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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Well, that's what we use our own super missiles for, right?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles that we are surely developing to counter Russia's super fighter aircraft. Or are we spending all our money on the F-35?
You see, this is where the story breaks down. We are told over and over about these superweapons that our rivals are developing that will make all our technology obsolete, so we need to get this new tech to beat them. But when simple questions are asked, everyone blinks and says, "Huh?"
In an environment where fighter aircraft are obsolete in the face of more advanced radars and missiles, why bother fielding them? If our enemies have fighter aircraft that can survive in this environment, why is our tech insufficient to deal with them?
edited 13th Oct '15 2:31:06 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If next years mech fight is a success, I see giant robots replacing most modern military vehicles if it sparks enough interest from the military afterwards.
That, and Iron Man styled Powered Armor
edited 13th Oct '15 2:28:44 PM by Demongodofchaos2
Watch SymphogearRussia's super fighter aircraft aren't anything too amazing. They're running into some of the same problems we are.
They're only "super" because the F-35 sucks that hard.
What we really need to worry about are Russia's land based anti air systems. They're easily the best in the world by a very large margin and are fast on their way to negating all our advances in stealth technology.
Why do you think Israel was so terrified of that possible Iran/Russia S-300 deal a while back?
Oh really when?To be effective at bringing down enemy aircraft the missiles have to be fired from within reasonable range, meaning from AA on the ground or from another aircraft.
Airspace is actually kinda like regular space in that sense, you can't just send a dozen guys in with high tech and expect them to control a city, you can't just have a couple of missile sub of shore with supper missiles and expect them to control the airspace. You need shit in the zone doing patrols.
Because Russian wins at AA, hands down. Also who says fighter aircraft are on the way out? You still need ground support and bomber support if nothing else.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:33:02 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranWhat you're telling me is that it is clearly pointless to keep throwing development money into aircraft. If the F-35 is going to be useless anyway in the face of Russian SAM tech, why bother?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Because you guys might fight someone who doesn't have Russian tech but does have something else? Or that only has limited coverage from their Russian tech, thus you can avoid the Russian tech and hit targets at the fringes that are protected by other less capable tech.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBecause we're not always going to be fighting the Russians and also because almost all of our combat doctrines are built around our air force.
We need planes in the sky. Our planes are too old to keep flying.
The F-35 is useless but we need something up there.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:36:22 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?Because the Russian radar tech is yet to prove being able to reliably track VLO aircraft without being inside the range of stand off ordinance fired from VLO aircraft.
If Stealth was such a hype, the Russians and the Chinese wouldn't be scrambling their asses to develop VLO of their own.
Inter arma enim silent legesThey aren't is the thing. The Russians have shown time and again that stealth is far from a priority when designed the PAK-FA. What it's built to be is the last word in air to air combat, the stealth is just a pleasant bonus. If that.
As for the Chinese, well they're just weird and trying to copy us because they can't make their own domestic designs.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:39:04 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?"The F-35 is useless but we need something up there."
Which is, apparently, the F-35, since we've sunk so much money into it that we don't have anything else. And when the first fifty-billion dollar aircraft is shot down by a million-dollar missile system? We can't keep that pace up for long.
The F-35 is designed for a mission that doesn't exist. So clearly we should build lots of them. What am I not getting?
edited 13th Oct '15 2:40:59 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The thing is that all of our current aircraft are just plain old. As in they're too old to fly despite our best efforts to maintain them. Not much we could have done to prevent that, this sorta shit happens.
The problem is that the F-35 is the only design we have right now and it really sucks. We don't have the time to start over, we need something in the air now and unfortunately the F-35 is that something.
And the F-35 is designed for every mission, not just air superiority.
As a result it's worse at doing the jobs of everything it's replacing and it's hideously expensive.
But unfortunately we are just straight up out of options and time.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:45:24 PM by LeGarcon
Oh really when?The Russians aren't that big on establishing air superiority over hostile territory are they? The US doctrine calls for air superiority, the Russian one calls for denying the enemy air superiority, not establishing their own.
That's its designed for several missions, some of which don't exist, but some of which do.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:53:47 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranAs I've said, I mostly expect mediocrity out of the F-35. Not actual, outright sucking (at least once the software's working right and the boneheaded B-model not withstanding), but at the end of the day, a fully-functional F-35 replacing everything seems a lot like asking the F-16 to replace everything except the F-15 - it might do alright at a lot of those roles (eg. light-to-medium dogfights and being a bomb truck), but there's a LOT of shoehorning involved, especially in specialized fields like CAS.
I'm more annoyed at the massive cost overruns and delays than anything else.
edited 13th Oct '15 2:54:23 PM by Balmung
Also, in some cases the F-35 is being called in to replace 40-year-old planes that are flat-out better at whatever job it is than the F-35 would ever be. Case in point: CAS missions, which the A-10 is quite capable of handling for another generation.
Honestly, I'm in favor of buying the Rafale for this generation's standard multirole. We have interceptors covered for the foreseeable future, the A-10 can be sold to the Army, and the Rafale can take over for the F-35. Seriously, why did we kill the Raptor if we were just going to piss the money down this hole instead?

It's almost like manned fighter aircraft are becoming obsolete in today's military environment. And we're going to have the mother of all expensive fighter aircraft ready just in time to be irrelevant!
edited 13th Oct '15 2:21:59 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"