.<p>It pointed out that the bases from which the F-35s would have to operate in a war with China would be very vulnerable:<p>"The concentration of high-value equipment and personnel at each operating location makes the F-35’s basing problem qualitatively different from that of simpler aircraft. The loss is not just one jet but the capacity to generate sorties from that site."<p>It pointed out that you can't produce F-35s at scale, which fucks you in the long run:<p>"At over eighty million dollars per airframe, with Lockheed Martin delivering fewer than two hundred aircraft per year across all variants and all customers worldwide, there is no surge capacity waiting to be activated and no precedent for accelerating a program of this complexity on wartime timelines. When one side can produce weapons by the hundreds and thousands — missiles, loitering munitions, and one-way attack drones — while the other relies on small numbers of exquisite platforms, the advantage shifts toward the side with scale."<p>The key message of the article is simply this (which should not be "weird" to anyone):<p>"The corrective is not to abandon the F-35 but to redefine its role. A smaller fleet should be reserved for the missions that truly require its unique capabilities — penetrating advanced air defenses, gathering intelligence in contested environments, and orchestrating distributed networks of unmanned systems. The marginal procurement dollar should shift toward platforms that are cheaper to build, easier to replace, less dependent on vulnerable forward infrastructure, and expendable in ways that manned fighters are not."
> "At over eighty million dollars per airframe, with Lockheed Martin delivering fewer than two hundred aircraft per year across all variants and all customers worldwide, there is no surge capacity waiting to be activated and no precedent for accelerating a program of this complexity on wartime timelines. When one side can produce weapons by the hundreds and thousands — missiles, loitering munitions, and one-way attack drones — while the other relies on small numbers of exquisite platforms, the advantage shifts toward the side with scale."<p>The article gets this wrong as well, the f35 can be built at scale, no other fighter aircraft is produced in such high numbers, its also significantly cheaper on a per airframe basis vs Gen 4 aircraft and its more advanced. This article is nonsense and the author doesn't know what they are talking about.
The F-22 or F-15 would have also performed superbly in Iran, they don't have modern anti-air capabilities.
It concerns me how casual the article and some of the comments here discuss <i>an actual war</i> against China, as if that were a reasonable scenario.<p>Of course I understand wanting to be prepared even for grim scenarios such as these. Military strategists should of course continually be refining such plans. But casual discussions like this, without even so much as a disclaimer about it being a hypothetical and <i>extremely</i> undesirable outcome, may pave the way towards it through normalization.
A general war against China is impossible. But a "limited" war fought over Taiwan isn't beyond the realm of possibility.<p>Which does take it into a kind of Schroedinger's realm. The US takes it seriously, so it develops technology for it, and China doesn't invade. But would China have invaded if the US hadn't prepared for that war? Quite possibly, but you can never know.
> 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.<p>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.<p>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 way despite bombing it relentlessly.<p>Coming back to your concern, I'm pretty sure some people at the Pentagon believe the US can fight China using an expeditionary force and somehow win.
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.<p>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 factions waiting in the wings, ready and willing to take over the government with force. (There are political factions, to be sure, but they're already integrated into the government, though without leverage over the Revolutionary Guard.) The only armed group remotely capable of even trying would be the Kurds, but the US and in particular Trump screwed them over in the past, multiple times. Even if they thought they could go it alone (which they couldn't), there was zero chance they were going to enter the fray without the US committing itself fully with their own invasion force (i.e. success was guaranteed), because failure would mean ethnic Kurds would be extirpated from Iran, and might induce Iraq and Syria to revisit the question of Kurdish loyalty to their own states. And, indeed, Kurdish groups took a wait and see approach, assembling some forces but waiting to see how the US played their cards.
The more I read about it, the more firmly I believe it is in the U.S.’s best interest to avoid military conflict with the world’s only manufacturing superpower.<p>Not that we could afford wars with non-superpowers either.
> 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.<p>It’ll be more concerning if wasn’t discussed in such a way. War is rarely reasonable. China doesn’t find it unreasonable to go to war over Taiwan. And for what? National pride and unity? It’s completely unreasonable, but everything they’re developing militarily is exactly for that. We must approach the subject clearly and explore every possibility as a real one. These discussions are about ending wars as quickly and decisively as possible while causing the minimal amount death.
> an actual war against China, as if that were a reasonable scenario.<p>Most modern military planning considers it a foregone conclusion. Whether that's accurate or not is arguable, but approaching discussions of military spending from a perspective grounded in current planning is certainly reasonable.
The people advocating for war against china will complain bitterly and weep the soon as their snacks and new electronic devices stop arriving by ship.
The primary purpose of something like the F-35 program is not producing a bunch of jets that we can use to win wars. Similar to how NASA's purpose is not to make large rockets that send things to orbit for cheap.<p>It is to investigate new technologies (i.e. how do we control a thousand drones) and preserve domain knowledge in a large number of engineers spanning multiple generations. If all these engineers go work at $BIG_TECH optimizing ad revenue for watching short videos, we'll have to rediscover basics the next time.<p>When we have to fight the next serious war, we are not going to primarily use F-35 jets built twenty years ago, it's going to be something built on a similar platform in larger numbers to specifically address challenges of that era. If it can not be made cheap enough, whatever contractors involved are going to be nationalized. All major wars between comparable powers were fought with technology hot off the assembly lines, not billion dollar prototype models developed twenty years ago to bomb caves in deserts.<p>If you look at it from this angle, all the idiosyncrasies make sense. There's of course the inefficiency of defense contractors skimming off profits at multiple layers, but if you find a solution to that while preserving productivity, you'd win the economics nobel tomorrow.
> When we have to fight the next serious war, we are not going to primarily use F-35 jets, it's going to be something built on a similar platform in larger numbers to specifically address challenges of that era. If it can not be made cheap enough, whatever contractors involved are going to be nationalized.<p>That is, to some extent, what the F-35 is; the mass-produced plane that incorporates what we learned from the F-117 and F-22 and whatnot. We've already made 10x as many as the F-22's production run.
Mass produced means something very different when it comes to wars between comparable powers.<p>There are barely more than a thousand F-35s, the number of US aircrafts used in WW2 was about 300,000.<p>If China produces 100 times or 1000 times their current numbers (and they can), marginal differences in capability are not going to matter.
> If China produces 100 times or 1000 times their current numbers (and they can), marginal differences in capability are not going to matter.<p>If china somehow learnes magic and produced 10,000 f16 equivalents <i>and</i> got into a major non-nuclear shooting war with the united states... they'd lose 10,000 planes. At some point there is such a qualitative difference that numbers don't really matter.
Quantity has been replaced by precision.<p>In WW2 the US would send a 1,000 bombers to hit a target and still miss. That's why they needed so many. Now a single attack jet can hit multiple targets with very high probability.
> If China produces 100 times or 1000 times their current numbers…<p>They get sanctioned and/or hit by B-2s long before the factories to do so are even completed, let alone producing a hundred thousand fighter jets.
<i>The primary purpose of something like the F-35 program is not producing a bunch of jets ... It is to investigate new technologies</i><p>I thought the F-22 investigated the technologies and the F-35 is the mass-produced version.<p><i>When we have to fight the next serious war ... it's going to be something built on a similar platform in larger numbers to specifically address challenges of that era.</i><p>Not if every jet takes 20 years to develop.<p><i>If it can not be made cheap enough, whatever contractors involved are going to be nationalized.</i><p>Which would accomplish nothing since the rot is so deep.
> I thought the F-22 investigated the technologies and the F-35 is the mass-produced version.<p>Sure, I'd think of it as a mass^2 produced version then ;)<p>> Not if every jet takes 20 years to develop.<p>Think of F-35 variants, not entirely new platforms. If I have to guess, one reduced to a barebones autonomous version built for the purpose to commanding drone swarms and dealing with incoming drone swarms.
The F-35 was designed to be a partially-nerfed export version of some of the capabilities in the F-22. It was anticipated that the large production rate would significantly reduce the unit costs, which seems to have panned out. They probably shouldn't have tried to produce three significantly different variations of the same design, since that added materially to the development cost.<p>The 6th gen platforms appear to be coming in at significantly reduced cost relatively to what they are replacing, which was a major objective.
The insight here is, that in current warfare, quantity is the quality that matters. And with quantity, cost of replacement needs to be low, platforms expendable, cheap to maintain and resupply. It, and it's support infrastructure, need to not easily be detected and targeted by drones while on the ground. F35 is not these things. It's powerful but brittle, and like many US platforms, too much value packed into too few platforms. Not enough sustain in prolonged modern conflict. A one-punch military.
>The insight here is, that in current warfare, quantity is the quality that matters. And with quantity, cost of replacement needs to be low, platforms expendable, cheap to maintain and resupply. It, and it's support infrastructure<p>The irony, of course, is that the US military knew that back in WWII in how the Sherman tank was able to defeat the "better" German tanks for all the same reasons listed above.
Pawns are the only piece that matter on a chess board?
I think the insight is that you need a high-low mix. Some threats call for top of the line capabilities (like early days of the Iran conflict with stand-off munitions and top-spec interceptors being used against Shahed drones and cheap cruise missiles). Some threats can be more economically serviced by a less capable, cheaper, and more available system.
Ukraine is using old school propeller trainer craft to shoot down some of the slower Russian drones. <a href="https://theaviationist.com/2024/06/26/ukrainian-yak-52-kill-marks/" rel="nofollow">https://theaviationist.com/2024/06/26/ukrainian-yak-52-kill-...</a> There's usually new footage of this every week on social media.<p>Don't really see or hear about the USA building or using propeller driven planes in military outside of special ops.
I mean the armed forces already know this well. They have a bunch of units of regular soldiers, and then they have a few special forces units.
100% this.<p>It's always been about the biggest, fastest, longest range punch. That is extremely useful for deep strike (which has always been NATO doctrine), but when the range is short you need quantity and mobility far more than you need quantity.<p>Being able to cut off your enemy is an extremely effective weapon if your enemy needs massive supply. Drop the major bridges between Moscow and Ukraine and the war would soon be over.<p>But when you can't do that for whatever reason you need quantity and mobility far more than you need quality.
The ideas that I as a civilian was sold over the past decades don't appear to hold up any longer.<p>As someone a while back put it, Russia lost several Bundeswehrs worth of equipment and keeps on grinding. Neither side is able to mass large forces, in a large part due to drones. And Iran can punish the US despite being comically outgunned.<p>Modern equivalents of Sherman and T-34 tanks over burdensome Tigers and a population willing to support heavy losses.
That's not a new idea, it's the same thing Germany learned about tanks in WWII.
I heard it argued that Germany didn't have the raw resources and production capacity to go for quantity. Especially later in the war. So quality it was.
Not really, the tanks were both inefficient to operate and inefficient to build (lack of standardization, constantly changing plans, have to redesign every single part..)
I mean not really? People focus on quantity but the German late war tank designs just <i>sucked</i>.
When people say things like the GP, they are talking about German early war tanks, not the late ones.<p>The problem is that the early WWII arms race was so fast that I don't know how anybody can say with confidence that Germany lost to worse tanks than theirs. By the time the allies got any volume into battle, they also got better designs than their earlier ones.
Depends what type of models you look at. There were many German designs that were much less prone to technical breakdowns due to pragmatic and mission focused design choices e.g. many of the Jagdpanzer ("tank destroyer") class like StuG II and Herzer were produced en masse and was very successful. Also, the Jagdpanther was a strong design.
You can just do both. The US does have some cheaper, more expendable drone platforms, and it's continuing to work on more. It should probably scale up production of them, though.
The total cost of the entire program over its projected lifetime is $1.7 trillion. The F-35 is made by one company, Lockheed Martin (with some pieces made by a couple others). This entire program is a massive transfer of taxpayer money into one company.<p>Another data point is that it's estimated that all student debt in the US combined is $1.7 - 1.8 trillion.<p>No wonder America keeps falling behind.
I think you're ignoring subcontractors and other suppliers. It's probably more like a thousand or so companies.
> The F-35 is made by one company, Lockheed Martin (with some pieces made by a couple others)<p>This isn't even remotely true, who is paying you to post this drivel?
That’s no insight, just a fact from the entire history of warfare except when one side had rifles/guns and the other didn’t.
I feel like there's a brute-force analogy to be drawn with the "Bitter Lesson" that we saw in AI development.
There are three stances that I can see in the debate at the moment.<p>* Quantity has a quality all of its own.<p>* Innovation and agility allows you to adapt and survive.<p>* 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.<p>The first two clearly have merits, but every military professional I have ever worked with has cited them at me, so I don't think that they are underweighted in discussion. I believe that the last one is not treated with enough weight in the debate. The best example I have of it is the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Platforms with glaring problems, fielded and maintained at huge cost, completely unable to achieve their strategic purpose. Even when sulking in port these ships have proven to be deadly for their crews and maintainers. Another example is the TB3 drone. It had a staring role for about 10 days in the Ukraine, but those were 10 days where the Russians ran out of petrol to run their air defence systems on. It hasn't been in evidence since because it just can't be used in the current environment.<p>One that worries me is the upcoming T31 (uk arrowhead variant) frigate. The argument for it is that it is a relatively affordable platform that the RN will have enough of to actually be able to get out and about. However, it doesn't have a sonar, so... what actual use is it as a frigate (I know the story about the helicopter and some other bits and bobs... but... really?)<p>Sure, when the other side has run out of the good kit dragging crap out of storage might work, but until then you are going to be sending good men to their death in second rate equipment. Is that going to build war winning morale?<p>Second rate equipment is for playing lets pretend, or for fighting wars of national survival. We should avoid both.
One thing you and the OP are not addressing is that most of these modern tactics are also necessitated by the fact that building an air force, navy, or cavalry that can beat modern superpowers is just a complete non-starter.<p>I'm not so sure the F-35 is built for the wrong war as much as the war would probably call for the F-35 if it didn't already exist.
Increased defense spending actually makes the US less, not more, safe. Everyone we're going to fight is prepared for an asymmetric, cheap war. We're vulnerable in how much they can make us spend to wage that war. A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone, etc.
I agree to a point.<p>But also look at Ukraine. They are punching well above their weight with asymmetrical tactics, but Russia is not <i>defeated</i>.<p>Drones and other autonomous, cheap weaponry changes a lot. Smaller states and non-state actors can inflict much more serious and expensive damage now more than ever.<p>Large weapons still matter though. If we ever were to enter an existential battle you would quickly see how big, expensive systems can still be advantageous. I am sure people will take issue with this comment but look at the relative restraint of Russia in Ukraine or the US in Iran vs, say, WWII. Modern morality prevents such scale and tactics until it does not. Then suddenly what matters are big weapons and the huge supply chains powering a war machine.<p>Both the US and Russia are also pivoting heavily towards drones, and they've been developing them for decades. Yes we have big, expensive weapons programs but we also have a lot of stuff ready or soon to be ready which is much, much cheaper.
> I am sure people will take issue with this comment but look at the relative restraint of Russia in Ukraine [...] vs, say, WWII.<p>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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_war_(2022%E2%80%93present)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russo-Ukrain...</a><p>Restraint, my unbleached asshole.
No one is fire-bombing cities yet, despite Ukraine pulling a WWII Japan and distributing weapons production amongst residences.
Russia is keeping their expensive equipment in the back since years now because they're afraid to lose it. They would be fire bombing cities if they could. Russia already used white phosphorous in this war. The only reason they're not killing more civilians with missiles and drones is because they can't build more of them.
> No one is fire-bombing cities yet<p>That was mainly the Americans, British, and the Germans, not the USSR.<p>Also, what makes you think they <i>could</i> in this war? Do you think they can send bombers over Ukranian cities and drop a shitton of ordnance?<p>The Russians aren't deploying nukes; that is the only actual 'restraint' to date.
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 ...
Yep, apparently Ukraine still cannot affect fuel production in Russia to any significant point. Drones with less than 100 kg of explosives do not do particularly significant damage. One really need to deliver like a ton or more of explosives and for that one needs bombers that can penetrate air defenses or very expensive stealth cruise missiles or big ballistic missiles.
Of course it has had a significant impact. The reason Russia has repeatedly turned off fuel exports every couple of months for the past couple of years despite high global prices because Ukraine keeps disabling enough of their refining capability to cause shortages.
Ukraine dramatically reduced Russian fuel export revenue, and the sanctions did so even more.<p>It was really coming to the point of urgent existential threat to the Putin regime this spring, before Trump and Netanyahu bailed him out, first by doubling the global oil price and then by relaxing sanctions.<p>And Ukraine's drone / cruise missile portfolio includes things like the Flamingo, more than twice the payload and range of a Tomahawk.
If Ukraine had access to Tomahawks, Russian oil industry would not exist at this point. With drones after two and halve years of attacks with multiple hits at the same refineries Ukraine reduced Russian fuel production at best by 20%.<p>Flamingo is still mostly vaporware. For precise strikes against Russian factories Ukraine uses either Storm Shadow or domestic Neptun.<p>But that just shows again that drones are not particularly effective against most industrial targets and even against oil installations the damage is not lasting.<p>Or consider how US was able to destroy the bridge in Iran yet Crimea bridge and bridges in Rostov that are absolutely vital to Russian war logistics still stands.
You think “morality” is what’s preventing the US or Russia to drop atomic bombs on their smaller targets?
> <i>Modern morality prevents such scale and tactics until it does not.</i><p>In the sense that the tide of geopolitics means that if someone tried that they'd mark themselves as a defector in the current scheme of morality and would stand to lose a lot when the rest of Europe inevitably treats that as an example of how they are about to be treated.
Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used. See for instance the Iran war. Quite pointless by all accounts and wouldn't have happened if the US didn't have aircraft carriers to send around the world.<p>So perhaps thriftiness in defense spending would also invite a prioritization in actual defensive capabilities?
I think the likely result would be more war. It wouldn't be with america, but without anerica providing protection to its allies in the region, the various countries in the region would probably be emboldened to fight it out themselves (im assuming in this scenario that russia and other great powers are also incapable of force projection. Obviously russia is busy right now, but historically they were knee deep in the middle east and much of us involvement now is a legacy of the cold war)
Even in a hypothetical situation where the USA had no aircraft carriers our military probably would have conducted some raids to delay Iran building nuclear weapons. The initial strikes against nuclear facilities were done with B-2 bombers launched from Missouri.
Not to mention US air bases dotted all over the Middle East, the near East, Europe, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean the Arctic…
Iran wouldn't have started to work in nuclear weapons if Bush didn't credibly threaten to invade them.<p>Hell, Iran didn't actually work into building them before Trump decided to attack them.
The threat that President Bush issued in 2002 was due to Iran being a state sponsor of terrorist groups, which was true then and is still true today. Historians can argue over whether that threat was a good idea at the time but it's too late to retract it now. We have to deal with the actual situation as it obtains today.<p>As for what Iran's leadership decided and when, we really have very little visibility into that so don't believe anything you hear. We're not even certain which faction is really in control of nuclear weapons policy. (This isn't an endorsement of the recent attacks.)
> Also seems that having a very capable military that lets you project power around the world also invites that power to be used.<p>I assure you that is a much better problem than the alternative.
Shot exchange is indeed a problem, but it's far more complex than this makes it sound. The opportunity cost of _not_ shooting down the drone isn't the cost of the drone, it's the cost of whatever it's going to destroy if you don't shoot it down.<p>Sometimes it makes sense to use a million dollar missile to destroy a $5,000 drone, if that drone would otherwise destroy an even more expensive air defense radar or energy production facility. This says nothing about the cost and value of the lives that might be lost in an enemy strike.<p>We would not be safer if the enemy had cheap drones and we had no weapons capable of fighting back.<p>The main problem is that air defense interception is incredibly challenging and expensive primarily because a mid-course defensive interceptor needs considerably greater capabilities than the weapon it is intercepting, because it needs to catch up to the incoming missile or drone mid-flight.<p>Sure, this can lead to massive overkill problems. Yes, the US should invest more in the low end of the high/low mix. But no, this does not mean there's no place for the high end, or that they should never be used to destroy lower end targets if that's all that is available.<p>A more interesting challenge, if you ask me, is in the naval domain. Imagine a capital ship has two options for defending against incoming threats - either fire an expensive and limited stock interceptor missile with a 99% kill chance, or wait until the threat is inside the range of a cheap cannon or laser system with a 95% kill chance. There's a real command level tradeoff to be made here. If you shoot every drone with interceptors, you lose shot exchange badly, and you just run out of interceptors. But if you let every target through into the engagement range of your close range systems, you run the risk that one makes it through to your ship, potentially causing damage and casualties.<p>The future of war is going to be wild one way or the other.
>Sometimes it makes sense to use a million dollar missile to destroy a $5,000 drone, if that drone would otherwise destroy an even more expensive air defense radar or energy production facility. "<p>If that $5000 drone was alone then sure. However if they launch 200 drones (money equivalent of one missile) you'd be looking at totally different picture. Also they usually launch combo. Few missiles and whole bunch of drones. even worse
I disagree on air defense inherently being very costly.<p>Old school was guns. Price per round was cheap. But the expensive missile kills the platform holding the cheap gun, you have to go with missiles. But the drone war is a different beast entirely. Drones can't shoot back. Thus the answer is guns. How well will their light drones fare against a Cessna armed with an automatic shotgun? How would the jet drones fare against a WWII warbird?<p>Lots of cheap, mobile guns. No meaningful self defense but doctrine is to always depart after shooting.<p>The naval one is much harder because you're not free to disperse your ship into many pieces. But, still, consider your cannon. Let's step down a bit, cheaper cannon with a 90% kill rate--but you put several of them.
To be fair the US is making steps into this realm and it's definitely a known issue. Their Shahed derivative, laser weapons becoming more ubiquitous.
I'm surprised how many drones countries are starting to manufacture. e.g the UK delivered 150k drones to Ukraine recently, based on the current state of the UK armed forces that kind of surprised me and definitely shows a change in ethos on how modern first world militaries will wage war in the future.
> A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone...<p>I guess it is a good thing then that this isn't something they actually do.<p>They use cheap weapons to shoot down cheap drones. Their primary anti-drone missile was developed in the 2010s and costs less than a Shahed.
> A million dollar patriot missile to shoot down a cheap drone, etc.<p>Except this is more propaganda than truth. In general america does not use patriots to shoot down drones except in exceptional circumstances.<p>Not that the ecconomics of missile defense isnt a problem. It can be. But some of it has been highly exagerated.
> Increased defense spending actually makes the US less, not more, safe.<p>It just makes us spend more money on defense, which is the entire point.<p>The industry obviously wants more and more profits.<p>They are never going to recommend getting rid of $200m F22s and replacing them with 30 $300k drones that would be more effective and cost 5% as much money.<p>That's 5% as much profit for them. They're not interested.<p>They are interested in profits, not national security.<p>And as you pointed out, they'd prefer a <i>LESS</i> secure world that <i>inherently</i> demands more money going to security.<p>You could spend more on security to actually be more secure. It's just that no one with any power is interested in that world.<p>They're only interested in making more money.
Article hits on this: F-35 is probably the best SEAD plane ever made. And best VTOL. And can do the full mission set of a multirole fighter, although not as exceptional in those roles.
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.<p>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).
First, in a war with China, China would be in the (more) morally just position. Second, as you can see in Iran, in Korea, in Vietnam, etc (and that's just US wars), aircraft only inflict pain, they do not win. US imperialists would really really like for that not to be the case, but it is just not. You would need a boots on the ground, and a draft, and will still probably lose and maybe cause our own government to topple. The Vietnam war was lost not because we didn't have fancy toys, but because the revolutionaries fought so hard and well that the U.S. army about on the verge of rebellion.<p>China very successfully built a rich economic system that is the factory of the world while eroding our own domestic capacity. In a war they can cut us off. We are not even as strong as we were during the Vietnam war, though we have fancier toys. Good luck!
Opponents of the Dragon Tank point to it's 10-Million-Dollar fangs and 35-Million-Dollar prehensile tail and say this is somewhat excessive... But developing new technology is essential to maintaining America's military advantage.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxJLUZWPEb8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxJLUZWPEb8</a><p>(Re-Upload: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8__8--YAm4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8__8--YAm4</a>)
> Think of a violin made by a master craftsman: beautiful, precise, capable of extraordinary performance, but impossible to produce quickly or cheaply. It takes time, rare expertise, and materials that cannot be sourced at scale. You would not equip an entire orchestra with instruments like that.<p>Kinda lost me at the first sentence with this metaphor; you <i>can and do</i> equip an orchestra with instruments of similar caliber to the violins. Woodwinds are expensive. Bigger strings are expensive. Percussion is expensive. Maybe brass is cheap idk but there aren't many of them in an orchestra. In fact the plurality of instruments in most orchestras is violins.
Every instrument (brass, woodwind, even a simple triangle), past a certain threshold is expensive, and their sound is different to their lower priced peers, and yes, you can't equip every violinist with a $2MM violin, just because.<p>Also, saying that instrument X is higher caliber to instrument Y is completely wrong. They all needs immense workmanship to produce, and immense effort to play. This effort can't be compared. A double bassist's finger spread for the first three positions is almost equal to whole keyboard/fretboard of a violin, but a violin can play 8x more notes with a bow when compared to the double bass. Momentum is a strong adversary when you try to change direction with a full size German bow.<p>You might think woodwinds are easy. A French horn player needs to play adjacent notes with small lip movements. That's an unforgiving blade's edge. A tuba player needs lungs of a whale to keep that long notes, etc. etc.<p>Also, just because viola, cello and double bass looks like a violin is borderline insult to all of them at once, and ignoring the other heavy lifters like clarinets, oboes and fagots.<p>Like how the article outlines. An expensive violin is good for a solo performance, but loses its importance in an orchestra. Like how F-35 becomes the wrong thing when the theater of war calls for different conventions and operates with completely different dynamics.<p>P.S.: Yes, I have played double bass in a symphony orchestra.
> Also, just because viola, cello and double bass looks like a violin is borderline insult to all of them at once, and ignoring the other heavy lifters like clarinets, oboes and fagots.<p>I don't think that last bit translated well.<p>Beyond that, what on earth are you talking about. Frankly what is the grandparent talking about? $2m violins cost that much because they're rare and famous and have a story, not because they somehow have a higher quality than a modern equivalent. Sort of like the mona lisa.
> I don't think that last bit translated well.<p>I don't think so. It's a good analogy how F-35 needs a good ground crew and logistics chain to keep it flying. Like how an orchestra needs these instruments to create subtle but extremely important pillars of sound, even if they're rarely or barely heard.<p>Also, not al $2MM violins cost that much because they have a story, but they're built by distinguished builders and built to order, for the person playing it, with old-stock woods and whatnot.<p>Yes, they don't cost that much, but you pay for the craftsmanship and the privilege. Price is an artificial construct after some point.
I think it is more referring to the quality of craftsmanship of the violin compared to other violins. You can’t make a whole orchestra of Stradivarius violins and their equivalents for other instruments (though what the Stradivarius equivalent is for timpani I couldn’t tell you :)
He's not talking about the number of violins, he's talking about the quality of them. Top-notch violins cost hundreds of thousands or even millions. But it's mostly famous solo musicians who own such instruments - an entire orchestra is not playing with those.
> the plurality of instruments in most orchestras is violins.<p>That only has to do with physics of sound intensity: to create a sound that is perceived as "twice as loud" as "one violin" you'd need ... ten violins.
I think they mean that everyone in the orchestra does not get a Stradivarius
He keeps citing China but the US isn't at war with China. For the wars that the US <i>is</i> fighting, i.e. against Iran and similarly equipped adversaries, the f-35 seems to be performing well.
Yeah, but the war drums are beating for it.<p>USA is shifting focus to china in lots of their policy documents<p>China is massively building up arms<p>Lots of talk about a potential invasion of taiwan at some point.<p>Its clearly something war planners are worried about.
A potential Chinese-American hot war is the conflict that today’s USAF and USSF should be preparing for.<p>Winning sub-peer conflicts is fine for projecting hard power (when it works...) and protecting allies (when you have them...) but it doesn’t really budge the needle on national security.
Fighting a war against China (presumably over Taiwan) doesn't seem like it would have much to do with national security.<p>That aside, people are simply not able to model how the next peer conflict will be fought ahead of time. All sides will be learning as they go. Building complex systems like the F-35 seems like a good way to maintain engingeering/technology culture that can be adapted when the time comes.<p>Also, I'm fairly skeptical of China's military. They keep purging people, and the human element in war seems underrated.
The premise that it is built for the "wrong war" is two fold. Design by committee didn't help the aircraft and made cost overruns and timelines worse but, the bigger premise or problem doesn't take to account that we still have other aircraft that fulfills other roles.<p>Also, the collaborative combat aircraft is being developed with the F22 and F35. Arguably though the collaborative combat aircraft is a bigger challenge than the F35 program as a whole and it is still in development whether it can be completed. We could downsize the F35 fleet or provide it in military aid but, I don't we can truly say wrong war it will still be available when a different war occurs and Aircraft have a long shelf life.
F-35 cost overruns are mostly solved. The cost of first-of-a-kind is always ludicrously expensive. Nth-of-a-kind, they're not so bad.
The F-35 is currently about the same price to procure as Gripen, a 4th generation non-stealthy fighter.<p>Anyone making claims about cost has a lot of work to do because the F-35 program is actually extremely cheap per unit now for what it is.
Seems like the life cycle costs for F35:s are about double compared to that of a Gripen E/F, with straight up procurement cost about a third more.<p><a href="https://ekonomickydenik.cz/app/uploads/2023/09/20230905-awn-saab-fighter-through-life-costs-study-may-2023-final-report.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ekonomickydenik.cz/app/uploads/2023/09/20230905-awn-...</a><p>The F35 is very, very impressive, just maybe not very suitable for a long war of attrition.
tiktok is the ultimate weapon still, nothing bombs minds more than that
The world has changed in many ways. Countries might now consider having weapons systems that are less-dependent on the US/China/Russian triumvirate. And much of the defensive threats don't require stealth - they require availability on short notice and the ability to work in various conditions (cold/hot/etc).
"Just as it took the brutal reality of naval warfare in the Pacific to shift the Navy’s love from the battleship to the aircraft carrier, it may take the catastrophic failure for limitations of exquisite tactical aircraft to overwhelm the forces keeping them drinking up most of the trough.<p>The corrective is not to abandon the F-35 but to redefine its role. A smaller fleet should be reserved for the missions that truly require its unique capabilities — penetrating advanced air defenses, gathering intelligence in contested environments, and orchestrating distributed networks of unmanned systems. The marginal procurement dollar should shift toward platforms that are cheaper to build, easier to replace, less dependent on vulnerable forward infrastructure, and expendable in ways that manned fighters are not.<p>The lesson of the Iran campaign is that the F-35 performed superbly in exactly the kind of fight it was built for. The lesson for force designers is that the next war may not be that fight. The future of airpower belongs to a larger orchestra, many of its instruments unmanned, inexpensive, and replaceable. Prudence demands that the United States start building it now."
I think ultimately the real weapon of mass destruction will be long-range drones the size of a DJI drone, each holding a small but extremely powerful explosive.<p>And then send millions of them, with specific single targets. Each AI controlled to target single weakpoints in buildings, bridges, or even specific people. You can't stop a million of them even with EMPs because you can just end a million more. You can destroy entire cities with a technology like this. If each drone costs $10,000 and you send a million of them that's only $10 billion for a war and complete destruction of your enemy.
I think the opposite. Drones are subject to the tyrany of the rocket equation: they need fuel (or batteries) to fly, then fuel (or batteries) to carry the fuel, etc, in a compounded way. Which makes long range drone inherently more expensive than short range ones.<p>Right now, the novelty of the technology means the offensive has an advantage. But long term it will be the defensive who will benefit the most from drones.
Explosives don't scale in the way you seem to think they do. Below a certain threshold of warhead mass, you won't do much more than scratch the paint. The effects aren't linearly additive. The warheads required to penetrate military targets are incredibly heavy; you won't be loading them on a DJI drone nor traveling far even if you could.<p>A thousand sparrows does not an eagle make.
You could also just write "magic" and say we should invest in wizards.<p>No DJI sized drone using any available or near future technology is going to have a range of more then whatever 20 to 30 minutes of well-below subsonic flight time can get you.
Calling the F-35 a masterpiece is rage-bait.<p>The primary goal of this program is not to make a plane, it's to spend $2 trillion in military contracts. As a side effect, it runs as a jobs program for engineers and its US based supply chain. Technology gets developed but with a super low ROI.
This would be an interesting article 4 years ago. Now I think it's old news and we've got the War Department spending $50bn on a new autonomous warfare wing.
The A10 Warthog is still in service due to the outsized volume of some incredibly wrong voices being able to shout down modern understandings of warfare. The role of CAS as an extension of the ground troops themselves controlled by infantrymen with tooling to automate that job is the future but the military industrial complex moves slowly.
theres a lot of things to critique about the us, but the f35 isn't one of them.<p>Over the past few years we have seen it operate with impunity over multiple countries. It astounding to me that in the 12 day war and the iran conflict there hasn't been issues from maintance alone.<p>We dont know how well the F35 holds up against patriots or s400's, but what we do know for certain is that against virtually everything else it unstopable.<p>More so when you realize the us has 600 and is making another 200 a year, and in a real war, you would lose some but theres rough parity between the number of s400 systems that exist, and the number of f35s that exist, and all those s400's will never be in teh same war or same place.
So, an author who takes no issue with the war of aggression against Iran, and is preoccupied with planning a war against China. Well that's just great.
So we’ve made a small number of exquisite King Tigers, and they’re making huge numbers of Shermans?
it seems to be worse than both Chinese planes and American planes, and was easily shot down by Iranians
The F-35 was specified when the Joint Strike Fighter program began in 1995, with the development contract awarded in 2001, and the first flight in 2006 or thereabouts.<p>Of course it was built for a different war... the use of drones didn't proliferate until after the 2010s and really more since the 2020s with Russia/Ukraine.<p>So, thanks Captain Obvious and arm-chair quarterback, for the insightful article.
People forget just how old the F-22 and F-35 actually are, mostly because they are still the current state-of-the-art. That is 1990s tech.<p>The 6th gen platforms currently in testing address many of the issues raised with the 5th gen platforms. Which you would expect since they weren't designed in the previous century.
People not paying attention need it explained to them.
It's a camel designed by committee.<p>On paper it looks cool.<p>In practice it was /never/ the right plane. The contractors knew and didn't care.
I think it's more contractors were responsible for providing only their deliverables. The program design as a whole is done by the DoD when they bid out their requirements.
Yeah, military pricing isn't because of it's good quality, it's because it's compliant, and they are usually at odds with each other.
> designed by committee<p>I've seen an argument--which I don't have enough expertise to advocate for--that the F35's broad but shallow appeal ("jack of all trades, master of none") has an indirect strength: A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed.<p>Speaking of military hardware in general, I can easily imagine there are cases where "best for logistics" completely trounces "best for the job".
> A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed.<p>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.<p>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 radio LRU from most other airframes and use it with the F-35, it has its own and its own maintenance cycles. The thing was designed to be expensive, it was not designed for manufacturing efficiency.
> Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35<p>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
part of its mission is being expensive, but surely you can see how that changes with the stroke of a pen?
Camels are very well designed.<p>Pick on a less useful animal.
Well yes, we have a load of taxpayer funded people to decide what to build.
The taxpayer funding is often the smaller part the complete lifetime pay package.<p>> A 2014 study of U.S. Department of Defense appointees showed that 28% exited to industry. As of 2023, 80 per cent of U.S. four-star retirees are employed in defense industry.[0]<p>There are actually entirely reasonable, rational explanations for this, but it's not a great look.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)</a>
People may not know how long the F-35 program has been going on. It's <i>over 30 years</i>. Discussions about what a next generation figher would be began in the Clinton administration. From the very start it was a series of compromises to be an all-in-one fighter. There are different needs in the military: air-to-air, ground bombardment, etc. Even stealth is a variable need. You just don't need it when you have air superiority. But having it also means not mounting weapons on the exterior of the airframe (as, say, the F-16 and F-14 did), which reduces how much ordinance it can deliver and indirectly how much fuel it can carry. F-35 operations are pretty much entirely dependent on in-air refuelling as a result.<p>Another fun fact in all this is the F-14. Did you the Navy has a policy of shredding all F-14s? Why? Because they were sold to Iran in the 1970s (pre-Islamic Revolution obviously) and the US wanted to make sure they could never get spare parts.<p>Anyway, as a result of that the US didn't want a repeat of selling the F-35 to a country that became an enemy so the US effectively has the ability to turn off the F-35 for every buyer... except one: Israel. Technically I think the avionics require daily activation and the US is the only supplier of those codes.<p>So, one nit I have about this article is the operational record of the F-35 in this current war. I don't think that's entirely correct. Iran's fairly primitive air defense has managed to damage the F-35 in at least one incident [1]. Also, you can assess the risk by how a fighter is used. As in, does the military use them with stand-off weapons [2] or not? This means using precision-guided munitions from a distance, possibly over-the-horizon. This wastes more payload on fuel. Those munitions are more expensive. The only reason you do it is because you fear the air defenses or otherwise can't guarantee air superiority. There have been a lot of reports the US military still primarily relies on standoff weapons in Iran. This is of course unconfirmed.<p>The bigger issue here is that post-Vietnam, and particularly since the 1990s, the US military has adopted a Strategic Air Doctrine. Rather than putting boots on the ground, the US projects military power by the ability to bombard. Unfortunately, that has limited utility. No regime has ever been overthrown by air power alone. And we're seeing that now. The entire Iranian military is built to resist strategic bombardment.<p>So yes, in this sense, the F-35 is built for Strategic Air Power and that's just not that relevant anymore.<p>So how do you put boots on the ground? Well, in Iran's case, it's like the country was specifically designed in a map editor to make this near-impossible. Iran is 5 times the size of Texas and has a population of ~93M people. It's surrounded on 3 sides by mountains and on the other by the Persian Gulf, which itself is bottlenecked by the Strait of Hormuz, which no US military ship has even approached in this conflict.<p>People just don't understand how complicated the logistics of this are and how many soldiers are required. You need, for example, tanks. You can't air lift multiple tank battalions. A plane can carry one, maybe two, tanks. They need fuel, munitions and maintenance. You need air defense and to establish bases. You need people to do all those things. Those people need to be fed.<p>Logistically, it's as complicated and large as D-Day.<p>It's also why I find the Taiwan question (also in this article) so frustrating, for two reasons:<p>1. China doesn't have the amphibious capability to cross 100 miles of ocean to land on Taiwan, establish a beach head and suppress a military of hundreds of thousands (as well as an insurgency) and to occupy the island. If you think they do, you have no idea what this takes;<p>2. More importantly, China has absolutely no reason to invade Taiwan and has shown no inclination to do so. this is the part that gets people mad for some reason. All but 10 countries on Earth have what's called the One China policy. This includes the US and Europe. That policy is that Taiwan is part of China and the question can simply remain unresolved. China belives the situation will be resolved eventually and there's absolutely no rush to do anything. The US agrees, policy-wise.<p>So any talk of a Taiwan invasion is just scaremongering to sell weapons. Like the F-35.<p>Maybe, just maybe, you should take with a grain of salt when the guy who sells you weapons tells you there's an imminent threat that requires you to buy the weapons they sell.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/politics/f-35-damage-iran-war" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/politics/f-35-damage-iran-war</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standoff_weapon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standoff_weapon</a>
The best defense policy for the USA, any country really, is to be a good neighbor, good "world citizen" and reliable friend<p>One can dream
I think cheap missiles and drones changed a lot of things. One could see this in Ukraine; more recently in Iran. USA is primarily focusing on heavy impact and expensive wars. This may be a more effective strategy, but it does not seem to be very realistic. I can't help but feel that this is especially much the case with regard to Iran, because the USA, despite what the orange bolo is saying, does not seem to be that eager to intensify the war (e. g. no ground invasion - and that's very telling if you remember the Iraq or Afghanistan invasion).
Is there a “right” war?
America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents, mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility.<p>U.S. weapons supremacy is increasingly exposed as a marketing facade. Despite a $1T annual budget, the industrial base is so brittle that strategic missile stocks were nearly depleted within a month of engagement with Iran. To keep the gears turning, Washington is now cannibalizing the stockpiles of its own allies.<p>You could make the case that the F-35 isn't a weapon; it’s a sophisticated wealth-extraction tool designed to fleece the American taxpayer. While it excels at deleting defenseless targets in lopsided conflicts, its primary mission is maintaining the flow of capital into a bloated military-industrial complex that prioritizes contractor profits over combat endurance.<p>Yes, the U.S. possesses the most lethal tactical hardware in history, but its industrial backbone is currently ill-equipped for a prolonged, peer-to-peer war of attrition.<p><pre><code> - Korean War (North Korea/China)
- Rating: Competent
- Note: North Korea began with a well-equipped, Soviet-backed armor force; China followed with massive, highly disciplined infantry waves that effectively fought the UN coalition to a stalemate.
- Vietnam War (North Vietnam/Viet Cong)
- Rating: Technologically Incompetent
- Note: While technologically outmatched, they demonstrated elite level unconventional warfare, logistical persistence (Ho Chi Minh Trail), and sophisticated anti-aircraft defenses.
- Invasion of Grenada (Grenadian Military)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: A very small force with limited heavy weaponry and minimal organizational depth.
- Invasion of Panama (Panamanian Defense Forces)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: Though professionalized to an extent, they lacked the hardware and air defense to resist a modern concentrated assault.
- Gulf War (Iraq)
- Rating: Competent (on paper) / Incompetent (in execution)
- Note: Iraq held the world's fourth-largest army at the time with modern Soviet equipment, but failed significantly in command, control, and air superiority.
- Intervention in Somalia (Local Militias/Warlords)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: Characterized by decentralized "technical" vehicles and light arms; effective only in urban ambush scenarios rather than conventional warfare.
- War in Afghanistan (Taliban/Al-Qaeda)
- Rating: Incompetent (conventionally) / Competent (insurgency)
- Note: Zero conventional capability (no air force/armor), but highly capable at sustained, low-tech asymmetric warfare.
- Iraq War (Ba'athist Iraq)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: By 2003, the military was severely degraded by a decade of sanctions and previous losses; it collapsed within weeks of the conventional invasion.
- Military Intervention in Libya (Gaddafi Loyalists)
- Rating: Poor
- Note: Largely reliant on aging Soviet hardware and mercenary units; unable to project power against NATO-backed air cover.
- War against ISIS (Insurgent State)
- Rating: Poor (conventionally) / Competent (tactically)
- Note: They lacked a traditional air force or navy but utilized captured heavy equipment and "shock" tactics with high psychological impact.</code></pre>
> - Invasion of Grenada (Grenadian Military)
> - Rating: Poor
> - Note: A very small force with limited heavy weaponry and minimal organizational depth.<p>> - Gulf War (Iraq)
> - Rating: Competent (on paper) / Incompetent (in execution)
> - Note: Iraq held the world's fourth-largest army at the time with modern Soviet equipment, but failed significantly in command, control, and air superiority.<p>> - Iraq War (Ba'athist Iraq)
> - Rating: Poor
> - Note: By 2003, the military was severely degraded by a decade of sanctions and previous losses; it collapsed within weeks of the conventional invasion.<p>the lesson of those wars to the US is, like sports teams, we need to deploy our forces in kinetic actions regularly or we lose our edge, lose touch with the battlefield and capabilities of opponents.<p>peace is better than war, of course, but you need to look at the progress of history as a stochastic process, and if you skip all the little wars because you have a choice, you will be ill-prepared for the big wars when they are thrust upon you. maybe call the little conflicts "friendlies", we need to compete in the friendlies to be ready for the unfriendlies.
><i>America hasn’t faced a peer-level, modern military since the Korean War. For seventy years, it has specialized in "wars of choice" against overmatched opponents</i><p>America has not faced any wars in its own "theater", it's own backyard; rather, it has "chosen" to fight wars that seemed important enough to travel halfway round the world, bringing lots of stuff. One of the American military's strengths is logistics, both getting there and on the battlefield.<p>><i>mistaking uncontested airspace for actual invincibility.</i><p>America pioneered and still leads in combined arms fighting doctrine and capabilities, and that basically requires air superiority as the first step. There's no mistake, it is creating uncontesed airspace (which starts with creating the capabilites) that enables victory at low casualty rates. It's not so much invincibility as "convincing vincibility" of opponents.
><i>China followed with massive, highly disciplined infantry waves that effectively fought the UN coalition to a stalemate.</i><p>just to clarify what "effectively fought" means, the Chinese entered the war when the ROK+US+UN forces had reached as far as the Yalu River, and yes their "infantry waves" response, i.e. lightly armed human waves, pushed the anti-communists back but at very, very high cost:<p>"North Korean casualties are estimated at around 1.5 million, including both military and civilian losses, while Chinese military casualties are estimated to be around 400,000 to 600,000."<p>"South Korean military losses during the Korean War were approximately 137,899 dead, with additional casualties including 24,495 missing and 8,343 captured. The United Nations forces, primarily composed of U.S. troops, suffered around 36,574 deaths, with total UN losses estimated at about 210,000 dead and missing."<p>that's about 2 million or more killed vs 210,000
we could do a moonbase for 2 trillion
But why? I'm not against the idea in principle, but there has to be a motivation beyond "It's possible". Even the search for knowledge, which is a good reason to invest in R&D, but how much would we learn on the moon for that 2 trillion that we couldn't learn more cheaply through other means?
Writers of history or historical fiction often wonder how did average people in militaristic, fascist societies from the past view their society? I think it’s obvious from the present-day US: they were amused. They were entertained by it. Human suffering, a necessary feature of such cultures, is trivialized by draping the death machine behind the veneer of fun, exciting game!
Huh?The F35 has flown.more missions against the Palistinians than perhaps ANY aircraft that has ever been use in war, and the F35 is central to commiting genocide on the Palistinian people, and there is very very little they can do about it, so by the logic of obsenity, does war have another?, it plays the "tune" in the keys of screams and horror.
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