29 Apr 21
@wildgrass saidProblem is you'll only ever know in hindsight where the best place was to have spent the money.
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 ro ...[text shortened]... have defense funds available to fix this blatant national security risk because... shiny planes etc.
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29 Apr 21
@kmax87 saidThat's... well, not quite nonsense, but quite irrelevant. This isn't about the best versus the nearly best versus the not very good but really useful. This is about the good enough at the price versus the completely over-designed and ridiculously over-priced nest egg for the military-Republican syndicate. And the F-35 is the latter, unfortunately in my country as well as in yours and the USA.
Problem is you'll only ever know in hindsight where the best place was to have spent the money.
@wildgrass - said
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.
You are on the right track, IMO, but, if you intend to take money spent on offensive armament,
then you should be prepared - again, IMO, that those same dollars be spent on some other armament platform.
30 Apr 21
2 edits
@wildgrass said"Artificial intelligence"? What does that mean? You want us to invent death robots without humans in the loop launching hypersonic missiles according to some programmed algorithm?
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 ...[text shortened]... have defense funds available to fix this blatant national security risk because... shiny planes etc.
Russia was spying, like they've been doing all through the Cold War. So what?
A massive cyber attack on our energy and utility grids or government servers would render our F-35's relatively useless.
No they won't. There's a pilot in it who can fly the plane remember? The cameras on the plane that provide situational awareness are hardwired to the aircraft.
I don't understand why you think more computers and fewer humans will prevent us from being hacked.
How much cybersecurity do we need to protect our sea lines of communication from aircraft? How many computer programmers does it take to prevent Russians from doing stuff like this:
https://news.yahoo.com/satellite-photos-show-aftermath-strike-074843504.html
March 6, 2021·2 min read
BEIRUT (AP) — A suspected missile strike on an oil-loading facility used by Turkey-backed opposition forces in northern Syria sparked a massive blaze across a large area where oil tankers are normally parked, aerial and satellite images show.
Syrian opposition groups and at least one war monitor blamed Russia for the strike
30 Apr 21
@shallow-blue saidWhile you may be correct about the F-35 program being an incredibly overpriced nest egg, it still serves an important purpose, and that is to help impoverish its competitors like China and Russia, all the while maintaining a military advantage, a really big stick that underwrites its position and place in the world. How did the USSR collapse in the first place? Part of it was Reagan and Star Wars and the poor Ruskies going bankrupt trying to keep up.
That's... well, not quite nonsense, but quite irrelevant. This isn't about the best versus the nearly best versus the not very good but really useful. This is about the good enough at the price versus the completely over-designed and ridiculously over-priced nest egg for the military-Republican syndicate. And the F-35 is the latter, unfortunately in my country as well as in yours and the USA.
For all the dollars that have been printed so far the US should have hyper-inflated already, but somehow the US dollar is still the world's reserve currency. World oil is still traded in US dollars apart from China's side hustle with a few nations. What that means is that the US passes on the devaluation of its dollar to the rest of the world enabling it's citizens to have a good lifestyle comparatively even though most of its manufacturing and heavy industry has been off-shored.
And how exactly does it get away with it? Why on earth would the rest of the world be happy with the US living high off the hog at their expense? What, just because Americans are all round nice guys and fun pals to be with?