7 ms·
Given Reuters cite the air force as their source, would anyone hazard theories as to why they're so happy to announce the movements of a supposedly secret plane
by gsmith2 7y ago
Given Reuters cite the air force as their source, would anyone hazard theories as to why they're so happy to announce the movements of a supposedly secret plane? It's pretty much in the news every time anything happens involving it, which seems quite intentional.
Is it perhaps just some kind of announcement of a capability to foreign countries?
- LegitShady 7y agoIt was spying on Baghdadi personally this whole time maybe.
- dwoozle 7y agoThe US military is not actually very good at war — the nuts and bolts of combat and conquest. They maintain an aura of invincibility through PR which is questioned every time they fail at war (the majority of the times since World War II) or fail to carry out the basic actions of war making, like driving ships: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swos-a-culture-in-crisis/ https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/08/27/navy-swo... .
- bsder 7y ago> The US military is not actually very good at war How do you define "good" at war? By the time you've reached "war" as a solution, "good" really isn't on the table. Pretty much the only way to be "good" at war is to be willing to kill every single person in the theatre--civilians included. You are "good" at war and "win" in that case--there is no enemy left. We also have a word for that--genocide. And we view that very negatively for good reason.
- monocasa 7y agoHow about their own metrics? Losing a carrier group to a bunch of speed boats and missiles in their own war games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
- Catsandkites 7y agoIsn't that article misleading though? For example the motorcycle messengers had "instantaneous communication" iirc.
- monocasa 7y ago[citation needed]
- ryanmercer 7y agoI mean you have this massive small-town sized ship (6000~ crew) and it's support ships, and then you have a bunch of agile, fast moving, speedboats that present very small targets that bounce across the waves that are capable of carrying enough explosives to put a hole in the hull... Obviously the swarm of small things that are effectively man-piloted missiles are going to be able to take out the slow 200 million pound behemoth that requires 3-5 miles to turn around.
- monocasa 7y agoCarrier groups are specifically designed to combat these kinds of threats. That's why "carrier killer" missiles like China's DH-26 are hypersonic; it's because that's what you're supposed to have to do to overwhelm a carrier group.
- rebuilder 7y agoWhere do you get the idea that the end-goal for use of military force is inevitably genocide? You win a war when the outcome lets you plausibly declare victory.
- rcurry 7y agoYou don’t have to be good at war, you just have to be better than everybody else. And that’s what sets the US military apart.
- fnordfnordfnord 7y agoHaving more helps too!
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoMore military or war?
- fnordfnordfnord 7y agoMore of everything, especially guns.
- detaro 7y agoIs this really something they could effectively hide otherwise from other space powers? If not, telling the world about it doesn't hurt much, is good PR, might make running the mission easier (if it was known during the flight and coordinated with other users of space), and the question of what it did is probably more interesting anyways. EDIT: looked it up a bit: both the start of this and previous missions had media coverage, and amateurs temporarily tracked the plane, so no point in secrecy.
- Valgrim 7y agoAnything in orbit can (and is) actively tracked by amateur and professionnal astronomers around the world. The secret aspect of the X37B plane is it's mission. Nobody knows what it was doing up there. Hypotheses range from carrying weapons, spying, or doing experiments. In any case, it is certainly also used as propaganda, a show of strength.
- beerandt 7y agoAnd I believe even the pro trackers lost it at least once, until it was rediscovered by accident. Which adds intrigue. Not counting foreign intelligence, obviously.
- BurningFrog 7y ago> It's pretty much in the news every time anything happens involving it It's in the news every time they decide to put it in the news. Many other things could happen in secret.
- RaiseProfits 7y agoAnything for good PR for a military budget.
- thrax 7y agoBecause Trump bragged about it with the whole "we're gonna have a space force!" rant. Probably just made sense to make it public now.