7 ms·

I admit that I'm completly clueless when it comes to aircraft and I understand that the final price tag on F22/F35 is very upsetting but I don't understand why

I admit that I'm completly clueless when it comes to aircraft and I understand that the final price tag on F22/F35 is very upsetting but I don't understand why those programs cannot be salvaged. Couldn't those planes be simplified/optimized to lower their cost?

toyg 5y ago
You’re getting dangerously close to a position whereby, if a process fails, what needs to be done is to add more processing.
redis_mlc 5y ago
I study warfare and am a pilot. The doctrine of the US Air Force is that they will have the best airplanes at any cost to achieve air dominance. They literally don't care about price as long as they get the lethality and qty. they want. Hence they will never look at low-cost fighters like the F-5, A-10 or A-29 for their own use, except as maybe trainers or Marine use. The F-22 is no longer made. Around 189 were built and there's about 150 left. It's a great plane, but the low count is a great concern in case of war (with China.) You can lose 150 planes in a couple of days in a kinetic war. The F-35 has numerous show-stopping problems, plus even more numerous irritating problems. The US needs about 1,000 operational ones, plus another 1,000 for our allies, to be an effective deterrent to China. (Since the US has 11 carriers, that's enough F-35s to populate them.) The reason we need so many planes is that China has almost 18,000 ships, which can be used to blockade (defend) the S. China Sea (a tactic they accidently discovered in the last Taiwan Strait conflict.) So that leaves aerial/ICBM attacks. The US MIC has prioritized pork instead of results, so we need to work on qty. The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. The only reasons the CCP hasn't successfully invaded Taiwan yet are: - the Taiwan Strait is about 80 miles wide at the narrrowest. Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent. - Russia told the CCP to stop saber-rattling on previous attempts - The US came to Taiwan's aid in the last two attempts, and has a policy of including Taiwan under its umbrella (like half the world's countries.) So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  You made a bunch of good points, which you undermined with partisanship. As a result, everyone is missing the 70% truth into which you've mixed pro-Trump nuggets. For example: > Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa. You're right that internal division is a major geopolitical liability, but you're missing half the story. Yes, when rival powers see BLM-themed looting they lick their chops, but they also do that when they see a QAnon-themed "capitol insurrection". It takes two or more to tango. If you had talked about division more generally it would have been better-received. But yeah: Can you imagine the US having a draft? Very few people would get shot at to defend "America as an idea" any more. Pretty sure that millions of Angry Youth have more conviction in their cause than Americans have in theirs. > The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally [...]. [...] So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own. First of all, I'm not convinced that Biden's administration is perceived as weak, relative to Trump. Yes, he's more conciliatory on the surface with China, just like Obama was -- but it was Obama/Biden who started the Pacific pivot. And Trump, while more "hard on China" on the surface, could well have been perceived as inexpert and flatterable/manipulable. (And Biden's physical state is mostly irrelevant. FDR was in a wheelchair and Timur was lame. Whatever. Dude doesn't go out and punch geopolitical adversaries with his fists.) But when you say > [The US] is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. ... you're right. You were also right with your first six paragraphs. And your observations about strategy and tactics were interesting. These are areas where you could educate HN, if you toned down the Trump/Biden stuff. > During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. This is the most interesting tidbit. A quote from [1]: > William Hyland, the author of this paper, was a Soviet analyst at CIA's Directorate of Intelligence before he was recruited for Kissinger's NSC staff. In this memorandum, Hyland critiqued an interagency study on Sino-Soviet relations that Kissinger has requested in National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 63. In the course of the analysis, which Kissinger characterized as "1st rate," Hyland acknowledged that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US." For example, implying that a war would involve Soviet strikes to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, Hyland observed that it might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem. The relevant Wikipedia article is also interesting [2]. [1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

toyg 5y ago

You’re getting dangerously close to a position whereby, if a process fails, what needs to be done is to add more processing.

redis_mlc 5y ago

I study warfare and am a pilot. The doctrine of the US Air Force is that they will have the best airplanes at any cost to achieve air dominance. They literally don't care about price as long as they get the lethality and qty. they want. Hence they will never look at low-cost fighters like the F-5, A-10 or A-29 for their own use, except as maybe trainers or Marine use. The F-22 is no longer made. Around 189 were built and there's about 150 left. It's a great plane, but the low count is a great concern in case of war (with China.) You can lose 150 planes in a couple of days in a kinetic war. The F-35 has numerous show-stopping problems, plus even more numerous irritating problems. The US needs about 1,000 operational ones, plus another 1,000 for our allies, to be an effective deterrent to China. (Since the US has 11 carriers, that's enough F-35s to populate them.) The reason we need so many planes is that China has almost 18,000 ships, which can be used to blockade (defend) the S. China Sea (a tactic they accidently discovered in the last Taiwan Strait conflict.) So that leaves aerial/ICBM attacks. The US MIC has prioritized pork instead of results, so we need to work on qty. The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.) During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. The only reasons the CCP hasn't successfully invaded Taiwan yet are: - the Taiwan Strait is about 80 miles wide at the narrrowest. Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent. - Russia told the CCP to stop saber-rattling on previous attempts - The US came to Taiwan's aid in the last two attempts, and has a policy of including Taiwan under its umbrella (like half the world's countries.) So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own.

FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
You made a bunch of good points, which you undermined with partisanship. As a result, everyone is missing the 70% truth into which you've mixed pro-Trump nuggets. For example: > Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa. You're right that internal division is a major geopolitical liability, but you're missing half the story. Yes, when rival powers see BLM-themed looting they lick their chops, but they also do that when they see a QAnon-themed "capitol insurrection". It takes two or more to tango. If you had talked about division more generally it would have been better-received. But yeah: Can you imagine the US having a draft? Very few people would get shot at to defend "America as an idea" any more. Pretty sure that millions of Angry Youth have more conviction in their cause than Americans have in theirs. > The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally [...]. [...] So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own. First of all, I'm not convinced that Biden's administration is perceived as weak, relative to Trump. Yes, he's more conciliatory on the surface with China, just like Obama was -- but it was Obama/Biden who started the Pacific pivot. And Trump, while more "hard on China" on the surface, could well have been perceived as inexpert and flatterable/manipulable. (And Biden's physical state is mostly irrelevant. FDR was in a wheelchair and Timur was lame. Whatever. Dude doesn't go out and punch geopolitical adversaries with his fists.) But when you say > [The US] is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again. ... you're right. You were also right with your first six paragraphs. And your observations about strategy and tactics were interesting. These are areas where you could educate HN, if you toned down the Trump/Biden stuff. > During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked. This is the most interesting tidbit. A quote from [1]: > William Hyland, the author of this paper, was a Soviet analyst at CIA's Directorate of Intelligence before he was recruited for Kissinger's NSC staff. In this memorandum, Hyland critiqued an interagency study on Sino-Soviet relations that Kissinger has requested in National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 63. In the course of the analysis, which Kissinger characterized as "1st rate," Hyland acknowledged that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US." For example, implying that a war would involve Soviet strikes to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, Hyland observed that it might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem. The relevant Wikipedia article is also interesting [2]. [1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/ [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]