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"There’s also criticism from the opposite direction, that we should be buying drones instead. I’ve largely said my piece on that earlier this year, but the shor

"There’s also criticism from the opposite direction, that we should be buying drones instead. I’ve largely said my piece on that earlier this year, but the short version is that in the areas where they are useful, unmanned systems have already taken over. We call them things like “cruise missiles” and “AAMs”." I'm not an expert here but I've read claims that China, if it invades Taiwan, will use some combinations of missiles, drones, and drone-missile hybrids to destroy or render ineffective landing strips and maintenance fields necessary for effective manned fighter aircraft deployment. Yes, there are missile defenses, but they'll be overwhelmed by the sheer number of missiles and drones, and thus the F-35 will be a powerful fighter that can't be effectively deployed. Edit to add: Carriers will suffer similar problems (sample: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/pentagon-war-games-reveal-that-us-would-lose-any-war-fought-in-the-pacific-with-china/ https://theaviationgeekclub.com/pentagon-war-games-reveal-th...) and be destroyed with hypersonic missile barrages. Is this true? No one will really know until the moment, but it seems and sounds plausible. "In any case, while the F-35 isn’t perfect, it’s clearly the best solution available for the threats the US and its allies face today." Unless the real threats are from drones and missiles that cost anywhere from 1/10th to 1/100th to even less than an F-35, and thus can be produced in far greater quantities for a given outlay.

closetnerd 4y ago
I'm the most ignorant man alive when it comes to war - but this is what I want to know. Isn't sensor + tracking abilities far more advanced at shooting down planes than planes are at creating damage? And if that's the case, aren't hyper/sonic/long/range stuff better at evading defenses? Seems like the next "war" will be LoL style to me.
- tlb 4y ago
  Wars are won by convincing the opposing government and its citizens that they have been defeated and must surrender. When there are a dozen F-35s flying patterns over your capital city, everyone has to admit defeat. Drones or missiles wouldn't have the same effect. For the desired effect, fighter jets must be big, loud, and expensive.
  - jcranmer 4y ago
    How many times has shock-and-awe actually compelled surrender? Especially when you exclude the instances where shock-and-awe wasn't preceded by a thorough evisceration of the defending military, which tends to understandably play a role in motivating people to surrender.
    - happysadpanda2 4y ago
      I realize that I might be illiterate on this topic, but I always thought the "shock" in "shock and awe" was the thorough evisceration of the defending army. If I am incorrect in this thinking, I hope someone will give me a better understanding.
    - KptMarchewa 4y ago
      Serbia in 1999 comes to mind.
  - zwkrt 4y ago
    That may be true, but I wouldn’t underestimate the terror caused by 100000 armed drones hovering over houses and streets and bridges.
  - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    Jet airplanes are last millenium's weapon. You're more likely to make them laugh than surrender.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Considering equal capabilities, airborne missiles are, I believe, cheaper than their land based counterparts (the can be smaller as much of their energy comes from the aircraft), more mobile (easier to fly a plane a few hundred km that drive a massive truck) and harder to destroy ahead of time. Many "smart weapons" are basic "dumb bombs" plus a relatively cheap conversion kit that makes them glide to the right spot. In Ukraine, I understand, much of the defence against Russian missiles pounding civilians is done from aircraft in the sky, not with rockets from the ground.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    >In Ukraine, I understand, much of the defence against Russian missiles pounding civilians is done from aircraft in the sky, not with rockets from the ground. Ground based systems still do majority of the work, although this might be for the acute lack of air force.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  >more advanced at shooting down planes One thing to consider is kill envelope / no escape is also function of manned fighters being restricted to manned limitations. An autonmous fighter that has bigger fuel tank than missiles (more flight envelope), better sensors to inform AI (due to larger airframe + power) that can can pull substantially more Gs than a human, can conceivable be much better at dodging missiles. To the point where it no longer becomes viable to shoot them down, both economically and tactically, i.e. cost more than UAV worth of missile to engage, and require so many missiles that it's easy to saturate defenses with handful of UAVs. A CSG can only dedicate so much space for air (VLS slots), if that DDG with ~100 cells with 30 reserved for anti air suddenly needs to move to 90, then it becomes useless for other missions. And if all ~100 cells isn't then UAVs in relatively small numbers can essentially operate uncontested. Implications being, such shift (which IMO tier1 US/PRC are pursuing) will massively benefit land based aviation that can mass deployment.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Unmanned aircraft aren't built for maneuver ability. Stop trying to turn everything into top gun.
    - dirtyid 4y ago
      Currently aren't, otherwise go tell the navy and airforce that. There's a reason programs exist to train AI to out gun topgun, because the current roadmap leads to large UAVs more performant than current manned fighters specifically because pushing beyond human flight envelops has capability merits.
count 4y ago
For what it's worth, the US would field F35s from CVNs, not air strips. And repairing a bombed out airstrip for mil use takes about 48-72 hours.
- cfraenkel 4y ago
  Have you compared the range of the naval F35s to the stand off range needed to keep the CVNs floating? (it's not even close, & there aren't enough tankers to keep the F35s in the air as CAP. Single deep strike, maybe. But to hold off an invasion, you need to provide sustained air cover.)
  - lumost 4y ago
    The new aim-260 had a range of 120 miles. The combination of long range Air to Air missiles and stealth is very hard to defeat. https://youtu.be/DRt2I39qU5U https://youtu.be/DRt2I39qU5U Has an interesting simulation of a carrier battle between a Chinese naval group and an American naval group with expected 2025 equipment.
    - eduction 4y ago
      This is argument goes back at least 50 years. The F-14 and before that the F-111 didn’t need to be good dogfighters because the AIM 54 phoenix was a 100 mile missile and would kill anyhting before it got remotely close. That turned out to be false as we learned against Libyan fighters and as the Israelis could have told us (or anyone who served in Vietnam).
      - lumost 4y ago
        Fair, however modern sensor and control mechanics are much better than they were 50 years ago. If the media is to be believed, we're reaching the end of a fighters ability to defeat a missile through anything other than kinematics/stealth.
        sudosysgen 4y ago
ranger207 4y ago
Making airstrips ineffective is much harder than it seems. Recall the US attack on the Syrian airbase a few years ago that did little lasting damage
elorant 4y ago
Drones are slow. You can pick them up easily with a fighter jet, and in some cases even with attack helicopters.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  The ones we use to spy on people and shoot small missiles are slow, but they are designed to stay in the air for a very long time. I assume they make drones today that are much faster (hypersonic missiles are very drone-like in some ways), we just don't know about them yet.
  - elorant 4y ago
    In which case they won't be cheap so you can't deploy myriads of them.
- Rygian 4y ago
  Parent's point is "how many of them can you pick up?" as they can overwhelm in number.
- hu3 4y ago
  But they have a very small footprint, which makes them hard for radars and automated targeting systems. And I doubt jets and helis can effectively eliminate hundreds of drones in a timely manner.
- nrclark 4y ago
  Drones can be very, very fast. it just depends on the design. A drone is just an unmanned aircraft at its core. A drone could do maneuvers that would kill a pilot, kamikaze itself, or fly with only enough fuel for a one-way trip. It could have a jet engine, a rocket, or maybe both. Designing for human pilots is really a huge limitation. Drones can be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and can have any engine the designer decides to put on them. They’re the future of aerial combat for sure.
  - elorant 4y ago
    Fast, cheap, heavy ordnance. Pick two.
rich_sasha 4y ago
All these weapon systems are available to Russia and they were unable to disable Ukrainian air power this way.
lumost 4y ago
Decommissioning hardened airfields is a hard task. The fighters sit in bunkers along with everything else if note. The bunkers are cheap to replace and are simple concrete structures. The runway is ultimately a piece of flattened ground. It’s only a question of bulldozer size for how long it takes to fill craters and patch the runway. There are also semi-public examples of extremely hardened runways such as the Swiss underground airbases.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Many of those airbases are located nearby motorways and most Swiss fighters can use them as emergency runway.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  If the bunkers are destroyed in a sneak attack with the fighters still in them, it won’t matter if the bunkers can be replaced, the fighters are toast.
  - lumost 4y ago
    It's really hard to launch a sneak attack from 300+ miles away through heavily defended air space. Satellites would detect any troop buildup long before the war starts.
    - dirtyid 4y ago
      Depends on capability of attackers. Even medium range hypersonics strikes = minutes of warning. Coordinating a bunch of TEL launchers to pop out of their cave for quick launch = maybe an hour to determine whether movement is training exercise or real deal, likely not enough time to conduct analysis communicated up/down command chain to get units to disperse/bunker in time.
      - lumost 4y ago
        Possible, but the bigger question would be what’s the follow-up? If you don’t have hundreds of thousands of troops ready to invade - why do a massive and expensive conventional first strike? A thousand hypersonics won’t win the war.
cwillu 4y ago
There's a 4 part series on navalgazing on Why the Carriers Are Not Doomed (https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1)
- dirtyid 4y ago
  Not bad series at the time and still relevant to non peer "enemistan" powers, but 4 years is long time with respect to PRC military modernization - and there's a reason the series correctly distinguishes between generic Enemistan mid/low tier powers and PRC even back then. In the last 4 years PRC has (according to each part of the series): 1) launched ~200 Yaogan/Gaofen/Jilin remote sensing satellites to have established near persistent coverage of PRC's backyard and beyond. 2) increased ability to generate fires and saturate CSG defenses, which even in 2018 author admits was sufficient to overwhelm single CSG. Also apart from relying on lol CMO "simulation", Part2 extrapolates interception rate of garbage tier Yemen ordnances (basic subsonic "cruise" missiles) without mentioning of much more performant PRC AShM hardware like YJ12 that travels at mach 2+ and evades on approach. 3) PRC successfully demonstrated coordinated DF21 & DF26 tests that hit moving target on water. Interestingly, this part of article seems to be updated with the 2020 tests but failed to mention it succeeded (initially confirmed, then retracted, then confirmed again by US last year). Meanwhile recent SM6 test (FTM33) shot down 1 of 2 short range ballistic missiles with 4 interceptors in what's described as "most complex" test so far, but "most complex" hasn't hinted at dealing with anything like counter measures. Reality is, missile defense also haven't been seriously stress tested. They could work as advertised or be another Patriot/Scud debacle. Also IMO poorly misread indicators that PRC is favoring carrier projection, development last few years (and really before) suggested coastal aviation/rocketforce doing most of anti-carrier activity. With better capabilities like YJ21 being revealed in Zhuhai this year. The part on programmed evasion is questionable too, like missiles dodge to the point of missing target when hitting targets with hypersonic shrapnel is part of the charm. 4) This part holds up alright only in that it doesn't make strong predictions, and PRC subs has been historically terrible until recent hints at mass producing new model due to shipyard expansions that suggest something mature is in the pipeline. Are CSGs doomed? Still impossible to say without shooting war, but most factors that author thought PRC had a chance of overcoming has been seemingly overcame (at scale) in the last few years. Also no one is seriously discussing PRC systems confrontation/destruction doctrine that will focus on taking out weak links like resupply and sustainment ships which can render carrier groups useless, or increasing possiblity of global strikes that will take out carriers/support ships when they eventually dock in port. IMO that's the "low"ish hanging fruit that dooms not just carriers, but US willingness to project power at all since it makes CONUS vunerable and can be proliferated (likely via PRC exports) to and be made operational by enemistan powers who can't manage airforce but can a rocketforce.
scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Not an expert here either, but shouldn’t a weapon be considered in the context of a broader weapon system? And isn’t that entire system the result of the intended strategy and tactical reality? Like, my understanding is that this thing is intended for asymmetrical, clandestine cold-war type of use. Not for WW2 scale confrontation with territorial gain objectives.
tb_technical 4y ago
Air superiority fighters are currently not at risk of being shot down by drone systems. Strategic airfields and carriers have surface to air countermeasures. All known systems are at risk of saturation attacks but they are wasteful methods of attack (especially if your opponent is on high alert). I think you're underestimating how scary the E2 and E2D AWACS are in conjunction with the defensive countermeasures a carrier has at their disposal. Everyone lies about how amazing their weapons are, but the CIWS and the E2D are old, well known, and very scary defensive systems. Truly what's most scary about China's military right now is their advanced linked radar networks. They, presumably, can render stealth technology useless in some core areas - thus denying the core features of the F35 and F22 craft. (Also remember the US has a base in Guam and a shitload of in-air tankers - over 500)

closetnerd 4y ago

I'm the most ignorant man alive when it comes to war - but this is what I want to know. Isn't sensor + tracking abilities far more advanced at shooting down planes than planes are at creating damage? And if that's the case, aren't hyper/sonic/long/range stuff better at evading defenses? Seems like the next "war" will be LoL style to me.

tlb 4y ago
Wars are won by convincing the opposing government and its citizens that they have been defeated and must surrender. When there are a dozen F-35s flying patterns over your capital city, everyone has to admit defeat. Drones or missiles wouldn't have the same effect. For the desired effect, fighter jets must be big, loud, and expensive.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  How many times has shock-and-awe actually compelled surrender? Especially when you exclude the instances where shock-and-awe wasn't preceded by a thorough evisceration of the defending military, which tends to understandably play a role in motivating people to surrender.
  - happysadpanda2 4y ago
    I realize that I might be illiterate on this topic, but I always thought the "shock" in "shock and awe" was the thorough evisceration of the defending army. If I am incorrect in this thinking, I hope someone will give me a better understanding.
  - KptMarchewa 4y ago
    Serbia in 1999 comes to mind.
- zwkrt 4y ago
  That may be true, but I wouldn’t underestimate the terror caused by 100000 armed drones hovering over houses and streets and bridges.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  Jet airplanes are last millenium's weapon. You're more likely to make them laugh than surrender.
rich_sasha 4y ago
Considering equal capabilities, airborne missiles are, I believe, cheaper than their land based counterparts (the can be smaller as much of their energy comes from the aircraft), more mobile (easier to fly a plane a few hundred km that drive a massive truck) and harder to destroy ahead of time. Many "smart weapons" are basic "dumb bombs" plus a relatively cheap conversion kit that makes them glide to the right spot. In Ukraine, I understand, much of the defence against Russian missiles pounding civilians is done from aircraft in the sky, not with rockets from the ground.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago
  >In Ukraine, I understand, much of the defence against Russian missiles pounding civilians is done from aircraft in the sky, not with rockets from the ground. Ground based systems still do majority of the work, although this might be for the acute lack of air force.
dirtyid 4y ago
>more advanced at shooting down planes One thing to consider is kill envelope / no escape is also function of manned fighters being restricted to manned limitations. An autonmous fighter that has bigger fuel tank than missiles (more flight envelope), better sensors to inform AI (due to larger airframe + power) that can can pull substantially more Gs than a human, can conceivable be much better at dodging missiles. To the point where it no longer becomes viable to shoot them down, both economically and tactically, i.e. cost more than UAV worth of missile to engage, and require so many missiles that it's easy to saturate defenses with handful of UAVs. A CSG can only dedicate so much space for air (VLS slots), if that DDG with ~100 cells with 30 reserved for anti air suddenly needs to move to 90, then it becomes useless for other missions. And if all ~100 cells isn't then UAVs in relatively small numbers can essentially operate uncontested. Implications being, such shift (which IMO tier1 US/PRC are pursuing) will massively benefit land based aviation that can mass deployment.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Unmanned aircraft aren't built for maneuver ability. Stop trying to turn everything into top gun.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    Currently aren't, otherwise go tell the navy and airforce that. There's a reason programs exist to train AI to out gun topgun, because the current roadmap leads to large UAVs more performant than current manned fighters specifically because pushing beyond human flight envelops has capability merits.

count 4y ago

For what it's worth, the US would field F35s from CVNs, not air strips. And repairing a bombed out airstrip for mil use takes about 48-72 hours.

cfraenkel 4y ago
Have you compared the range of the naval F35s to the stand off range needed to keep the CVNs floating? (it's not even close, & there aren't enough tankers to keep the F35s in the air as CAP. Single deep strike, maybe. But to hold off an invasion, you need to provide sustained air cover.)
- lumost 4y ago
  The new aim-260 had a range of 120 miles. The combination of long range Air to Air missiles and stealth is very hard to defeat. https://youtu.be/DRt2I39qU5U https://youtu.be/DRt2I39qU5U Has an interesting simulation of a carrier battle between a Chinese naval group and an American naval group with expected 2025 equipment.
  - eduction 4y ago
    This is argument goes back at least 50 years. The F-14 and before that the F-111 didn’t need to be good dogfighters because the AIM 54 phoenix was a 100 mile missile and would kill anyhting before it got remotely close. That turned out to be false as we learned against Libyan fighters and as the Israelis could have told us (or anyone who served in Vietnam).
    - lumost 4y ago
      Fair, however modern sensor and control mechanics are much better than they were 50 years ago. If the media is to be believed, we're reaching the end of a fighters ability to defeat a missile through anything other than kinematics/stealth.
      - sudosysgen 4y ago

ranger207 4y ago

Making airstrips ineffective is much harder than it seems. Recall the US attack on the Syrian airbase a few years ago that did little lasting damage

elorant 4y ago

Drones are slow. You can pick them up easily with a fighter jet, and in some cases even with attack helicopters.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
The ones we use to spy on people and shoot small missiles are slow, but they are designed to stay in the air for a very long time. I assume they make drones today that are much faster (hypersonic missiles are very drone-like in some ways), we just don't know about them yet.
- elorant 4y ago
  In which case they won't be cheap so you can't deploy myriads of them.
Rygian 4y ago
Parent's point is "how many of them can you pick up?" as they can overwhelm in number.
hu3 4y ago
But they have a very small footprint, which makes them hard for radars and automated targeting systems. And I doubt jets and helis can effectively eliminate hundreds of drones in a timely manner.
nrclark 4y ago
Drones can be very, very fast. it just depends on the design. A drone is just an unmanned aircraft at its core. A drone could do maneuvers that would kill a pilot, kamikaze itself, or fly with only enough fuel for a one-way trip. It could have a jet engine, a rocket, or maybe both. Designing for human pilots is really a huge limitation. Drones can be smaller, lighter, cheaper, and can have any engine the designer decides to put on them. They’re the future of aerial combat for sure.
- elorant 4y ago
  Fast, cheap, heavy ordnance. Pick two.

rich_sasha 4y ago

All these weapon systems are available to Russia and they were unable to disable Ukrainian air power this way.

lumost 4y ago

Decommissioning hardened airfields is a hard task. The fighters sit in bunkers along with everything else if note. The bunkers are cheap to replace and are simple concrete structures. The runway is ultimately a piece of flattened ground. It’s only a question of bulldozer size for how long it takes to fill craters and patch the runway. There are also semi-public examples of extremely hardened runways such as the Swiss underground airbases.

pjmlp 4y ago
Many of those airbases are located nearby motorways and most Swiss fighters can use them as emergency runway.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
If the bunkers are destroyed in a sneak attack with the fighters still in them, it won’t matter if the bunkers can be replaced, the fighters are toast.
- lumost 4y ago
  It's really hard to launch a sneak attack from 300+ miles away through heavily defended air space. Satellites would detect any troop buildup long before the war starts.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    Depends on capability of attackers. Even medium range hypersonics strikes = minutes of warning. Coordinating a bunch of TEL launchers to pop out of their cave for quick launch = maybe an hour to determine whether movement is training exercise or real deal, likely not enough time to conduct analysis communicated up/down command chain to get units to disperse/bunker in time.
    - lumost 4y ago
      Possible, but the bigger question would be what’s the follow-up? If you don’t have hundreds of thousands of troops ready to invade - why do a massive and expensive conventional first strike? A thousand hypersonics won’t win the war.

cwillu 4y ago

There's a 4 part series on navalgazing on Why the Carriers Are Not Doomed (https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1 https://www.navalgazing.net/Carrier-Doom-Part-1)

dirtyid 4y ago
Not bad series at the time and still relevant to non peer "enemistan" powers, but 4 years is long time with respect to PRC military modernization - and there's a reason the series correctly distinguishes between generic Enemistan mid/low tier powers and PRC even back then. In the last 4 years PRC has (according to each part of the series): 1) launched ~200 Yaogan/Gaofen/Jilin remote sensing satellites to have established near persistent coverage of PRC's backyard and beyond. 2) increased ability to generate fires and saturate CSG defenses, which even in 2018 author admits was sufficient to overwhelm single CSG. Also apart from relying on lol CMO "simulation", Part2 extrapolates interception rate of garbage tier Yemen ordnances (basic subsonic "cruise" missiles) without mentioning of much more performant PRC AShM hardware like YJ12 that travels at mach 2+ and evades on approach. 3) PRC successfully demonstrated coordinated DF21 & DF26 tests that hit moving target on water. Interestingly, this part of article seems to be updated with the 2020 tests but failed to mention it succeeded (initially confirmed, then retracted, then confirmed again by US last year). Meanwhile recent SM6 test (FTM33) shot down 1 of 2 short range ballistic missiles with 4 interceptors in what's described as "most complex" test so far, but "most complex" hasn't hinted at dealing with anything like counter measures. Reality is, missile defense also haven't been seriously stress tested. They could work as advertised or be another Patriot/Scud debacle. Also IMO poorly misread indicators that PRC is favoring carrier projection, development last few years (and really before) suggested coastal aviation/rocketforce doing most of anti-carrier activity. With better capabilities like YJ21 being revealed in Zhuhai this year. The part on programmed evasion is questionable too, like missiles dodge to the point of missing target when hitting targets with hypersonic shrapnel is part of the charm. 4) This part holds up alright only in that it doesn't make strong predictions, and PRC subs has been historically terrible until recent hints at mass producing new model due to shipyard expansions that suggest something mature is in the pipeline. Are CSGs doomed? Still impossible to say without shooting war, but most factors that author thought PRC had a chance of overcoming has been seemingly overcame (at scale) in the last few years. Also no one is seriously discussing PRC systems confrontation/destruction doctrine that will focus on taking out weak links like resupply and sustainment ships which can render carrier groups useless, or increasing possiblity of global strikes that will take out carriers/support ships when they eventually dock in port. IMO that's the "low"ish hanging fruit that dooms not just carriers, but US willingness to project power at all since it makes CONUS vunerable and can be proliferated (likely via PRC exports) to and be made operational by enemistan powers who can't manage airforce but can a rocketforce.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago

Not an expert here either, but shouldn’t a weapon be considered in the context of a broader weapon system? And isn’t that entire system the result of the intended strategy and tactical reality? Like, my understanding is that this thing is intended for asymmetrical, clandestine cold-war type of use. Not for WW2 scale confrontation with territorial gain objectives.

tb_technical 4y ago

Air superiority fighters are currently not at risk of being shot down by drone systems. Strategic airfields and carriers have surface to air countermeasures. All known systems are at risk of saturation attacks but they are wasteful methods of attack (especially if your opponent is on high alert). I think you're underestimating how scary the E2 and E2D AWACS are in conjunction with the defensive countermeasures a carrier has at their disposal. Everyone lies about how amazing their weapons are, but the CIWS and the E2D are old, well known, and very scary defensive systems. Truly what's most scary about China's military right now is their advanced linked radar networks. They, presumably, can render stealth technology useless in some core areas - thus denying the core features of the F35 and F22 craft. (Also remember the US has a base in Guam and a shitload of in-air tankers - over 500)