2716

I mean, we are selling them, so we better have a lot of them in our military right? I think the answer to do we need thousands of them is, yes? The plan was, and still is, to replace a large portion of our aging fleet with this plane. With separate variants for each branch. Every F-35 has multi-role capability, which is why it was so widely adopted in the US and abroad.

Honestly we don’t really maintain a large force of air to air high tech aircraft, I think the only A2A aircraft currently maintained is the F22, and that is no longer being actively produced. Everything else has been fitted for multi-role capability.

Oh, I forgot about the F15 B and C, which there are less than 300 in active service, with about that many Strike Eagle variants in service too. Probably have about 400-500 A2A aircraft currently.

2717

Do our strategic planners actually say this? We know it’s absurd right? The implication undermines the whole idea of having a joint strike aircraft in the first place. I don’t know; I’m just a schmoe. I was black shoe Navy all the way and don’t know much about U.S. strategic military planning, but the emphasis of our military on air superiority and air capability seems from a distance like just a huge ball of tails all wagging each other, particularly in the era of drones and mobile missile batteries.

2718

Yeah, we need these aircraft to have superiority over everyone else but also we will sell them to everyone else too is kind of a weird justification for them.

2719

Lol, true.

The Pentagon has said that the plan is to maintain a technological advantages by having the US purchased F-35 have the newest updates and packages.

Also, we do limit selling them to allies. Though of course the Iranian F14’s were sold that way too.

But, how else are you going to sell aircraft? I mean, unless the US were to say, we won’t sell our miliatary technology to anyone else, we would have a much larger military budget problem. Not to mention when a world war breaks out, your coalition of allies are under-trained and missing equipment.

Plus, we aren’t selling the F-22, which still probably is the strongest A2A fighter out there, despite it missing an IRST, but it sounds like those upgrades are being worked on.

2720

Yes, of course. It just sounds funny when.

But there is a pretty good argument that we spend way too much on the military and defense these days.

2721

The successor to the F-22, the NGAD, has been in dev for a while. Lots of rumbles about what it can do.

2722

The F-35 is not being sold to anybody. See the Turkey debacle.

In focusing on the hardware you guys are missing the real strength of the F-35; networking, data sharing and even hostile data insertion. What is called the cyber domain in pentagonese. It’s no coincidence that this is where they suddenly become very quiet in interviews.

If an ally who has panthers turns coat and becomes an enemy, you can bet those panthers would get neutered with two mouseclicks and a typed command. Heck, they might even be used as moles i the cold war spy thriller sense of the word.

Why thousands? Well even if it’s all decided on night one of the war, mass and depth still are a thing. A mobile missile launcher is nice, but three squadrons of panthers fucking up shit while seeing everything in are on a whole other level.

2723

Yes it does, particularly with the example of Iran.

2724

Given the danger of a “hostile” takeover of the US this seems like something that isn’t just undesireable for US allies but also for the current US administration.

2725

The F35 has multiple partners, not just the US. it is being sold and delivered to at least 8 other countries iirc.

2726

The fact that they exist is the reason they don’t get used. US’ adversaries don’t try to take on the US Air Force / navy head on - or haven’t since Vietnam, anyway - because they’re pretty sure they’re going to lose, so even when they do have an air force they tend try to use it asymmetrically. So the price of having the best fighters in the world may well be the fact that you rarely or never get to use them.

In a sense, this is probably just a paraphrasing of what @schurem has already said.

2727

I would certainly hope not. If there’s a backdoor an adversary can find/exploit it themselves. :)

2728

Nice analysis.

pilot

2729

Well in addition to the $1.5 trillion in program costs for the F35s over the next couple of decades.

2730

Oh I didn’t mean in the sense of a backdoor, but more like a whole slew of support infrastructure (from sattelites to ground based routers) that can easily be told to ignore planes numbers 500 to 534. And that suddenly leaves panther nr 524 deaf, blind and mute.

2731

A reality of military power and technology is that if you’re strong or advanced enough you “don’t need” the stuff you have because no one will try to fight you, knowing they’ll lose horribly.

Until they don’t. Russia thought they had that level of power over Ukraine until, suddenly, they didn’t.

2732

Good conversation. My point was simply that a few engagements do not a trend make. Numbers and duration are relative, of course. No one expects WWII levels of activity. But the one-offs with Iran or Libya don’t tell us that much. A two-week fight over Korea during a North Korean attack, that would be a “real” fight. As would the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

2733

That would be decided in one night. The rest of those two weeks would be the USAF and their swabbie buddies pounding the norks to rubble and then pounding the rubble to dust and then pounding the dust to atoms.

Now US vs China, that’s a more interesting scenario. That might stay “interesting” for more than one night. But not much more, because of the killing power of modern weaponry combined with the very limited magazine depth. 120 raptors are only gonna last that long. Four long missiles per plane, let’s be generous and have three quarters of those missiles miss. That means in 120 engagements, the raptor force is spent. But that’s the pessimist take.

There’s about 300 J-20s IIRC. They wouldn’t last long either. Say the raptors see them before they see the raptors. That means they get schwacked. Let’s have half the raptors’ missiles miss (generous!) and that takes the raptors one or two big decisive engagement to annihilate the J-20 as an effective force.

Si vis pacem, para bellum. War? War never changes.

2734

True, but all I’m saying is that it is risky to extrapolate broad principles of air combat from minor skirmishes. That’s all.

2735

The Army is making a uniform bra.