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The Oldest Man posted:The problem with stealth in the case of the f35 is that it was used as a rationale why the homer car of tactical aircraft would not be a piece of poo poo even with its many, many design shortcomings and out of control price inflation: because stealth would make it invincible so it was fine that it had inadequate performance, insufficient weapons, etc. Now that's kind of going/gone by the wayside and you see less about how stealth makes the F35 worth it and more some handwavey bullshit about sensor or network fusion making the F35 worth it because of those secret and/or intangible benefits outweighing all the very real problems. That's because stealth is sold as a feature at this point. The US is never going to have a non-stealth aircraft again. The new shiny is the ~full battlespace~ integrated systems because they let defense contractors sell an entire suite of electronics to every service.
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Sep 13, 2023 01:09
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Complications posted:That's because stealth is sold as a feature at this point. The US is never going to have a non-stealth aircraft again. The new shiny is the ~full battlespace~ integrated systems because they let defense contractors sell an entire suite of electronics to every service. hell, we paid extra for "stealth" coast guard cutters: quote:https://www.sldinfo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/National-Security-Cutter-Special-Report.pdf
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Sep 13, 2023 01:26
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The thing about "stealth" is that it was used over and over as a rebuttal whenever someone asked "why are we spending big bucks on a clear turkey?". Because stealth, duh. Don't question it! Having a better radar cross section under select conditions absolutely compensates for negative dot points one through twenty. Does it have a utility? Of course. But so do things like genuinely mission capable ships that don't dissolve in water (unless that mission is shore bombardment of a primitive tribal island people who only have spears and darts) and modern planes that can outfly a museum piece gloster meteor. edit-To say nothing of the built in excessively high upkeep costs designed to extract maximum yield on the back end. edit2 -when the economy shits the bed in a big way those material upkeep costs are going to really start to matter, even if the effects will take a while to show. DancingShade has issued a correction as of 08:16 on Sep 13, 2023 |
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Sep 13, 2023 08:11
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rusty rear end f35s with backfiring afterburners and styrofoam missiles
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Sep 13, 2023 14:22
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planes that are so good, we don't rare risk using them 
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Sep 13, 2023 15:13
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But have you considered that the Nighthawk looks awesome? There’s a reason everyone loved it in 90’s pop culture and that’s because it looks like a badass spaceship that can shoots lasers at Klingons instead of some boring ole’ jet plane like all the current aircraft like the F35/J20/Su57. All other factors are irrelevant.
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Sep 13, 2023 22:02
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galagazombie posted:But have you considered that the Nighthawk looks awesome? There’s a reason everyone loved it in 90’s pop culture and that’s because it looks like a badass spaceship that can shoots lasers at Klingons instead of some boring ole’ jet plane like all the current aircraft like the F35/J20/Su57. All other factors are irrelevant. X-29 was the best looking fighter of all time.
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Sep 14, 2023 02:29
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If this is the twilight of the American Empire, I just wish they’d have some charm and dignity, you know? 
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Sep 14, 2023 03:25
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I was reading a recommended book on the Solomons campaign and the total loss of Japanese planes from Dec. 1941 - Summer 1942 was around 1,200 planes. And that was an air force that had air superiority and was fighting against mostly obsolete airframes. Anyway, that gigantic operational loss total in a peer conflict is what I think about when I see that the air force has 200 F-22s or whatever
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Sep 14, 2023 05:58
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Frosted Flake posted:If this is the twilight of the American Empire, I just wish they’d have some charm and dignity, you know? american troops singing cumtown parody songs about having a small dick and being gay while they march would be pretty good
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Sep 14, 2023 06:09
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tatankatonk posted:I was reading a recommended book on the Solomons campaign and the total loss of Japanese planes from Dec. 1941 - Summer 1942 was around 1,200 planes. And that was an air force that had air superiority and was fighting against mostly obsolete airframes. Anyway, that gigantic operational loss total in a peer conflict is what I think about when I see that the air force has 200 F-22s or whatever The stealth means missiles will never lock on- A Lockheed executive
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Sep 14, 2023 06:13
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tatankatonk posted:I was reading a recommended book on the Solomons campaign and the total loss of Japanese planes from Dec. 1941 - Summer 1942 was around 1,200 planes. And that was an air force that had air superiority and was fighting against mostly obsolete airframes. Anyway, that gigantic operational loss total in a peer conflict is what I think about when I see that the air force has 200 F-22s or whatever Yeah the dream is a video game hero experience where they shoot down a hundred each of the enemy, competing for high scores in the officers mess. Regrettably reality and dreams have this rather nasty disconnect that takes some people by surprise.
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Sep 14, 2023 06:43
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China Might Have 250 J-20 Stealth Fighters This is another one of those, "China is lagging behind" articles where when you read it, you realize China most certainly is not lagging despite the author insisting they are. China has scaled up production of the J-20 to about 200 a year. The author concedes this is more than the US' F-22 fleet, but only because the US doesn't produce the F-22 anymore. If they still did, they would have 750! And yes, the author continues, China is producing double the number of J-20s vs. the amount of F-35s America is building per year. However, dear readers, the US has a fleet of 500 F-35s! Double the number of J-20s China has right now, so China is lagging behind.
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Sep 14, 2023 09:44
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OhFunny posted:China Might Have 250 J-20 Stealth Fighters I would have won that athletics carnival race if I wore my shoes, if I slept last night, if I didn't jerk off 5 minutes before the race, if I didn't have a bee sting, if mom packed my right lunch, if I
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Sep 14, 2023 09:59
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"If we ignore these past 15 years, none of us have really aged very much"
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Sep 14, 2023 10:04
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also the ‘missing their target’ this year for f35s is the software thing that was posted here previously: https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-...%205G%20speeds. whereby they haven’t shipped any f35s since July and likely won’t until April 24 at least.
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Sep 14, 2023 11:38
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Look, the USA does not protect its hegemony by manufacturing objects The USA protects its hegemony by ensuring that its wealthiest 10% of households never experience discomfort, inconvenience, or interruption in their procurement of treats
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Sep 14, 2023 12:24
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Only having 200 modern fighters in your entire global air force is fine if you plan to go nuclear after losing more than 50
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Sep 14, 2023 13:36
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Crazycryodude posted:Only having 200 modern fighters in your entire global air force is fine if you plan to go nuclear after losing more than 5
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Sep 14, 2023 14:03
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OhFunny posted:China Might Have 250 J-20 Stealth Fighters Does this article really say "200 J20 per year". I don't see it. But if China can really outbuild the US 80-100 fighters per year somebody is going to lose their poo poo. Also China probably building more J20 now because they finally switched to home grown engines.
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Sep 14, 2023 14:07
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stephenthinkpad posted:Does this article really say "200 J20 per year". I don't see it. Impossible, jet engines are magic and China can never make them, not with their weak iintellectual potential! GlassEye-Boy has issued a correction as of 14:26 on Sep 14, 2023 |
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Sep 14, 2023 14:23
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i doubt the j20s have the advanced "helmet that snaps the pilot's neck" technology of the f35. though hell if they cost $110M/jet maybe china has truly taken strides towards the hi-tech neoliberal bloat/graft mode of production
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Sep 14, 2023 14:31
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I think if China is really building 200 J20 a year and building like 10 054B frigates and what 4-5 055 cruiser a year then there is a real time table somewhere in Xi's office. I am not going to say what it is.
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Sep 14, 2023 14:45
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stephenthinkpad posted:I think if China is really building 200 J20 a year and building like 10 054B frigates and what 4-5 055 cruiser a year then there is a real time table somewhere in Xi's office. I am not going to say what it is. It's almost like the war material is... breeding. Replicating itself like metal animals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReHOMJLY03E
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Sep 14, 2023 14:49
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china imports like 70% of its oil so they're probably building up their navy/jets to be able to fill in for the collapse of the us more than anything else. if there was something impeding oil coming in from the middle east, that'd be bad news for china. so they gotta be able to keep singapore open jesus i guess that means day one of china war the us is probably mining the gently caress out of the east end of the singapore strait
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Sep 14, 2023 15:22
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China is also building a 2nd gas pipeline from Russia (same size as Nordstream2) and pushing really hard for EV cars. I just think if US didn't bother to actually impose sanctions on Russia oil smuggling, are they really going to block any potential oil shipping?
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Sep 14, 2023 15:37
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the us can't stop russia from shipping oil to countries that don't have to comply with their silly sanctions. and if they tried to do it by force that's probably the apocalypse. same with china. I don't think there will be an actual us-china direct war in the near future but i could definitely see the us cooking up a pretext to invade singapore in order to pressure china when the us is a little closer to collapse. a little quick search shows russia's total exports are $110b while china imports almost $300b of oil per year so even if russia sold china all their oil, china still needs a whole lotta oil which is primarily coming on boats from the middle east through singapore. maybe the boats could go around? or china could finish up their pipeline through the stans/xinjian. but pipelines are also really vulnerable because they have to have pumping stations periodically and sometimes they go along bridges or they have to be above ground due to permafrost. and apparently there's a bunch of permafrost in the himalayas/western china, which makes sense
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Sep 14, 2023 16:07
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The 2nd pipeline will go through Mongolia, which shouldn't be any technical problem because China already have experience building 1 around Manchuria/Dongbei and another from one of the Stans to Xinjiang. If China can wait 10-20 years, they can build that fabled Thailand canal which will cut out the entire Singapore Malacca Strait. The China backed standard gauged continental SEA railway is also not ready, they have the Laos section done, the Thailand section probably will be built in 3-4 years. Given the non-pro US party forming government in Thailand, the railway building probably will be expedited.
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Sep 14, 2023 16:25
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Hatebag posted:the us can't stop russia from shipping oil to countries that don't have to comply with their silly sanctions. and if they tried to do it by force that's probably the apocalypse. same with china. You just build redundancy in terms of pipelines. Otherwise, the US navy just isn't big enough, especially now to enforce its will across Asia.
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Sep 14, 2023 16:27
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right now, though, singapore is a choke point for chinese oil imports. hopefully china can build some defensible redundancy for imports before the us moves against them because russia doesn't have the capacity to supply china on its own
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Sep 14, 2023 16:44
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DancingShade posted:Yeah the dream is a video game hero experience where they shoot down a hundred each of the enemy, competing for high scores in the officers mess. It's especially bizarre since, for the much vaunted stealth to be any use at all, they have to carry only the weapons which they can fit in the internal bays, which I believe are two (2) missiles, and even if PLAAF fighters were as inferior as they imagine, and were making the aerial equivalent of human wave attacks, and even assuming every US missile hit and killed a target, they'd still be hosed. American propeller planes killed German jets with superior numbers, it baffles me that they think that have a greater qualitative edge than that.
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Sep 14, 2023 16:55
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Pomeroy posted:It's especially bizarre since, for the much vaunted stealth to be any use at all, they have to carry only the weapons which they can fit in the internal bays, which I believe are two (2) missiles, and even if PLAAF fighters were as inferior as they imagine, and were making the aerial equivalent of human wave attacks, and even assuming every US missile hit and killed a target, they'd still be hosed. American propeller planes killed German jets with superior numbers, it baffles me that they think that have a greater qualitative edge than that. F22s can carry 6 AMRAAMs in the centerline bay and 2 sidewinders in the die bays, so realistically that's 6 shots and then 2 backups if they go to the merge which is an incredibly bad idea. But you're unlikely to get a kill with each missile so even in the best case scenario where the air force has the space and time and exploit the stealth fully, you're probably only getting one or two kills per F22 per sortie and that's just not enough.
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Sep 14, 2023 16:59
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Hatebag posted:right now, though, singapore is a choke point for chinese oil imports. hopefully china can build some defensible redundancy for imports before the us moves against them because russia doesn't have the capacity to supply china on its own Right now, but the it very may come down to just an expansion of pipelines toward Iran (and therefore connecting much of the Middle East). It really isn't undoable, and probably why such an extreme move by the US is probably not seriously on the table especially since it would screw up much of their own trade. I don't think the US is going to collapse in a real sense in the near future either, it is just going to sink a deep and deeper mire ala the UK.
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Sep 14, 2023 17:07
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stephenthinkpad posted:The 2nd pipeline will go through Mongolia, which shouldn't be any technical problem because China already have experience building 1 around Manchuria/Dongbei and another from one of the Stans to Xinjiang. I thought the new Thai government was pro-US/anti-China.
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Sep 14, 2023 17:14
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crepeface posted:I thought the new Thai government was pro-US/anti-China. Nah the liberal guy (Pita) couldn't get enough seats to form a government, so the 2nd largest party (Thaksin's party) formed a new government with the previous military government's party and some small parties (obviously with the blessing of the King.) So think of it as everybody but the libs coalition. BTW Thaksin's lineage can trace back to Guangdong China.
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Sep 14, 2023 17:32
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China's gonna Panama Canal the Malayan peninsula to sidestep Singapore as a chokepoint
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Sep 14, 2023 18:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:China's gonna Panama Canal the Malayan peninsula to sidestep Singapore as a chokepoint and im gonna watch videos about its construction on tiktok
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Sep 14, 2023 18:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:China's gonna Panama Canal the Malayan peninsula to sidestep Singapore as a chokepoint I swear to God, if we end up trying to create some sort of "Malay Barrier" this "Singapore Strategy" hinges on, Sandhurst delenda est.
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Sep 14, 2023 18:16
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i don't know that a canal would actually benefit china that much in this scenario because if the us was blockading singapore they could just as easily blockade the andaman sea/malacca strait from oil tankers because that's only about 200 miles across assuming a canal from krabi to surat thani or points southeast based on elevation. i think you'd have a rough time building a useful canal north of there due to the mountains and all the volcanic islands near the kra buri river. pipelines are probably china's most secure option which is what they've been building
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Sep 14, 2023 18:56
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Good News for USA’s dependence on Taiwan: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/tsmcs-arizona-fab-will-ship-chips-to-taiwan-for-packaging-employees-say/ quote:A new report has revealed that America may be quickly approaching a major roadblock in its bid to become a global chips leader by the end of the decade. Employees of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—which is leagues ahead of competitors in mass production of advanced chips— told The Information that TSMC has no plans to build a packaging facility in the US.
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Sep 14, 2023 20:14
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