So what happens when the A-10s control surfaces fail? I know, it crashes like any other plane.
Try again. Quite a few came back quite severely shot up... and were flying again the next day.
Yes, because they didn't lose their control surfaces. Or else they wouldn't be able to fly. I mean unless the A-10 has a magical ability to control it'self without any control surfaces unlike very other plane in existance.
And, again, it won't *be* low and slow where it can be shot at by MANPADS, AA guns, small SAM sites, ect. That's the whole point.
Until some part of that magnificent avionics package goes down, or the datalinks to the ground forces are jammed, or until someone realizes that with only two bombs the F-35 has to REALLY make their shots count...
And why exactly are any of those going to happen? Or is this another of the "technology sucks eyeball best grrrr" things.
Any time you have a hunk of Russian junk sporting one of these:
You've probably lost contact with ground personnel.
As far as going after the planes themselves:
While they've been very short on specifics re cyberwarfare vulnerabilities of the F-35 and it's variants, apparently several software packages have apparently proven vulnerable to cyber attack. The only thing I've been able to find anything specific on is the Autonomic Logistics Information System, which may permit pilots and ground crews to be fed bad information or be a back door allowing sabotage of other systems.
So what happens when the A-10s control surfaces fail? I know, it crashes like any other plane.
Try again. Quite a few came back quite severely shot up... and were flying again the next day.
Not when their control surfaces fail though As you can probably imagine, flying an airplane without controls is kinda... difficult.
Tell it to the Israeli F-15 pilot who landed safely without a wing.
The A-10 was built to take damage and come home. And it does that with bells on. I repeat, several were quite severely shot up and not only flew home but flew missions THE NEXT DAY.
Lord knows what's going to happen to the F-35 the first time it takes a hit, CAS or not. Probably fall out of the sky. Certainly won't be stealthy anymore and there goes it's one advantage over legacy platforms.
So what happens when the A-10s control surfaces fail? I know, it crashes like any other plane.
Try again. Quite a few came back quite severely shot up... and were flying again the next day.
Yes, because they didn't lose their control surfaces. Or else they wouldn't be able to fly. I mean unless the A-10 has a magical ability to control it'self without any control surfaces unlike very other plane in existance.
Airliners are now designed to be flown entirely on engine control inputs via the flight computer if the control surface hydraulics fail. So there are already aircraft flying EVERY DAY that can fly without any control surfaces, and the odds are you've actually flown in one.
And, again, it won't *be* low and slow where it can be shot at by MANPADS, AA guns, small SAM sites, ect. That's the whole point.
Until some part of that magnificent avionics package goes down, or the datalinks to the ground forces are jammed, or until someone realizes that with only two bombs the F-35 has to REALLY make their shots count...
And why exactly are any of those going to happen? Or is this another of the "technology sucks eyeball best grrrr" things.
What makes you think they CAN'T happen? First law of combat is Murphy's. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible moment. How many times has your personal computer crashed? How many smart phones have you gone through? And remember, neither of those are ROUTINELY subjected to the eight-plus g's of stress of ACM.
One last thing. How does an F-35 provide CAS across a mile wide battlefront... with two bombs. Hmmm?
Tell it to the Israeli F-15 pilot who landed safely without a wing.
Is that all?
Ladies and gents, my I present the pinnacle of American aviation, and reigning number one champ of 'Holy gak, we made it back to base!' the Boeing B-17 'All American'.
Almost cut in half by a collision with a 109, All American made it 300 miles back to base.
There was so little holding the plane together she fell apart during landing.
Tell it to the Israeli F-15 pilot who landed safely without a wing.
Yeah, and people have been doing that since the fething 40s. The means some control surfaces are out but not all of them. Do you actually know what it would mean if all control surfaces were knocked out? That means no pitch, no roll, no elevation. Nothing.
The A-10 was built to take damage and come home. And it does that with bells on. I repeat, several were quite severely shot up and not only flew home but flew missions THE NEXT DAY.
Lord knows what's going to happen to the F-35 the first time it takes a hit, CAS or not. Probably fall out of the sky. Certainly won't be stealthy anymore and there goes it's one advantage over legacy platforms.
And this the whole problem with the argument. You go "look this plane made it back with one wing" and then go "this more advanced plane would just fall out of the sky". Not based on anything other than bias against the platform.
Airliners are now designed to be flown entirely on engine control inputs via the flight computer if the control surface hydraulics fail. So there are already aircraft flying EVERY DAY that can fly without any control surfaces, and the odds are you've actually flown in one.
If some of them fall yes engine control can greatly help. If everything fails, you are a bit screwed. You can make it to a runway, maybe. But you won't be able to operate effectively in a war zone.
What makes you think they CAN'T happen? First law of combat is Murphy's. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible moment. How many times has your personal computer crashed? How many smart phones have you gone through? And remember, neither of those are ROUTINELY subjected to the eight-plus g's of stress of ACM.
I'll be honest I've yet to have a smartphone break on me because I tend to be careful with my electronics.
But here's another problem with your argument as a whole, of course if everything goes wrong the plane can't do anything. That's true with any plane. What if the GAU has a malfunction. What if all the plane's control surfaces freeze up. What if they pilot can't find the target with his old sensor tech? See I can do this too!
One last thing. How does an F-35 provide CAS across a mile wide battlefront... with two bombs. Hmmm?
If it's only taking two bombs that means we are dealing with a situation that requires stealth. If it requires stealth then that makes our current CAS aircraft useless. In a situation where there is no danger, then we pull out something less stealthy with more firepower. Do I really have to explain this to you?
If the F-35 doesn't dare bring it's pylon based weaponry that means we are dealing with something that can detect any non-stealth plane. And F35 with Pylon weaponry is still a hell of a lot more stealthy than an F-16, Super Hornet, A-10 ect. So that most probably means strikes against heavy SAM emplacements. Or strikes in areas where we have not yet secured air superiority. Neither of those we are going to send an A-10 in these days. Back when it was designed and built, being tough was enough. Nowadays, against modern SAMs not so much.
And this the whole problem with the argument. You go "look this plane made it back with one wing" and then go "this more advanced plane would just fall out of the sky". Not based on anything other than bias against the platform.
Its based on the fragility of the platform. The F-35 simply has far less ability to sustain damage and still function.
Now could it take damage and still fly? Probably, depending on the specifics of the damage. But the point is it is less likely to be able to do so. A-10s are far more durable.
Its the classic trade-off between Stealth and Durability. if you are more stealthy, you have to give up durability.
Its definitely worth having a stealth fighter like the F-35, but we need to be mindful of its limitations. It is NOT a ground support aircraft and we should NEVER attempt to use it as one. And focusing too much on aircraft like this means we are going to be in trouble if we need stuff that can provide CAS in a hot warzone. We shouldn't ever assume we'll only ever be bombing 3rd world nations with Russian hand-me-down air defenses. That is how we'll lose WW3, but not having gear that can pick on something its own size.
And this the whole problem with the argument. You go "look this plane made it back with one wing" and then go "this more advanced plane would just fall out of the sky". Not based on anything other than bias against the platform.
Its based on the fragility of the platform. The F-35 simply has far less ability to sustain damage and still function.
Does it? What is the proof of that? I mean it will probably take less damage than the A-10 before becoming unoprable. But that's just an assumption, not based on any information. And the toughness of the A-10 when it relates to modern air defenses is rather overblown.
Now could it take damage and still fly? Probably, depending on the specifics of the damage. But the point is it is less likely to be able to do so. A-10s are far more durable.
Its the classic trade-off between Stealth and Durability. if you are more stealthy, you have to give up durability.
Its definitely worth having a stealth fighter like the F-35, but we need to be mindful of its limitations. It is NOT a ground support aircraft and we should NEVER attempt to use it as one. And focusing too much on aircraft like this means we are going to be in trouble if we need stuff that can provide CAS in a hot warzone. We shouldn't ever assume we'll only ever be bombing 3rd world nations with Russian hand-me-down air defenses. That is how we'll lose WW3, but not having gear that can pick on something its own size.
I mean the whole point of the F-35 is that it *can* operate in a hot warzone, unlike the A-10. The A-10 is very much a legacy platform, and it's vulnerability to modern air defenses is very much appreciated and considered by our military. There's a reason we kept the A-10 back out of the initial invasions in Iraq. A dedicated modern CAS platform would be a nice thing to have, alltogether though. The F-35 can be a CAS platform if needed, and it's what we have in the event of, as you say, WW3. Something taking into account modern air defenses and stealth technology would be a good comprise. A modern close air support vehicle designed to combat the modern battlefield. and not the battlefield of the 1970s (or the 90s fighting people with tech from the 70s).
The F-35 is not the solution to CAS on the modern battlefield.But it's a solution to a number of other problems as well as being capable in both strike and some CAS missions. But the A-10 is not a solution to CAS on the modern battlefield unless we are trying to get out pilots killed. A new attacker program is needed IMO (probably downgrading to a 25mm cannon as the 35mm doesn't cut it against modern tanks, and it just extra weight and complexity against unarmored troops, and lightly armoured vehicles) with a focus on stealth and guided weaponry to give it defenses against modern SAMs and MANPADs. That can also mount AAMs so it can actually defense it'self against enemy aircraft more effectively. And with our more advanced sensor tech, loiter time isn't as important (you can line up on the targets much faster, don't have to search for them), allowing it to achieve faster speeds, again removing one of the main deficiencies of the A-10 on the modern battlefield.
Tell it to the Israeli F-15 pilot who landed safely without a wing.
Yeah, and people have been doing that since the fething 40s. The means some control surfaces are out but not all of them. Do you actually know what it would mean if all control surfaces were knocked out? That means no pitch, no roll, no elevation. Nothing.
Sure. Now tell me how the F-35 is immune to the same problem.
The A-10 was built to take damage and come home. And it does that with bells on. I repeat, several were quite severely shot up and not only flew home but flew missions THE NEXT DAY.
Lord knows what's going to happen to the F-35 the first time it takes a hit, CAS or not. Probably fall out of the sky. Certainly won't be stealthy anymore and there goes it's one advantage over legacy platforms.
And this the whole problem with the argument. You go "look this plane made it back with one wing" and then go "this more advanced plane would just fall out of the sky". Not based on anything other than bias against the platform.
That's a fair point. Of course, your argument is entirely based on "It won't work the way you think, honest it won't..." but we ALL lack the evidence to back it up because the F-35 has not yet seen combat nor suffered battle damage.
Airliners are now designed to be flown entirely on engine control inputs via the flight computer if the control surface hydraulics fail. So there are already aircraft flying EVERY DAY that can fly without any control surfaces, and the odds are you've actually flown in one.
If some of them fall yes engine control can greatly help. If everything fails, you are a bit screwed. You can make it to a runway, maybe. But you won't be able to operate effectively in a war zone.
NO. After an airline crash brought on by a failure of the flight controls it was demonstrated that with careful control of the engines you could successfully fly a routine airline mission without flight surface controls at all. Then the fly-by-wire systems were programmed to do it with the normal cockpit controls instead of relying entirely on the throttles.
And if you're in a shot-up aircraft of ANY kind, you're not going to be operating effectively in a war zone. The A-10 gets props for getting shot up and not only returning to base, but being repaired, re-engined, reloaded, and fighting the next day. I can GUARANTEE the F-35 will not be doing that, not if it's going to remain strealthy.
What makes you think they CAN'T happen? First law of combat is Murphy's. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, at the worst possible moment. How many times has your personal computer crashed? How many smart phones have you gone through? And remember, neither of those are ROUTINELY subjected to the eight-plus g's of stress of ACM.
I'll be honest I've yet to have a smartphone break on me because I tend to be careful with my electronics.
But here's another problem with your argument as a whole, of course if everything goes wrong the plane can't do anything. That's true with any plane. What if the GAU has a malfunction. What if all the plane's control surfaces freeze up. What if they pilot can't find the target with his old sensor tech? See I can do this too!
It's unlikely an A-10 pilot's eyeballs will cease working in mid flight, and if they do he's got bigger problems. It's equally unlikely that an entire platoon's worth of smoke grenades would also simultaneously fail. Low tech solutions fail far less often than high-tech ones.
As far as the gun failing or the flight controls freezing up, demonstrate that the F-35 is LESS likely to have the same problem. Well, I guess the F-35's gun won't fail in a CAS situation; with under 200 rounds it wouldn't be effective anyway so it wouldn't matter if it failed.
One last thing. How does an F-35 provide CAS across a mile wide battlefront... with two bombs. Hmmm?
If it's only taking two bombs that means we are dealing with a situation that requires stealth. If it requires stealth then that makes our current CAS aircraft useless. In a situation where there is no danger, then we pull out something less stealthy with more firepower. Do I really have to explain this to you?
If the F-35 doesn't dare bring it's pylon based weaponry that means we are dealing with something that can detect any non-stealth plane. And F35 with Pylon weaponry is still a hell of a lot more stealthy than an F-16, Super Hornet, A-10 ect. So that most probably means strikes against heavy SAM emplacements. Or strikes in areas where we have not yet secured air superiority. Neither of those we are going to send an A-10 in these days. Back when it was designed and built, being tough was enough. Nowadays, against modern SAMs not so much.
And THAT'S my whole point. You don't waste an A-10 in a high-threat environment, you send in the F-35 to knock back the air defenses. You don't waste an F-35 in a low-threat environment; you send in the bomb trucks so you don't risk losing a hundred-million dollar airframe to pilot error or equipment failure. And once the F-35 has knocked back the air defenses it's no longer a high threat environment. Do I really have to explain this to you?
And this the whole problem with the argument. You go "look this plane made it back with one wing" and then go "this more advanced plane would just fall out of the sky". Not based on anything other than bias against the platform.
Its based on the fragility of the platform. The F-35 simply has far less ability to sustain damage and still function.
Now could it take damage and still fly? Probably, depending on the specifics of the damage. But the point is it is less likely to be able to do so. A-10s are far more durable.
Its the classic trade-off between Stealth and Durability. if you are more stealthy, you have to give up durability.
Its definitely worth having a stealth fighter like the F-35, but we need to be mindful of its limitations. It is NOT a ground support aircraft and we should NEVER attempt to use it as one. And focusing too much on aircraft like this means we are going to be in trouble if we need stuff that can provide CAS in a hot warzone. We shouldn't ever assume we'll only ever be bombing 3rd world nations with Russian hand-me-down air defenses. That is how we'll lose WW3, but not having gear that can pick on something its own size.
Oh, yes, totally agreed. The F-35 has it's uses - rolling back air defenses should be top of the list. But it literally CANNOT be risked anywhere it might take random damage from ground fire which would fatally compromise it's stealth until it's repaired. Bullet holes make dandy radar reflectors, you know. And since it's stealth capabilities literally CANNOT be repaired except at the factory - the down side of using large pieces of carbon fiber for your skin and frame - it CANNOT be risked to ground fire... and therefore cannot be risked in a CAS capability.
Shouldn't be any need to either. The A-10 does the job just fine once the F-35 does it's job and knocks back the antiair defenses.
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Co'tor Shas wrote: And with our more advanced sensor tech, loiter time isn't as important (you can line up on the targets much faster, don't have to search for them), allowing it to achieve faster speeds, again removing one of the main deficiencies of the A-10 on the modern battlefield.
Loiter time is actually QUITE important, unless you expect the enemy to NOT dive into their foxholes when an air strike comes in for some reason. If you have just enough loiter time to do one pass and then you're gone, the enemy dives into their foxholes and waits for you to leave. If you can hang around for an hour, either they have to stay up and fighting as you bomb and strafe them repeatedly, or they allow your troops to advance on their positions unopposed...
I'll let you guess which one happened when in Vietnam, between getting CAS from fast-moving jets, and getting CAS from Skyraiders....
Does it? What is the proof of that? I mean it will probably take less damage than the A-10 before becoming unoprable. But that's just an assumption, not based on any information.
.
Well, from what little I've been able to find out about repairing the F-35, a hole as big around as a soup can renders the plane inoperable. That's anywhere, not just through the pilot. A breach that big also means that, if the plane does get back to base, it has to be sent back to Lockheed due to it's near unrepairability in the field.
I mean, looking at it strictly from a logistics point of view, the F-35 is one of the worst aircraft in recent history. Situations where any other fighter aircraft would be considered lightly damaged, the F-35 is a write off, or at very least is heading back to the factory.
It's bad enough that, and I again underline, the navy is building a special class of transport expressly to ferry F-35s that are damaged back and forth. Not for parts, or fuel, or anything else. Because we have current ships that can do that for at least the next forty years. Expressly for the F-35.
So to recap- the argument has come down to what mission for CAS we want to be covered. For a first world, modern frontline vs equivalent force, we would need a stealthy plane able to attack SAM sites effectively.
Conversely, such a high priced and high tech marvel would be wasted if applied to a counterinsurgency battle much like the one we have today, with 4th rate gear the only opposition for the aircraft.
This seems to dovetail nicely with the existing A-10s, and the upcoming light attack aircraft. The F35 is utilized to neutralize threats, and then just maintains a watch to make sure its more vulnerable (but massively more economical) brethren can operate with impunity. It seems like a surprisingly logical compromise that the Air Force is moving forward with.
Gitzbitah wrote: For a first world, modern frontline vs equivalent force, we would need a stealthy plane able to attack SAM sites effectively..
Well, then the F-35 is already out of the running. 2 1k pound bombs are not going to engage a SAM site effectively. Particularly if it's one of those dispersed mobile launcher systems.
It's also fairly useless against aircraft with only two anti-air missiles before it's out.
Honestly, in a WW3 scenario it doesn't matter much what plane you use for CAS (as long as it can suppress enemy ground troops it will be fine). There will be so many targets that any CAS is just going to be a drop on a glowing plate. What you really want in such a scenario is to just focus on the high-profile targets. You know, big powerful ground radars, command centers, supply depots, that sort of stuff. You aren't going to be making much of a dent in an armoured or infantry division with aircraft (because it is thousands of heavily defended targets), but you can harass and impede that division very effectively by taking out the infrastructure it relies on. And for that job, you really want a F-35 rather than an A-10, because the F-35's stealth gives it a chance of slipping through the enemy's air defense networks. An A-10 on the other hand is 99% likely to get shot down by interceptors, because it is so slow (and modern air defense systems can't be fooled anymore by staying low, on which the A-10 relied for stealth when it was first introduced). The A-10 is a great plane that definitely has a clear purpose in the Air Force, but it is not fighting in a hypothetical WW3. Rather the purpose of the A-10 is to be a highly reliable, cost-effective support platform in a medium to low threat environment.
Iron_Captain wrote: Honestly, in a WW3 scenario it doesn't matter much what plane you use for CAS (as long as it can suppress enemy ground troops it will be fine). There will be so many targets that any CAS is just going to be a drop on a glowing plate.
What you really want in such a scenario is to just focus on the high-profile targets. You know, big powerful ground radars, command centers, supply depots, that sort of stuff. You aren't going to be making much of a dent in an armoured or infantry division with aircraft (because it is thousands of heavily defended targets), but you can harass and impede that division very effectively by taking out the infrastructure it relies on. And for that job, you really want a F-35 rather than an A-10, because the F-35's stealth gives it a chance of slipping through the enemy's air defense networks. An A-10 on the other hand is 99% likely to get shot down by interceptors, because it is so slow (and modern air defense systems can't be fooled anymore by staying low, on which the A-10 relied for stealth when it was first introduced).
The A-10 is a great plane that definitely has a clear purpose in the Air Force, but it is not fighting in a hypothetical WW3. Rather the purpose of the A-10 is to be a highly reliable, cost-effective support platform in a medium to low threat environment.
The F-35 does not carry enough firepower, using stealth, to take out any of the above. Not even infrastructure. So, let it slip on through, it's not going to do enough to make it a threat.
The F-35 could fly support for a B-2, though. In that case the F-35 doesn't need to carry the ordnance to take out the hard target, but rather anti-aircraft missiles to protect the B-2 from any intercept that manages to find it.
You wouldn't want to support the B-2 with anything but a stealth fighter, after all, as that would sacrifice the stealth of the B-2 itself.
How can a company with so much experience and so powerful as Lockheed, working for the US government, with so much money, be
1/ That late
2/ be that overcosted ?
Really interested in the F35 story !
godardc wrote: How can a company with so much experience and so powerful as Lockheed, working for the US government, with so much money, be
1/ That late
2/ be that overcosted ?
Really interested in the F35 story !
The list of military projects that delivered on specifications, on time and within budget is painfully short (if it's ever happened in modern times).
A Town Called Malus wrote: The F-35 could fly support for a B-2, though. In that case the F-35 doesn't need to carry the ordnance to take out the hard target, but rather anti-aircraft missiles to protect the B-2 from any intercept that manages to find it.
You wouldn't want to support the B-2 with anything but a stealth fighter, after all, as that would sacrifice the stealth of the B-2 itself.
The issue here being the max anti aircraft missiles the F-35 can carry while stealth is max 4. And it can't dog fight, so it's bad at this role too.
godardc wrote: How can a company with so much experience and so powerful as Lockheed, working for the US government, with so much money, be
1/ That late
2/ be that overcosted ?
Really interested in the F35 story !
The list of military projects that delivered on specifications, on time and within budget is painfully short (if it's ever happened in modern times).
If you're lucky you end up delivering 1 out of 3.
This is actually true of only the US, and that's due to how the US bidding process works. though it has been spreading to NATO allies.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The F-35 could fly support for a B-2, though. In that case the F-35 doesn't need to carry the ordnance to take out the hard target, but rather anti-aircraft missiles to protect the B-2 from any intercept that manages to find it.
You wouldn't want to support the B-2 with anything but a stealth fighter, after all, as that would sacrifice the stealth of the B-2 itself.
The issue here being the max anti aircraft missiles the F-35 can carry while stealth is max 4. And it can't dog fight, so it's bad at this role too.
Don't understand how this discussion has gone on this long... Baron is apparently smarter then all of the smartest heads of Air Forces of the most advanced countries in the world, who keep buying this aircraft. No one should bother arguing this with him anymore.
Iron_Captain wrote: Honestly, in a WW3 scenario it doesn't matter much what plane you use for CAS (as long as it can suppress enemy ground troops it will be fine). There will be so many targets that any CAS is just going to be a drop on a glowing plate.
What you really want in such a scenario is to just focus on the high-profile targets. You know, big powerful ground radars, command centers, supply depots, that sort of stuff. You aren't going to be making much of a dent in an armoured or infantry division with aircraft (because it is thousands of heavily defended targets), but you can harass and impede that division very effectively by taking out the infrastructure it relies on. And for that job, you really want a F-35 rather than an A-10, because the F-35's stealth gives it a chance of slipping through the enemy's air defense networks. An A-10 on the other hand is 99% likely to get shot down by interceptors, because it is so slow (and modern air defense systems can't be fooled anymore by staying low, on which the A-10 relied for stealth when it was first introduced).
The A-10 is a great plane that definitely has a clear purpose in the Air Force, but it is not fighting in a hypothetical WW3. Rather the purpose of the A-10 is to be a highly reliable, cost-effective support platform in a medium to low threat environment.
Except that's not a CAS mission you're describing. That's deep strike and interdiction, and the A-10 was never really considered for that mission. That's Tornado, F-111, and F-15E mission. The F-35 can do a halfway job of that mission too... halfway because two small bombs means it's probably going to take five or six to carry the payload of a single alternative.
That's why the F-35's primary mission should be rolling back the anti-air so other platforms can take advantage of the opening and carry in several times a stealthy F-35's bombload to do the job.
The F-35 is going to be a magnificent recon aircraft, and vital in the wild weasel/iron hand mission. Beyond that, if it remains stealthy it lacks the weapons loadout for a real combat mission, and if it really loads up on weapons it's not even remotely stealthy anymore.... at which point, why risk it?
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A Town Called Malus wrote: The F-35 could fly support for a B-2, though. In that case the F-35 doesn't need to carry the ordnance to take out the hard target, but rather anti-aircraft missiles to protect the B-2 from any intercept that manages to find it.
You wouldn't want to support the B-2 with anything but a stealth fighter, after all, as that would sacrifice the stealth of the B-2 itself.
F-22 would be a better choice due to extra range and ordinance. Of course, it's a rather moot point; for any tactical aircraft to reach a truly strategic target you'd send a B-2 after, you'd also have to send in a decidedly UNstealthy KC-135 or KC-10.... and I don't expect that to end well.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The F-35 could fly support for a B-2, though. In that case the F-35 doesn't need to carry the ordnance to take out the hard target, but rather anti-aircraft missiles to protect the B-2 from any intercept that manages to find it.
You wouldn't want to support the B-2 with anything but a stealth fighter, after all, as that would sacrifice the stealth of the B-2 itself.
The issue here being the max anti aircraft missiles the F-35 can carry while stealth is max 4. And it can't dog fight, so it's bad at this role too.
Don't understand how this discussion has gone on this long... Baron is apparently smarter then all of the smartest heads of Air Forces of the most advanced countries in the world, who keep buying this aircraft. No one should bother arguing this with him anymore.
djones520 wrote: Baron is apparently smarter then all of the smartest heads of Air Forces of the most advanced countries in the world, who keep buying this aircraft.
I can keep posting more links, but I think you get the point. Maybe I should explain why people are buying a gak plane to you?
NATO. The US has been pressuring it's NATO allies hard to help defray the costs of the F-35. However, those countries are starting to walk away from their orders, some buying Russian Su-57 or US F-18s instead.
There is also the issue that makes me question their sanity, the fact that the aircraft cannot be repaired without sending it back to the US, with Pentagon permission. Currently only Israel, which bought it's with US money, is allowed to repair it's own planes. Which may be an issue if things like this keep up:
Military development often, heck always, has politicians mucking about with it. That’s why sometimes we get truly messed up projects that aren’t exactly what was needed.
NATO. The US has been pressuring it's NATO allies hard to help defray the costs of the F-35. However, those countries are starting to walk away from their orders, some buying Russian Su-57 or US F-18s instead.
There is also the issue that makes me question their sanity, the fact that the aircraft cannot be repaired without sending it back to the US, with Pentagon permission. Currently only Israel, which bought it's with US money, is allowed to repair it's own planes. Which may be an issue if things like this keep up:
Who's buying SU-57s anyway? I read not even the Russians will be manufacturing more than a few as glorified tech demonstrators and even then no one knows when engines will be ready.
Who's buying SU-57s anyway? I read not even the Russians will be manufacturing more than a few as glorified tech demonstrators and even then no one knows when engines will be ready.
After the debacle with the US Senate and Turkey's F-35s, the Turks are in talks to buy Su-57s instead.
The Russian Air Force will be manufacturing more than a few, but definitely not nearly as many as they were originally planning as the price has bloated way beyond original expectations. They currently have an initial order of just 12 planes (down from 70), but are expected to follow. The Russian Air Force hasn't lost its ambitions, the costs have just forced it to spread out the acquisition over a longer period. They are still cheaper than comparable American aircraft though, so it would be a good deal for Turkey which is not the kind of country that can afford to buy loads of overly expensive F-35s. Aside from Turkey, India is also highly interested in the Su-57 and has been closely involved in its development. There is a plan that Russia and India will eventually work together on jointly building an export variant for India. India is also working on a fifth-generation jet of its own, but its capabilities to pull that off are dubious at best (so far it only exists as a scale model).
The Su-57 is definitely more than just a glorified tech demonstration however. Even though it hasn't finished development since the engine that is being developed for it has suffered delays (the prototypes you see flying around use an upgraded Su-27 engine), the Su-57 has already seen combat in Syria.
Anyways, for countries with virtually non-existent defense budgets and air forces such as Denmark or the Netherlands, the F-35 program was a massive mistake. Instead of having around a hundred 4 or 4.5 generation jets they will now get only a handful of 5th generation jets with very low payload, who also have to stay in the US for maintenance and repair. Basically, their air forces already had limited capabilities, but now they have no capabilities at all. The Dutch Air Force will go from 61 jets to 37. And given that the F-35 can only carry 4 weapons whilst retaining stealth (and if you aren't retaining stealth, why aren't you flying an F-16?), that is not the kind of air force that can deliver a significant contribution to any conflict. Made worse by the fact that a significant number of those 37 will always be stationed in the Netherlands and the US, and therefore not available for deployment. The F-35 is an excellent plane, it is just too expensive and too specialised to be useful to small air forces. The Dutch and the Danes would have been much better off with the Saab Gripen or an updated version of their existing F-16s.
" Israeli media reported that an Israeli F-35 had been damaged by a bird strike two weeks before (Google translation here). The plane reportedly landed safely, but the Israeli Air Force did admit that it wasn’t sure whether the plane will fly again. "
So... either the F-35 took severe damage from an outdated missile system, OR, it's so fragile that a single bird strike has damaged it so bad the Israelis don't know if it can be repaired.
Either way, not good news for the F-35 in the CAS mission...
" Israeli media reported that an Israeli F-35 had been damaged by a bird strike two weeks before (Google translation here). The plane reportedly landed safely, but the Israeli Air Force did admit that it wasn’t sure whether the plane will fly again. "
So... either the F-35 took severe damage from an outdated missile system, OR, it's so fragile that a single bird strike has damaged it so bad the Israelis don't know if it can be repaired.
Either way, not good news for the F-35 in the CAS mission...
Actually, if you look at Israeli news sources on the incident, they say that the damage was minor and would be repaired within a few days. The missile story is probably just fake news. The F-35's stealth may not be as great as is sometimes claimed, but it is definitely good enough to fool ancient radar technology from half a century ago. No 1960's missile is realistically going to hit a F-35.
Iron_Captain wrote: [but it is definitely good enough to fool ancient radar technology from half a century ago. No 1960's missile is realistically going to hit a F-35.
Actually if it's Radar is outside X band and shorter RADAR wavelengths, the F-35 is not stealth. So, actually it's more likely for an older system to lock onto it, since old style RADARs worked at longer wavelengths.
Iron_Captain wrote: [but it is definitely good enough to fool ancient radar technology from half a century ago. No 1960's missile is realistically going to hit a F-35.
Actually if it's Radar is outside X band and shorter RADAR wavelengths, the F-35 is not stealth. So, actually it's more likely for an older system to lock onto it, since old style RADARs worked at longer wavelengths.
Aye. Low-wavelength radars can detect a stealth fighter. But it is just detecting. You can't get a lock for a missile that way (the signal is not strong enough). So no, an old radar system can never lock onto a F-35, though it could be potentially used to direct interceptors armed with guns and heat-seeking missiles to secure a kill, if the stealth fighter is detected early enough to allow the interceptors to take off and intercept. Also, you could potentially get a lock on stealth fighters by combining multiple low-wavelength radar signatures from multiple radars, though such a system is expensive and difficult to deploy because of the massive size of the radars. Anyways while the newest SAM systems might be a threat, it is well beyond the capability of SAM systems from the 1960's.
Just detecting is plenty against the F-35. It's mother naked to IR threats, the Soviets equipped their interceptors and air-superiority fighters with long-range IR scanners and long-range IR-guided missiles, and I don't expect with America being so heavily invested in anti-radar stealth the Russians and Chinese would have been dumb enough to stop doing so.
The F-117, being heavily IR baffled, could have evaded them. Not the F-35.
Yes, after 17 years of work there is still nearly a THOUSAND flaws in the aircraft, over 100 of which can potentially destroy or severely damage the aircraft and/or kill the pilot.
Remember the good old days when we could design and build a production aircraft in SIX MONTHS using nothing more than brains, drafting tables, and slide rules? Now they're too busy using their Nintendo's to do the design work and don't seem to be exercising their brains at all...
Yes, after 17 years of work there is still nearly a THOUSAND flaws in the aircraft, over 100 of which can potentially destroy or severely damage the aircraft and/or kill the pilot.
Remember the good old days when we could design and build a production aircraft in SIX MONTHS using nothing more than brains, drafting tables, and slide rules? Now they're too busy using their Nintendo's to do the design work and don't seem to be exercising their brains at all...
To be fair to them, aircraft got a LOT more complex since the days they were designed and built in six months.
Remember when cars were just 4 stone wheels, and a dinosaur canvas for a roof? Those were the days.
The design of a 5th generation aircraft is more complex than could possibly imagine.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, that article is a hack job of pretty amazing proportions, written by someone with no understanding of how issues manifest, and risk management.
Some of those issues are exactly the same as ones that still exist on jets that have been flying for years in the USAF. Wonder why that isn't being mentioned...
Yes, after 17 years of work there is still nearly a THOUSAND flaws in the aircraft, over 100 of which can potentially destroy or severely damage the aircraft and/or kill the pilot.
Remember the good old days when we could design and build a production aircraft in SIX MONTHS using nothing more than brains, drafting tables, and slide rules? Now they're too busy using their Nintendo's to do the design work and don't seem to be exercising their brains at all...
To be fair to them, aircraft got a LOT more complex since the days they were designed and built in six months.
True, but seventeen years is still seventeen years. How many new fighters have the Russians designed and built in that time? How many have the Chinese designed and built?
Heck, Kelly Johnson and crew flew the SR-71 in SIX years... without a single computer. Lockheed went from the P-38 to the SR-71 in less time than the F-35 has been in development. At some point you have to say "Enough is enough" and start issuing severe penalties for nonperformance.
Like any modern combat aircraft, I'm sure the F-35 will be fine...in about 10-15 years. However, the main issue is the cost of getting to that point. Combat airframes are deceptively worthwhile considering the often maligned costs that citizens gripe about. "$30 million for a plane is too much!", etc. We often get 25-40 years out of an aircraft before retiring it. That's a pretty good investment.
The F-35, while generally failing to deliver on a bunch of promises, may eventually become a worthwhile component of our combat aviation community...but those dollars are adding up at a frightening rate. I feel we could be paying top dollar for a completely "okay" product by the time it's all said and done.
If I was anyone other than the US I wouldn't look at it for a second. Gen 4++ style aircraft are a much more decent option, often doing 70-80% of the work a fancy new super jet will do for maybe 30% the cost. Even the Russians have backtracked on their own Su-50 and revised their procurement schedule to concentrate more on a slew of Su-35s and the newest Migs they're producing. They did do the Su-50 (PAK-FA) in a fantastically short period, and I think it'll likewise be a great plane when finalized.
I think the F-35 stands a strong chance of being the painful first child in the new family of mass-production 5th generation aircraft. I hope we can scrounge back the performance we initially wanted out of it. It's nothing to write home about at the moment.
Thebiggesthat wrote: Your article mentions failures that are still present in the F16. Should that aircraft be fixed by now?
Yes. Why aren't they? How many are there? Do any threaten the life of the pilot?
Perhaps a link might help answer my questions.
Maybe they aren't fixed because in reality, they aren't the big deal that a yahoo article written by someone that doesn't understand aircraft development and risk management thinks they are.
Maybe you could point out which of those issues in that article risk the life of the pilot? I'll be happy to rebuke and inform where I can, with the caveat that this is a public forum and I can't speak freely. But if you are only interested in articles written by journalists, then you'll not get the full picture I'm afraid.
Maybe you could point out which of those issues in that article risk the life of the pilot? I'll be happy to rebuke and inform where I can, with the caveat that this is a public forum and I can't speak freely. But if you are only interested in articles written by journalists, then you'll not get the full picture I'm afraid.
Have not read the article, but I'll call only carrying two to four anti-aircraft missiles and the fact that I'm given to understand the part where the pilots blacking out is still occurring. I'd call those threats to the pilots. Landing gear collapse is also something of an issue but not as severe.
Thebiggesthat wrote: Your article mentions failures that are still present in the F16. Should that aircraft be fixed by now?
Yes. Why aren't they? How many are there? Do any threaten the life of the pilot?
Perhaps a link might help answer my questions.
Maybe they aren't fixed because in reality, they aren't the big deal that a yahoo article written by someone that doesn't understand aircraft development and risk management thinks they are.
Maybe you could point out which of those issues in that article risk the life of the pilot? I'll be happy to rebuke and inform where I can, with the caveat that this is a public forum and I can't speak freely. But if you are only interested in articles written by journalists, then you'll not get the full picture I'm afraid.
So you're claiming to work on or around the F-35 and have information that we're not privy to. All right. Please, Enlighten us with your credentials and what your experience is (as far as you can without violating security) with the F-35 so we know how serious to take you.
funny the proponents of Canada buying the F-35 have insisted that technology has reached a point where a second engine isn't nesscary. they where wrong, biiiig suprise
So you link to an article where a second engine wasn't necessary.......
Unlike the biggest I haven't worked around the F-35 but I have done DoD acquisition and that Yahoo article had my eyes rolling so many times they're just recovering now a few days later. I could take a T&E report on picnic tables and use quotes to make it sound like the end of the world. You have one org (T&E) who has zero responsibility to get anything delivered but always want to be able to say I told you so and a second org (News) whose ignorant of what their talking about and just needs to make everything as exciting as possible (and probably has an agenda to boot).
The twin engine thing is a big knock. Technology be damned, ask any combat aviator who flies off a carrier for a living...two engines is ALWAYS better than one. I don't need the opinion of the internet, the government, or the contractor building it - I'm interested in the guys who'll be flying the thing.
I'm a trials engineer, who's job it is is to test software and functionality on fast jet aircraft. Ive worked on a state of the art fast jet for 8 years, and have extensive experience in reporting and analysis regarding faults and fixes. And yes, have some experience in the last couple of years with JSF.
Maybe you could point out which of those issues in that article risk the life of the pilot? I'll be happy to rebuke and inform where I can, with the caveat that this is a public forum and I can't speak freely. But if you are only interested in articles written by journalists, then you'll not get the full picture I'm afraid.
Have not read the article, but I'll call only carrying two to four anti-aircraft missiles and the fact that I'm given to understand the part where the pilots blacking out is still occurring. I'd call those threats to the pilots. Landing gear collapse is also something of an issue but not as severe.
Neither mentioned in the article. But well done for not bothering to read.
Weapon loadout is fairly irrelevant, that's not what it's there for solely. 4 is more that enough.
Please expand on the blackout issues. Is this the seat oxygen system, or pilot unfamiliarity with an aircraft capable of this performance.
Same with landing gear collapse? Is this collapse despite being within the performance window, or VTOL pilots used to a different aircraft like the GR/AV8?
Four weapons is only enough when you aren't facing five or more opponents...
A software engineer. Very good, I'm sure you know all about the software problems and could tell us why the F-35 can't use a host of new weapons systems yet... if not for the pesky security issues. Can you address the severity of the 100+ open issues that threaten the life of the pilot and/or the flightworthyness of the airframe?
Vulcan wrote: Four weapons is only enough when you aren't facing five or more opponents...
How often is an F-35 going to be flying solo against 5 targets?
Well, if it is supposed to fly CAS missions then quite often. Furthermore, only having 4 weapons is also going to be a problem if it is supposed to fly air superiority or intercept missions, since the kill probability of a missile is quite a bit less than 100%, which means you need multiple missiles for a single target. Which means that you'd need to send in multiple F-35s, which drives up the already stellar operating costs even further. Either that or you mount more weapons externally on the F-35 which dramatically increases its usefulness but of course at the cost of stealth. It is a tradeoff you need to make with the F-35 for every mission. Do you need stealth but at the cost of having a small payload, or do you need a larger payload but at the cost of lacking stealth? Overall that is still an improvement over 4th-generation jets since they don't get to make that choice at all, they always suffer from a lack of stealth.
Vulcan wrote: Four weapons is only enough when you aren't facing five or more opponents...
How often is an F-35 going to be flying solo against 5 targets?
Right, and what is it going to do if up against 7 targets and its only got 6???????????? I guess its going to shoot 6 missiles and then high-tail out of there.
I think the 4 is ok. Its not great, but since we'll have far more of them than lets say the F-22, we'll just be sending more of them. As its been mentioned here before, the internal bays will be used for the initial strikes against radar sites and so on, and then as things get harder for the enemy to target, let alone shoot at, the F-35, then its will start using its external hardpoints to carry more.
And think about this, its stealthy, but more importantly can shoot missiles in any direction. That's amazing for even a single F-35, but going up against a wing of these? The enemy will get massacred. And you also have to stop looking at these things in a void, they are part of a system. Chances are we'll know every movement taking place well before a threat is in the area. So you are talking about an enemy trying to visually see an F-35 and hopes it can get a radar lock on it (as in that Australian pilot talked about trying to do to an F-22), while the F-35 is going to know where exactly you are from beyond visual range.
Sure the project has been a mess, but they are really trying to build 3 different aircraft at the same time all carrying the same software. Its pretty crazy and will probably be never attempted again. At least I hope not. But regardless the F-35 is still miles away from what anyone else is able to field. I would have felt better about having 200 more F-22s but oh well. We haven't needed them and by the time we probably will, there will be something else in the works. I think there already is: 1 air superiority fighter, and a long range fighter to accompany the Raider. So we'll have to see what happens. I am sure both will be scary.
And don't get me started on that chinese crap. They can't even build a good jet engine. Can't hit moving targets with their carrier killer missiles. Anything they have are just cheap imitations of american or russian designs. They might keep things interesting in the opening salvos, but after that? They will be picked apart and destroyed.
Vulcan wrote: Four weapons is only enough when you aren't facing five or more opponents...
How often is an F-35 going to be flying solo against 5 targets?
Right, and what is it going to do if up against 7 targets and its only got 6???????????? I guess its going to shoot 6 missiles and then high-tail out of there.
I think the 4 is ok. Its not great, but since we'll have far more of them than lets say the F-22, we'll just be sending more of them. As its been mentioned here before, the internal bays will be used for the initial strikes against radar sites and so on, and then as things get harder for the enemy to target, let alone shoot at, the F-35, then its will start using its external hardpoints to carry more.
And think about this, its stealthy, but more importantly can shoot missiles in any direction. That's amazing for even a single F-35, but going up against a wing of these? The enemy will get massacred. And you also have to stop looking at these things in a void, they are part of a system. Chances are we'll know every movement taking place well before a threat is in the area. So you are talking about an enemy trying to visually see an F-35 and hopes it can get a radar lock on it (as in that Australian pilot talked about trying to do to an F-22), while the F-35 is going to know where exactly you are from beyond visual range.
Sure the project has been a mess, but they are really trying to build 3 different aircraft at the same time all carrying the same software. Its pretty crazy and will probably be never attempted again. At least I hope not. But regardless the F-35 is still miles away from what anyone else is able to field. I would have felt better about having 200 more F-22s but oh well. We haven't needed them and by the time we probably will, there will be something else in the works. I think there already is: 1 air superiority fighter, and a long range fighter to accompany the Raider. So we'll have to see what happens. I am sure both will be scary.
And don't get me started on that chinese crap. They can't even build a good jet engine. Can't hit moving targets with their carrier killer missiles. Anything they have are just cheap imitations of american or russian designs. They might keep things interesting in the opening salvos, but after that? They will be picked apart and destroyed.
The problem with 'just sending more' is that it is more expensive. And more expensive means less export sales, less missions, less equipment, less manpower etc. A wing of F-35s may be impressive, but that is little use if the enemy can field 3 wings of cheaper fighters for every F-35 wing you have (there are plenty of ways to get a radar lock on an F-35, or to kill an F-35 without radar as discussed earlier in this thread). You want to balance out performance with costs. Building the best, deadliest jet in the world is easy. It is designing such a jet while keeping it cost-effective that is hard. The Chinese may not be able to build good jet engines, but they build perfectly fine jets using Russian engines. The J-10 for example is a very modern, deadly design that can easily match or even outmatch all other 4th generation multirole fighters. And the J-31 looks like a very promising 5th generation stealth fighter, produced in a fraction of the time the US needed for its projects. China is very rapidly catching up to the US and Russia in terms of technology, so it would be unwise to underestimate their new designs. The US is still firmly in the lead when it comes to the latest fighter jet technology. But it can't remain in the lead if it starts underestimating its rivals. That same sort of complacency saw the US lose its initial lead in missile and space technology to the Soviets/Russia.
The problem with 'just sending more' is that it is more expensive. And more expensive means less export sales, less missions, less equipment, less manpower etc. A wing of F-35s may be impressive, but that is little use if the enemy can field 3 wings of cheaper fighters for every F-35 wing you have (there are plenty of ways to get a radar lock on an F-35, or to kill an F-35 without radar as discussed earlier in this thread). You want to balance out performance with costs. Building the best, deadliest jet in the world is easy. It is designing such a jet while keeping it cost-effective that is hard.
Red Flag is saying otherwise. Besides, the F-35 is not fighting in a void. Still plenty of other aircraft in the US air force to help it.
Those Loyal Wingman plans are the real deal apparently. One of the things the F-35 is supposed to do is act as a manager for other aircraft, so it looks like this capability was planned a long time ago.
The Chinese may not be able to build good jet engines, but they build perfectly fine jets using Russian engines. The J-10 for example is a very modern, deadly design that can easily match or even outmatch all other 4th generation multirole fighters. And the J-31 looks like a very promising 5th generation stealth fighter, produced in a fraction of the time the US needed for its projects.
And even the Russian engines are lagging. And Russia wont give China their best one. And you say looks promising but you cannot look at an aircraft and conclude its abilities. The truth is both are frankenstein jets built from tech they ripped off from others. I doubt they barely understand the tech. And if they did, they wouldn't be relying on the russians for engines.
Worse still, China has no experience in any kind of air campaign. Not even a short one, let alone a long complex one. All they have are theories and a bunch of parades to go by. That is very different than another that's a well oiled machine with experiencing managing the complete battle space.
Vulcan wrote: Four weapons is only enough when you aren't facing five or more opponents...
How often is an F-35 going to be flying solo against 5 targets?
Given the pricetag of the F-35, I don't think America is ever going to have very many of them. Yes, I know the plan was to buy several thousand, but how realistic is that anymore? We'll be doing good to get a couple hundred.
How many fighters do the Russians have? How many do the Chinese have? A couple THOUSAND... each? Even an obsolescent piece of garbage is more than a match for an F-35 that's out of ammo. Worse, the fifth fighter is free to go after AWACs or tankers...
KTG17 wrote: One of the things the F-35 is supposed to do is act as a manager for other aircraft, so it looks like this capability was planned a long time ago.
Among two dozen other things. And calling it 'planned' is a bit generous. It's about as planned as a table napkin sketch is a fully developed blueprint.
I'm a bit curious how the pilot is going to fly half a dozen planes in a combat situation. Something tells me he's gonna be busier than the proverbial one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
KTG17 wrote: One of the things the F-35 is supposed to do is act as a manager for other aircraft, so it looks like this capability was planned a long time ago.
Among two dozen other things. And calling it 'planned' is a bit generous. It's about as planned as a table napkin sketch is a fully developed blueprint.
I'm a bit curious how the pilot is going to fly half a dozen planes in a combat situation. Something tells me he's gonna be busier than the proverbial one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
He isn't. In the example of Have Raider, the drone F-16 simulated a bombing attack while avoiding an attack and regrouped with the F-16 with the pilot on its own. I think if they were expecting the F-35 pilot to actually pilot the drones this wouldn't be getting off the ground. The idea is for the F-35 to give tasks to the Loyal Wingmen and for them to autonomously engage those targets on their own, including air to air targets, then regroup with the F-35. And I don't mean the planned capability in this regard, as I have no idea, but I know the software on the plane is meant to handle the battle-space for other aircraft, especially the Gen 4 ones. So I don't think this is a huge leap. Rather than picking up a target and assigning it to a couple of F-15s, it will just assign it to a Loyal Wingman.
I think this is going to come up a lot faster than people think, too.
I think this pic is so badass, even if CGI.
While everyone else is trying to catch up to building a Gen 5, we're working on this.
While everyone else is trying to catch up to building a Gen 5, we're working on this.
No, they arn't, and, IIRC, legally we shouldn't be working on this, as, you know, autonomous weapons systems are SERIOUSLY frowned upon with quite a few efforts underway to add 'killer robots' to the list of banned weapons, along with Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological warfare.
Uh, yes they are. Google Loyal Wingman there is plenty to read up on. The Navy is also building autonomous ships to patrol too. In war time you can bet they will be told to engage as well.
Also, the difference between autonomous and killer robots is that the human pilot is still making the decision for the Loyal Wingman, or whatever weapon system, on what to engage. The Loyal Wingman is just deciding how to do it. 'Killer robots' would mean you just let it go and if picks its own targets, and may end up killing indiscriminately. That's the problem people have. It might be a blurry line but there is a difference.
And consider this, the Air Force has already come out and said that the next gen of combat aircraft might be it as far as human pilots are concerned. A great deal of effort goes into preventing an airplane from being too maneuverable, because the human pilot can't handle it. Remove the pilot and your aircraft can push even crazier gs. Those Loyal Wingmen will fly circles around any human pilot since they wont have to worry about blacking out.
Future war is going to be decided lighting quick by the 'toys' everyone has at the time. Whoever runs out of those toys first is going to lose. Might be another 100 years before thats a reality but its coming.
Future war is going to be decided lighting quick by the 'toys' everyone has at the time. Whoever runs out of those toys first is going to lose. Might be another 100 years before thats a reality but its coming.
Unless one side figured out that they could easily win the war if they can keep going once all expensive toys are exhausted and were to keep back a massive supply of cheap, outdated equipment. If you are a big country like the US, Russia or China, there is no way the enemy can put you out of the fight before they exhaust their advanced equipment. Then it comes down to who can keep producing the most cost-effective weapons, rather than the most advanced ones. Total war between large industrial nations won't change a lot, those are always going to remain wars of attrition. It is going to be a different story for smaller conflicts though, those are already decided very quickly when an advanced military shows up, and that is going to be even quicker. And if the past 73 years are any indication, those smaller conflicts are going to remain a lot more common than big wars, thanks to the blessing that is mutually assured destruction.
But yeah, aircraft are probably all going to be drones in the future. The technology is not quite here yet, but if it keeps advancing like it does currently it definitely won't be more than a century.
Fully autonomous robots without human control are never going to happen I think. Even before going into ethical and legal barriers, fully autonomous robots just don't provide many benefits over human-controlled ones, and quite a lot of drawbacks.
Future war is going to be decided lighting quick by the 'toys' everyone has at the time. Whoever runs out of those toys first is going to lose. Might be another 100 years before thats a reality but its coming.
Unless one side figured out that they could easily win the war if they can keep going once all expensive toys are exhausted and were to keep back a massive supply of cheap, outdated equipment. If you are a big country like the US, Russia or China, there is no way the enemy can put you out of the fight before they exhaust their advanced equipment. Then it comes down to who can keep producing the most cost-effective weapons, rather than the most advanced ones. Total war between large industrial nations won't change a lot, those are always going to remain wars of attrition.
Indeed. Which is something that is sorely overlooked right now. Expensive toys are good when they're better than the opponent, but if there is anything close to parity they lose their advantage and suddenly have a massive number of disadvantages.
It is going to be a different story for smaller conflicts though, those are already decided very quickly when an advanced military shows up, and that is going to be even quicker. And if the past 73 years are any indication, those smaller conflicts are going to remain a lot more common than big wars, thanks to the blessing that is mutually assured destruction.
At least until anti-ballistic missile technology becomes more reliable, and that day is fast approaching. Once ICBMs can be shot down with a high success rate the thread of MAD will cease to exist. Then we will be back to the way things were before nuclear bombs.
There would be a brief period where only one super power has reliable anti-ICBM technology, a time when they could flex their muscle since their ICBMs would still be useful while their opponents were useless. But the other nations would catch up in time, either independently, a defector steals the plans, etc...
The refinement after that will be the ability to trivially shoot down combat aircraft and smaller missiles. At which point we're back to infantry, indirect artillery, and tanks being the main fighting force. Aircraft will be relegated to scouting duties, and then it will be unmanned drones trying to stay hidden because if detected a laser will shoot them down immediately.
KTG17 wrote: Uh, yes they are. Google Loyal Wingman there is plenty to read up on. The Navy is also building autonomous ships to patrol too. In war time you can bet they will be told to engage as well.
Also, the difference between autonomous and killer robots is that the human pilot is still making the decision for the Loyal Wingman, or whatever weapon system, on what to engage. The Loyal Wingman is just deciding how to do it. 'Killer robots' would mean you just let it go and if picks its own targets, and may end up killing indiscriminately. That's the problem people have. It might be a blurry line but there is a difference.
And consider this, the Air Force has already come out and said that the next gen of combat aircraft might be it as far as human pilots are concerned. A great deal of effort goes into preventing an airplane from being too maneuverable, because the human pilot can't handle it. Remove the pilot and your aircraft can push even crazier gs. Those Loyal Wingmen will fly circles around any human pilot since they wont have to worry about blacking out.
Future war is going to be decided lighting quick by the 'toys' everyone has at the time. Whoever runs out of those toys first is going to lose. Might be another 100 years before thats a reality but its coming.
even something like Loyal wingwman inches up to the line, thing is, banning of weapons historicly is a pretty hard thing to do, in times of war people tend to ignore them, sure chemical and biological warfare are said to be banned but you hear about Gas attacks in the middle east regularly, and every nation in the world has centers devoted to bio-weapon research, sure they mostly do it so they know how to contain it, but in a world war situation it's not hard to see someone using them.
KTG17 wrote: One of the things the F-35 is supposed to do is act as a manager for other aircraft, so it looks like this capability was planned a long time ago.
Among two dozen other things. And calling it 'planned' is a bit generous. It's about as planned as a table napkin sketch is a fully developed blueprint.
I'm a bit curious how the pilot is going to fly half a dozen planes in a combat situation. Something tells me he's gonna be busier than the proverbial one legged man in an ass kicking contest.
He isn't. In the example of Have Raider, the drone F-16 simulated a bombing attack while avoiding an attack and regrouped with the F-16 with the pilot on its own. I think if they were expecting the F-35 pilot to actually pilot the drones this wouldn't be getting off the ground. The idea is for the F-35 to give tasks to the Loyal Wingmen and for them to autonomously engage those targets on their own, including air to air targets, then regroup with the F-35. And I don't mean the planned capability in this regard, as I have no idea, but I know the software on the plane is meant to handle the battle-space for other aircraft, especially the Gen 4 ones. So I don't think this is a huge leap. Rather than picking up a target and assigning it to a couple of F-15s, it will just assign it to a Loyal Wingman.
I think this is going to come up a lot faster than people think, too.
I think this pic is so badass, even if CGI.
While everyone else is trying to catch up to building a Gen 5, we're working on this.
Fully autonomous robots without human control are never going to happen I think. Even before going into ethical and legal barriers, fully autonomous robots just don't provide many benefits over human-controlled ones, and quite a lot of drawbacks.
Well we have autonomous cars being tested all over the country and while those still have a ways to go, some of them actually do not have humans in them. I imagine flying is easier than driving as there aren’t many obstacles at 10,000 ft. The proof of concept has already been tested so I am sure they are well on their way.
I mean they are working on fully antonomous refueling drones... so how big of a leap is that to a drone with a missile which can determine for itself how it should destroy a target?
Fully autonomous robots without human control are never going to happen I think. Even before going into ethical and legal barriers, fully autonomous robots just don't provide many benefits over human-controlled ones, and quite a lot of drawbacks.
Well we have autonomous cars being tested all over the country and while those still have a ways to go, some of them actually do not have humans in them. I imagine flying is easier than driving as there aren’t many obstacles at 10,000 ft. The proof of concept has already been tested so I am sure they are well on their way.
I mean they are working on fully antonomous refueling drones... so how big of a leap is that to a drone with a missile which can determine for itself how it should destroy a target?
That is a huge, enormous, massive leap. Going from building a drone that can refuel an aircraft to a drone that can decide over life and death is a huge step. Which once again does not provide actual benefits. And flying in combat situations is a lot more complicated than driving on a road. Flying in general is a lot more difficult than driving, despite the relative rarity of obstacles. At this point in time it is doubtful whether automated cars are ever going to be a thing (outside of experiments I mean, considering the fact that many people won't accept them and they have trouble dealing with unpredictable situations), let alone automated refueling drones. And those are the kind of 'dumb' vehicles that actually make sense being automated. Automating a fighter jet is on an entirely different level. It will be much cheaper and effective to just have it controlled remotely by a human.
Except that you have the delay in the pilot sending a signal to the drone, where as if its autonomous, it decides it pretty quickly.
I know we has some ways to go here, but lets not forget how quickly we went from the first plane, to WWII fighters, to putting a man on the moon. I think these things will come a lot quicker than we realize.
KTG17 wrote: Except that you have the delay in the pilot sending a signal to the drone, where as if its autonomous, it decides it pretty quickly.
I know we has some ways to go here, but lets not forget how quickly we went from the first plane, to WWII fighters, to putting a man on the moon. I think these things will come a lot quicker than we realize.
A delay of a few milliseconds isn't going to mean anything because the distances involved in aerial combat are quite large, and because the delay between an AI providing the control input and the aircraft actually reacting would already be much larger than the delay in sending a signal to a drone. Anyways, we are talking about milliseconds which is totally irrelevant.
Wait, you are saying that a pilot sitting in a shipping crate on a base in the US piloting a drone somewhere over the middle east is going to be able to send a signal through satellites faster than an autonomous's cpu can give itself?
KTG17 wrote: Wait, you are saying that a pilot sitting in a shipping crate on a base in the US piloting a drone somewhere over the middle east is going to be able to send a signal through satellites faster than an autonomous's cpu can give itself?
No.
No. What he said was that a few milliseconds doesn't matter.
Now a human will have a slower reaction time than a computer, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We want a human to make the call on stuff like this. We don't want an AI getting trigger happy and blasting something erroneously.
Which is why these things won't be full-bore AI's. They'll be more like missiles. The controller tells the onboard computer 'kill that' and it engages that target until either the target goes down, or it does. The only difference will be that the computer will have subordinate computers (in the missiles and gunsight) to do the actual killing instead of going for a kamikaze run itself.
A better comparison might be the Predator drone. A person back in HQ gives it a course, and the onboard computer flies the drone. A person back in HQ does the targeting and launches any missiles the Predator might happen to have. The primary difference will be that the Loyal Wingman will be able to maneuver for a better shot and fire at the optimal moment instead of depending on someone else to determine position and timing. It won't - or at least shouldn't - be capable of determining WHAT it wants to go after.
Vulcan wrote: Which is why these things won't be full-bore AI's. They'll be more like missiles. The controller tells the onboard computer 'kill that' and it engages that target until either the target goes down, or it does. The only difference will be that the computer will have subordinate computers (in the missiles and gunsight) to do the actual killing instead of going for a kamikaze run itself.
A better comparison might be the Predator drone. A person back in HQ gives it a course, and the onboard computer flies the drone. A person back in HQ does the targeting and launches any missiles the Predator might happen to have. The primary difference will be that the Loyal Wingman will be able to maneuver for a better shot and fire at the optimal moment instead of depending on someone else to determine position and timing. It won't - or at least shouldn't - be capable of determining WHAT it wants to go after.
Let me put it this way: if the expectation is for the F-35 pilot to control these, in combat, then everything you just said is incorrect. If the pilot is flying the plane in combat, trying to fly the drones in the way you suggest will get him killed. It's not like the enemy isn't going to be smart enough to 'focus on that guy'. So either these things will be smart enough to engage on their own, or they're a hundred million dollars of worthless.
The pilot of the F-35 designates a target on radar and tells drone A to kill it. Drone A then maneuvers against the target while the F-35 pilot is free to do other things. It's no different than targeting a missile, only it comes back after the target has been dealt with.
But at no point does the drone decide that it's going to engage a target WITHOUT the pilot telling it to.
The pilot of the F-35 designates a target on radar and tells drone A to kill it. Drone A then maneuvers against the target while the F-35 pilot is free to do other things. It's no different than targeting a missile, only it comes back after the target has been dealt with.
But at no point does the drone decide that it's going to engage a target WITHOUT the pilot telling it to.
The thing is you are asking the pilot to control several of these other aircraft, while also piloting his own combat aircraft and trying to stay alive himself.
It would be more efficient to let the pilot just focus on his personal aircraft while leaving the drones to be piloted by someone back stateside.
There are a whole host of reasons why that might not be practical. Some comments above said that there wouldn’t be much of a difference between AI making a decision on the spot and a pilot sending commands from halfway around the world. Nonsense. The greater the distance the greater the delay. A drone with its own AI is going to be able to take in information about its environment and react much faster than sending all that back to a remote pilot. And up till now the US drone war has basically involved bombing terrorists. Those Predators and Global Hawks are not going to be able to do that kind of job in a war against a modern military.
The F-35 is going to be taking in a ton of information about its environment. Many more than any fighter in history. But it is designed to be able to manage the battle space. It doesn’t have to engage all the targets now, it can assign them to other aircraft. The only difference with the Loyal Wingmen is that he is going to probably assign a Loyal Wingman with a command in his helmet and away it’s going to go.
The Navy has also discussed making carriers with the primary purpose of drone-like aircraft.
And I imagine these things will accompany not just F-35s, but eventually all sorts of aircraft.
Massively wrong. There's a huge benefit in removing vulnerability to jamming, improving response times, and reducing the human staff required for a given number of aircraft. AI is incredibly useful here.
And flying in combat situations is a lot more complicated than driving on a road.
Not necessarily. Much of the difficulty in automated cars is things like getting a vision system that can reliably identify pedestrians and anticipate their behavior. A fighter has no such problem, as its threat identification is just using the same radar/IR/etc that human-piloted aircraft are using. It doesn't need to make difficult decisions about whether that ambiguous shape is an enemy fighter or a helpless child, it just acknowledges a radar signature not accompanied by appropriate IFF codes and engages the target.
Flying in general is a lot more difficult than driving, despite the relative rarity of obstacles.
Speaking as a pilot, not true at all. Flying is easy 99% of the time, even for someone like me who is too stubborn to use the autopilot. The only real difficulty outside of emergency situations is landing (since most planes aren't expensive enough to be equipped with full autoland capability), and you don't really care if a drone has a mechanical failure and crashes because it's a piece of expendable ordnance.
Massively wrong. There's a huge benefit in removing vulnerability to jamming, improving response times, and reducing the human staff required for a given number of aircraft. AI is incredibly useful here.
Improving response time by milliseconds isn't going to matter one bit. And introducing AI won't reduce human staff since instead of pilots you will now need programmers. You do have a point on the jamming though. However, an AI would also have drawbacks as it would be more vulnerable to hacking and other forms of electronic warfare.
And flying in combat situations is a lot more complicated than driving on a road.
Not necessarily. Much of the difficulty in automated cars is things like getting a vision system that can reliably identify pedestrians and anticipate their behavior. A fighter has no such problem, as its threat identification is just using the same radar/IR/etc that human-piloted aircraft are using. It doesn't need to make difficult decisions about whether that ambiguous shape is an enemy fighter or a helpless child, it just acknowledges a radar signature not accompanied by appropriate IFF codes and engages the target.
Unless you want your automated fighter going around killing children, you'd better make sure it can make those decisions and a whole lot more. An automated jet fighter would need to do virtually everything an automated car can do and then some. And it would need to be able to fly in addition to that, which involves a lot more variables than driving and thus is more difficult to program properly (though not impossible, flight is already automated to a great degree, but there are still difficulties with getting an AI to behave right in more complicated situations that can arise, which is why so far a Human pilot is always necessary).
Flying in general is a lot more difficult than driving, despite the relative rarity of obstacles.
Speaking as a pilot, not true at all. Flying is easy 99% of the time, even for someone like me who is too stubborn to use the autopilot. The only real difficulty outside of emergency situations is landing (since most planes aren't expensive enough to be equipped with full autoland capability), and you don't really care if a drone has a mechanical failure and crashes because it's a piece of expendable ordnance.
Yeah. It is not that 99% of the time I am talking about. Driving is easy 99% of the time as well. It is the exceptional emergency situations that are giving AI a great deal of trouble, both in the air and on the road. Also, I imagine that people do care when a drone crashes because it is an expensive piece of ordnance and therefore not expendable.
The US Marines sure are in a hurry with the F-35. They seem to be ahead of everyone else and they are using the most complicated version of the aircraft.
Sure a bizarre looking thing to see on the bottom of the plane.
BTW, the gun, shoots a combo of armor piercing, incendiary, explosive and tracer all in the same round. Each round is like $5k. So a bullet is going to light up as it hits you, pierce you, blow you up, then set your remains on fire.
Automatically Appended Next Post: In other news, looks like the Syrians shot down a Russian aircraft. DIdn't hear about this in the news.
KTG17 wrote: The only difference with the Loyal Wingmen is that he is going to probably assign a Loyal Wingman with a command in his helmet and away it’s going to go.
*this is such a gross oversimplification I'm not even sure where to start...*
Ok, let me take a crack at this:
What you said will not be how it works, nor if current US policy remains, will it EVER be how it works. There's a few extra steps here that have to happen before the Loyal Wingman can fire. Most notably a real live human has to pull the trigger. Not designate a target, actually fire the weapons
This is done for a variety of reasons (thanks SWORDS) but most notably so that a living human is responsible. The US does not like the idea of having to determine responsibility if a machine guns down a village with no one at the helm.. So policy is that the machine cannot fire it's weapons without a real human finger on the trigger. What this means for those Loyal Wingman drones is that the pilot controlling them must fire their weapons for them. Individually. Do you see where there may be some issues here with pilot performance controlling the weapons of five or six drones as well as his own?
Any external store on the F35 is a radar trap. It's more or less "stealthy" on occasion, at short distances. In a proper full-on war footing it'll be non-stealthy most of the time owning to external stores.
KTG17 wrote: The only difference with the Loyal Wingmen is that he is going to probably assign a Loyal Wingman with a command in his helmet and away it’s going to go.
*this is such a gross oversimplification I'm not even sure where to start...*
Ok, let me take a crack at this:
What you said will not be how it works, nor if current US policy remains, will it EVER be how it works. There's a few extra steps here that have to happen before the Loyal Wingman can fire. Most notably a real live human has to pull the trigger. Not designate a target, actually fire the weapons
This is done for a variety of reasons (thanks SWORDS) but most notably so that a living human is responsible. The US does not like the idea of having to determine responsibility if a machine guns down a village with no one at the helm.. So policy is that the machine cannot fire it's weapons without a real human finger on the trigger. What this means for those Loyal Wingman drones is that the pilot controlling them must fire their weapons for them. Individually. Do you see where there may be some issues here with pilot performance controlling the weapons of five or six drones as well as his own?
So let’s say the pilot fires a missile at a target and zoom away it goes. Does the pilot tell the missile when to blow up? Does it steer the missile to the target? No. The missile does it on its own.
The Loyal Wingman is the go between. The pilot says, ‘destroy that target’ and the LW flies off to destroy that target, avoiding enemy attempts to shoot it down, then it fires a missile to blow it up.
No one is saying the F-35 is going to tell a bunch of autonomous drones to go have some fun. I don’t know why you think this isn’t happening when the US Air Force is all about developing this technology. I can assure you there might be a blurry line between what you think it means and what I think, but I think it’s pretty evident that the US military is saying everything it can to calm people down because people feel uneasy about what is coming.
Or you know, pilot issues fire mission, drone goes off and independently maneuvers, then confirms when it has the shot with a tone or prompt in the cockpit. Pilot presses drone fire button.
Heck, if it's been built for that it might even explain the low internal weapons mount- if you want your pilot to be controlling drones, you don't want your pilot trying to kill targets with weapons from the main plane- you want the pilot evasive and avoiding detection at all times.
It will be very interesting to watch this develop.
KTG17 wrote: So let’s say the pilot fires a missile at a target and zoom away it goes. Does the pilot tell the missile when to blow up? Does it steer the missile to the target? No. The missile does it on its own.
Now that's false equivalency. And notice the part where 'the pilot fires a missile'. The life or death decision has already been made before the missile is launched. Telling a drone 'Go Engage that target' means that the drone, and not the pilot, will be making the decisions about how to engage a target. So when it decides to kill a sam site next to a school by dropping a JDAM, who's responsible for that? If the bloody thing has caught a virus (which has happened) and when it gets it;'s orders it wanders off and kills half a village, do we blame the pilot?
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Gitzbitah wrote: Or you know, pilot issues fire mission, drone goes off and independently maneuvers, then confirms when it has the shot with a tone or prompt in the cockpit. Pilot presses drone fire button.
Heck, if it's been built for that it might even explain the low internal weapons mount- if you want your pilot to be controlling drones, you don't want your pilot trying to kill targets with weapons from the main plane- you want the pilot evasive and avoiding detection at all times.
It will be very interesting to watch this develop.
Currently the target must be confirmed visually. Though if this will remain is a good question.
I think a lot of you don't understand the sheer number of things that have to happen and people involved before a drone can engage, currently.
Iron_Captain wrote: Improving response time by milliseconds isn't going to matter one bit.
Why are you assuming that it's only a response time difference of milliseconds? It isn't just the lag time for the communication system, it's the time for a slow human brain to make a decision. And in air combat very small amounts of time are significant. A drone may not have a shot anymore once a human decides to approve it.
And introducing AI won't reduce human staff since instead of pilots you will now need programmers.
Uh, no, the two are not comparable at all. Pilots are highly trained specialists that have to risk their lives every time they fly into combat, and must be present for every mission. Programmers are specialized in a different way, work a nice safe 9 to 5 job far away from the war, and do all of their work up front on a single design that can be arbitrarily scaled up to any size of drone fleet without requiring any additional programmers.
However, an AI would also have drawbacks as it would be more vulnerable to hacking and other forms of electronic warfare.
Nope. Hacking a drone is effectively impossible. Encryption and the specialized and access-controlled nature of its hardware do not leave vulnerable points for anyone to hack. This isn't a move where the "hacker" types randomly at a keyboard until the progress bar reaches 100%, a successful hack would likely be much more difficult than just shooting down the drone with conventional weapons.
Unless you want your automated fighter going around killing children, you'd better make sure it can make those decisions and a whole lot more.
Nope. Remember, the primary use of fully autonomous drones (as opposed to a remotely-operated drone like we use now) is air superiority and air defense suppression. There are no civilian targets in either of these situations. Anything in the air that isn't a friendly aircraft is confirmed to be a hostile threat, and anything operating AA fire control radar is confirmed to be a military target. This is not at all the same kind of environment that an automated car has to deal wit.
And it would need to be able to fly in addition to that, which involves a lot more variables than driving and thus is more difficult to program properly (though not impossible, flight is already automated to a great degree, but there are still difficulties with getting an AI to behave right in more complicated situations that can arise, which is why so far a Human pilot is always necessary).
Again, speaking as a pilot, you are simply wrong here. Flying is much easier than driving, in large part because the tolerances are much larger. You can put a GPS waypoint into a plane and hit "direct to" and the autopilot will take it there with a negligible chance of failure. A 5' deviation from the intended course is irrelevant because it's orders of magnitude less than the separation distances between any other aircraft or terrain. A 5' deviation on a road is a crash, which means GPS is not sufficient and you have to get into vision systems that detect the road boundaries, identify pedestrians that could appear with near-zero separation distance, etc. There's a reason why automated cars are still a dream while a properly equipped airplane can easily fly its entire route without a human doing anything but sitting there watching in case something goes wrong.
Also, I imagine that people do care when a drone crashes because it is an expensive piece of ordnance and therefore not expendable.
It's a war. Stuff is destroyed in a war. In any fight against a peer-level enemy (IOW, not bombing "military age males" who can't possibly shoot back) the costs of war are going to be so obscenely high that the loss of drones is just a rounding error in the final bill. Whole squadrons of human-piloted fighters become expendable in that kind of war, much like we didn't stop bombing Germany just because we lost a few B-17s. We accounted for the expected loss rate, increased production and crew training to compensate, and kept throwing more planes and crews into the meat grinder. Drones will be more of the same, except with even less concern over losses because no people are dying when the hardware is destroyed.
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BaronIveagh wrote: So when it decides to kill a sam site next to a school by dropping a JDAM, who's responsible for that?
Who cares, the SAM site is getting destroyed no matter how many innocents are in the blast radius. It doesn't matter if a human pilot or a drone executes the final drop command and releases the weapon, both are going to destroy the SAM site because there is no other option. The only real difference is that the human pilot may have bad feelings about having to do it, while the drone will execute its orders to attack anything with a particular radar emissions pattern and not lose any sleep over what else it destroys. So, to the degree that the moral issues can be considered at all, the drone wins.
If the bloody thing has caught a virus (which has happened) and when it gets it;'s orders it wanders off and kills half a village, do we blame the pilot?
This is a completely unrealistic movie plot idea, not reality.
I think a lot of you don't understand the sheer number of things that have to happen and people involved before a drone can engage, currently.
That's because we're currently using drones for a very different purpose in a very different kind of war. Layers of confirmation and careful targeting are fine when you're bombing some idiot with an AK-47 and a twitter feed full of terrorist propaganda, in the kind of war where things like air superiority drones are useful all of that goes away. The time pressure and realities of war just don't allow it.
BaronIveagh wrote: Now that's false equivalency. And notice the part where 'the pilot fires a missile'. The life or death decision has already been made before the missile is launched. Telling a drone 'Go Engage that target' means that the drone, and not the pilot, will be making the decisions about how to engage a target. So when it decides to kill a sam site next to a school by dropping a JDAM, who's responsible for that?
There are smart bombs that fail and hit unintended targets. That is happening right now. So what? In your example, they would have to know the location of the SAM site in order to bomb it, right? And be aware of its close proximity of the school.
And if the Loyal Wingman is under threat from opposing aircraft, who gives a gak if the pilot tells the Loyal Wingman to deal with it? Thats really the whole point of the Loyal Wingman, to protect human pilots.
I can't imagine any scenario where a pilot of an F-35 is expected to control the flight of a drone while trying to fly his own plane, especially with all the complicated tech the F-35 already has. Either these Loyal Wingmen fly themselves or someone else flies them.
I think a lot of you don't understand the sheer number of things that have to happen and people involved before a drone can engage, currently.
Yes I do. I know how these drones have to be prepared to fly over borders and know the laws within each country and in some cases may stalk a target for days before finally pulling the trigger. But these are terrorists typically in countries we are not at war with. There is a whole host of legal procedures that have to be followed. But in an all out war with an opposing power? The Loyal Wingmen will be there to assist a pilot in a dangerous environment whether it be air-to-air or air-to-surface. I imagine if the F-35 has been launched its been for a specific reason, and if assigned to blow up a bridge in the company of the LW, who knows maybe the F-35 would send the LW ahead to dangerous zone, or use the LW to protect it from enemy aircraft while it does its mission.
All this really sounds like sci-fi but obviously its on its way.
Who cares, the SAM site is getting destroyed no matter how many innocents are in the blast radius. It doesn't matter if a human pilot or a drone executes the final drop command and releases the weapon, both are going to destroy the SAM site because there is no other option. The only real difference is that the human pilot may have bad feelings about having to do it, while the drone will execute its orders to attack anything with a particular radar emissions pattern and not lose any sleep over what else it destroys. So, to the degree that the moral issues can be considered at all, the drone wins.
Except the pilot might decide to use a weapon more appropriate to the target environment. You know, something a human pilot might understand to do, whereas a robot gives no feths.
Ah... you do realize that SEVERELY limits the range at which a target can be engaged, yes? That's what led to the air-to-air mess in Vietnam, where Phantoms without guns were being engaged with some success by old MiG-17s; the Phantoms were not allowed to use their range advantage because they had to visually ID any targets before shooting.
Which put them in gun range of a heavily-armed and maneuverable gunfighter...
Likewise, demanding an F-35 get within visual range of, say, an Su-37 will cost you the F-35. The Su-37 (like all Russian fighers) has an IR sight for using their medium (40 miles) range IR-guided missiles...
BaronIveagh wrote: Except the pilot might decide to use a weapon more appropriate to the target environment. You know, something a human pilot might understand to do, whereas a robot gives no feths.
The human pilot isn't going to care either. As soon as a critical target like a SAM site is identified it's getting hit with whatever available weapon is most likely to destroy it, nobody is stopping to check what might be nearby before starting the attack. Stop thinking with the mindset of current wars against helpless idiots with AK-47s and start thinking about the kind of total war between peer-level states where a drone swarm would actually be relevant.
Ask the guys down at Creech if they've finally gotten rid of that worm yet.
Link please? Google is not helping here.
And getting rid of a worm is easy. Read-only storage for the drone's computers, do a complete wipe and factory reset. I don't think you understand just how different security issues are between general-purpose PCs and single-purpose hardware developed with an emphasis on security.
Peregrine wrote: The human pilot isn't going to care either. As soon as a critical target like a SAM site is identified it's getting hit with whatever available weapon is most likely to destroy it, nobody is stopping to check what might be nearby before starting the attack. Stop thinking with the mindset of current wars against helpless idiots with AK-47s and start thinking about the kind of total war between peer-level states where a drone swarm would actually be relevant.
I was. Apparently, my assumption was mistaken that war crimes were still a negative thing. I mean, if you're going to throw out Protocol I (above example you give being a gross violation of), why not throw the whole thing out and dump Sarin on the school and SAM site?
And getting rid of a worm is easy. Read-only storage for the drone's computers, do a complete wipe and factory reset. I don't think you understand just how different security issues are between general-purpose PCs and single-purpose hardware developed with an emphasis on security.
The Virus turned up on the UAV's control computers at Creech rather than on the UAVs themselves, and deployed a key logger. It's believed that no classified information leaked, but the perps are unknown so it's not 100%. A policy exception allowing thumb drives allowed the virus to spread across numerous secure and non-secure systems.
Oldest story in IT, people got lazy.
Also you might have gotten a very small summery from Creech AFBs Wikipedia entry.
BaronIveagh wrote: I was. Apparently, my assumption was mistaken that war crimes were still a negative thing. I mean, if you're going to throw out Protocol I (above example you give being a gross violation of), why not throw the whole thing out and dump Sarin on the school and SAM site?
We had laws against war crimes in WWII and yet that didn't stop either side from carpet bombing whole cities to destroy a factory and anything that happened to be nearby. And you don't dump sarin on the SAM site because it's a laughably ineffective weapon against that kind of target. Chemical weapons are illegal without much controversy because people realized that they're primarily weapons of terror against civilian targets, not effective tools for winning a battle against peer-level forces. The relevant WMD would be tactical nuclear weapons, and it's quite likely that this hypothetical scenario escalates there and the SAM site gets nuked.
The Virus turned up on the UAV's control computers at Creech rather than on the UAVs themselves, and deployed a key logger. It's believed that no classified information leaked, but the perps are unknown so it's not 100%. A policy exception allowing thumb drives allowed the virus to spread across numerous secure and non-secure systems.
Keylogger on the computer =/= virus in the drone's control systems. They are two very different things.
btw, some virii are not so easily disposed of.
{citation needed}
How exactly does this hypothetical virus violate the laws of physics to maintain its presence in RAM that does not contain an electrical charge or in read-only storage that has been burned in at the factory and has no write function included in its hardware?
Also, disposing of the Creech virus would be easy. Thermite the hard drives of every computer involved, replace with new ones. The issue is not the technological ability to remove a virus, it's the IT department being cheap about replacing hardware.
BaronIveagh wrote: I was. Apparently, my assumption was mistaken that war crimes were still a negative thing. I mean, if you're going to throw out Protocol I (above example you give being a gross violation of), why not throw the whole thing out and dump Sarin on the school and SAM site?
We had laws against war crimes in WWII and yet that didn't stop either side from carpet bombing whole cities to destroy a factory and anything that happened to be nearby. And you don't dump sarin on the SAM site because it's a laughably ineffective weapon against that kind of target. Chemical weapons are illegal without much controversy because people realized that they're primarily weapons of terror against civilian targets, not effective tools for winning a battle against peer-level forces. The relevant WMD would be tactical nuclear weapons, and it's quite likely that this hypothetical scenario escalates there and the SAM site gets nuked.
Exactly. In this hypothetical total war scenario, I don't think drones would be a good weapon since they are complicated pieces of equipment and nuked the moment the war escalates to that level. For total war, it is a much better idea to invest into long-range missiles which are much more effective for indiscriminate bombing than aircraft could ever hope to be, and missile launch silos and vehicles are more resilient to enemy counterstrikes than air bases are. We use aircraft instead of long-range missiles to bomb targets because we think it is important to get "eyes on a target" and we like to be accurate as possible. Take away those requirements, and you have just made aircraft obsolete entirely (at least for strategic bombing roles).
Peregrine wrote: The human pilot isn't going to care either. As soon as a critical target like a SAM site is identified it's getting hit with whatever available weapon is most likely to destroy it, nobody is stopping to check what might be nearby before starting the attack. Stop thinking with the mindset of current wars against helpless idiots with AK-47s and start thinking about the kind of total war between peer-level states where a drone swarm would actually be relevant.
I was. Apparently, my assumption was mistaken that war crimes were still a negative thing. I mean, if you're going to throw out Protocol I (above example you give being a gross violation of), why not throw the whole thing out and dump Sarin on the school and SAM site?
Did you miss the part where the last time America fought a peer-level military we leveled whole cities and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the doing? Where we actually NUKED TWO CITIES to try and force a surrender?
That's the kind of war he's talking about. Not even a fairly limited conflict like Korea or Vietnam. A no-holds-barred (short of a general nuclear exchange), one side survives or the other, war against a military peer.
BaronIveagh wrote: I was. Apparently, my assumption was mistaken that war crimes were still a negative thing. I mean, if you're going to throw out Protocol I (above example you give being a gross violation of), why not throw the whole thing out and dump Sarin on the school and SAM site?
We had laws against war crimes in WWII and yet that didn't stop either side from carpet bombing whole cities to destroy a factory and anything that happened to be nearby. And you don't dump sarin on the SAM site because it's a laughably ineffective weapon against that kind of target. Chemical weapons are illegal without much controversy because people realized that they're primarily weapons of terror against civilian targets, not effective tools for winning a battle against peer-level forces. The relevant WMD would be tactical nuclear weapons, and it's quite likely that this hypothetical scenario escalates there and the SAM site gets nuked.
Exactly. In this hypothetical total war scenario, I don't think drones would be a good weapon since they are complicated pieces of equipment and nuked the moment the war escalates to that level. For total war, it is a much better idea to invest into long-range missiles which are much more effective for indiscriminate bombing than aircraft could ever hope to be, and missile launch silos and vehicles are more resilient to enemy counterstrikes than air bases are. We use aircraft instead of long-range missiles to bomb targets because we think it is important to get "eyes on a target" and we like to be accurate as possible. Take away those requirements, and you have just made aircraft obsolete entirely (at least for strategic bombing roles).
Iron_Captain wrote: For total war, it is a much better idea to invest into long-range missiles which are much more effective for indiscriminate bombing than aircraft could ever hope to be, and missile launch silos and vehicles are more resilient to enemy counterstrikes than air bases are.
Missiles are hideously expensive though, and nobody really keeps what could be called a long term stockpile of the things. Estimates put the US Tomahawk missile stockpile at around 3600. Thats going to last maybe a couple days if we have any sort of long term full scale conflict and new missile production, assuming we are able to keep production facilities running, would be made far slower than we would use them up.
In the event of any long term full scale war that doesn't resort to launching the Nukes anybody involved is going to run out of missiles pretty fast and be down to bullets and conventional artillery.
Iron_Captain wrote: For total war, it is a much better idea to invest into long-range missiles which are much more effective for indiscriminate bombing than aircraft could ever hope to be, and missile launch silos and vehicles are more resilient to enemy counterstrikes than air bases are.
Missiles are hideously expensive though, and nobody really keeps what could be called a long term stockpile of the things. Estimates put the US Tomahawk missile stockpile at around 3600. Thats going to last maybe a couple days if we have any sort of long term full scale conflict and new missile production, assuming we are able to keep production facilities running, would be made far slower than we would use them up.
In the event of any long term full scale war that doesn't resort to launching the Nukes anybody involved is going to run out of missiles pretty fast and be down to bullets and conventional artillery.
And planes are cheap? Googling up claims F-35 costs over 90 millions while tomahawk costs 1.4. Presumably that 90 millions does not include it's missile supply either. Can you bomb more efficiently with 1 F-35 than about 66 tomahawks?
For the price of 3600 tomahawks you would get 53 F-35. And presumably still need to pay missiles for the planes.
Iron_Captain wrote: For total war, it is a much better idea to invest into long-range missiles which are much more effective for indiscriminate bombing than aircraft could ever hope to be, and missile launch silos and vehicles are more resilient to enemy counterstrikes than air bases are.
Missiles are hideously expensive though, and nobody really keeps what could be called a long term stockpile of the things. Estimates put the US Tomahawk missile stockpile at around 3600. Thats going to last maybe a couple days if we have any sort of long term full scale conflict and new missile production, assuming we are able to keep production facilities running, would be made far slower than we would use them up.
In the event of any long term full scale war that doesn't resort to launching the Nukes anybody involved is going to run out of missiles pretty fast and be down to bullets and conventional artillery.
And planes are cheap? Googling up claims F-35 costs over 90 millions while tomahawk costs 1.4. Presumably that 90 millions does not include it's missile supply either. Can you bomb more efficiently with 1 F-35 than about 66 tomahawks?
For the price of 3600 tomahawks you would get 53 F-35. And presumably still need to pay missiles for the planes.
And fuel, and pilots, and maintenance, and specialised refueling aircraft, and a big airbase etc. Missiles are expensive, but aircraft are an order of magnitude more expensive. On top of being less expensive to produce, missiles also do not require as much fuel, maintenance, auxiliary support, big sprawling bases etc. Militaries do generally not keep big stockpiles of long-range missiles since the only functionality offered by those missiles is "indiscriminate destruction of everything within a massive blast radius", which given how modern militaries at least pretend to strive towards minimising collateral damage, is not a very desirable functionality. But when you get to a total war, and you don't care about collateral damage anymore... Then there is no reason why you would not just send in a bunch of cruise missiles or ICBMs instead of aircraft. Of course, the low stockpiles means nations would run out pretty quickly, and then it would be down to whichever nation can rebuild rudimentary infrastructure and crank out cheap mass-produced tanks, artillery, planes and guns the fastest. With all advanced tech depleted or destroyed, we'd be basically be back to WW2 attrition warfare. Presuming of course that both warring parties are still willing to continue after having their infrastructure and cities blown to rubble. Luckily, the chance of a major war like this happening is rather low, because the destruction your own nation would inevitably suffer is not a very pretty idea even if you win the war. And that also means that aircraft will continue to play a significant role on the battlefield at least in the near future, since those battlefields are likely going to be mostly low-intensity proxy wars or insurrections like we are seeing today. And, going back to the autonomous drone discussion, that also means that it will be very important for any sort of drone to be able to avoid collateral damage. Which in turn means that human control will probably always remain a necessity.
Iron_Captain wrote: For total war, it is a much better idea to invest into long-range missiles which are much more effective for indiscriminate bombing than aircraft could ever hope to be, and missile launch silos and vehicles are more resilient to enemy counterstrikes than air bases are.
Missiles are hideously expensive though, and nobody really keeps what could be called a long term stockpile of the things. Estimates put the US Tomahawk missile stockpile at around 3600. Thats going to last maybe a couple days if we have any sort of long term full scale conflict and new missile production, assuming we are able to keep production facilities running, would be made far slower than we would use them up.
In the event of any long term full scale war that doesn't resort to launching the Nukes anybody involved is going to run out of missiles pretty fast and be down to bullets and conventional artillery.
And planes are cheap? Googling up claims F-35 costs over 90 millions while tomahawk costs 1.4. Presumably that 90 millions does not include it's missile supply either. Can you bomb more efficiently with 1 F-35 than about 66 tomahawks?
For the price of 3600 tomahawks you would get 53 F-35. And presumably still need to pay missiles for the planes.
Hence why I said we're all going to be down to bullets and artillery.
I suppose you could argue that long range missiles are more cost effective than a plane, which would be true. But both will run out very quickly in an actual war as they suffer from the same problem.
We had laws against war crimes in WWII and yet that didn't stop either side from carpet bombing whole cities to destroy a factory and anything that happened to be nearby. And you don't dump sarin on the SAM site because it's a laughably ineffective weapon against that kind of target. Chemical weapons are illegal without much controversy because people realized that they're primarily weapons of terror against civilian targets, not effective tools for winning a battle against peer-level forces. The relevant WMD would be tactical nuclear weapons, and it's quite likely that this hypothetical scenario escalates there and the SAM site gets nuked.
Actually, Peregrine, what you described became a war crime with a 1977 addition to the Geneva conventions, which came about because WW2. Just like the rules about treatment of prisoners came about because the US Civil War. You might notice Coventry being prominently missing from the Nuremberg Trials.
I kind of wonder when the dak hits the fan again, and we have even more people going to war than everyone has in WWII, its going to take a lot more munitions to blow each other up, and since everyone loves touting when another commits a war crime, you'll see lots of people in cities and close to civilians and the only way to kill a lot of the enemy is by mass bombing. I think after its all over people will say 'man that was terrible lets not do that again', but during? I expect a lot of the war crime stuff to be set aside.
How exactly does this hypothetical virus violate the laws of physics to maintain its presence in RAM that does not contain an electrical charge or in read-only storage that has been burned in at the factory and has no write function included in its hardware?
Also, disposing of the Creech virus would be easy. Thermite the hard drives of every computer involved, replace with new ones. The issue is not the technological ability to remove a virus, it's the IT department being cheap about replacing hardware.
Strictly speaking hypothetically, certain systems can't be ROM. They have to be EPROM. Unless they're buying a whole new drone or F-35 every time a new software version gets approved.
Which means that, yes, hypothetically you could create a virus that comes back every time the thing boots up by slipping it in with a firmware update. And it would be time consuming to find just which system it was coming from.
Getting back to the F-35 we had it's first combat missions with the US on Thursday, and first crash today. That was quick.
How exactly does this hypothetical virus violate the laws of physics to maintain its presence in RAM that does not contain an electrical charge or in read-only storage that has been burned in at the factory and has no write function included in its hardware?
Also, disposing of the Creech virus would be easy. Thermite the hard drives of every computer involved, replace with new ones. The issue is not the technological ability to remove a virus, it's the IT department being cheap about replacing hardware.
Strictly speaking hypothetically, certain systems can't be ROM. They have to be EPROM. Unless they're buying a whole new drone or F-35 every time a new software version gets approved.
Which means that, yes, hypothetically you could create a virus that comes back every time the thing boots up by slipping it in with a firmware update. And it would be time consuming to find just which system it was coming from.
These planes probably have ROMs for operational controls with custom architecture (ie, fly dat plane!) and solid state memory/harddrives for tasks that requires data collection. I would hope that those systems don't "talk" to each other to mitigate such virus/worm infection scenarios.
Furthermore, with the freaking costs to these machines, I'd totally believe new hardware would be needed to swap out the old for each software versions. (not including patches).
Getting back to the F-35 we had it's first combat missions with the US on Thursday, and first crash today. That was quick.
So the German Luftwaffe, still using our decades-old Panavia Tornados, is looking for a replacement for their multirole/ground attack jets. From what I read in German news, our department of defense squandered millions in the triple digits with "consulting" and corresponding jobs and is generally doing a crap job of replacing our old tech, but furthermore, it looks like the F-35 is our kind-of only choice for a replacement right now. The Dassault Rafale is still in the game, made by our neighbors, but politics seem to have sidelined that one and now we are looking at glorious "Lightning IIs", too, for our small Luftwaffe.
I'm not really hyped about this plane as many others, I guess. Especially for our comparably small army, compared to the bigger nations. Spending enormous amounts of money for maybe 20 planes that might just as well be shot down in the first days of a larger war by some new-tech missile or simply due to bad planning and bad luck, and then we have a Luftwaffe without planes anymore? These small numbers, regardless of how great the plane is supposed to be, just sound really dangerous to me.
Get those high-tech planes, alright, but perhaps have a second-line wave of MUCH cheaper, older-generation fighters ready, with enough trained pilots as well. World War II saw 20,000 Spitfires and 30,000 BF 109s alone in the European theater, and nowadays we bumble about with just enough planes to fill one large hangar? And when they get shot down or just killed on the ground by long-range missiles we can wait for a few years before they are replaced? None of this sounds sustainable.
Hell, we had 24 MiG-29 we took from the GDR when it collapsed, and we gave them away for 1 EUR each to Poland. I mean, more power to Poland, but in what world do you just give away 24 solid jet fighters when you are having trouble keeping your ridiculously old Tornados even slightly flyworty?!
These planes probably have ROMs for operational controls with custom architecture (ie, fly dat plane!) and solid state memory/harddrives for tasks that requires data collection. I would hope that those systems don't "talk" to each other to mitigate such virus/worm infection scenarios.
Autonomic Logistics Information System talks to all of them and has already been shown to be vulnerable, though it was limited to feeding the pilots and drones bad information, so if Peregrine wants that Children's hospital to be a SAM site, the hardware will tell him it is. As long as he doesn't use his eyeballs and something resembling judgment about the giant red cross on the roof, he's gonna be every bit as lethal as that drone.
Further, if you use ROM even a patch could, in theory, require the whole shebang to be replaced with a new one. I dunno about the air-force, but when I worked for Snyder, the army was pretty specific about wanting the firmware being patchable rather than the alternative.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Witzkatz wrote: So the German Luftwaffe, still using our decades-old Panavia Tornados, is looking for a replacement for their multirole/ground attack jets. From what I read in German news, our department of defense squandered millions in the triple digits with "consulting" and corresponding jobs and is generally doing a crap job of replacing our old tech, but furthermore, it looks like the F-35 is our kind-of only choice for a replacement right now. The Dassault Rafale is still in the game, made by our neighbors, but politics seem to have sidelined that one and now we are looking at glorious "Lightning IIs", too, for our small Luftwaffe.
I'm not really hyped about this plane as many others, I guess. Especially for our comparably small army, compared to the bigger nations. Spending enormous amounts of money for maybe 20 planes that might just as well be shot down in the first days of a larger war by some new-tech missile or simply due to bad planning and bad luck, and then we have a Luftwaffe without planes anymore? These small numbers, regardless of how great the plane is supposed to be, just sound really dangerous to me.
Get those high-tech planes, alright, but perhaps have a second-line wave of MUCH cheaper, older-generation fighters ready, with enough trained pilots as well. World War II saw 20,000 Spitfires and 30,000 BF 109s alone in the European theater, and nowadays we bumble about with just enough planes to fill one large hangar? And when they get shot down or just killed on the ground by long-range missiles we can wait for a few years before they are replaced? None of this sounds sustainable.
Hell, we had 24 MiG-29 we took from the GDR when it collapsed, and we gave them away for 1 EUR each to Poland. I mean, more power to Poland, but in what world do you just give away 24 solid jet fighters when you are having trouble keeping your ridiculously old Tornados even slightly flyworty?!
/rant.
Get more Typhoons. I know that Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader 71 has some, and they're frankly better than the F-35.
The Typhoons are apparently only planned as air superiority fighters. I agree they should fill that role nicely, but apparently people don't think they can fill the fighter-bomber role.
Possibly roaming a bit OT with this, but aren't we gradually (or almost already?) at the point where the squishy meatbag is the limiting factor?
Just wondering how many Generations will follow Gen 5 before on-board human-pilot replacement? Maybe 1x more?
I'm not suggesting we're at the point for full-on autonomous fighters, but with AR/VR advancing pretty steadily, would we really need an -on-board pilot going beyond Gen 6? Can we not maybe do that already in some cases?
The F-35 has had issues with pilots blacking out, though they occasionally claim to have fixed them, it seems to be an issue that comes back after it's 'fixed'.
BaronIveagh wrote: The F-35 has had issues with pilots blacking out, though they occasionally claim to have fixed them, it seems to be an issue that comes back after it's 'fixed'.
To get rid of the human pilot you have to either develop a highly capable AI that you trust not to zap an infant clinic because all the prams look like tanks, or you have to trust the controllers sitting in Arizona 8,000 miles from the battle area to make the right decisions despite the time lag and inability to eyeball the real situation the way a pilot can.
I don't mean to impune drone controllers in any way, but it just isn't the same.
Witzkatz wrote: The Typhoons are apparently only planned as air superiority fighters. I agree they should fill that role nicely, but apparently people don't think they can fill the fighter-bomber role.
The only thing stopping the Luftwaffe from getting more Typhoons in the bomber role is that the Tornado is the only German A/C that's capable of carrying nuclear ordnance (under the NATO nuclear sharing program) and it's extremely unlikely the US would certify the Typhoon for that when the F35 is out there as an option.
Kilkrazy wrote: To get rid of the human pilot you have to either develop a highly capable AI that you trust not to zap an infant clinic because all the prams look like tanks, or you have to trust the controllers sitting in Arizona 8,000 miles from the battle area to make the right decisions despite the time lag and inability to eyeball the real situation the way a pilot can.
I don't mean to impune drone controllers in any way, but it just isn't the same.
I get the lag at 8K, KK, but I'm thinking something like an "evolution" of AWACS? Say some fething huge & powerful C&C plane / blimp (feth-it ... satellite/space station?) with all the "pilots" on board, with gakloads of defensive swarmed interceptors / killer-sats? No?
Witzkatz wrote: The Typhoons are apparently only planned as air superiority fighters. I agree they should fill that role nicely, but apparently people don't think they can fill the fighter-bomber role.
The only thing stopping the Luftwaffe from getting more Typhoons in the bomber role is that the Tornado is the only German A/C that's capable of carrying nuclear ordnance (under the NATO nuclear sharing program) and it's extremely unlikely the US would certify the Typhoon for that when the F35 is out there as an option.
So our choices of acquiring new fighter-bombers are basically linked to what the US would like us to have? Because they need to allow the planes we are allowed to strap the bombs to that the US would like us to carry? That sounds like a Lockheed-Martin lobbyist's dream scenario indeed.
Witzkatz wrote: The Typhoons are apparently only planned as air superiority fighters. I agree they should fill that role nicely, but apparently people don't think they can fill the fighter-bomber role.
The only thing stopping the Luftwaffe from getting more Typhoons in the bomber role is that the Tornado is the only German A/C that's capable of carrying nuclear ordnance (under the NATO nuclear sharing program) and it's extremely unlikely the US would certify the Typhoon for that when the F35 is out there as an option.
So our choices of acquiring new fighter-bombers are basically linked to what the US would like us to have? Because they need to allow the planes we are allowed to strap the bombs to that the US would like us to carry? That sounds like a Lockheed-Martin lobbyist's dream scenario indeed.
Did you "seriously" think it was ever any different? (not saying it's right ... just saying ...)
Kilkrazy wrote: To get rid of the human pilot you have to either develop a highly capable AI that you trust not to zap an infant clinic because all the prams look like tanks, or you have to trust the controllers sitting in Arizona 8,000 miles from the battle area to make the right decisions despite the time lag and inability to eyeball the real situation the way a pilot can.
Or, third option: you don't care about killing the infants because there's a war to be fought. The only real issue with killing them is that you've wasted ammunition on an irrelevant target, but the whole point of drone swarms is to be so cheap that sheer numbers overcome any inefficiency per drone. A "shoot first, ask questions never" policy works just fine for the swarm.
Witzkatz wrote: The Typhoons are apparently only planned as air superiority fighters. I agree they should fill that role nicely, but apparently people don't think they can fill the fighter-bomber role.
The only thing stopping the Luftwaffe from getting more Typhoons in the bomber role is that the Tornado is the only German A/C that's capable of carrying nuclear ordnance (under the NATO nuclear sharing program) and it's extremely unlikely the US would certify the Typhoon for that when the F35 is out there as an option.
So our choices of acquiring new fighter-bombers are basically linked to what the US would like us to have? Because they need to allow the planes we are allowed to strap the bombs to that the US would like us to carry? That sounds like a Lockheed-Martin lobbyist's dream scenario indeed.
I can't comment further on that without breaking the politics ban but pretty much yes. That's the way NATO was set up.
Kilkrazy wrote: To get rid of the human pilot you have to either develop a highly capable AI that you trust not to zap an infant clinic because all the prams look like tanks, or you have to trust the controllers sitting in Arizona 8,000 miles from the battle area to make the right decisions despite the time lag and inability to eyeball the real situation the way a pilot can.
Or, third option: you don't care about killing the infants because there's a war to be fought. The only real issue with killing them is that you've wasted ammunition on an irrelevant target, but the whole point of drone swarms is to be so cheap that sheer numbers overcome any inefficiency per drone. A "shoot first, ask questions never" policy works just fine for the swarm.
People do care about killing infants though, so that is not an option. Not unless you want to deal with massive local resistance, political fallout at home and an entire world including your allies who hate you. In other words, a smart military uses smart bombs.
Kilkrazy wrote: To get rid of the human pilot you have to either develop a highly capable AI that you trust not to zap an infant clinic because all the prams look like tanks, or you have to trust the controllers sitting in Arizona 8,000 miles from the battle area to make the right decisions despite the time lag and inability to eyeball the real situation the way a pilot can.
I don't mean to impune drone controllers in any way, but it just isn't the same.
I get the lag at 8K, KK, but I'm thinking something like an "evolution" of AWACS? Say some fething huge & powerful C&C plane / blimp (feth-it ... satellite/space station?) with all the "pilots" on board, with gakloads of defensive swarmed interceptors / killer-sats? No?
It could be done that way.
The counter-arguments are that the point of drones is to keep human crews well out of harm's way.
A large C&C plane in the near battle area is a mighty tempting target.
To protect it with lots of drones or fighters turns it into a Death Star which might be hard to kill but losing it wrecks the entire force structure.
Kilkrazy wrote: The counter-arguments are that the point of drones is to keep human crews well out of harm's way. A large C&C plane in the near battle area is a mighty tempting target.
To protect it with lots of drones or fighters turns it into a Death Star which might be hard to kill but losing it wrecks the entire force structure.
That Command plane would also be transmitting like crazy, giving commands to swarms of drones - one imagines the missile technology required to hit it wouldn't be nearly as high as what's needed against a properly working F-35.
Not to mention any enemy with the resources would be planning to get at the pilots, whether they sit in a plane, on a space station or in a bunker half the world away. They're piloting armed drones, they're a perfectly legitimate military target and worth taking out with any means necessary even if they sit in a downtown office building next to a daycare center.
Witzkatz wrote: I'm not really hyped about this plane as many others, I guess. Especially for our comparably small army, compared to the bigger nations. Spending enormous amounts of money for maybe 20 planes that might just as well be shot down in the first days of a larger war by some new-tech missile or simply due to bad planning and bad luck, and then we have a Luftwaffe without planes anymore? These small numbers, regardless of how great the plane is supposed to be, just sound really dangerous to me.
Get those high-tech planes, alright, but perhaps have a second-line wave of MUCH cheaper, older-generation fighters ready, with enough trained pilots as well. World War II saw 20,000 Spitfires and 30,000 BF 109s alone in the European theater, and nowadays we bumble about with just enough planes to fill one large hangar? And when they get shot down or just killed on the ground by long-range missiles we can wait for a few years before they are replaced? None of this sounds sustainable.
Yeah I sympathize. I think most countries buying the F-35 will never get out of the plane what some of the few do. Part of the problem is that over the last 50 years all these companies have been merging and there are far fewer competitors around now. Also, as you can see with the tech that they are putting into the F-35, that you either have it or you don't. It takes some crazy resources to take on a project like the F-35, which many would argue, was too big anyway. But given the limited number of options out there, do you want to tell your military and people that you are settling for lower rate planes or do you want to show your military is keeping up and has the latest. Its a hard pill to swallow either way.
But given the number of planes they are making, and the number of countries buying them, its probably safe to say that this plane will be around for a couple of decades. But in the case of Germany, if they can barely afford spare parts for their fighters now, I highly doubt they will have many of the F-35 air worthy in 10 years.
I do believe though, that as time goes by, the cheaper options are going to be dominated and wacked by the more expensive ones. And its just not about the plane anymore, its how it fits into the system. And if you don't have a system that the F-35 is designed to fit in with, then its even more money that is going to waste.
I honestly do not know the answer.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I do miss competition though. Remember all the crazy ideas from the 50s on? Guys like these:
People do care about killing infants though, so that is not an option. Not unless you want to deal with massive local resistance, political fallout at home and an entire world including your allies who hate you. In other words, a smart military uses smart bombs.
Anything I say on this subject could be construed as a insult directed at Peregrine. I think the idea that victory would only be possible through war crimes is absurd, and that he should be ashamed of himself. But I think it'd take 12 officers to convince him.
BaronIveagh wrote: Anything I say on this subject could be construed as a insult directed at Peregrine. I think the idea that victory would only be possible through war crimes is absurd, and that he should be ashamed of himself. But I think it'd take 12 officers to convince him.
No, of course war crimes are not necessary for victory. The point is nobody is going to give a about war crimes in the kind of war where an autonomous drone swarm is useful. There are two key facts:
1) A drone swarm is only necessary or useful in a major war between peer-level states. In the sort of "kill a bunch of guys with AK-47s and suicide bombs" wars that we're currently fighting you don't need them. The extended endurance of a remotely operated drone is useful, but you can afford to have multiple pilots and analysts for each drone and take your time with identifying a potential target. Nothing gets time-critical because nothing is shooting back, the worst that can happen is that you can't confirm your target and have to destroy it later. Where the autonomous swarm becomes useful is when you need to put a large number of planes in the air at once in a high-threat environment. IOW, for things like air superiority missions, defense suppression, etc, where you're facing a suicide mission that must be completed. The drone swarm gives you the sheer numbers to engage that many targets at once, and it ensures that your only losses are to expendable munitions instead of human pilots. But that kind of situation only exists against peer-level states, whatever ISIS re-brands itself as next isn't going to come anywhere close to that kind of threat.
2) Wars between peer-level states are an avoid at all costs situation. No sane person wants a war with Russia or China, and no sane person on the other side wants a war with the US or its close allies. Such a war is likely to be obscenely destructive even if it doesn't go nuclear, and has a terrifyingly high risk of going nuclear and ending civilization as we know it. The potential price of such a war is almost certainly more than any possible gain from it, which means that short of our current "president" starting a war over twitter everyone involved is going to do everything they can to avoid it. If we're shooting at Russia or China it's a desperate "survival of the nation" kind of situation, and nobody is going to have time to worry about a hypothetical war crimes trial. If a SAM site happens to be close to a bunch of innocent babies, well, nobody is going to bother paying attention to what is nearby. As soon as that fire control radar is identified an anti-radar missile or GPS-guided bomb is on its way. It doesn't matter if a human pilot or a drone gives the launch command, the only thing anyone is paying attention to is winning the war by destroying the enemy's ability to fight.
BaronIveagh wrote: Anything I say on this subject could be construed as a insult directed at Peregrine. I think the idea that victory would only be possible through war crimes is absurd, and that he should be ashamed of himself. But I think it'd take 12 officers to convince him.
No, of course war crimes are not necessary for victory. The point is nobody is going to give a about war crimes in the kind of war where an autonomous drone swarm is useful. There are two key facts:
1) A drone swarm is only necessary or useful in a major war between peer-level states. In the sort of "kill a bunch of guys with AK-47s and suicide bombs" wars that we're currently fighting you don't need them. The extended endurance of a remotely operated drone is useful, but you can afford to have multiple pilots and analysts for each drone and take your time with identifying a potential target. Nothing gets time-critical because nothing is shooting back, the worst that can happen is that you can't confirm your target and have to destroy it later. Where the autonomous swarm becomes useful is when you need to put a large number of planes in the air at once in a high-threat environment. IOW, for things like air superiority missions, defense suppression, etc, where you're facing a suicide mission that must be completed. The drone swarm gives you the sheer numbers to engage that many targets at once, and it ensures that your only losses are to expendable munitions instead of human pilots. But that kind of situation only exists against peer-level states, whatever ISIS re-brands itself as next isn't going to come anywhere close to that kind of threat.
And pray tell, why in this scenario are you wasting an expensive drone instead of a cheap cruise missile? We don't need unmanned aircraft for suicide missions in high-threat environments. We already have them. They are called missiles.
Iron_Captain wrote: And pray tell, why in this scenario are you wasting an expensive drone instead of a cheap cruise missile? We don't need unmanned aircraft for suicide missions in high-threat environments. We already have them. They are called missiles.
Two reasons:
1) Endurance and response time. A drone can hold in a standby position for an extended period of time and then quickly deliver a strike once it is needed. A cruise missile can not do the same without becoming a drone in all but name. So yeah, the missile is great for destroying known targets in the opening minutes of a war and lots of missiles will be used for that purpose, but the drone swarm will still be needed to eliminate targets as they appear. Consider the difference between a fixed SAM site in permanent bunkers vs. a truck-mounted system that can pop up anywhere and open fire.
2) Air superiority. It's a suicide mission in a peer-state war, and drones can do it. Cruise missiles can't.
Iron_Captain wrote: And pray tell, why in this scenario are you wasting an expensive drone instead of a cheap cruise missile? We don't need unmanned aircraft for suicide missions in high-threat environments. We already have them. They are called missiles.
Two reasons:
1) Endurance and response time. A drone can hold in a standby position for an extended period of time and then quickly deliver a strike once it is needed. A cruise missile can not do the same without becoming a drone in all but name. So yeah, the missile is great for destroying known targets in the opening minutes of a war and lots of missiles will be used for that purpose, but the drone swarm will still be needed to eliminate targets as they appear. Consider the difference between a fixed SAM site in permanent bunkers vs. a truck-mounted system that can pop up anywhere and open fire.
2) Air superiority. It's a suicide mission in a peer-state war, and drones can do it. Cruise missiles can't.
1) Modern cruise missiles can already hold, change target and hover in standby position. Besides, it is much faster to launch a missile than it is to send a drone to its target, unless the drone already happens to be in the area. Which of course leaves the drone very vulnerable to being taken out by the SAM system it is after. Cruise missiles can also be deployed from aircraft who could be at standby way out of range of enemy air defenses yet still be close enough to ensure a very fast response time. But most importantly, when the missiles are done flying there won't be a drone swarm anymore. Drones would have to be located on an airbase, which as a high priority target would have been destroyed in the opening minutes of the war. Realistically, any war between states with expansive missile arsenals is going to be fought without much in the way of air assets at all (at least in fixed-wing aircraft). Drones will be mostly useless in a war between peer-level states. Such a war would be immensely destructive in the opening hours, your drone assets are unlikely to survive, and they are too expensive and complicated to quickly rebuild. The most useful systems in such a conflict (aside from simply getting more missiles) are ones that are simple yet effective and can be produced in a short timeframe to overwhelm the enemy while he is still reeling from the initial onslaught. Basically, the state who can rebuild its military the fastest will win the war. Where drones do excel is in low-intensity conflicts that drag on a long while, where the lower operating costs of a drone can save money in the long run and you do not risk losing public approval because of the slow but constant trickle of casualties, and where cruise missiles and ICBMs are generally too expensive and destructive to use.
2) There is no such thing as an air superiority suicide mission. If an air superiority mission is a suicide mission than it is counterproductive to the goal of establishing air superiority, which requires you to take out enemy air assets without losing your own. Also, cruise missiles can do it. Enemy air assets are dependent on infrastructure. Goodbye airbases, goodbye air force.
2) There is no such thing as an air superiority suicide mission. If an air superiority mission is a suicide mission than it is counterproductive to the goal of establishing air superiority, which requires you to take out enemy air assets without losing your own. Also, cruise missiles can do it. Enemy air assets are dependent on infrastructure. Goodbye airbases, goodbye air force.
Unless, of course, the airforce in question is built around the assumption that the airbases are the first targets to go and plan around it accordingly, investing in aircraft that can land on random country roads and hide in the woods while refuling and rearming.
1) Modern cruise missiles can already hold, change target and hover in standby position. Besides, it is much faster to launch a missile than it is to send a drone to its target, unless the drone already happens to be in the area. Which of course leaves the drone very vulnerable to being taken out by the SAM system it is after. Cruise missiles can also be deployed from aircraft who could be at standby way out of range of enemy air defenses yet still be close enough to ensure a very fast response time.
Actually no. We haven't seen a war between similarly advanced rivals using this technology yet, but in the case of the US military, there is a lot of stalking that goes on before the shot is fired. Sometimes days. A cruise missile can't do that. There are drone pilots operating out of containers who are suffering from PTSD from becoming so familiar with a target, sometimes with a family around, that its starting to affect them when they kill them. And many drive home to their families after their shift has ended that is the crazy part. 'Honey how was your day?'
BTW I dated a girl once who was in Iraq that did the very type of work that Kimi did in the first story, and she told me who she would put together packets for the strikes together. She often did some of the interrogating too. This girl couldn't have weighed more than 105, was a cute little southern girl, and not anywhere near the type of person you would envision doing that kind of work. It was crazy.
I also dated another who was also in the air force in Afghanistan and did the weather reports. There was a lot of pressure because if they sent up a drone in the wrong kind of weather and anything happened to it, heads would roll. So if she was off she would get blasted for it.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Unless, of course, the airforce in question is built around the assumption that the airbases are the first targets to go and plan around it accordingly, investing in aircraft that can land on random country roads and hide in the woods while refuling and rearming.
Shameless national plug.
Actually this is very legit. All US air force bases begin the day sweeping the air strips for little debris like small stones to prevent them getting sucked into intakes. A russian pilot visiting a US base stated he didn't think that would be possible in war time situations, and that jets have to be rugged enough to handle things like that, and to some extend he has a point. But for the most part the US is going to act as the aggressor anyway and more than likely is going to chose the time and where the battles occur. Not to say that an airbase in South Korea wouldn't be impacted, but I don't worry about the ones in Missouri.
1) Modern cruise missiles can already hold, change target and hover in standby position. Besides, it is much faster to launch a missile than it is to send a drone to its target, unless the drone already happens to be in the area. Which of course leaves the drone very vulnerable to being taken out by the SAM system it is after. Cruise missiles can also be deployed from aircraft who could be at standby way out of range of enemy air defenses yet still be close enough to ensure a very fast response time.
Actually no. We haven't seen a war between similarly advanced rivals using this technology yet, but in the case of the US military, there is a lot of stalking that goes on before the shot is fired. Sometimes days. A cruise missile can't do that. There are drone pilots operating out of containers who are suffering from PTSD from becoming so familiar with a target, sometimes with a family around, that its starting to affect them when they kill them. And many drive home to their families after their shift has ended that is the crazy part. 'Honey how was your day?'
BTW I dated a girl once who was in Iraq that did the very type of work that Kimi did in the first story, and she told me who she would put together packets for the strikes together. She often did some of the interrogating too. This girl couldn't have weighed more than 105, was a cute little southern girl, and not anywhere near the type of person you would envision doing that kind of work. It was crazy.
I also dated another who was also in the air force in Afghanistan and did the weather reports. There was a lot of pressure because if they sent up a drone in the wrong kind of weather and anything happened to it, heads would roll. So if she was off she would get blasted for it.
That is for low-intensity conflicts though where the US wants to avoid collateral damage as much as possible. Hence the stalking to make sure they have the right guy, and if possible to look for a moment to blow him up without his entire family. In a total war scenario there is no time nor need for that. Which, while much more destructive, I can imagine is actually less emotionally taxing for the people pulling the trigger, since you do not get face to face with your victims. That is why for example Allied strategic bomber crews from WW2 could do what they did, even though what they did was in practice usually little more than mass-murdering innocent kids and other civilians. But if those same people had been asked to kill the exact same kids through more personal means (like just shooting them) they would undoubtedly have refused. It is because they never saw their victims that they could disconnect themselves from it.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Unless, of course, the airforce in question is built around the assumption that the airbases are the first targets to go and plan around it accordingly, investing in aircraft that can land on random country roads and hide in the woods while refuling and rearming.
Shameless national plug.
The Swedes do build great, practical aircraft though.
KTG17 wrote: Actually this is very legit. All US air force bases begin the day sweeping the air strips for little debris like small stones to prevent them getting sucked into intakes. A russian pilot visiting a US base stated he didn't think that would be possible in war time situations, and that jets have to be rugged enough to handle things like that, and to some extend he has a point. But for the most part the US is going to act as the aggressor anyway and more than likely is going to chose the time and where the battles occur. Not to say that an airbase in South Korea wouldn't be impacted, but I don't worry about the ones in Missouri.
But what good will a base in Missouri do you when the conflict is in Korea?
Well, for one, our Stealth Bombers typically launch from there. But just making the point that the trade off for high tech, and maybe more fragile weapons pays off when most of our opponents can't strike most of the sources they are coming from. So we can still walk the strips looking for pebbles.
KTG17 wrote: Well, for one, our Stealth Bombers typically launch from there. But just making the point that the trade off for high tech, and maybe more fragile weapons pays off when most of our opponents can't strike most of the sources they are coming from. So we can still walk the strips looking for pebbles.
But states that can match the US militarily such as Russia and China can destroy those bases in Missouri with trivial ease. Even North Korea may get the capability to hit Missouri not far into the future. And what are those stealth bombers (assuming they somehow survive the destruction of the base) going to do then? It is not like they are able to take off from any muddy field. Destroy its base, and any aircraft becomes useless. Well unless you are smart like the Swedes and build your aircraft with that in mind.
High tech is great for proxy wars, low intensity conflicts and invading places without nasty missiles or other means to hit your homeland and infrastructure. But for taking on a really big enemy you want something that is simple, reliable and can be built and operated even after you got hit right in the face and your country is in ruins.
KTG17 wrote: Well, for one, our Stealth Bombers typically launch from there. But just making the point that the trade off for high tech, and maybe more fragile weapons pays off when most of our opponents can't strike most of the sources they are coming from. So we can still walk the strips looking for pebbles.
But states that can match the US militarily such as Russia and China can destroy those bases in Missouri with trivial ease. Even North Korea may get the capability to hit Missouri not far into the future. And what are those stealth bombers (assuming they somehow survive the destruction of the base) going to do then? It is not like they are able to take off from any muddy field. Destroy its base, and any aircraft becomes useless. Well unless you are smart like the Swedes and build your aircraft with that in mind.
What does Russia or China have that can hit the mainland US, especially a central state like Missouri, without starting a nuclear war? At which point it isn't about the stealth bombers, but all the ICBM silos and nuclear equipped subs.
KTG17 wrote: Well, for one, our Stealth Bombers typically launch from there. But just making the point that the trade off for high tech, and maybe more fragile weapons pays off when most of our opponents can't strike most of the sources they are coming from. So we can still walk the strips looking for pebbles.
But states that can match the US militarily such as Russia and China can destroy those bases in Missouri with trivial ease. Even North Korea may get the capability to hit Missouri not far into the future. And what are those stealth bombers (assuming they somehow survive the destruction of the base) going to do then? It is not like they are able to take off from any muddy field. Destroy its base, and any aircraft becomes useless.
Well unless you are smart like the Swedes and build your aircraft with that in mind.
What does Russia or China have that can hit the mainland US, especially a central state like Missouri, without starting a nuclear war? At which point it isn't about the stealth bombers, but all the ICBM silos and nuclear equipped subs.
You can't hit a state like the US, Russia or China and get away without retaliation. That is the point I was making earlier about how good equipment for a total war scenario is easy to produce and operate, and drones would be worthless because they are the exact opposite.
Vulcan wrote: Excellent point. If you're nuking Missouri, the world is fethed and no military capabilities matter anymore because we're all dead.
No, some of us will still be alive and envy the dead.
I'll point out once again the flaws with some of these arguments:
Stealth aircraft arn't.
Let me show you how to beat the F-35 in three easy steps that any half assed warlord can afford, let alone a 'peer'.
One, buy all the 'inferior' 4th gen fighters that are up for fire sale you can. Buy old, soviet era long wave radar systems.
Two: When something plane ish turns up in an area,, sorty about 50 faster, more mobile, more heavily armed 'junk' aircraft for every contact.
Three Wipe floor with F-35s before they can run away.
Vulcan wrote: Excellent point. If you're nuking Missouri, the world is fethed and no military capabilities matter anymore because we're all dead.
No, some of us will still be alive and envy the dead.
I'll point out once again the flaws with some of these arguments:
Stealth aircraft arn't.
Let me show you how to beat the F-35 in three easy steps that any half assed warlord can afford, let alone a 'peer'.
One, buy all the 'inferior' 4th gen fighters that are up for fire sale you can. Buy old, soviet era long wave radar systems.
Two: When something plane ish turns up in an area,, sorty about 50 faster, more mobile, more heavily armed 'junk' aircraft for every contact.
Three Wipe floor with F-35s before they can run away.
I'd like to see the half assed warlord who can afford 50 4th gen jet fighters.
Vulcan wrote: Excellent point. If you're nuking Missouri, the world is fethed and no military capabilities matter anymore because we're all dead.
Far from all of us. Many would die in such a war, without a doubt. But there would still be loads of people left as well.
Sure, there would be small bands of survivors. There wouldn't be anything left with which to support even WWII aircraft for very long, much less repair and maintain stealth aircraft and/or drones and missiles.
Vulcan wrote: Excellent point. If you're nuking Missouri, the world is fethed and no military capabilities matter anymore because we're all dead.
No, some of us will still be alive and envy the dead.
I'll point out once again the flaws with some of these arguments:
Stealth aircraft arn't.
Let me show you how to beat the F-35 in three easy steps that any half assed warlord can afford, let alone a 'peer'.
One, buy all the 'inferior' 4th gen fighters that are up for fire sale you can. Buy old, soviet era long wave radar systems.
Two: When something plane ish turns up in an area,, sorty about 50 faster, more mobile, more heavily armed 'junk' aircraft for every contact.
Three Wipe floor with F-35s before they can run away.
I'd like to see the half assed warlord who can afford 50 4th gen jet fighters.
I'm sure the Soviets would have used exactly this method, saving their more advanced aircraft (and more experienced pilots) for offensive operations.
Although if you really want to down the F-35 for a reasonable cost, you track it and avoid it (long-wave radar is plenty good enough for this)... and sent those fifty fighters after the KC-10 or KC-135 supporting it. No refueling and those F-35s don't come back.
Vulcan wrote: Excellent point. If you're nuking Missouri, the world is fethed and no military capabilities matter anymore because we're all dead.
Far from all of us. Many would die in such a war, without a doubt. But there would still be loads of people left as well.
Sure, there would be small bands of survivors. There wouldn't be anything left with which to support even WWII aircraft for very long, much less repair and maintain stealth aircraft and/or drones and missiles.
The vast majority of the world population would survive actually. Assuming a war between the US and Russia or China, even most of the population in those countries would survive unless either one of the warring parties is stupid and decides to blow their entire arsenal in one go (which would leave them very vulnerable to future attacks), and even then there would be lots of survivors since neither of those countries has the nuclear arsenal to destroy every single city and town in the other country. Supporting WW2-style aircraft would certainly still be possible. It is quite easy to build those in a converted civilian factory. But yeah, stealth aircraft would be out of the question, which is the point I was making about how complicated designs are useless in total war.
Vulcan wrote: Excellent point. If you're nuking Missouri, the world is fethed and no military capabilities matter anymore because we're all dead.
Far from all of us. Many would die in such a war, without a doubt. But there would still be loads of people left as well.
Sure, there would be small bands of survivors. There wouldn't be anything left with which to support even WWII aircraft for very long, much less repair and maintain stealth aircraft and/or drones and missiles.
The vast majority of the world population would survive actually. Assuming a war between the US and Russia or China, even most of the population in those countries would survive unless either one of the warring parties is stupid and decides to blow their entire arsenal in one go (which would leave them very vulnerable to future attacks), and even then there would be lots of survivors since neither of those countries has the nuclear arsenal to destroy every single city and town in the other country. Supporting WW2-style aircraft would certainly still be possible. It is quite easy to build those in a converted civilian factory. But yeah, stealth aircraft would be out of the question, which is the point I was making about how complicated designs are useless in total war.
If Russia or China launches a nuclear strike against the US, it also has to strike against every NATO country as the US has nuclear weapons in many of those countries, not to mention the countries own stockpiles. The US currently has around 1,800 strategic nuclear warheads currently deployed. The UK has around 120, France has between 200 and 300. Russia has around 1,600. Even without its allies, the US has Russia outgunned.
Also, nuclear war requires you to strike with everything you have, as there will not be the infrastructure in place to reliably launch a secondary wave of attacks except from autonomous delivery systems like submarines once your enemy retaliates with their own nuclear arsenal.
It's unlikely that, even in the event of a nuclear conflict that everything would actually get launched/implemented/used.
It is more likely the world would be heavily changed, but would continue to exist, even on fringes and in distant areas. We, as a race have already detonated 2200+ hydrogen/atomic/fusion/nuclear etc. weapons just in testing. The world still exists. I know there's a huge difference in tests and actual nuclear war - but it would take something special to actually eliminate the human race.
Now, ruining the entire world for thousands of years to come? Yes..that would happen for sure.
I'd like to see the half assed warlord who can afford 50 4th gen jet fighters.
Depends on where you buy. Flanker L, brand new and fully modernized will set you back about 10 million used or 30million new and 15,000 dollars an hour ish to fly, compared to the F-35's Debatable price tag (since it keeps changing) but around 100million to 120 million (though they swear it's gonna get cheaper) and 40,000 an hour to fly. meaning you can field 5 jets for the same cost as the F-35, which is still enough that the F-35 will run out of ammo before you run out of planes to throw at it.
Israel noted this issue with the F-35 when they dialed back their order recently in favor of the F-15, which they've announced plans to build up a huge force of instead.
Yep. The F-35 is going to be very good at what it does once they get the kinks worked out... but completely unaffordable as a major portion of your air force. The majority of the work is going to be done by legacy airframes, and upgrades thereof, because there will never be enough F-35s to go around.
I'd like to see the half assed warlord who can afford 50 4th gen jet fighters.
Depends on where you buy. Flanker L, brand new and fully modernized will set you back about 10 million used or 30million new and 15,000 dollars an hour ish to fly
I am going to assume that if you going to be bargain shopping, you'll have to assume that the quality of pilots and their training will be done at a bargain as well.
That is why I think the US is so far ahead and pulling out even further ahead of everyone else. Its not just the technology, but the fact that we've been at war for so long, and train longer and harder than everyone else. Its one thing to theorize what you might do with your forces, its another to execute it. The US has much more experience at executing than everyone else. So even if country X could load up on Flanker L's for cheap, it doesn't mean they would be able to use them to their full advantage. And chances are, its not going to be a F-35 versus the Flanker L on the Flanker L's terms. The Flanker is probably going to be a bit blind while the F-35 knows everything that is going on.
That is why I think the US is so far ahead and pulling out even further ahead of everyone else. Its not just the technology, but the fact that we've been at war for so long, and train longer and harder than everyone else. Its one thing to theorize what you might do with your forces, its another to execute it.
That's great, but according to the pentagon's own estimates for the sort of war everyone here is talking about, those experienced pilots will all be dead or otherwise incapacitated in the first six hours of the war. And that's the sunniest, most feel-good, numbers.
The side that wins is the side that can replace losses fastest.
Also, just, fyi: if how you think the US is ahead was how war worked, in a peer on peer sort of war, we'd all be living in a world where Nazi Germany and Japan won WW2.
Anyone know why the Marines don't use ramps like the Brits and others do? I don't think the marines use catapults but I could be wrong. Seems like the ramps would help.
BaronIveagh wrote: That's great, but according to the pentagon's own estimates for the sort of war everyone here is talking about, those experienced pilots will all be dead or otherwise incapacitated in the first six hours of the war. And that's the sunniest, most feel-good, numbers.
Which is another argument in favor of drones. Drone spam allows you to very quickly increase your effective manpower by having a small number of human operators controlling a whole fleet of drones, and allows the vast majority of the first-six-hours losses to be taken by expendable munitions instead of experienced human pilots. Who cares if the drone fleet suffers 95% losses as long as it gets the job done.
The side that wins is the side that can replace losses fastest.
There is no such thing as replacing losses in a modern war between peer-level states. Modern aircraft simply take way too long to build and modern weapons are too destructive to allow a war to continue that long. And cheap WWII-level expendable replacement garbage is worthless. It doesn't matter how many P-51 equivalents you can build with your low-tech factories, a single surviving F-35 (or drone figher) can kill an infinite number of them with zero chance of getting shot down, limited only by its need to return to base and rearm for another attack. Once the initial massacre happens the winner is the side that still has surviving reserves. And that's an argument for building reserves up front (including hordes of expendable drones), not for some bizarre attempt to build primitive weapons mid-war.
KTG17 wrote: I don't think that is a fair comparison. Germany and Japan's ability to strike the US was really limited. And today, the US can strike anywhere.
And that has anything to do with anything I just said? Distance has nothing to do with anything, it's the ability to replace loses. The harder it is to replace a loss, the greater the disadvantage every single loss imparts. This is why a Sherman you can produce a thousand of, and replace a transmission by removing four bolts, is superior to a Tiger you can make one of, and that same damage sends it back to the factory because it can't be repaired in the field.
Anyone know why the Marines don't use ramps like the Brits and others do? I don't think the marines use catapults but I could be wrong. Seems like the ramps would help.
Because the Navy operates the Marines ships? Or possibly because the Wasp class double as helicopter carriers which don't require ski jumps?
BaronIveagh wrote: Distance has nothing to do with anything, it's the ability to replace loses.
And distance is a huge factor in replacing losses. The US could easily replace all of its losses in WWII because its entire manufacturing industry was immune to attack. Germany and Japan could, at best, attempt to sink convoys carrying replacements to the battlefield. They couldn't do anything to slow the actual manufacturing of new equipment. The same is not true in a hypothetical modern war, Russia and China have the ability to destroy US industry.
KTG17 wrote: I don't think that is a fair comparison. Germany and Japan's ability to strike the US was really limited. And today, the US can strike anywhere.
And that has anything to do with anything I just said? Distance has nothing to do with anything, it's the ability to replace loses.
Correct, and neither Germany nor Japan could not impact the US's ability to manufacture tanks, ships, and airplanes, nor acquire natural resources, due to the distance involved. On the other hand, in the modern world, the US can strike anywhere on the planet in short notice.
Because the Navy operates the Marines ships? Or possibly because the Wasp class double as helicopter carriers which don't require ski jumps?
Jesus. Ok, why doesn't the navy use ski jumps on the amphibious assault ships, which have shorter decks like most of the world's navies who all seem to use them.
Peregrine wrote: by having a small number of human operators controlling a whole fleet of drones, and allows the vast majority of the first-six-hours losses to be taken by expendable munitions instead of experienced human pilots. Who cares if the drone fleet suffers 95% losses as long as it gets the job done.
When the human pilots are killed first because they're transmitting, making their stealth useless, you end up with 100% of the drone force dead, and not getting the job done.
Modern aircraft simply take way too long to build and modern weapons are too destructive to allow a war to continue that long. And cheap WWII-level expendable replacement garbage is worthless. It doesn't matter how many P-51 equivalents you can build with your low-tech factories, a single surviving F-35 (or drone figher) can kill an infinite number of them with zero chance of getting shot down, limited only by its need to return to base and rearm for another attack. Once the initial massacre happens the winner is the side that still has surviving reserves. And that's an argument for building reserves up front (including hordes of expendable drones), not for some bizarre attempt to build primitive weapons mid-war.
God Himself Could Not Shoot Down This Plane!
I'm not going to bother, the arrogance has gotten too great and breached the fantasy barrier. I'm Out.
Not really. When we've reached the point that one plane will annihilate an infinite number of other planes, we've abandoned reality and there's no point in even trying to carry on a conversation.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think you might feel differently about the F-35 after you have flown it. Why not take one out for a spin? Just tell them you are thinking of buying one and just want to test drive before signing the dotted line.
BaronIveagh wrote: That's great, but according to the pentagon's own estimates for the sort of war everyone here is talking about, those experienced pilots will all be dead or otherwise incapacitated in the first six hours of the war. And that's the sunniest, most feel-good, numbers.
Which is another argument in favor of drones. Drone spam allows you to very quickly increase your effective manpower by having a small number of human operators controlling a whole fleet of drones, and allows the vast majority of the first-six-hours losses to be taken by expendable munitions instead of experienced human pilots. Who cares if the drone fleet suffers 95% losses as long as it gets the job done.
The side that wins is the side that can replace losses fastest.
There is no such thing as replacing losses in a modern war between peer-level states. Modern aircraft simply take way too long to build and modern weapons are too destructive to allow a war to continue that long. And cheap WWII-level expendable replacement garbage is worthless. It doesn't matter how many P-51 equivalents you can build with your low-tech factories, a single surviving F-35 (or drone figher) can kill an infinite number of them with zero chance of getting shot down, limited only by its need to return to base and rearm for another attack. Once the initial massacre happens the winner is the side that still has surviving reserves. And that's an argument for building reserves up front (including hordes of expendable drones), not for some bizarre attempt to build primitive weapons mid-war.
No, that single surviving F-35 or drone won't be killing anything because it has no base to take off from or return to, and a base that can support such advanced aircraft will take many years to set up, only for your precious surviving fighter to then be shot down by a surviving enemy SAM system, leaving you with nothing. And that is presuming the enemy doesn't decide your surviving high-tech weapon system isn't enough of a priority target to send in one of the missiles they kept back just for such an occasion. And even if your remaining drone fighter somehow survive all of that the P-51s will win the war because your drones will run out of munitions after a day. The thing is that modern warfare is so destructive that you won't have any reserves that survive the initial days of the war. If you build up reserves the enemy is just going to destroy them as well. It takes just a single ICBM to take destroy an entire depot full of expensive drones. You can't outbuild or effectively defend against the destructive power of massed nuclear weapons. That is why you need to make sure you can get up quickly again after the hit inevitably knocks you down. The one who gets up the fastest again wins the fight. And that is before going into the fact that you simply can't build up reserves of F-35s or drone jets because they are too expensive for that.
Yeah, that thing about one modern plane killing an infinite number of other planes is possibly true if you start that mindgame with all planes armed and fueled at cruising altitude. However, as soon as logistics come into it...What was the number mentioned earlier in this thread, it costs 40,000 $ an hour to fly an F-35? That's most probably because it has replacement parts that are made from increasingly complex alloys in increasingly complex processes, meaning the supply chain to keep that one F-35 shooting down Zeros or 109s or P-51s is quite long.
During the Katanga conflict in the Congo, the separatists used a Fouga Magister training jet and literally rigged two machine guns to that thing on the spot. The unexpected aerial threat managed to take out a bunch of newer-era fighter jets and support planes by shooting them on their airfield, with nothing more than what I assume is .50cal bullets. And damn, THOSE are easy to make compared to F-35 replacement parts and all the sensory equipment and parts for AMRAAMs and Sidewinder missiles...
Plus the F-35 has to rearm every 4 shots. Which means it is landing somewhere and refueling and rearming. Which means the other 46 planes have ample opportunity to find it and shoot it on the tarmac, or as its taking off and use heat seeking missiles which don't care about yo stealth.
Even if you manage to survive a nuclear conflict with a single F-35, the chance of you having the infrastructure to support it even in the short term in nil. Lockheed Martan is almost certainly on the "Nuke this first" list.
One fighter against an Empire? That's just crazy enough to work.
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
That being said, isn't this thread getting a bit off track? I much preferred hearing about the various 4th gens and 5th gens being compared to the F-35 in terms of costs and combat capabilities.
All fighters are worthless if they don't have a base.
'Best fighter to operate after a nuclear war' seems deserving of its own thread.
Not really. When we've reached the point that one plane will annihilate an infinite number of other planes, we've abandoned reality and there's no point in even trying to carry on a conversation.
Agreed. The F-35 pops five older fighters (four with missiles, one with it's gun), returns to base to rearm... and gets strafed on the ground by fighters 6 to... well, however many there are.
So basically some of you are saying that one day an F-35 is going to be launched into combat and the enemy is going to launch 50 fighters in response, the F-35 will shoot down 4 enemy fighters, turn tail and run back to its base, where the remaining 46 fighters are going to follow it and blow it up while it’s re-arming and re-fueling?
Meanwhile the rest of the US military is going to be sitting this one out? Sounds reasonable.
KTG17 wrote: So basically some of you are saying that one day an F-35 is going to be launched into combat and the enemy is going to launch 50 fighters in response, the F-35 will shoot down 4 enemy fighters, turn tail and run back to its base, where the remaining 46 fighters are going to follow it and blow it up while it’s re-arming and re-fueling?
Meanwhile the rest of the US military is going to be sitting this one out? Sounds reasonable.
Please, continue.
I think we are saying there ARE benefits to buying a bunch of last-gen fighters comparaed to one next-gen fighter apart from the obvious disadvantage in open combat. We are just using extreme examples to show those advantages.
Witzkatz wrote: During the Katanga conflict in the Congo, the separatists used a Fouga Magister training jet and literally rigged two machine guns to that thing on the spot. The unexpected aerial threat managed to take out a bunch of newer-era fighter jets and support planes by shooting them on their airfield, with nothing more than what I assume is .50cal bullets. And damn, THOSE are easy to make compared to F-35 replacement parts and all the sensory equipment and parts for AMRAAMs and Sidewinder missiles...
Or the Biafra rebels that Swedish Count von Rosen wanted to help - by flying in a few light prop trainers armed with bolted-on rocket pods. The government lost several of their shiny MiGs on the ground.
KTG17 wrote: So basically some of you are saying that one day an F-35 is going to be launched into combat and the enemy is going to launch 50 fighters in response, the F-35 will shoot down 4 enemy fighters, turn tail and run back to its base, where the remaining 46 fighters are going to follow it and blow it up while it’s re-arming and re-fueling?
Meanwhile the rest of the US military is going to be sitting this one out? Sounds reasonable.
Please, continue.
No. We were discussing the claim that in the event you survived a nuclear war with one F35 you would allegedly be able to take on an infinite number of inferior fighters
KTG17 wrote: So basically some of you are saying that one day an F-35 is going to be launched into combat and the enemy is going to launch 50 fighters in response, the F-35 will shoot down 4 enemy fighters, turn tail and run back to its base, where the remaining 46 fighters are going to follow it and blow it up while it’s re-arming and re-fueling?
Meanwhile the rest of the US military is going to be sitting this one out? Sounds reasonable.
Please, continue.
Probably going to be more like 50 F-35s in one place with AWACS and tanker support. To afford the 50 F-35s in all the trouble spots the rest of the Air Force is gutted. Around 500 or so Chinese or Russian (who else would be a peer-level fight?) will launch against them. Sure, the F-35s will decimate the ones they engage, and the other 200 will take down the AWACS and tankers. After which the F-35s never reach base, having ran out of fuel...
No. We were discussing the claim that in the event you survived a nuclear war with one F35 you would allegedly be able to take on an infinite number of inferior fighters
Whereas those of us who bother to learn about this gak know that the most advanced army in the world can be beaten to death with stones once they are outnumbered past a critical point.
Meanwhile the rest of the US military is going to be sitting this one out?
Based on projections, dying messily.
The current projections for a war with China, Russia, and/or North Korea would make it the most costly in terms of casualties in the history of American arms. Numbers over 90% casualties get bandied about.
To be honest, the most effective use of the current military in this scenario is to serve as officers for draftees.
Kilkrazy wrote: Where's the losing side on this global nuclear war getting its infinite number of inferior fighters?
Sorry, but the whole debate has been obfuscated to the point of complete iverisimilitude.
Well, first of all they aren't the losing side. Secondly, they get their fighters from factories. Light prop fighters like a P-51 are a million times more easy to produce than a highly advanced multi-million dollar 5th-gen F-35. After a nuclear exchance, which is what a total war would come down to, most of the vital military-industrial infrastructure of both warring sides would be in ruins. In such circumstances, restarting the production of F-35 fighters would be impossible. But the production of something as simple as P-51s on the other hand is something that could be set up quite quickly with limited means.
Iron_Captain wrote: But the production of something as simple as P-51s on the other hand is something that could be set up quite quickly with limited means.
Except for that tiny problem that, in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has annihilated modern infrastructure and industry, everyone is going to be far too busy trying to avoid starving to death to deal with irrelevant things like building fighters to go attack some other country (where everyone is also starving to death).
Also no, it isn't easy to set up factories to build something like a P-51. Easier than F-35 factories, sure, but still dependent on modern infrastructure and supporting industries. It still requires precision manufacturing, raw material supplies, skilled labor, etc. You aren't going to build that all from scratch, and if it exists pre-war it's at the bottom of a mushroom cloud.
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Vulcan wrote: Probably going to be more like 50 F-35s in one place with AWACS and tanker support. To afford the 50 F-35s in all the trouble spots the rest of the Air Force is gutted. Around 500 or so Chinese or Russian (who else would be a peer-level fight?) will launch against them. Sure, the F-35s will decimate the ones they engage, and the other 200 will take down the AWACS and tankers. After which the F-35s never reach base, having ran out of fuel...
The sort of "build your industry from scratch post-nuclear-war" fighter being proposed can't even reach the cruising speed/altitude of the tankers or AWACS planes. Nor can they out-run modern SAMs, have sufficient speed and endurance to chase the F-35s back to their bases, etc. To make any kind of realistic threat to even the easiest modern targets you need semi-modern jet fighters that aren't meaningfully easier to build or support compared to the F-35. If you can't build and support F-35s because your industry has all been nuked you sure as hell aren't going to be putting any MiG-21 clones in the air.
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BaronIveagh wrote: When the human pilots are killed first because they're transmitting, making their stealth useless, you end up with 100% of the drone force dead, and not getting the job done.
You do know that drones can be controlled remotely, right? If China is launching ICBMs at bases in the US to kill the drone operators, well, I think it's safe to say that WWIII has started and aircraft of any kind are irrelevant.
Yes, they'll nuke each other into non-existence and not one human will survive to take up arms. Assuming they don't, however...
Even conventional weapons are too deadly for new production to matter. We aren't carpet bombing the entire region around a factory and hoping to score lucky hits, factories are going to be a primary target and quickly destroyed. Meanwhile battlefield losses are going to be so absurdly high that the slaughter can't continue for months/years, there just won't be anything left by that point. In a modern war you have what you start the war with and you'd better hope it's enough.
God Himself Could Not Shoot Down This Plane!
I'm not going to bother, the arrogance has gotten too great and breached the fantasy barrier. I'm Out.
Sigh. The F-35 is literally invulnerable to attack in the air against your proposed P-51 swarm. It is significantly faster, can fly significantly higher, can detect the enemy at much longer range, and can engage from far beyond the range of any possible return fire. It can kill P-51s at will, and effortlessly disengage if anything miraculously gets into a position to threaten it. It's a sign of your concession of defeat that, rather than suggesting any believable way that it could possibly lose in the air, you insist on destroying the F-35 on the ground and assume that it won't have any ground-based defenses (all of which can also slaughter P-51s in obscene numbers) protecting the base.
(Too bad you dismissed the idea of a swarm of expendable drones, because your horde of suicide P-51s is far better done by drones.)
Except for that tiny problem that, in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has annihilated modern infrastructure and industry, everyone is going to be far too busy trying to avoid starving to death to deal with irrelevant things like building fighters to go attack some other country (where everyone is also starving to death).
Also no, it isn't easy to set up factories to build something like a P-51. Easier than F-35 factories, sure, but still dependent on modern infrastructure and supporting industries. It still requires precision manufacturing, raw material supplies, skilled labor, etc. You aren't going to build that all from scratch, and if it exists pre-war it's at the bottom of a mushroom cloud.
Yep, yep, another nuke every fifteen feet. You do realize that to kill enough factories to prevent this, you'd have to ignore all military targets. Nukes aren't infinite either.
In reality quite a bit of infrastructure and even factories would survive. While I'm sure the worlds single Abrams factory would be primary target, and Lockheed would likely also be on the receiving end, raw materials would be the toughest part. Unless you're along the Great Lakes or mid Atlantic states. Then it's just a matter of patching some roads and getting lake trade moving again. Unless you think that Russia or China an launch enough nukes to boil the great lakes dry...
In the area outside the AOE for the nuking of Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo, (assuming 10 Megaton hits, in reality they would likely be a larger number of smaller nukes) there are still 28 mines that produce the correct raw materials, three steel mills, four tube mills, two dozen factories capable of producing the required components (some already work for the US military) and at least two hydro plants. There's also untold acres of Amish farms in PA that give no feths about fuel and would be clear enough of radiation to produce viable crops. There's even oil and refining capability (Albeit in small amounts)
The sort of "build your industry from scratch post-nuclear-war" fighter being proposed can't even reach the cruising speed/altitude of the tankers or AWACS planes.
Really? Because the KC-767 isn't faster, doesn't fly higher and most certainly not better armed than even a Mig-15. Which was produced under pretty close to the conditions you describe.
You do know that drones can be controlled remotely, right? If China is launching ICBMs at bases in the US to kill the drone operators, well, I think it's safe to say that WWIII has started and aircraft of any kind are irrelevant.
You do realize that you don't have to do that to stop US drones,right? Let' say that the US is fighting China. China detonates a nuke over the Pacific at about 400km above the surface and that's it for the drones. The antennae that they require for remote operation fry their circuits like an electric chair. I'm aware that many systems are hardened against EMP, but 'hardened against EMP' is like the word 'bulletproof'. There are degrees, and the more cables and antennae, the less EMP proof it is.
Also, back to the F-35: How exactly do you intend it to shoot down infinite anything when for every hour of flight time, it takes 50 hours of maintenance?
KTG17 wrote: If China detonates a nuke anywhere its going to be the end of civilization anyway. So who cares.
That is honestly the one weird thing about these times we live in - it is really questionable what amount of regular military force will be useful in what kind of situation, because everyone agrees there is a certain point - use of nuclear weapons - where Earth as we know it will just be done. And nobody can be a 100% sure where and when that point will be reached, and what military tools will be actually employed until that point.
I mean, for centuries - centuries! - people might've discussed the advantages of this way of smithing a sword over that way of smithing a sword, or using this wood for a bow instead of that wood for a bow, and it any advantage always made sense to pursue, because wars were fought in a certain way. With the advent of nukes, this has changed dramatically, with no one having the final answer in this. I feel the large militaries in the world are just going ahead developing non-nuclear weapons "just in case" and for use in these asymmetric low-intensity conflicts, but at some point the result might really just be "gg wp, nukes are being launched, no one cares how many billions you put into your last-gen's super-fighters ECCM module now"
Honestly makes me think about the general, strategic goals behind military development.
I think to have as many nukes as we do is a waste of money. The US can kill everything on the planet 17 times over. What is the point of the 16 additional times? I don't care how many China or Russia has, we have enough to kill everyone. So what is the point. There is never going to be a limited nuclear strike against someone who can retaliate. So you will have to go all in, and assume the same will happen to you.
So I just don't see it ever happening. Even in the instance where one captial is endanger of falling through conventional means, I highly doubt the trigger will be pulled. Its essentially committing suicide. I guess unless you are Hitler. But I imagine peeps will want to negotiate the end of the war before making the decision to kill everyone on the planet.
Witzkatz wrote: Honestly makes me think about the general, strategic goals behind military development.
One perspective might be that whilst you are engaging in an asymmetrical war, the opponent you are fighting against may be receiving support from another world power.
Hypothetically, let's say the US got involved in the war in Ukraine. It supplies planes and pilots to provide air support for Ukrainian government forces. The Ukrainian rebels have received material support from Russia, including anti-air missile systems. So the US planes need to be able to defeat that anti-air system.
In other words, whilst the great powers may not engage in official wars with each other, their equipment may end up pitted against each other and they are trying to ensure that in such an event they come out on top.
Exactly, equipment might be used in a proxy war. But many of these discussion points we had in the last pages were concerned with a "full-on" war, and I'd argue that a lot of the wars we've seen over the last years and decades were still comparably (!) low-intensity to wars like WW2, or even compared to Korea or Vietnam.
I feel that, if wars are staying as localized as they've been lately, many factors of war don't come into play, namely how a country deals with attrition of expensive equipment, how it deals with weapon/tank/plane factories being hit, resource logistics being hit and so forth.
I guess what I'm saying is - with the US, Russia, China and partially the EU being the big military producers, wars not directly involving those countries will never see the destruction of manufacturing capabilites or associated supply lines, things that mattered a LOT in previous wars. (For example the lack of oil for Germany in WW2, lack of aluminum for aircraft everywhere, etc.) So now we are having arguments around how complex and complicated a fighter jet might be, and how much of a disadvantage these complexities are, and I feel a little bit like it might never be relevant - stuff can be almost as complex as it wants to be if in case A the factories and supply lines are never directly involved in a war and there's never enough attrition to warrant a faster rate of producing weaponry - and in case B everything is going away in nuclear fire.
That's one of these big differences to previous wars. And it fits in with my earlier complaint about just having 20 Eurofighters active or somesuch - the question is really if you'll ever need more with the comparably-localized, semi-proxy, semi-low-intensity wars we are having, because any escalation affecting USA/EU/Russia/China directly will probably be game over.
Iron_Captain wrote: But the production of something as simple as P-51s on the other hand is something that could be set up quite quickly with limited means.
Except for that tiny problem that, in the aftermath of a nuclear war that has annihilated modern infrastructure and industry, everyone is going to be far too busy trying to avoid starving to death to deal with irrelevant things like building fighters to go attack some other country (where everyone is also starving to death).
Also no, it isn't easy to set up factories to build something like a P-51. Easier than F-35 factories, sure, but still dependent on modern infrastructure and supporting industries. It still requires precision manufacturing, raw material supplies, skilled labor, etc. You aren't going to build that all from scratch, and if it exists pre-war it's at the bottom of a mushroom cloud.
Starving to death? No sorry, but to destroy infrastructure to such a degree that an entire country the size of the US starves to death you'd need like a million more nukes than there are on the world right now. Apart from just nuking military and government targets, you'd need to nuke small towns, farms, roads, bridges, mines, railways etc. No country in the world has enough nukes to do that. Lots of infrastructure, including all military, would be destroyed in a nuclear war, but the majority of civilian infrastructure would survive.
BaronIveagh wrote: When the human pilots are killed first because they're transmitting, making their stealth useless, you end up with 100% of the drone force dead, and not getting the job done.
You do know that drones can be controlled remotely, right? If China is launching ICBMs at bases in the US to kill the drone operators, well, I think it's safe to say that WWIII has started and aircraft of any kind are irrelevant.
Yes, they'll nuke each other into non-existence and not one human will survive to take up arms. Assuming they don't, however...
Even conventional weapons are too deadly for new production to matter. We aren't carpet bombing the entire region around a factory and hoping to score lucky hits, factories are going to be a primary target and quickly destroyed. Meanwhile battlefield losses are going to be so absurdly high that the slaughter can't continue for months/years, there just won't be anything left by that point. In a modern war you have what you start the war with and you'd better hope it's enough.pp
Yeah, the factory will be destroyed. But since you did not carpet bomb the entire region, what is stopping the enemy from simply building a new factory in the ruins of the old, that you won't be able to destroy because you ran out of missiles?
Nothing. There will be nothing to stop a country from continuing the war effort after the initial exchange has exhausted the arsenals of both sides. The deadliness of modern weapons, combined with their small number, is exactly why new production would be more important than ever. It means that in a modern war, very little of a nation's standing military and military infrastructure is going to survive. However, it also means that all nations are going to be running out of weapon systems very quickly. And every factory and every tank and every aircraft you can build after the enemy has used up his weapons is something they will have lots of issues dealing with.
I'm not going to bother, the arrogance has gotten too great and breached the fantasy barrier. I'm Out.
Sigh. The F-35 is literally invulnerable to attack in the air against your proposed P-51 swarm. It is significantly faster, can fly significantly higher, can detect the enemy at much longer range, and can engage from far beyond the range of any possible return fire. It can kill P-51s at will, and effortlessly disengage if anything miraculously gets into a position to threaten it. It's a sign of your concession of defeat that, rather than suggesting any believable way that it could possibly lose in the air, you insist on destroying the F-35 on the ground and assume that it won't have any ground-based defenses (all of which can also slaughter P-51s in obscene numbers) protecting the base.
(Too bad you dismissed the idea of a swarm of expendable drones, because your horde of suicide P-51s is far better done by drones.)
Dear Peregrine, sorry to disappoint, but that F-35 isn't going to have any ground defences protecting it (aside from heavy machine guns, AA cannons and whatever relatively low-tech weapons survived the nuclear exchange or could be produced afterwards), nor is it even going to have a base, because those have been destroyed by a nuclear ICBM. And that is why the P-51s win. Because the F-35 isn't even going to be able to leave the ground after a nuclear exchange. And even if it does, it's weapons load is minimal so it won't be able to do much damage to a formation of P-51s, which will then be able follow it back to its base. And even if they then fail to destroy the F-35, the F-35 is now useless anyway because it has run out of irreplaceable missiles.
At best, if you would have some surviving F-35s or other high-tech weapon systems left after a nuclear exchange, they will go out in an impressive last blaze of glory where they will destroy quite a few technologically inferior opponents before running out of irreplaceable weapons or spare parts. More likely however is that they are simply going to sit around being useless because you do not have the logistics to put them in the air at all.
KTG17 wrote: So basically some of you are saying that one day an F-35 is going to be launched into combat and the enemy is going to launch 50 fighters in response, the F-35 will shoot down 4 enemy fighters, turn tail and run back to its base, where the remaining 46 fighters are going to follow it and blow it up while it’s re-arming and re-fueling?
Meanwhile the rest of the US military is going to be sitting this one out? Sounds reasonable.
Please, continue.
I think we are saying there ARE benefits to buying a bunch of last-gen fighters comparaed to one next-gen fighter apart from the obvious disadvantage in open combat. We are just using extreme examples to show those advantages.
F-15E, F-22, the F-18(all varients), the EA-18g will see active service until a minimum of 2030 according to DOD with the EA-18G, F-35A and the F-18/A all being the next gen group that will remain beyond that date.
Vulcan wrote: Probably going to be more like 50 F-35s in one place with AWACS and tanker support. To afford the 50 F-35s in all the trouble spots the rest of the Air Force is gutted. Around 500 or so Chinese or Russian (who else would be a peer-level fight?) will launch against them. Sure, the F-35s will decimate the ones they engage, and the other 200 will take down the AWACS and tankers. After which the F-35s never reach base, having ran out of fuel...
The sort of "build your industry from scratch post-nuclear-war" fighter being proposed can't even reach the cruising speed/altitude of the tankers or AWACS planes. Nor can they out-run modern SAMs, have sufficient speed and endurance to chase the F-35s back to their bases, etc. To make any kind of realistic threat to even the easiest modern targets you need semi-modern jet fighters that aren't meaningfully easier to build or support compared to the F-35. If you can't build and support F-35s because your industry has all been nuked you sure as hell aren't going to be putting any MiG-21 clones in the air.
Granted. Of course, my scenario is mainly applicable to pre-nuclear holocaust conflict, 50 F-35s vs. 500 Soviet-era MiG and Sukhoi fighters is not so unthinkable. And even a MiG-15 should be able to down a tanker or AWACs...
I agree with you on the odds of P-51s going into production anytime soon after a nuclear war. What few survivors make it won't be building anything much beyond the sixteenth century (unless they can kitbash it from whatever's lying around) for a good decade or so... minimum. But then, the F-35s will all be blown up, or out of ammo and fuel, very shortly after such a war as well, and every bit as irrelevant as the P-51 swarm that will never be built.
I recently learned that, in the last days of the war, the production of Bf 109 fighters was done to a significant portion by concentration camp labor. As jarring (and full-on cliché evil empire) as that is, it makes you wonder about how difficult it is to build reasonable airplanes if you have blueprints, an engineer who knows something about aviation, and a few primary tools and machines intact...
Witzkatz wrote: I recently learned that, in the last days of the war, the production of Bf 109 fighters was done to a significant portion by concentration camp labor. As jarring (and full-on cliché evil empire) as that is, it makes you wonder about how difficult it is to build reasonable airplanes if you have blueprints, an engineer who knows something about aviation, and a few primary tools and machines intact...
Its definitely doable. And easier if your labor force is a willing participant, even if they are unskilled and are only following rote instructions.
The truly difficult part is maintaining a supply chain that can keep you supplied with raw materials. Organizing the whole system is where the real struggle will be.
Yeah not to mention refining the oil for the fuel. But while we're dreaming I guess we can assume that will happen.
BTW, is anyone familiar with the old RPG Gamma World? Its prob gone through a couple of versions since the good old 80s. It was a pretty dark and scary concept when you think about it. Its hard to be a fan of stories like that or Mad Max and so on, when you consider the amount of destruction that has to take place for those stories to get going.
But it does make me wonder what the world would be like a couple hundred years after a full blown nuclear war. Lets say pockets of peeps survive in Africa, South American, South Pacific Islands, etc. Or maybe on all the continents. Imagine what the first empires might be like. Anyone familiar with SF3D?
So I am not taking in the immediate years following a nuclear war, but some time after it when what is left of mankind starts getting back on its feet. I don't think for a moment they will be as advanced as SF3D, but would they be able to build P-51s or something like it? Perhaps. Prob not many tho. But it is interesting to imagine what a second industrial age might look like.
Reminds me of. . .
And part of the problem for the survivors is how much is stored on computers these days. No one is going to be pulling information off of 200 year old hard drives. While you could dig up a scroll from 2000 years ago and read the news, the same isn't going to happen with a junk of plastic and rusted metal, with info in 1s and 0s that no one is going to understand even if they could pull any info off them. Old books will be the big deal, but I doubt the complex know-how knowledge is even printed anymore. So mankind knowledge would def be reset in a big way.
The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.
Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.
To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.
I think that would depend on your definition of "end of civilization". While I agree (and responded earlier to that effect) that we would not wipe mankind from the face of the Earth even in a full blown nuclear engagement, the world as we know it would cease to exist.
Eradicating the major world powers would turn the entire world structure on its head. Instantly destabilized world markets, massive refugee floods, striking poverty, loss of oil/natural gas/energy to major countries dependent on Russia, etc. It's fair to say that the way we envision human existence would be radically upended.
Elbows wrote: I think that would depend on your definition of "end of civilization". While I agree (and responded earlier to that effect) that we would not wipe mankind from the face of the Earth even in a full blown nuclear engagement, the world as we know it would cease to exist.
Eradicating the major world powers would turn the entire world structure on its head. Instantly destabilized world markets, massive refugee floods, striking poverty, loss of oil/natural gas/energy to major countries dependent on Russia, etc. It's fair to say that the way we envision human existence would be radically upended.
That being said, yes, humans would persist.
Fact is that there is so few nuclear weapons that even the major world powers would be merely heavily damaged rather than eradicated. They might lose their major population centres, infrastructure and a lot of their population, but a country can survive that (Poland and Belarus in WW2 are good examples) and recover quickly. You would get market destabilisation and massive refugee floods, but we saw that in WW2 as well without it bringing about the end of civilisation as we know it. Governments would act to prevent the destabilised market from destroying the economy as they did in WW2 (nationalisation of foreign assets, reducing reliance on import/export etc.) and shelter refugees. It would really damage economic growth and our prosperity, lead to scarcity and rationing for years etc. but to say our entire existence would be radically upended is a bit overly apocalyptic. The past has shown Humans and governments to be quite resilient.
Iron_Captain wrote: The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.
Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.
To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.
One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.
One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.
And it wouldn't just be one, either...
This, in a nutshell. The bombs are only a third of the picture. Radiation is another third, and starvation the final. Certainly here in Europe, the food supply chains would break down excessively fast. Those in the blast radius get killed, those on the fringes burnt and blinded, those nearby hit with sufficient radioactivity to ensure they'll be dead within a few years, and those outside the immediate radius have to deal with the lack of any support infrastructure and contamination of their land from prevailing wind/ocean.
Don't get me wrong, I know that there'll be blind spots. Nukes are targeted based upon population density and military need. Bangor and the Outer Hebrides will likely be just fine (out of prevailing wind, access to ocean for foodstuffs, etc). But in the UK at least, I'd expect to lose 95% of the population within the first two years. Just one single Dong Feng detonating over the top of London alone would have over two million dead and over three and a half million casualties. Replicate that on all of our major and intermediate population centres (that's what, sixty missiles?), and the UK would have effectively ceased to exist. The Atlantic Wind would ensure that anything which hit Cardiff and Bristol would sweep radiation over the south (along with the odd missiles whacking into places like Exeter), and you'd have much the same scenario up and down the mainland. Even Scotland would take a few hits around Glasgow to help pollute the area.
Wherever you wanted to go in the UK more or less, you're just driving into more irradiated territory and starving people. Most of us would never make it. At best, we'd die riddled with cancer five years down the line. The countryside would be picked bare by survivors in weeks. If it was winter, the starvation process would be quicker still.
I don't know about the US and the rest of the world, but over here in the UK? We're pretty stuffed. There'd be nothing left but bunkers and a handful of small villages/towns along the western and northern coast. And given that if we're hit Ireland likely has been too, the people on the West Coast/Wales wouldn't be too healthy either after a few years. Birth deformities, higher cancer rates, reduced lifespan, etcetc. No, we'd be reduced to a pastoral community level really quite quickly. I daresay the government has some equipment and installations appropriately placed with that in mind to co-ordinate whatever was left; but it really would be a handful of villages/ hi-tech bunkers with supplies. Thinking ahead to how we'd reconstruct is an interesting thought exercise though.
The logical thing to do would be to put whatever heavy machinery is still left into use in Northern Scotland/ the West Coast immediately to dig additional bunkers/regional hubs for the pregnant and young. Use them as an administrative labour resource to co-ordinate what's going on outside; whilst assembling fishing fleets (seafood would be the most uncontaminated and boats can be constructed of wood). Rationing would be immediately instituted. Try and place whatever animal livestock is left in the most uncontaminated regions; likely sheep/goats on the various Scotch islands and a few shielded valleys in Wales. Resume coal mining for a power source and get a station or two up and running. The environment is already ruined by this stage after all; and it's the most suitable natural resource. Get some small wooden frames airborne for emergency transport purposes; all they need is a few lawnmower engines (limited fuel after all), canvas and wood. Try and develop some form of domestic wind turbine to keep the lights on at a small scale.
No, thinking it over, it could be done. You could start to rebuild. But it would be very miserable and hard going for a good decade or two afterwards, with scant luxuries. It would take two hundred years to reach our current state again.
Iron_Captain wrote: The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.
Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.
To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.
One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.
And it wouldn't just be one, either...
The dangers of radiation and nuclear fallout are often highly exaggerated as well. Chernobyl for example is far from unlivable. Crops grow in irradiated soil just fine. People in fact continue to live in Chernobyl with no significant problems, and the whole area is flourishing in flora and fauna. Sure, you might have a somewhat higher than average risk of developing cancer. But in the aftermath of a global nuclear war, will you care about that? Probably not. Same thing for cities like Hiroshima or Nagasaki, that were bombed directly. They never became unlivable and people continued to live there after the bomb fell. The radiation and fallout of a nuclear exchange would kill plenty of people, but it would not have any significant effect on people not living near an impact zone. If Cheyenne Mountain gets nuked, radiation might very well spread across the Great Plains, but no one is going to care about that little bit of radiation. I mean, what are they going to do about it? Stop eating food and starving themselves to death? You would see a higher incidence in cancer and birth defects, but nothing that really impacts the viability of Human habitation in the area. After the Chernobyl disaster, radiation spread across most of Europe as well. It hasn't led to the abandonment of Europe or the fall of Human civilisation there afaik.
Iron_Captain wrote: The destructiveness of nuclear war is usually incredibly overblown in fiction. The truth of the matter is that there is only a few thousand operational nuclear bombs in the entire world, divided between several different countries (mostly the US and Russia). Not nearly enough to make large countries collapse and bring about the end of civilisation as we know it.
Let's say if Russia's full operational strategic arsenal of 1,950 nuclear-tipped ICBMs and SLBMs hits the US. That is 1,950 military bases, airfields, cities, bunkers, factories etc. erased from the map. Is that anywhere near the entire US? The US has 3,035 cities with a population of over 10,000 people. Even in the extremely unlikely case where Russia spends its full arsenal on destroying US cities (rather than send most against military targets), there is going to be lots of places and lots of people left untouched.
To achieve total annihilation we'd have to go back to Cold War levels of nuclear weapons, where the US and the Soviet Union each had many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons aimed at each other.
One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.
One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.
And it wouldn't just be one, either...
This, in a nutshell. The bombs are only a third of the picture. Radiation is another third, and starvation the final. Certainly here in Europe, the food supply chains would break down excessively fast. Those in the blast radius get killed, those on the fringes burnt and blinded, those nearby hit with sufficient radioactivity to ensure they'll be dead within a few years, and those outside the immediate radius have to deal with the lack of any support infrastructure and contamination of their land from prevailing wind/ocean.
Don't get me wrong, I know that there'll be blind spots. Nukes are targeted based upon population density and military need. Bangor and the Outer Hebrides will likely be just fine (out of prevailing wind, access to ocean for foodstuffs, etc). But in the UK at least, I'd expect to lose 95% of the population within the first two years. Just one single Dong Feng detonating over the top of London alone would have over two million dead and over three and a half million casualties. Replicate that on all of our major and intermediate population centres (that's what, sixty missiles?), and the UK would have effectively ceased to exist. The Atlantic Wind would ensure that anything which hit Cardiff and Bristol would sweep radiation over the south (along with the odd missiles whacking into places like Exeter), and you'd have much the same scenario up and down the mainland. Even Scotland would take a few hits around Glasgow to help pollute the area.
Wherever you wanted to go in the UK more or less, you're just driving into more irradiated territory and starving people. Most of us would never make it. At best, we'd die riddled with cancer five years down the line. The countryside would be picked bare by survivors in weeks. If it was winter, the starvation process would be quicker still.
I don't know about the US and the rest of the world, but over here in the UK? We're pretty stuffed. There'd be nothing left but bunkers and a handful of small villages/towns along the western and northern coast. And given that if we're hit Ireland likely has been too, the people on the West Coast/Wales wouldn't be too healthy either after a few years. Birth deformities, higher cancer rates, reduced lifespan, etcetc. No, we'd be reduced to a pastoral community level really quite quickly. I daresay the government has some equipment and installations appropriately placed with that in mind to co-ordinate whatever was left; but it really would be a handful of villages/ hi-tech bunkers with supplies. Thinking ahead to how we'd reconstruct is an interesting thought exercise though.
The logical thing to do would be to put whatever heavy machinery is still left into use in Northern Scotland/ the West Coast immediately to dig additional bunkers/regional hubs for the pregnant and young. Use them as an administrative labour resource to co-ordinate what's going on outside; whilst assembling fishing fleets (seafood would be the most uncontaminated and boats can be constructed of wood). Rationing would be immediately instituted. Try and place whatever animal livestock is left in the most uncontaminated regions; likely sheep/goats on the various Scotch islands and a few shielded valleys in Wales. Resume coal mining for a power source and get a station or two up and running. The environment is already ruined by this stage after all; and it's the most suitable natural resource. Get some small wooden frames airborne for emergency transport purposes; all they need is a few lawnmower engines (limited fuel after all), canvas and wood. Try and develop some form of domestic wind turbine to keep the lights on at a small scale.
No, thinking it over, it could be done. You could start to rebuild. But it would be very miserable and hard going for a good decade or two afterwards, with scant luxuries.
Modern nukes, because of how they both work and are deployed actually generate fairly little fallout. Airbursts, because they're more efficient at killing people, are preferred to ground strikes, which generate more fallout but are less effective when it comes to actually killing people and destroying targets.
For example, if one were to detonate a Dong Feng 5 Megaton Nuke in an airburst over Pittsburgh, you would kill approximately 470,000 people, with a further 580,000 injured, give or take. If you were to waste the nuke in a ground strike, you'd only kill about 400,000 killed and only another 300,000 injured due to topography and the limits of the overpressure wave. Also due to topography, you'd have detectable fallout as far away as Prince Edward Island, but dangerous levels only about as far away as Salamanca, NY, assuming a 15mph wind from SE on the day of detonation. Also, remember that the fallout does not cover all the land between these points, but rather makes a long, sort of Comet tail shape.
In contract that very lethal airburst? Negligible fallout. as in near undetectable levels even in the immediate vicinity. This is due to the fact that he altitude at which the missile is most lethal also precludes the fireball from touching ground, which is how it generates fallout.
Maybe for the US it would be negligible. For the UK? The mainland is really quite small. Even France is almost three times larger than us. What would be a tiny smear of fallout in Russia or China would be highly problematic for us. Duplicate it sixty to a hundred times over all our major to intermediate centres, and there's little of the UK not affected.
Indeed. Nuclear war would actually be far less devastating than pop culture would have you believe. Would billions die? Yes, but only because modern vehicles would cease to function due to the EMP frying the computers necessary for cars and trucks to simply turn on. Which would lead to no ability to get food from farms to the people who remained alive. Which would lead to billions starving to death in the space of a month or so.
Once that first few weeks ended though, anybody left alive would have an easier time of it. And even areas that received lethal radiation exposure in the blasts would be relatively safe to enter.
The US would actually probably still be relatively intact.
Russia has about 6800 nukes(but only approximately 2000 are deployed. The rest are in storage). China has about 270 nukes. North Korea is estimated to have 15 or so. These are the only Nuclear powers which would launch at the US. The remainder are US allies.
That leaves just over 7000 nukes that could possibly be aimed towards the US and Western Europe, if every last one of them was successfully launched and didn't have any complications. 7000 nukes would run out quite fast if you were going for both Military and Civilian targets. Most targets would need several nukes to simply cover the whole thing, and some extras just in case some of the missiles failed.
Just take California civilian targets. It would take 5-8 nukes just for the city of San Franscisco, and another 4-5 each for Oakland and San Jose. Sacramento would need another 2-3. Los Angeles would require around 10 for the greater metropolitan area. Same for San Diego. Spare another 10 nukes for the various cities in the Central valley. So just hitting just the major cities in California has taken around 50 and you haven't even hit any military targets or accounted for some of the nukes having technical failures. Europe is also way more dense than the US, so you'd be using Nukes up rapidly.
So what realistically happens is the large urban areas of the targeted countries suffer direct strikes, killing large numbers of people but leaving the vast majority alive. Most if not all medium and small sized cities aren't targeted at all and only suffer the effect of the EMP, and minor fallout damage if any. The government and armed forces suffer great losses, but continue to function. Though they will lose control over many areas simply because they don't have enough manpower. Several states, particularly the ones worst hit by the bombs, probably cease to exist in any meaningful way. The smaller populated states, and thus those that aren't huge targets, would still function and remain part of the US government, though possibly broken up into smaller organizations.
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Ketara wrote: Maybe for the US it would be negligible. For the UK? The mainland is really quite small. Even France is almost three times larger than us. What would be a tiny smear of fallout in Russia or China would be highly problematic for us. Duplicate it sixty to a hundred times over all our major to intermediate centres, and there's little of the UK not affected.
Yeah, Europe would have it worse off because you are more urbanized. More people would die due to starvation in the weeks following the war.
Ketara wrote: Maybe for the US it would be negligible. For the UK? The mainland is really quite small. Even France is almost three times larger than us. What would be a tiny smear of fallout in Russia or China would be highly problematic for us. Duplicate it sixty to a hundred times over all our major to intermediate centres, and there's little of the UK not affected.
Ketara, let me try and explain this again: you probably have a puddle on your street that would mass more than the total fallout of a 5 megaton bomb. Assuming that the fireball did not touch ground.
For argument, I ran the number for dropping 32 5 megaton nukes on England. While casualties ran about 11million dead and 16 million injured, and not a single major city was left standing (For god Sake man, i was reduced to dropping a nuke on Swindon to try and drive the numbers up a bit), your fallout levels were.... well, maybe a bin full. You have to understand that a nuke detonated at optimal altitude incinerates most of it's radioactive material. If the fireball does not touch the ground, then fallout from a 5 megaton blast can fit in a gallon bucket.
If it's a rainy day in England, you may have black rain at ground zero, but would not have any appreciable fallout at all outside the blast zone.
Just take California civilian targets. It would take 5-8 nukes just for the city of San Franscisco, and another 4-5 each for Oakland and San Jose. Sacramento would need another 2-3. Los Angeles would require around 10 for the greater metropolitan area. Same for San Diego. Spare another 10 nukes for the various cities in the Central valley. So just hitting just the major cities in California has taken around 50 and you haven't even hit any military targets or accounted for some of the nukes having technical failures. Europe is also way more dense than the US, so you'd be using Nukes up rapidly.
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Your numbers are a bit high because you're using small nukes and/or trying to fit the entire metro area into the 75% kill zone. A single Dong Feng 5 (which I'm using as my standard Chinese nuke here) can cause minor casualties (20%), if detonated over Point Park, Pittsburgh, from Greensburg to Aliquippa,with increasingly more lethal results as you approach ground zero. Several blocks away, PPG would have literally melted, flooding market square with boiling glass.
Grey Templar wrote: Indeed. Nuclear war would actually be far less devastating than pop culture would have you believe. Would billions die? Yes, but only because modern vehicles would cease to function due to the EMP frying the computers necessary for cars and trucks to simply turn on. Which would lead to no ability to get food from farms to the people who remained alive. Which would lead to billions starving to death in the space of a month or so.
That is of course, assuming that nobody fixes the computer, gets cars to start without the computer or simply has an older car without computers at all. Starvation would be an issue immediately after a nuclear exchange, but given that food production tends to occur in rural areas and therefore is unlikely to take major hits, it is an issue that could be quickly resolved provided that some form of central government survives to set up the distribution.
Grey Templar wrote: Indeed. Nuclear war would actually be far less devastating than pop culture would have you believe. Would billions die? Yes, but only because modern vehicles would cease to function due to the EMP frying the computers necessary for cars and trucks to simply turn on. Which would lead to no ability to get food from farms to the people who remained alive. Which would lead to billions starving to death in the space of a month or so.
That is of course, assuming that nobody fixes the computer, gets cars to start without the computer or simply has an older car without computers at all. Starvation would be an issue immediately after a nuclear exchange, but given that food production tends to occur in rural areas and therefore is unlikely to take major hits, it is an issue that could be quickly resolved provided that some form of central government survives to set up the distribution.
While the farms themselves will survive the nukes, they would still be affected by the EMP as those have an insanely large radius. And for that reason any nuclear exchange will have a few nukes explode high in the atmosphere with the sole purpose of sending out the EMP. Heck, you could have almost the same effect as directly detonating nukes on the ground just by having them high in the atmosphere to cripple infrastructure with EMP. It just kills everybody in a few weeks instead of a bunch of people immediately and more over the weeks to follow.
You actually have to have very very old vehicles that wouldn't be affected by an EMP, and certainly any vehicles which you could transport large quantities of food with would be vulnerable.
And while the damage from an EMP can be repaired, that requires places that were not themselves affected to be able to send the replacement parts. You could in theory jury rig some vehicles as well. However none of that would come in time to prevent mass starvation. The government would be a little too busy trying to get the remaining military forces back together and functioning again to mobilize any recovery efforts in time to prevent it. Largely because a huge chunk of the government's assets will themselves have been rendered inoperable by the EMP. They might save some people in some areas, but the vast majority will simply starve. Or resort to cannibalism. Either way, lots of people die.
The food distribution system in modern economies is insanely fragile because there is no long term food storage. All types of food retailers have only a few days of food stored up. Thats why when stuff like a Hurricane occurs you see stores empty almost instantaneously. Not to mention the methods of harvesting food quickly is dependent on machinery to harvest the fields, machinery which will not function after the EMP. If you had to harvest the massive fields we have today by hand most of the food would spoil before it was harvested. The food rots in the field while millions die of starvation and/or fighting over the few scraps of food they can find.
So unless the government is able to step in within a few hours of the nuclear war occuring, with a magic fleet of semi-trucks that somehow survived the EMP, you're not going to be setting up any sort of emergency infrastructure and food will disappear.
Ketara, let me try and explain this again: you probably have a puddle on your street that would mass more than the total fallout of a 5 megaton bomb. Assuming that the fireball did not touch ground.
For argument, I ran the number for dropping 32 5 megaton nukes on England. While casualties ran about 11million dead and 16 million injured, and not a single major city was left standing (For god Sake man, i was reduced to dropping a nuke on Swindon to try and drive the numbers up a bit), your fallout levels were.... well, maybe a bin full. You have to understand that a nuke detonated at optimal altitude incinerates most of it's radioactive material. If the fireball does not touch the ground, then fallout from a 5 megaton blast can fit in a gallon bucket.
If it's a rainy day in England, you may have black rain at ground zero, but would not have any appreciable fallout at all outside the blast zone.
Looking into it in more detail, I dropped sixty nukes (my starting premise) and Britain got whacked like this:-
That's using the Chinese nukes. China's arsenal isn't huge however, and the odds are that I doubt we'd get more than that (possibly even less) in a war with them. They'd need to reserve more for whacking targets in Europe and the US; rather than Watford.
On the flip hand side, if it was Russia (the far more likely culprit), we'd probably be looking at at a few more nukes than that. On top of that, given the Russian propensity for tactical nuclear weapons (and weapons malfunctioning to detonate later than intended); I imagine a chunk of them would burst on the surface. We don't live in a large country after all, and you only need a handful (maybe six) detonated like that to cause some real problems. Here's the map with six ground bursters added at likely locations (London, Barrow-in-Furness, etc)
There really isn't much of mainland England left. In line with my original predictions, you're looking at chunks of Scotland and Wales.It would be a good day to be living in Inverness!
One should bear in mind, fallout and radiation are going to affect a LOT larger area than what is within the blast radius of those bombs. Sure, there might be quite a bit of real estate left un-blown-up. But if you can't grow food on it, and living on it kills you in a handful of years, that's going to kill a lot of people too; quite possibly more than are killed in the bombing and immediate aftermath thereof. Consider Chernobyl; the explosion might just have been big enough to level a large house but still significantly contaminated around 100,000 square kilometers of land. Imagine how much more land would be contaminated by a single megaton nuclear device over, say, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Seattle. Nuking Cheyanne Mountain would spread radiation across much of the Great Plains; turning the breadbasket of America into an agricultural wasteland.
And it wouldn't just be one, either...
This, in a nutshell. The bombs are only a third of the picture. Radiation is another third, and starvation the final. Certainly here in Europe, the food supply chains would break down excessively fast. Those in the blast radius get killed, those on the fringes burnt and blinded, those nearby hit with sufficient radioactivity to ensure they'll be dead within a few years, and those outside the immediate radius have to deal with the lack of any support infrastructure and contamination of their land from prevailing wind/ocean.
Grey Templar wrote: While the farms themselves will survive the nukes, they would still be affected by the EMP as those have an insanely large radius. You actually have to have very very old vehicles that wouldn't be affected by an EMP, and certainly any vehicles which you could transport large quantities of food with would be vulnerable.
Aye, modern large-scale farming is a bit more high-tech than people might realize. Any but the oldest or simplest farm machines will be just as knocked out as a modern car and animal production is also highly automated - cows are fed and watered by machines and sometimes even milked automatically. The modern farm (farmer plus family) doesn't have nearly enough manpower to sow, harvest or tend animals manually. Unless they got massive help within a few days the people at a larger dairy farm could drop dead from exhaustion and still not be able to feed, water, milk etc all the cows.
While the farms themselves will survive the nukes, they would still be affected by the EMP as those have an insanely large radius. And for that reason any nuclear exchange will have a few nukes explode high in the atmosphere with the sole purpose of sending out the EMP. Heck, you could have almost the same effect as directly detonating nukes on the ground just by having them high in the atmosphere to cripple infrastructure with EMP. It just kills everybody in a few weeks instead of a bunch of people immediately and more over the weeks to follow.
You actually have to have very very old vehicles that wouldn't be affected by an EMP, and certainly any vehicles which you could transport large quantities of food with would be vulnerable.
And while the damage from an EMP can be repaired, that requires places that were not themselves affected to be able to send the replacement parts. You could in theory jury rig some vehicles as well. However none of that would come in time to prevent mass starvation. The government would be a little too busy trying to get the remaining military forces back together and functioning again to mobilize any recovery efforts in time to prevent it. Largely because a huge chunk of the government's assets will themselves have been rendered inoperable by the EMP. They might save some people in some areas, but the vast majority will simply starve. Or resort to cannibalism. Either way, lots of people die.
The food distribution system in modern economies is insanely fragile because there is no long term food storage. All types of food retailers have only a few days of food stored up. Thats why when stuff like a Hurricane occurs you see stores empty almost instantaneously. Not to mention the methods of harvesting food quickly is dependent on machinery to harvest the fields, machinery which will not function after the EMP. If you had to harvest the massive fields we have today by hand most of the food would spoil before it was harvested. The food rots in the field while millions die of starvation and/or fighting over the few scraps of food they can find.
So unless the government is able to step in within a few hours of the nuclear war occuring, with a magic fleet of semi-trucks that somehow survived the EMP, you're not going to be setting up any sort of emergency infrastructure and food will disappear.
While I'll grant that interstate food distribution in the west and south west would suffer, most of this should have a lot '*' next to them that say "*depending on region".
Oh, and it's not a secret, so, let me introduce a 'magic truck' that gives no feths about emps or even the availability of gasoline.
Your government thanks you for your ignorance of our actual capabilities in this scenario. I can think of at least two full depots of these suckers in the middle of nowhere.
Ketara wrote:
Looking into it in more detail, I dropped sixty nukes (my starting premise) and Britain got whacked like this:-
No, it wouldn't, because no one would ever use nukes like that. I mean, maybe Thatcher, but you're basically ignoring the most important targets to hammer every small town you can think of. Scotland would be hit much, much harder than this, for example.
I mean, not even one Nuke on Scapa Flow????
Spetulhu wrote:
Aye, modern large-scale farming is a bit more high-tech than people might realize. Any but the oldest or simplest farm machines will be just as knocked out as a modern car and animal production is also highly automated - cows are fed and watered by machines and sometimes even milked automatically. The modern farm (farmer plus family) doesn't have nearly enough manpower to sow, harvest or tend animals manually. Unless they got massive help within a few days the people at a larger dairy farm could drop dead from exhaustion and still not be able to feed, water, milk etc all the cows.
You and I clearly have had very different experiences living on farms. It sounds like you think they all run like factory farms.
No, it wouldn't, because no one would ever use nukes like that. I mean, maybe Thatcher, but you're basically ignoring the most important targets to hammer every small town you can think of. Scotland would be hit much, much harder than this, for example.
I mean, not even one Nuke on Scapa Flow????
Every small town? Hardly. Have you actually travelled the UK? I hammered the major landmarks first (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff, etc), then moved onto secondary (Liverpool, Exeter, Bristol, Sheffield, Brighton, etc), then threw some at the major naval/military targets (Barrow in Furness, Portsmouth, etc), then the well-populated-but-less-known ones (Hull, Plymouth, Colchester, etc). I daresay a handful of them would go elsewhere than I predicted (I'm not cognisant of every military installation), but a lot of the more major military targets ( the JSCSC, RAF Henlow, Andover, etc) are covered by the existing spread. Scapa Flow, by the way, has been defunct since 1956 as a naval base.
Regardless, you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing now . The point is well made; that sixty to seventy nukes, adequately dispersed with a handful set for ground detonation, would make a bit of a mess of the mainland.
EDIT:- Having looked further into it, looks like I missed one or two bases on the periphery. Otherwise, it would seem Scotland get off almost....scot-free?
No, it wouldn't, because no one would ever use nukes like that. I mean, maybe Thatcher, but you're basically ignoring the most important targets to hammer every small town you can think of. Scotland would be hit much, much harder than this, for example.
I mean, not even one Nuke on Scapa Flow????
Every small town? Hardly. Have you actually travelled the UK? I hammered the major landmarks first (London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff, etc), then moved onto secondary (Liverpool, Exeter, Bristol, Sheffield, Brighton, etc), then threw some at the major naval/military targets (Barrow in Furness, Portsmouth, etc), then the well-populated-but-less-known ones (Hull, Plymouth, Colchester, etc). I daresay a handful of them would go elsewhere than I predicted (I'm not cognisant of every military installation), but a lot of the more major military targets ( the JSCSC, RAF Henlow, Andover, etc) are covered by the existing spread.
Regardless, you seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing now. The point is well made; that sixty to seventy nukes, adequately dispersed with a handful set for ground detonation, would make a bit of a mess of the mainland. You are of course, free to believe that an enemy would bother to aim half a dozen nukes at a defunct naval base (since 1956) with nothing but a visitor centre and a handful of oil tankers for company.
That is not how you use nukes. In reality, you'd see tons of nukes lobbed at high-priority targets such as London, airfields and military bases, and none at small towns at all unless they have important industries or cultural significance. You don't just trust the radiation to take care of it. You really want it all covered under the direct destructive blast radius, to ensure your target really is gone. You also want to use multiple nukes for the same target to ensure at least one of them hits in case of malfunction or interception (expect at least 2 nukes for every target, and up to 10 for larger ones). Small towns are very low-priority targets, you don't want to waste your rare and precious nukes on them. Neither Russia nor China nor both of them combined have enough nukes to target even all large cities in the US, UK and other NATO countries, let alone small towns. In a nuclear war, they'd go after military targets rather than just nuke cities. They just don't have enough weapons to do that.
EDIT:- Having looked further into it, looks like I missed one or two bases on the periphery. Otherwise, it would seem Scotland get off almost....scot-free?
That map was made based on Soviet doctrine though. The Soviets had tens of thousands of nukes standing ready, and so could afford to nuke pretty much every little town in the entire NATO. Russia's arsenal is only a small remnant of what the Soviet arsenal was, so expect only the higher-priority targets on that map to actually get hit in a present-day nuclear war. That is not to say that the survivability of a large-scale nuclear war in southern England wouldn't be quite low compared to that in Scotland of course. But the UK as a whole would survive it.
That is not how you use nukes. In reality, you'd see tons of nukes lobbed at high-priority targets such as London, airfields and military bases, and none at small towns at all unless they have important industries or cultural significance. You don't just trust the radiation to take care of it. You really want it all covered under the direct destructive blast radius, to ensure your target really is gone. You also want to use multiple nukes for the same target to ensure at least one of them hits in case of malfunction or interception (expect at least 2 nukes for every target, and up to 10 for larger ones). Small towns are very low-priority targets, you don't want to waste your rare and precious nukes on them. Neither Russia nor China nor both of them combined have enough nukes to target even all large cities in the US, UK and other NATO countries, let alone small towns. In a nuclear war, they'd go after military targets rather than just nuke cities. They just don't have enough weapons to do that.
Point acknowledged, but:
a) The end result is actually more or less the same in terms of spread (I linked the British government's expectation of targets above)
b) The same argument which dictates that nukes will be followed up with multiples to cover malfunctions correspondingly implies the secondary result of such happenings (namely nukes exploding too soon/too late/veering off course). You might well end up with more (or less) ground detonations than you wish for.
c)Not to mention that Baron was arguing Scotland (which is more or less made up of small towns) would be hit much harder than I (and the British Government) painted it as; so the two of you are actually in contention there.
That map was made based on Soviet doctrine though. The Soviets had tens of thousands of nukes standing ready, and so could afford to nuke pretty much every little town in the entire NATO. Russia's arsenal is only a small remnant of what the Soviet arsenal was, so expect only the higher-priority targets on that map to actually get hit in a present-day nuclear war. That is not to say that the survivability of a large-scale nuclear war in southern England wouldn't be quite low compared to that in Scotland of course. But the UK as a whole would survive it.
Russia still has several thousand nuclear weapons. I put seventy odd total on my initial estimate above. The map subsequently linked had just over a hundred. I daresay that Russia has that many and a bit besides to spare for one of the primary military forces of NATO if hostilities break out. An eightieth of their arsenal is not huge when weighed against the vexation the UK can cause as compared to say, Portugal.
Ketara wrote: . Scapa Flow, by the way, has been defunct since 1956 as a naval base.
As a naval base, sure, but Flotta Oil terminal makes it a highly important target all the same. Hit it and Sullom Voe and you've more or less ended access to North Sea Oil.
Getting back to the F-35: wouldn't the easiest way to eliminate the F-35 be to stop all shipments of rare earth metals to the US? Given the rate the thing goes through parts, they'd be out of commission on their own in a few months.
That is not how you use nukes. In reality, you'd see tons of nukes lobbed at high-priority targets such as London, airfields and military bases, and none at small towns at all unless they have important industries or cultural significance. You don't just trust the radiation to take care of it. You really want it all covered under the direct destructive blast radius, to ensure your target really is gone. You also want to use multiple nukes for the same target to ensure at least one of them hits in case of malfunction or interception (expect at least 2 nukes for every target, and up to 10 for larger ones). Small towns are very low-priority targets, you don't want to waste your rare and precious nukes on them. Neither Russia nor China nor both of them combined have enough nukes to target even all large cities in the US, UK and other NATO countries, let alone small towns. In a nuclear war, they'd go after military targets rather than just nuke cities. They just don't have enough weapons to do that.
Point acknowledged, but:
a) The end result is actually more or less the same in terms of spread (I linked the British government's expectation of targets above)
b) The same argument which dictates that nukes will be followed up with multiples to cover malfunctions correspondingly implies the secondary result of such happenings (namely nukes exploding too soon/too late/veering off course). You might well end up with more (or less) ground detonations than you wish for.
c)Not to mention that Baron was arguing Scotland (which is more or less made up of small towns) would be hit much harder than I (and the British Government) painted it as; so the two of you are actually in contention there.
That map was made based on Soviet doctrine though. The Soviets had tens of thousands of nukes standing ready, and so could afford to nuke pretty much every little town in the entire NATO. Russia's arsenal is only a small remnant of what the Soviet arsenal was, so expect only the higher-priority targets on that map to actually get hit in a present-day nuclear war. That is not to say that the survivability of a large-scale nuclear war in southern England wouldn't be quite low compared to that in Scotland of course. But the UK as a whole would survive it.
Russia still has several thousand nuclear weapons. I put seventy odd total on my initial estimate above. The map subsequently linked had just over a hundred. I daresay that Russia has that many and a bit besides to spare for one of the primary military forces of NATO if hostilities break out. An eightieth of their arsenal is not huge when weighed against the vexation the UK can cause as compared to say, Portugal.
Hey you guys mind keeping this on topic? The mods are chomping at the bit to lock threads that go off topic.
Think this is fall out from Elon smoking it up with Rogan? Thought Space X was getting tight with the military, and part of the reason they shot a car into space.
Think this is fall out from Elon smoking it up with Rogan? Thought Space X was getting tight with the military, and part of the reason they shot a car into space.
The F-16. It is effective with a high payload to weight ratio, pretty maneuverable (though not as much as MiG or SU fighters), highly versatile in almost every possible role and relatively cheap. And it looks super sexy. One of the best US jets ever designed. Sure, any jet is going to have accidents. But if you lose a F-35 in an accident that is a financial catastrophe, whereas the loss of an F-16 is much easier on the budget and can be replaced quite easily.
The F-16. It is effective with a high payload to weight ratio, pretty maneuverable (though not as much as MiG or SU fighters), highly versatile in almost every possible role and relatively cheap. And it looks super sexy. One of the best US jets ever designed. Sure, any jet is going to have accidents. But if you lose a F-35 in an accident that is a financial catastrophe, whereas the loss of an F-16 is much easier on the budget and can be replaced quite easily.
Not only that, but if you look at Number In service/accidents and losses, it has a fairly solid level of reliability compared to the F-35. Granted this is skewed, but...
Vulcan wrote: And how many of those aircraft losses were over something as basic as a bloody fuel line failure... on an aircraft in development for two decades.
Not many. Leading causes seem to be pilot error and doing insane things like overloading the weapon mounts far past their safe weight limits, and then taking her up and then performing a 9 G turn while inverted and overloaded. Pilot reported difficulty in maintaining level flight after that one, probably from the loss of several key aircraft components. Like big sections of the wings.
Vulcan wrote: And how many of those aircraft losses were over something as basic as a bloody fuel line failure... on an aircraft in development for two decades.
Pilot reported difficulty in maintaining level flight after that one, probably from the loss of several key aircraft components. Like big sections of the wings.
Yeah, I can see how that would reduce the effectiveness of an aircraft somewhat
Some of the most cutting-edge weapons in the US's military arsenal can be "easily hacked" using "basic tools", a government report has concluded.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found "mission-critical" cyber-vulnerabilities in nearly all weapons systems tested between 2012 and 2017.
That includes the newest F-35 jet as well as missile systems.
Spoiler:
In the report, Pentagon officials said they "believed their systems were secure", NPR reported.
The committee's members expressed concerns about how protected weapon systems were against cyber-attacks.
The report's main findings were:
the Pentagon did not change the default passwords on multiple weapons systems - and one changed password was guessed in nine seconds
a team appointed by the GAO was able to easily gain control of one weapons system and watch in real time as the operators responded to the hackers
it took another two-person team only one hour to gain initial access to a weapons system and one day to gain full control
many of the test teams were able to copy, change or delete system data with one team downloading 100 gigabytes of information
The GAO added that the Pentagon "does not know the full scale of its weapons system vulnerabilities".
The Pentagon has not issued a detailed response to the 50-page report but the document quoted officials as saying that some of the security test results "were unrealistic".
Ken Munro, an expert at security firm Pen Test Partners, said he was "not at all surprised" by the findings.
"It takes a long time to develop a weapons system, often based on iterations of much older systems. As a result, the components and software can be based on very old, vulnerable code.
"Developers often overlook 'hardening' the security of systems after they've got them operating, with the philosophy, 'it's working, so don't mess with it'.
"However, that's no excuse. This report shows some very basic security flaws that could easily have been addressed by changing passwords and keeping software up-to-date."
Oh wow...this invokes memories of key naval ship computers operating on Windows 95 all over again. In a way it's charming and maddening at the same time, that super secret high-tech weapons developers AND handlers are like everybody else, and apparently keep "12345" as their password or kind-of tape their password on a sticky note directly to the fire-and-forget missile, just in case...
The flip side is that old software can act as a defence as much as a vulnerability past a point. Good luck finding a Chinese cyber-specialist who can affect a COBOL system which utilises floppy discs for operation.
Ketara wrote: The flip side is that old software can act as a defence as much as a vulnerability past a point. Good luck finding a Chinese cyber-specialist who can affect a COBOL system which utilises floppy discs for operation.
This. And the systems running on these old OS are not running on the home edition but rather custom developed versions of the OS.
They are also intended to do very specific things. If an old OS can support the software you need for that then why use a newer one? That newer OS needs more processing power and memory to run, which means you need a bigger CPU and more ram which is more expensive, higher power requirements etc.
While not strictly related (and admitted far off the F-35 path), the Russians ordered 10,000 new typewriters a few years ago, acknowledging that hacking of computers and even their own intranet (their government/military has their own) was too prevalent and they're considering reverting to classic briefcase-chained-to-wrist couriers with typewritten documents for some information.
I think that says a lot about the curren status of cyberwarfare.
Ketara wrote: The flip side is that old software can act as a defence as much as a vulnerability past a point. Good luck finding a Chinese cyber-specialist who can affect a COBOL system which utilises floppy discs for operation.
This. And the systems running on these old OS are not running on the home edition but rather custom developed versions of the OS.
They are also intended to do very specific things. If an old OS can support the software you need for that then why use a newer one? That newer OS needs more processing power and memory to run, which means you need a bigger CPU and more ram which is more expensive, higher power requirements etc.
Because an old OS no longer gets updated as frequently as it needs to be (Microsoft isn't doing anymore, and the DoD doesn't have the resources for it), which means that any vulnerabilities in it that get discovered can be easily exploited because it will take a long time for them to get fixed, if ever.
Ketara wrote: The flip side is that old software can act as a defence as much as a vulnerability past a point. Good luck finding a Chinese cyber-specialist who can affect a COBOL system which utilises floppy discs for operation.
As long as there are valuable systems that run on COBOL you can be sure that there are also hackers specialising in working with it.
What the Military should do if they want to use the old systems is begin doing their own software support. Or heck, just develop their own operating system.
Grey Templar wrote: What the Military should do if they want to use the old systems is begin doing their own software support. Or heck, just develop their own operating system.
That requires massive funds and manpower though, something the military doesn't have to spare.
To be fair, it's open source and everything done is supposed to be examined openly and approved before being included in the system and released. I doubt the military would comply with that aspect of the philosophy behind open source.
However, the point is that while Windows and MacOS required multi-billion dollar companies to produce them, Linux doesn't.
Thinking further, since secure software is becoming so crucial to national security, it would make sense for the military to put a vast amount of effort into secure development.
To be fair, it's open source and everything done is supposed to be examined openly and approved before being included in the system and released. I doubt the military would comply with that aspect of the philosophy behind open source.
However, the point is that while Windows and MacOS required multi-billion dollar companies to produce them, Linux doesn't.
Thinking further, since secure software is becoming so crucial to national security, it would make sense for the military to put a vast amount of effort into secure development.
That would require a Congress that isn't still upset about being forced to use this new fangled 'wheel' when 'tame wolves' can pull the travois just fine.
Ketara wrote:The flip side is that old software can act as a defence as much as a vulnerability past a point. Good luck finding a Chinese cyber-specialist who can affect a COBOL system which utilises floppy discs for operation.
Yeah but then you're left with a situation where the guys fresh out of college are told they need to fix an application written in Clipper, and all the documentation for how to use it has been lost and the users have been training each other by word of mouth for fifteen years. GLHF.
Crazy_Carnifex wrote:Welp, I think the weapons are officially smarter than we are.
Ketara wrote:The flip side is that old software can act as a defence as much as a vulnerability past a point. Good luck finding a Chinese cyber-specialist who can affect a COBOL system which utilises floppy discs for operation.
Yeah but then you're left with a situation where the guys fresh out of college are told they need to fix an application written in Clipper, and all the documentation for how to use it has been lost and the users have been training each other by word of mouth for fifteen years. GLHF.
That's fine, they'll think the floppy discs are 3D printed save icons anyway.
Its crazy the Air Force is shooting for 1,700 F-35s. Given the idiocy of shutting down the F-22, I wouldn't be surprised they never hit 1,700 either. Not that I think anyone is going to catch up to the F-35's capability, but something will happen where they will need to divert funds to something else, and kill the production early. Who knows maybe I will be wrong.
Automatically Appended Next Post: This is interesting too:
Off-topic a little, but I saw a model of a hypothetical firefighting A-10 with a water tank under the centre fuselage and no weapons. I wonder if that would pull to the left, without the weight of the cannon?
Vulcan wrote: I don't think the A-10 could carry enough weight on ONE hardpoint for enough water to have any real impact on a fire.
On the other hand, it can carry a total of 16,000 pounds (7,200 kilograms) of mixed ordnance across eleven pylon stations. The lightest firefighting planes are cropdusters carrying only 2 or 3 cubic meters of water.
Water bombs have been tested and proved ineffective, so you'd need some other delivery mechanism. If you worked that out the A-10 could pass "light" firefighting planes and place on the lower end of "medium".
I TOLD YOU ALL TO STAY ON TOPIC!!! IAMNOTGOINGTOTELLYOUAGAIN!!!
Hey what about that daisy cutter bomb to put out a fire. I thought it sucks the oxygen out of the area. But then again, I am sure the blast would cause another fire too.
So bomb puts out fire 1 and then starts fire 2. Correct me if I am wrong. I am writing all this without taking a moment to verify any of it.
KTG17 wrote: I TOLD YOU ALL TO STAY ON TOPIC!!! IAMNOTGOINGTOTELLYOUAGAIN!!!
Hey what about that daisy cutter bomb to put out a fire. I thought it sucks the oxygen out of the area. But then again, I am sure the blast would cause another fire too.
So bomb puts out fire 1 and then starts fire 2. Correct me if I am wrong. I am writing all this without taking a moment to verify any of it.
Well, if this works
Spoiler:
Then any fighter should just be able to buzz the fire to extinguish it, right?
I do really hope that that connection has some of the best security in the world. The thought of someone being able to get access to an entire carrier group after hacking into a single plane is downright terrifying.
Why is it even news that they managed to establish a wireless link between an airplane and a ship? My Mom can do that between her phone and her car's sound system.
Why is it even news that they landed someone on the Moon? Mankind's been flying places for over 40 years!
There's a tad bigger difference in distance between an aircraft moving at high velocities and an aircraft carrier than between your mum's phone and her car's sound system, and the phone is presumably also stationary in relation to the sound system.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Why is it even news that they landed someone on the Moon? Mankind's been flying places for over 40 years!
There's a tad bigger difference in distance between an aircraft moving at high velocities and an aircraft carrier than between your mum's phone and her car's sound system, and the phone is presumably also stationary in relation to the sound system.
And is also sending a lot less information. And isn't encrypting that information.
Grey Templar wrote: Why is it even news that they managed to establish a wireless link between an airplane and a ship? My Mom can do that between her phone and her car's sound system.
This is actually a huge step, and its going to change warfare. While you can debate the ability of the F-35 to dogfight or perform missions it wasn't really designed to do, the tech that is going into that plane is revolutionary and is going be in every fighter the US builds in the near future. The data link is one of them.
Think of it this way, in the past, a fighter on patrol might see an enemy ship, and radio back "We've spotted a X-class ship (and they even get that wrong sometimes) heading X." Then this information gets passed around the fleet and they plot it and maybe pass it on to nearby ships. I doubt this information would have even made it to a regional command center quickly. There would have to be a number of manual steps to get that information into the hands of decision makers (which too gets lost sometimes) on what to do next, and you are also talking about a drag in time.
In the future, the F-35 sensors will spot the ship, identify what it is from its software, automatically transmit that information to nearby US warships, who in turn will pass that information real time through satellites to regional command centers and all the way to the Pentagon. There won't be "our fleet is here, and the enemy ship is about here." There will be a very detailed map on where every allied unit is and where every enemy unit is, and resources will be quickly assigned based on that information. The speed at which these decisions will be made will be much faster than most can imagine. And while the enemy is waiting for reports to come in on enemy movement, our bombs will already be on the way. Actually, munitions might even be launched from ships guided by the F-35.
Information is going to be the key to winning future wars, and that is why I keep talking about the 'system'. You can't judge any component of the US military on its own and judge the outcome of a battle based on that. Everything in the US military will be linked, passing information real time, and acting accordingly, while most opponents will be guessing.
Now I imagine there are ways to jam the transmissions and even try to hack that information, but I am sure the US military gave thought to that a long time ago.
The next evolution for this is to embed it into your infantrymen. So while the F-35 is doing this for a fleet, imagine a single infantryman passing information at the company level, or brigade, on what and where is nearby. Imagine a SEAL team with that technology. Based on what my neighbor told me, the peeps who make the HUD for the F-35 helmet are working on a similar display for infantry. Now, how you power that I have no idea. I imagine batteries will be an issue. We're probably a ways away from that though, but its coming. But tanks will have it, everything will have it.
But again, we’ve had wireless connections for decades. Over great distances, and they’ve only now managed one with a fighter? That smacks of gross incompetence.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Why is it even news that they landed someone on the Moon? Mankind's been flying places for over 40 years!
There's a tad bigger difference in distance between an aircraft moving at high velocities and an aircraft carrier than between your mum's phone and her car's sound system, and the phone is presumably also stationary in relation to the sound system.
And is also sending a lot less information. And isn't encrypting that information.
We can send pictures and entire programs worth of data wirelessly fairly trivially. That stuff takes a lot of data space. This really should have been something the military did decades ago.
This is really just smart phone level tech plus incryption, which wouldn’t add much in the way of data as to be a huge obstacle.
Yeah, this isn't particularly cutting-edge technology. But yet the F-35 is the first aircraft with this kind of capability. The reason why we see this introduced only now is probably because of security. Wireless connections are incredibly vulnerable to hacking, jamming and other kinds of interference. So while a wireless connection is nothing revolutionary, one that is secure enough for military use is.
It's not just about the F-35. It's about the training the pilot receives, how often they fly, and the tactics they practice. It's the integrated battle environment they will be flying in. The F-35 is not the first aircraft to use data links. It's been going on since the 1970's. Ever heard of AWACS? Airborne Warning and Control System? They have a radar that can see 250 miles (unclassified). The best a fighter can do is about 250 miles (F-22, F-35, maybe a couple other next gen Russian fighters, Euro Fighter?). The best target acquisition radars are good to only about 25 miles. Past that is "Beyond Visual Range (BVR)". One of the best AAM is the US AIM 120 with about an effective range of 50 miles. There are BVR missiles out there, but no one besides the US and a handful of other countries even have them, and none of them have the technology or training to employ them effectively like the US Air Force.
As a further plug for AWACS, they are way, way more than a flying radar plane. They are an Airspace Battle Management platform that can form data links with any aircraft in the US inventory, satellites, ground stations, Drones, and other intelligence platforms to form a picture of the battle space. They can communicate with all the air/ground assets in theater. Then the 20+ Airspace Battle Managers/Specialists onboard the aircraft manage and direct airspace assets to prosecute the Air Order of Battle. No other country in the world right now can fight in the air like the US.
As to how secure those data links are? Well, now we are talking about Electronic Warfare, and that stuff is a pretty highly guarded secret and classified. You can guess though, that if it was a problem, then not every aircraft in the US inventory would be retrofitted or built to enable data links.
You know what blew me away back in 2003? At Red Flag (think Top Gun for the Air Force), a F-22 was acting as a command/control platform. It has an "enemy" aircraft on it's mission data screen (note how it's not a radar screen...), that an F-15C couldn't see. The F-22 was able to look at the real time inventory on board the F-15C, see the most effective AAM the F-15 had, and send the F-15 a target request with target acquisition telemetry. The F-15 pilot sees the message, acknowledges the request, and pickles off a missile that uses the F-22's data to direct itself to the target. The F-15 pilot never even saw the target on his radar! That was in 2003. What do you think they have now?
Grey Templar wrote: But again, we’ve had wireless connections for decades. Over great distances, and they’ve only now managed one with a fighter? That smacks of gross incompetence.
The military can't just buy civilian tech off the shelf, they have military standards and compatibility to think about. Apple might not give two hoots about whether the newest i-gimmick works with older i-stuff, the military kind of has to. If you move to something entirely new you've got a whole fleet of machines that will need extensive refits in order to get the benefits, and that costs money. Tanks, aircraft, ships etc do get "upgrade packages" but they can't do that every year.
Grey Templar wrote: But again, we’ve had wireless connections for decades. Over great distances, and they’ve only now managed one with a fighter? That smacks of gross incompetence.
It's not just the wireless signal, it's the data processing and automation that is important. Sending lots of data wirelessly doesn't help much if you don't have a good way to integrate all of it into a coherent picture and ensure that the relevant information (and only the relevant information) gets to the people who need it. Connecting your phone to your car's speaker is more equivalent to speaking over the radio with another person, something we've been doing for what, 80+ years?
You know what blew me away back in 2003? At Red Flag (think Top Gun for the Air Force), a F-22 was acting as a command/control platform. It has an "enemy" aircraft on it's mission data screen (note how it's not a radar screen...), that an F-15C couldn't see. The F-22 was able to look at the real time inventory on board the F-15C, see the most effective AAM the F-15 had, and send the F-15 a target request with target acquisition telemetry. The F-15 pilot sees the message, acknowledges the request, and pickles off a missile that uses the F-22's data to direct itself to the target. The F-15 pilot never even saw the target on his radar! That was in 2003. What do you think they have now?
Well, military tech development doesn't move very fast usually (due to the prohibitive costs involved in implementing new developments), so I guess it is exactly the same technology just now with a whole aircraft carrier group linked up instead of a couple of aircraft. So now an F-35 could use the more powerful radars of a ship to acquire target locks, which is pretty cool. Or, a scouting F-35 could achieve target locks for an entire fleet of warships, which is downright terrifying...
about war crimes in the kind of war where an autonomous drone swarm is useful. There are two key facts:
