F-35

@earl-of-trumps said
@wildgrass -
Because it's all siphoned off in order to build shiny jets that don't do anything.

Well, I wouldn't quite go that far, WG, but when was the last time our jet fighters went head to head with enemy jet fighters?
I'm thinking Vietnam. Maybe I'm wrong but the point being, jets fighting enemy jets is such a low probability event
of happening that we cannot put all that money into that one aspect of combat. My opinion

Say you build a house. It's a nice house with all the necessary things to feed and shelter your family. Then you borrow a bunch of money from your unborn grandkids to build another house next to that house. The new house is fancy. It's got all the bells and whistles and, to thrill the public, the thing is invisible. Crazy. You move your family out of the perfectly-usable old house and into the new.

What does the new house do? Was it worth it?

@wildgrass said
Say you build a house. It's a nice house with all the necessary things to feed and shelter your family. Then you borrow a bunch of money from your unborn grandkids to build another house next to that house. The new house is fancy. It's got all the bells and whistles and, to thrill the public, the thing is invisible. Crazy. You move your family out of the perfectly-usable old house and into the new.

What does the new house do? Was it worth it?

The new house doesn't get bombed to smithereens.

@wildgrass said
Say you build a house. It's a nice house with all the necessary things to feed and shelter your family. Then you borrow a bunch of money from your unborn grandkids to build another house next to that house. The new house is fancy. It's got all the bells and whistles and, to thrill the public, the thing is invisible. Crazy. You move your family out of the perfectly-usable old house and into the new.

What does the new house do? Was it worth it?

You won't see me disagree on this issue, Wildgrass, and again, we pretty much see eye-to-eye with overspending
*in general*, as well as porkbelly pet projects for special interest groups. IMO, this F-35 is NOT worth the money. No way.

But the overspending by the pols in DC go well beyond just the F-35. Let's just say the F-35 is a microcosm of the real Evil.

@athousandyoung said
The new house doesn't get bombed to smithereens.

Not since Pearl Harbor 80 years ago. Will the winner of next years war rely on manned aircraft?

@wildgrass said
Not since Pearl Harbor 80 years ago. Will the winner of next years war rely on manned aircraft?

You think F35 can be hacked...but not unmanned aircraft?!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21373353

@wildgrass said
Not since Pearl Harbor 80 years ago. Will the winner of next years war rely on manned aircraft?

Manned or unmanned, the aircraft that will decide the war will be stealth bombers.
What I am suggesting here is the most likely scenario, by far.

It is possible that the USAF will have its F-35 fighters tangle with Russian SU 35's
but that is not what will determine the war's outcome. My opinion.

@earl-of-trumps said
Manned or unmanned, the aircraft that will decide the war will be stealth bombers.
What I am suggesting here is the most likely scenario, by far.

It is possible that the USAF will have its F-35 fighters tangle with Russian SU 35's
but that is not what will determine the war's outcome. My opinion.

F35s are optimized for ground attack so they are in effect small stealth bombers. An F35 has far more air to ground capacity than the F117 which was ONLY a bomber and had no air to air capability.

@athousandyoung said
F35s are optimized for ground attack so they are in effect small stealth bombers. An F35 has far more air to ground capacity than the F117 which was ONLY a bomber and had no air to air capability.

ATY, did we really need yet another stealth bomber?

@earl-of-trumps said
ATY, did we really need yet another stealth bomber?

Yes because it is cheaper to operate than a B2

@athousandyoung said
You think F35 can be hacked...but not unmanned aircraft?!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21373353

Right. I think you're missing the argument. Both are obviously hackable. Anything with a computer is hackable. The Russian government was swimming around unnoticed in the Pentagon for an entire year. We absolutely should invest heavily in cyber warfare. WE should invest and focus much more heavily on it than we are now. The problem is that, instead of doing that, we are currently way too invested in the shiny objects that are F-35 jets. The F-35 addresses the problems of the Bosnian war but won't do anything substantive to assist in future warfare. It's just a jobs program.

Ditch the whole program. Invest in the next war, not the last one.

@wildgrass said
Right. I think you're missing the argument. Both are obviously hackable. Anything with a computer is hackable. The Russian government was swimming around unnoticed in the Pentagon for an entire year. We absolutely should invest heavily in cyber warfare. WE should invest and focus much more heavily on it than we are now. The problem is that, instead of doing that, we are cur ...[text shortened]... are. It's just a jobs program.

Ditch the whole program. Invest in the next war, not the last one.

What would investing in the next war look like? Do you know?

The post that was quoted here has been removed

Keep in mind, wildgrass, that the Sukhoi Flankers like the Su35 are already considered better planes than the American teen series (F15/16/18)

@athousandyoung said
What would investing in the next war look like? Do you know?

Artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and large scale cyberwarfare will likely dominate. What do you think Russia was doing walking the halls of the Pentagon for that year? It wasn't a test. We're not prepared to deal with it. A massive cyber attack on our energy and utility grids or government servers would render our F-35's relatively useless. How much do we spend on cybersecurity? $17 billion

I'm not saying F-35's aren't cool or whatever. I'm saying that the program costs too much. $1.7 trillion spent instead on cybersecurity might have prevented the large scale Russian hack of the Pentagon that no one seems to want to talk about. They've done it twice. In the latest hack they had plenty of time to steal all of our military and intelligence data and establish routes for re-entry whenever they want.

Other examples include recent ransomware attacks on US hospitals, which hospitals have been paying to get out of due to the expense of rebuilding complex research data servers. If these hackers wanted to, they could have done enormous damage to our healthcare system. We don't seem to have defense funds available to fix this blatant national security risk because... shiny planes etc.