10 ms·

To add on, supermaneuverabillity looks really cool and is an impressive technical achievement for sure, but its utility in combat (at least for the time being)

To add on, supermaneuverabillity looks really cool and is an impressive technical achievement for sure, but its utility in combat (at least for the time being) is likely low to negative. Among other reasons, the more players in a fight, the less anyone can afford to sell all their energy for a shot opportunity--even if it works, it leaves them extremely vulnerable.

stouset 6y ago
This 100%. While really cool demonstrations, the utility of these in a fight is virtually nonexistent. Any air-to-air engagements these days are inevitably BVR (beyond visual range) encounters, where aircraft fire missiles at one-another from extreme ranges. This type of maneuverability has no use whatsoever in such a scenario. If all of the long-range missiles fail to neutralize one side of the other and both forces opt to continue the engagement, you get to WVR (within visual range) where infrared missiles and—once those are spent—guns are employed. There could be opportunities here where such a trick might be useful, but only in a 1v1 scenario. For any case where you might have two or more enemies to deal with, such an abrupt loss of energy is suicide. And if you’re on the side with superior numbers, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor with little chance of you being defensive in the first place. And in the 1v1 scenario, modern infrared missiles like the AIM-9x (which are effective even when launched at frankly ridiculous off-boresight angles) make such a maneuver suicide as well. So it might, might be useful if: both sides empty their long/medium-range radar-guided missiles at one-another, only two combatants remain, neither decides to bug out, the aggressor empties their IR missiles unsuccessfully, and the defensive craft is imminently going to be within the weapon employment zone for the bandit’s cannon… then this might be a Hail Mary to force the aggressor to overshoot so you can turn the tables. But having bled all your energy, you’re going to get at most one shot before you’re back to simply trying to survive.
- Firehawke 6y ago
  Most fights will inevitably go from BVR to WVR-- ECM is continually in a war of escalation with munitions and ECM is almost always ahead.
  - scarier 6y ago
    This is a really interesting topic for debate. Possibly the most recent employment of modern air-to-air tactics we've seen in actual combat was in the early '80s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19). I hope we never have to see an actual large-scale air war between high-end, near-peer competitors, and can continue to armchair debate these kinds of scenarios.
    - trhway 6y ago
      Speaking about ECM and the Bekaa battle, a kind of similar situation has just happened in the recent months - Turkey found a way for their drones to effectively attack Russian "Pantsir-S1" anti-aircraft system (details aren't clear, seems that in addition to ECM the drone specific aspects like long loitering waiting for opportunity and simultaneous multiple drone attack from different directions played key role), and around 30 Pantsirs have just been lost in Syria and Libya. (Sidenote: Ukraine has recently got those drones from Turkey and successfully tested against Pantsir - Pantsirs are standard air defense of Russian tank battalions and was the main reason Ukraine, who has nor stealth nor high precision standoff, didn't use the air-to-ground attacks against the Russian tank forces when they ventured into Donbass back then in August 2014 and February 2015)
      - scarier 6y ago
        This is interesting! Do you have any more in-depth articles on it? The Pantsir can be a pretty beastly threat...
        noir-york 6y ago
        This article has some more information: https://t-intell.com/2020/05/22/lethal-stalkers-how-turkish-drones-are-neutralizing-haftars-pantsirs-in-libya-bda/ https://t-intell.com/2020/05/22/lethal-stalkers-how-turkish-...
      - imtringued 6y ago
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Yes but to win the fight first you have to get to the fight. These low-speed abilities mean russian aircraft can operate from much shorter/poorer strips than western jets. They are the product of a different mindset, a more defensive strategy. I doubt the f22 has ever touched grass.
  - scarier 6y ago
    To be fair, even non-supermaneuverable Russian jets have good unimproved-field performance--old-school tech like intake screens plays a much bigger role here than fancy thrust vectoring and fly-by-wire controls. But they absolutely are a product of a different mindset, and have been wildly successful in certain aspects.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Bobbcatt 6y ago
  All of this is extremely wrong. First of all, there's no guarantee that you will be able to use BVR. A stealth fighter using its radar is the same as a man in a camouflage at night turning on his search light. Everybody will know where you are. There might also be rule of engagement restriction, as has been many times that forced within-visual-range. For WVR, the ability to supermaneuver is useful. It can give you that extra edge to get the angle on a target. You have to give up a lot of energy, sure. But you do have >1 TWR, and your buddies to cover you. It's not a magical tool but another one in a toolbox. Also, in WVR, the advantage goes to the side with fewer planes. There was a study from the korean war to show this. The reason is because if you and your buddy is fighting 20 bandits, you can shoot at anybody that flies in front of you, while the enemies have to visually identify. And the speed of jet combat makes it impossible to verify before you lose your opportunity. >So it might, might be useful if: both sides empty their long/medium-range radar-guided missiles at one-another, only two combatants remain, neither decides to bug out, the aggressor empties their IR missiles unsuccessfully, and the defensive craft is imminently going to be within the weapon employment zone for the bandit’s cannon Yup. Just like in vietnam. We are gonna fly up there with our f4s afterburning to mach 2, then we will launch all our sparrows at the bandits, who would fly straight into our missiles because they are dumb, and then we will land just in time for lunch.
  - scarier 6y ago
    Oversimplified for sure, but I think "extremely wrong" is unfair. I think the jury is still out on whether or not a stealth-on-stealth fight (or a more conventional fight in an ECM-heavy environment) inevitably devolves into a WVR knife fight. There are a number of reasons why this doesn't have to be the case. You're absolutely correct that ROE can force a VID, but it'd be pretty dumb to box yourself into a corner that would force you into a neutral-ish WVR fight, yeah? I agree that supermaneuverability has the potential to be useful, but I think it's fair to say that it's very much an edge case, and even then more of an augment to missiles that already have HOBS capability than a replacement for them. It certainly isn't a game-changing capability the way HOBS was. Also, TWR only goes so far to help recover from an energy deficit, especially if you have to go into reheat to make it happen. Gas kills are a thing... Yes and no. Against a well-coordinated, larger force it's really difficult to win, and I very much wouldn't recommend adopting it as a primary tactic. If you had a fight that magically began at the furball phase (admittedly, this is one potential outcome of stealth-on-stealth engagements, although I imagine we'd need to develop better and different technology to make it a reality), that would be more likely to favor the individual, at least until they run out of missiles (it's difficult to over-emphasize how difficult guns kills are against maneuvering targets, even for a hypothetical magic robot with near-perfect aim). Old-school fights like Korea were much closer to the "immediate, chaotic furball" side of the spectrum than current fights, and there was a much less well-developed set of intra-and inter-flight tactics. A modern 2v1 (even heaters-only) is far more lopsided against the 1 than it was during Korea. With good coordination, this scales. (Aside: a really good book about the air war in Korea is The Hunters by James Salter. Highly recommended--it's fiction, but based on the author's own experiences as a pilot there.) For what it's worth, technology and tactics have improved in the last half decade (perhaps more than we can say about our judgement?)... The proliferation of certain technologies will force continual re-evaluation of tactics, but I think it's safe to say that BVR is reasonably mature and not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. (That said, reports of the death of the air-to-air gun will always be greatly exaggerated.)
- amelius 6y ago
  So you want maneuverability in your missiles, not your aircraft?
  - huffmsa 6y ago
    Yes, because the missile doesn't need to worry about what happens after it gets a positional advantage and goes boom. It wins, game over.
  - stouset 6y ago
    Precisely. Your missiles are far lighter, can turn on a dime before firing their rockets, and—most importantly—don’t need to worry about survival after a missed shot.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    Obviously. A fighter jet has a trust-to-weight ratio of about 1. Even ultra-old air-to-air-missiles whose specs are declassified like the the AIM-9B from the 1950s have a T/W ratio of over 20, and they are much easier to make maneuverable compared to a 30 ton jet that shouldn't break apart or kill its pilot.
Diesel555 6y ago
It has very little combat usage, there's a reason the Raptor doesn't do it. Any time you see an aircraft do some high AOA (Angle of Attack) maneuver and provide almost zero line of site (not moving up / down / left / right), you know he's slow and you've won the fight if you have airspeed (assuming gun only). The only benefit would be to get an IR missile off when you've already realized you are losing and he's behind you.
- scarier 6y ago
  >The only benefit would be to get an IR missile off when you've already realized you are losing and he's behind you. Bummer the Raptor driver doesn't have JHMCS...
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    JHMCS isn't that useful in such extreme off-axis situations. A missile taking a big turn requires it to expend a lot of energy and drastically hampers its probability to hit the target.
  - Diesel555 6y ago
    I mean for the Russian driver. And yes... bummer... but who can turn their neck that far? Don't forget eyeball gimbals don't count.
    - scarier 6y ago
      Maybe they'll start adding certain neck mobility requirements in the anthropometric screening? It's a brave new world...
- burfog 6y ago
  A reasonable use would be for checking out a slow little biplane or helicopter, presumably a foolish civilian, who is violating restricted airspace.
  - scarier 6y ago
sudosysgen 6y ago
Not necessarily. In a reality where your missiles have a huge delta-v and acceleration advantage against the enemy, while your plane itself is deficient in energy generation and retention, supermaneouvrability might be a logical and effective option. Indeed, if you're a Russian Su-27 that just shot off two R-77 at targets at the cost of its energy, you just forced two of your opponents to disengage and lose all of their useful energy as well as targeting opportunities, and they might even be shot down. Evading a missile is so costly in terms of energy and opportunity that getting a shot off by sacrificing your energy can be viable. After all, if you've got a missile on your tail you're not much of a threat anymore. If there are many enemies, not only are you not much of a threat but you're soon dead.
- scarier 6y ago
  Are we talking F-pole/A-pole tactics or WVR stuff?
  - Diesel555 6y ago
    How many fighter pilots lurk hacker news?
    - scarier 6y ago
      I think I've seen a handful here...
    - thaeli 6y ago
      Probably a few actual fighter pilots, and quite a few more simulator enthusiasts who know a lot about the mechanics.
      - atlgator 6y ago
        Or perhaps even those that built the flight simulators that trained the pilots. Now we’ve come full circle.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
TwoBit 6y ago
Seems like the classic problem of Russians doing something because it's impressive and not because it's a good idea.
- scarier 6y ago
  To be fair, the same systems that enable supermaneuverability typically enhance "normal" maneuverability as well. I don't think the Russian engineers were designing these systems specifically for awesome-looking airshow maneuvers and 1v1 BFM.
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    BFM... a less-than-common phrase online but very common on the DFS.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
How can an ability be negative? I can always decide to not use it?
- scarier 6y ago
  In the sense that the advantages you get from using it could be outweighed by the risks you incur by using it. All else being equal, supermaneuverability is great to have, but when you start looking at design tradeoffs (e.g. canards being great for maneuverability but poor for stealth, the added weight and complecity of TVC) it's not necessarily an advantage.
burfog 6y ago
You can stall with lots of energy, up in the coffin corner. The U-2 pilots commonly fly there. Going slower or turning too much will produce a stall, but going faster can hit never-exceed speed limits. Supermaneuverabillity would make that portion of the flight envelope much less hazardous.
- scarier 6y ago
  A supermaneuverable U-2 would be... interesting. I wonder if that would reduce pilot workload or increase it? The engineer in me would suggest a robust automatic flight control system system instead, although considering how insane the procurement process can be, I'm admittedly not all that confident it would save money in the long run.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
    I'm not a engineer but it seems infeasible to me to create a U2 variant with wings strong enough for such maneuvering. They shaved every ounce they could off those things.
Symmetry 6y ago
Especially with the introduction of off-boresight missiles that don't require the plane to be facing the target to launch at them like the AIM-9X.
benburleson 6y ago
I grew up with Top Gun, so I get excited thinking about dog fighting, but in the context of 2020 and cyber warfare, is there really much value in air combat? When is the last time two sides actually engaged fighter jets? I'm probably blissfully unaware how relevant they are, but it just feels like a massive waste of money continuing to build these projects.
- z3phyr 6y ago
  > When is the last time two sides actually engaged fighter jets? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_border_skirmishes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_bo...
- Sebb767 6y ago
  > but in the context of 2020 and cyber warfare, is there really much value in air combat? Technical fights are surely relevant, but in the worst case you can 'simply' unplug your overseas fibres and be done with it. Also, if someone simply marches/flies in and destroys your IXPs, your technical superiority gets irrelevant pretty quick. So, you really need to keep up technically with your possible foes. Additionally, it also serves as a demonstration of strength and industry funding. So fighter jets won't be going anywhere, soon.

stouset 6y ago

This 100%. While really cool demonstrations, the utility of these in a fight is virtually nonexistent. Any air-to-air engagements these days are inevitably BVR (beyond visual range) encounters, where aircraft fire missiles at one-another from extreme ranges. This type of maneuverability has no use whatsoever in such a scenario. If all of the long-range missiles fail to neutralize one side of the other and both forces opt to continue the engagement, you get to WVR (within visual range) where infrared missiles and—once those are spent—guns are employed. There could be opportunities here where such a trick might be useful, but only in a 1v1 scenario. For any case where you might have two or more enemies to deal with, such an abrupt loss of energy is suicide. And if you’re on the side with superior numbers, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor with little chance of you being defensive in the first place. And in the 1v1 scenario, modern infrared missiles like the AIM-9x (which are effective even when launched at frankly ridiculous off-boresight angles) make such a maneuver suicide as well. So it might, might be useful if: both sides empty their long/medium-range radar-guided missiles at one-another, only two combatants remain, neither decides to bug out, the aggressor empties their IR missiles unsuccessfully, and the defensive craft is imminently going to be within the weapon employment zone for the bandit’s cannon… then this might be a Hail Mary to force the aggressor to overshoot so you can turn the tables. But having bled all your energy, you’re going to get at most one shot before you’re back to simply trying to survive.

Firehawke 6y ago
Most fights will inevitably go from BVR to WVR-- ECM is continually in a war of escalation with munitions and ECM is almost always ahead.
- scarier 6y ago
  This is a really interesting topic for debate. Possibly the most recent employment of modern air-to-air tactics we've seen in actual combat was in the early '80s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19). I hope we never have to see an actual large-scale air war between high-end, near-peer competitors, and can continue to armchair debate these kinds of scenarios.
  - trhway 6y ago
    Speaking about ECM and the Bekaa battle, a kind of similar situation has just happened in the recent months - Turkey found a way for their drones to effectively attack Russian "Pantsir-S1" anti-aircraft system (details aren't clear, seems that in addition to ECM the drone specific aspects like long loitering waiting for opportunity and simultaneous multiple drone attack from different directions played key role), and around 30 Pantsirs have just been lost in Syria and Libya. (Sidenote: Ukraine has recently got those drones from Turkey and successfully tested against Pantsir - Pantsirs are standard air defense of Russian tank battalions and was the main reason Ukraine, who has nor stealth nor high precision standoff, didn't use the air-to-ground attacks against the Russian tank forces when they ventured into Donbass back then in August 2014 and February 2015)
    - scarier 6y ago
      This is interesting! Do you have any more in-depth articles on it? The Pantsir can be a pretty beastly threat...
      - noir-york 6y ago
        This article has some more information: https://t-intell.com/2020/05/22/lethal-stalkers-how-turkish-drones-are-neutralizing-haftars-pantsirs-in-libya-bda/ https://t-intell.com/2020/05/22/lethal-stalkers-how-turkish-...
    - imtringued 6y ago
sandworm101 6y ago
Yes but to win the fight first you have to get to the fight. These low-speed abilities mean russian aircraft can operate from much shorter/poorer strips than western jets. They are the product of a different mindset, a more defensive strategy. I doubt the f22 has ever touched grass.
- scarier 6y ago
  To be fair, even non-supermaneuverable Russian jets have good unimproved-field performance--old-school tech like intake screens plays a much bigger role here than fancy thrust vectoring and fly-by-wire controls. But they absolutely are a product of a different mindset, and have been wildly successful in certain aspects.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Bobbcatt 6y ago
All of this is extremely wrong. First of all, there's no guarantee that you will be able to use BVR. A stealth fighter using its radar is the same as a man in a camouflage at night turning on his search light. Everybody will know where you are. There might also be rule of engagement restriction, as has been many times that forced within-visual-range. For WVR, the ability to supermaneuver is useful. It can give you that extra edge to get the angle on a target. You have to give up a lot of energy, sure. But you do have >1 TWR, and your buddies to cover you. It's not a magical tool but another one in a toolbox. Also, in WVR, the advantage goes to the side with fewer planes. There was a study from the korean war to show this. The reason is because if you and your buddy is fighting 20 bandits, you can shoot at anybody that flies in front of you, while the enemies have to visually identify. And the speed of jet combat makes it impossible to verify before you lose your opportunity. >So it might, might be useful if: both sides empty their long/medium-range radar-guided missiles at one-another, only two combatants remain, neither decides to bug out, the aggressor empties their IR missiles unsuccessfully, and the defensive craft is imminently going to be within the weapon employment zone for the bandit’s cannon Yup. Just like in vietnam. We are gonna fly up there with our f4s afterburning to mach 2, then we will launch all our sparrows at the bandits, who would fly straight into our missiles because they are dumb, and then we will land just in time for lunch.
- scarier 6y ago
  Oversimplified for sure, but I think "extremely wrong" is unfair. I think the jury is still out on whether or not a stealth-on-stealth fight (or a more conventional fight in an ECM-heavy environment) inevitably devolves into a WVR knife fight. There are a number of reasons why this doesn't have to be the case. You're absolutely correct that ROE can force a VID, but it'd be pretty dumb to box yourself into a corner that would force you into a neutral-ish WVR fight, yeah? I agree that supermaneuverability has the potential to be useful, but I think it's fair to say that it's very much an edge case, and even then more of an augment to missiles that already have HOBS capability than a replacement for them. It certainly isn't a game-changing capability the way HOBS was. Also, TWR only goes so far to help recover from an energy deficit, especially if you have to go into reheat to make it happen. Gas kills are a thing... Yes and no. Against a well-coordinated, larger force it's really difficult to win, and I very much wouldn't recommend adopting it as a primary tactic. If you had a fight that magically began at the furball phase (admittedly, this is one potential outcome of stealth-on-stealth engagements, although I imagine we'd need to develop better and different technology to make it a reality), that would be more likely to favor the individual, at least until they run out of missiles (it's difficult to over-emphasize how difficult guns kills are against maneuvering targets, even for a hypothetical magic robot with near-perfect aim). Old-school fights like Korea were much closer to the "immediate, chaotic furball" side of the spectrum than current fights, and there was a much less well-developed set of intra-and inter-flight tactics. A modern 2v1 (even heaters-only) is far more lopsided against the 1 than it was during Korea. With good coordination, this scales. (Aside: a really good book about the air war in Korea is The Hunters by James Salter. Highly recommended--it's fiction, but based on the author's own experiences as a pilot there.) For what it's worth, technology and tactics have improved in the last half decade (perhaps more than we can say about our judgement?)... The proliferation of certain technologies will force continual re-evaluation of tactics, but I think it's safe to say that BVR is reasonably mature and not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. (That said, reports of the death of the air-to-air gun will always be greatly exaggerated.)
amelius 6y ago
So you want maneuverability in your missiles, not your aircraft?
- huffmsa 6y ago
  Yes, because the missile doesn't need to worry about what happens after it gets a positional advantage and goes boom. It wins, game over.
- stouset 6y ago
  Precisely. Your missiles are far lighter, can turn on a dime before firing their rockets, and—most importantly—don’t need to worry about survival after a missed shot.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  Obviously. A fighter jet has a trust-to-weight ratio of about 1. Even ultra-old air-to-air-missiles whose specs are declassified like the the AIM-9B from the 1950s have a T/W ratio of over 20, and they are much easier to make maneuverable compared to a 30 ton jet that shouldn't break apart or kill its pilot.

Diesel555 6y ago

It has very little combat usage, there's a reason the Raptor doesn't do it. Any time you see an aircraft do some high AOA (Angle of Attack) maneuver and provide almost zero line of site (not moving up / down / left / right), you know he's slow and you've won the fight if you have airspeed (assuming gun only). The only benefit would be to get an IR missile off when you've already realized you are losing and he's behind you.

scarier 6y ago
>The only benefit would be to get an IR missile off when you've already realized you are losing and he's behind you. Bummer the Raptor driver doesn't have JHMCS...
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  JHMCS isn't that useful in such extreme off-axis situations. A missile taking a big turn requires it to expend a lot of energy and drastically hampers its probability to hit the target.
- Diesel555 6y ago
  I mean for the Russian driver. And yes... bummer... but who can turn their neck that far? Don't forget eyeball gimbals don't count.
  - scarier 6y ago
    Maybe they'll start adding certain neck mobility requirements in the anthropometric screening? It's a brave new world...
burfog 6y ago
A reasonable use would be for checking out a slow little biplane or helicopter, presumably a foolish civilian, who is violating restricted airspace.
- scarier 6y ago

sudosysgen 6y ago

Not necessarily. In a reality where your missiles have a huge delta-v and acceleration advantage against the enemy, while your plane itself is deficient in energy generation and retention, supermaneouvrability might be a logical and effective option. Indeed, if you're a Russian Su-27 that just shot off two R-77 at targets at the cost of its energy, you just forced two of your opponents to disengage and lose all of their useful energy as well as targeting opportunities, and they might even be shot down. Evading a missile is so costly in terms of energy and opportunity that getting a shot off by sacrificing your energy can be viable. After all, if you've got a missile on your tail you're not much of a threat anymore. If there are many enemies, not only are you not much of a threat but you're soon dead.

scarier 6y ago
Are we talking F-pole/A-pole tactics or WVR stuff?
- Diesel555 6y ago
  How many fighter pilots lurk hacker news?
  - scarier 6y ago
    I think I've seen a handful here...
  - thaeli 6y ago
    Probably a few actual fighter pilots, and quite a few more simulator enthusiasts who know a lot about the mechanics.
    - atlgator 6y ago
      Or perhaps even those that built the flight simulators that trained the pilots. Now we’ve come full circle.
  - sandworm101 6y ago

TwoBit 6y ago

Seems like the classic problem of Russians doing something because it's impressive and not because it's a good idea.

scarier 6y ago
To be fair, the same systems that enable supermaneuverability typically enhance "normal" maneuverability as well. I don't think the Russian engineers were designing these systems specifically for awesome-looking airshow maneuvers and 1v1 BFM.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  BFM... a less-than-common phrase online but very common on the DFS.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

How can an ability be negative? I can always decide to not use it?

scarier 6y ago
In the sense that the advantages you get from using it could be outweighed by the risks you incur by using it. All else being equal, supermaneuverability is great to have, but when you start looking at design tradeoffs (e.g. canards being great for maneuverability but poor for stealth, the added weight and complecity of TVC) it's not necessarily an advantage.

burfog 6y ago

You can stall with lots of energy, up in the coffin corner. The U-2 pilots commonly fly there. Going slower or turning too much will produce a stall, but going faster can hit never-exceed speed limits. Supermaneuverabillity would make that portion of the flight envelope much less hazardous.

scarier 6y ago
A supermaneuverable U-2 would be... interesting. I wonder if that would reduce pilot workload or increase it? The engineer in me would suggest a robust automatic flight control system system instead, although considering how insane the procurement process can be, I'm admittedly not all that confident it would save money in the long run.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  I'm not a engineer but it seems infeasible to me to create a U2 variant with wings strong enough for such maneuvering. They shaved every ounce they could off those things.

Symmetry 6y ago

Especially with the introduction of off-boresight missiles that don't require the plane to be facing the target to launch at them like the AIM-9X.

benburleson 6y ago

I grew up with Top Gun, so I get excited thinking about dog fighting, but in the context of 2020 and cyber warfare, is there really much value in air combat? When is the last time two sides actually engaged fighter jets? I'm probably blissfully unaware how relevant they are, but it just feels like a massive waste of money continuing to build these projects.

z3phyr 6y ago
> When is the last time two sides actually engaged fighter jets? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_border_skirmishes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_bo...
Sebb767 6y ago
> but in the context of 2020 and cyber warfare, is there really much value in air combat? Technical fights are surely relevant, but in the worst case you can 'simply' unplug your overseas fibres and be done with it. Also, if someone simply marches/flies in and destroys your IXPs, your technical superiority gets irrelevant pretty quick. So, you really need to keep up technically with your possible foes. Additionally, it also serves as a demonstration of strength and industry funding. So fighter jets won't be going anywhere, soon.