Is it smart that there is still a pilot in the plane? I mean, it's 2020 and this plane will probably not be built in large numbers for another few years. Are human pilots still better than computers?
I would think a plane could be lighter and react and maneuver more rapidly, pull more Gs, if there was no human inside.
If you let AI autonomously designate targets and kill targets fully then humans are no longer at the top of the food chain. It's easy to dismiss the control problem in civilian environments because humans suffer from that exact same problem and that's why we have the rule of law and law enforcement. But the military works differently. The person, organization or AI in charge of the military also effectively governs all civilians of that nation.
Just in case, some form of AI (AI is just a buzzword for a complex algorithm) already identifies and shots targets. For example, Iron Dome is fully autonomous (human operator is not capable of reacting quickly).
Although I’m not aware of autonomous systems which shoots something with people onboard. But I disagree the characterization of these systems as “top of the food chain”. This naming would provide food for philosophers, but practically this definition is useless.
"Roper declined to comment on how many prototype aircraft have been flown or which defense contractors manufactured them. He wouldn’t say when or where the first flight occurred. And he refused to divulge any aspect of the aircraft’s design — its mission, whether it was uncrewed or optionally crewed, whether it could fly at hypersonic speeds or if it has stealth characteristics."
We don't even know that there was a pilot. All we know is that a jet aircraft was produced in a fairly rapid timeframe.
For highly fluid, continuously changing environments? Yes. Humans are much more adaptable than computers.
That having been said: there is a YouTube video of a test pilot talking to some folks at MIT(?) and saying that the F35 is basically the future of piloting in that you don't "fly" the plane so much as tell the plane "do action X" and the plane figures out how to do it. So, the next generation of planes are going to be even more of this--effectively a human pilot in theatre commanding a drone swarm.
> I would think a plane could be lighter and react and maneuver more rapidly, pull more Gs, if there was no human inside.
Absolutely. And lots of these will be commanded from a bunker somewhere. The number of these commanded from a pilot in theatre is going to get smaller and smaller.
I'm not an expert either, but I suspect the reason is that you don't want your primary means of force projection left susceptible to network interruptions.
If there's a pilot in the cockpit and the data fusion network goes down, the pilot can still stay in the fight.
> With modern weapons if the network is interrupted the pilot is just as useless.
This seems like a gross underestimation of what a pilot brings to the table; if it were true, the F-35 wouldn't have a gatling gun. Missions like close air support for ground troops are just as important to a modern battlefield as taking down enemy emplacements with a missile.
When you're talking about the U.S. military, the base can be an ocean away and the primary network is likely to be a constellation of satellites. Modern military planners are hyper-paranoid about battlefield communications disruption, which makes "someone shot our satellites out of orbit" a legitimate scenario to plan for.
A ship may be nearby, but a ship's mast is only so tall. Assuming a typical cruising altitude of the aircraft at 10km, and a mast height of 100m (generous), the line of sight radio horizon is 30km. A friendly AWACS gives you about 400km.
Even with satcom, jamming of these links remains a very real concern. GEO coms sats by their nature have a relatively low power signal. Clever modulation can do a lot, but it can't escape the fundamental physics.
> It cannot be ocean away because fighter jet range does not exceed 2000 miles.
Leaving aside the fact that fighter jets can be refueled in flight, why would you build a fleet of remotely operated planes but still keep the pilots in theatre? Now instead of taking down 25 jets individually, your adversary only needs to blow up the room where their pilots are sitting.
The key benefit of remote operation is that the operators can stay far away from the bullets.
If that “room” is inside an aircraft carrier (which is likely the case), it’s hard to blow. They are very well protected against all attacks except for probably ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads.
I'd imagine that 2,000 mile number isn't taking aerial refueling into account? When Australia bought their fleet of F-18s, many of them were flown nonstop from the US to Australia. Autonomous refueling is relatively mature, and I'd imagine gets even more valuable when the receiving aircraft isn't limited by human endurance
Why are people questioning why this is a crewed plane? The article clearly says we don’t know that detail:
...”he refused to divulge any aspect of the aircraft’s design — its mission, whether it was uncrewed or optionally crewed, whether it could fly at hypersonic speeds or if it has stealth characteristics.
I would guess it's uncrewed... It's a lot easier to prototype stuff quickly if nobodies life is on the line if a wing falls off...
I can totally imagine it being a state secret if it's crewed or not - the enemy not knowing how big a diplomatic incident they'll cause if they shoot one down is an advantage.
You could even have the "meatware" be an add-in module. A single "unit" that fits into the plane that has a seat and all the controls, together with an ejector/entry hatch. If you don't have that unit, you could fill the same space with an extra fuel tank, cargo, or weapons systems.
Isn’t the reason we spent unlimited money on the F35 is to have one super stupid plane for all branches that does everything you ask but nothing well except costs tons of money?
Anyway, glad to see the USAF was building something useful in the background. Wouldn’t be shocked if it was a small team with few resources.
This is the F-22 replacement. It's one of the highest priority projects within the AF at the moment. Tens of thousands of people are working on this.
The F-35 was a misconceived project and burned money and time in its early stages. It's been beaten back into shape today however, largely because Ash Carter switched Lockhead from a cost plus contract to one where they have the lion's share of any non trivial cost overruns moving forward. How shocking that suddenly LM got the marginal cost to build a new F-35 under 90 million as a result.
I can recommend you read the book Skunk Works by Ben Rich and he'll tell you that overpriced useless planes are a government corporate welfare program designed to keep military contractors in business and skilled workforce employed.
His case in point was the B2 which was supposed to got to Lockheed as they had the better tech and could have made it cheaper but instead they gave the contract to Northrop to prevent Lockheed having too large share of the defense pie and to keep Northrop afloat as they were denied other lucrative contracts in the past.
BTW this book is also chock a block full of other great advice on how to move very fast without breaking things.* it’s a slim book about classified work so very high level, but that’s what makes some of the examples more applicable than if it has just been about how to design a plane quickly.
* of course most of the work, being warplanes and a ship, was intended to break things :-/.
> ...to keep Northrop afloat as they were denied other lucrative contracts in the past.
This is not terrible in principle (assuming you support having a military at all) in order to preserve a diversity of sources. This mentality (from both military and private sector) is why AMD has a license to produce x86 instruction set hardware (although that license may not matter so much today): up into the late 70s people would not buy parts if there was not an independent second source.
Unfortunately this managed competition was destroyed in the 90s — not the managed part but the competition part.
This same reason justifies the expensive and horrifically distorting agricultural subsidies. The principle is to make sure there is adequate food production even when it is not economically self justifying so that people don’t starve due to lack of food supplies. You can argue that the system doesn’t work properly (hint: it doesn’t) but at the minimal baseline it is better than not existing.
As the 2008 and 2020 crises demonstrate, this kind of baseline diversity has withered away over the last 40 years, especially but hardly exclusively in the US, and made the whole system more fragile.
The F35 is the Space Shuttle of the military budget. Does everything, but nothing well. Is so complicated and un-maintainable that it consumes the entire budget. Let's hope the F35 doesn't cost as many lives as the Space Shuttle or a similar project, the Osprey.
Switzerland is currently debating how to replace a 30 year old fleet of F/A-18s. I've advocated that we should turn our back on what I see as 20th century thinking in the fighter jet market and instead design something for our context, but people don't believe me when I say that designing with off the shelf engines, radars and weapons should be possible on the cheap today. Mostly, I don't see why my tax dollars should build up American or French industry, when we know that Swiss engineers are smart enough to zig where the world around then zags. (See also Solar Impulse and Alinghi.)
I do agree with the first idea. The second one is not always the best line of thought, especially when it's about sovereignty or defense.
Suppose you buy fighter jets from China, but tensions rise and you somehow cut diplomatic ties. How are you going to get maintenance parts. Very inaccurate example but just to illustrate that yes, economically, your idea makes sense. Geopolitically, it depends.
Buy the planes with spare parts and training. When calculating a price for a plane, include not just the price tag, but also the risks of getting these planes unusable in ten years.
So yes, buying jets from China might be not the best idea even if they initially seem cheaper. But that’s not the case for US jets.
Why? It's hard to predict how relationships with the US will look over the next 40 years (F-18 is 37 years old). Especially with relationships on a downward trajectory during Bush's and Trump's presidency.
Sure, the risk is a lot smaller than with China, but it does exist
Spare parts and training are not enough to maintain a fleet of fighter jets. You need experienced in-house technicians to provide the maintenance and replace the black-box electronics, which means you're still at the mercy of whatever country manufactures the jets. Doesn't matter if it's China or the US, if they decide a year down the line that they don't like you, guess what? No servicing for you, and your fleet of fancy jets will only last until they break down, or get remotely disabled/bricked/self-destructed with a kill switch.
Maintaining a Sovereign Nation 101 is that you do not entrust your national security to another country. Sure, it's more expensive to do your own R&D and manufacturing, but you get the peace of mind that your continued existence does not depend on a foreign government's continual blessing.
It takes 6 minutes for a fighter jet to cross the whole of the longest possible stretch of Swiss territory. How many defense missiles for the price of one F35?
if your enemy is flying over your territory the bombs have already dropped, you need to intercept them at range and have some leeway on top because missiles aren't guaranteed to hit and you have to have time to decide to send a second wave of missiles
so you are (as a non-NATO-member) defending your territory by effectively moving combat to the area of the most powerful military alliance there is today (heck, even Germany, where the army is in a, uuuhm, "sorry" state still has an air force comparable in size to countries like Saudi Arabia (which are smaller, but spend excessively on military)).
The only possible attackers then are either NATO states (which are largely democratic and "civilized" so that the people wouldn't tolerate a surprise attack on another "white"-country) or some foes attacking NATO.
In both cases they are screwed anyway and unless they decide to attack NATO with an outside foe, I'd be glad to see some American made, Swiss-flown CAP over Europe (which, sincerely is the most likely outcome if Switzerland really is democratic and not just a safe haven for corrupt elites).
Switzerland has a modern military industry, and produces for itself and for export. Superpower economics are not the only way to manage self sovereignty.
Switzerland may have modern military industry, but it cannot produce everything it need to defend, instead it produces, for example, guns, and import bullets, or produces tanks and import planes, or produces radars and imports radar jammers.
> say that designing with off the shelf engines, radars and weapons should be possible on the cheap today
I'm afraid this largely underestimates the complexity of designing a combat aircraft. Keep in mind it is useless to be "good enough" for a fighter, you must be on par or superior to the others on at least a some aspects.
Actually the citizens don't know that for sure... The military has not shared with us the list of required missions, just that the list exists and is so comprehensive that only the most expensive fighters could possibly meet it. Saab was forced to bow out of competition for example. I suspect that the list of missions is unreasonable and that if the military was forced by a no vote to get reasonable about what a Swiss Air Force is actually for, they'd be able to use modern design tools to out build and underspend the neighbors. Cleverness comes from constraints.
I think I see why you think it would be good idea, but considering the size of Swiss army it would be very costly effort.
Its not only about figuring out next gen avionics (which is a feat on its own with unstable constructions these days), but also integration with radar, weapon systems and overall integration within the battlefield.
Since Suisse align on most if not all levels to west culture/mindset, I would say they should buy/rent some western-built ones. Anyway the idea of surviving major air conflict with any superpower is laughable. If you consider neighbors, France, Germany and possibly Italy would also decimate air force quickly (no clue about Austrians).
Maybe not the highest and most expensive tech since it won't be used in any real conflict anyway. A-10 equivalent would be a good choice for ground support for example.
“And the answer [to] why we aren’t going faster is simply money. We can push the accelerator down more today because the digital technology allows it.”
Gong to burn some internet points here but this should not be what we are spending money on right now as a nation.
We have >250k (200k official) people dead (excess deaths) from COVID and many more overdosing on opioids or dying from preventable diseases. Handouts to the military-industrial-congressional complex are exactly what we do not need right now.
We need to get Medicare for all and Universal Basic Income passed or otherwise more people will realize that this country does not care about them and only cares about giving the military new toys.
As I understand it in the US the military is social welfare. Thousands of underprivileged Americans escape poverty through joining and get an education.
... and become traumatized from killing some guys with AKs defending their home country from foreign invasion, seeing civilian death and suffering on massive scale that their efforts and presence brings. Or just end up being killed/crippled.
There's about a 10 to 1 ratio between non combat and combat roles, and of combat roles less than 1 in 10 of them will actually see combat. The overwhelming majority of the military are people who just want to get a leg up on a career that can support themselves and a family.
That said, I know several people personally that joined up due to lack of options, saw combat, and are now profoundly broken, so I don't mean to belittle that point. Just don't oversimplify things to thinking it's the only thing.
The details vary by service, but generally when enlisting you get a choice between open enlistment or enlistment in a particular specialty or skill set. Again, depending on the service, in many cases you can enlist for a guaranteed job role. Even in the case that you do open enlistment, when it comes down to it, no one in the US military is going to force you to go into combat with a gun to your back commissar style, as that's obviously incredibly likely to backfire, and in the worst case, backfire in a way that gets lots of other people killed to.
My friends that saw combat knew what their options were within the military and what they were signing up for. They may have had an idealized picture of what combat would be like, or the odds of a conflict happening, but they weren't forced into a combat role against their will.
I'm all for criticism of the military system of the US, but that needs to be grounded in reality.
I'll add that while PTSD is a very serious problem, it is not a guaranteed outcome of being involved in combat operations - even over extended time periods.
Most of these Americans - vast majority I’d guess - aren’t even in a combat role.
On the balance of the last 70 years, if you live in a developed country you need to thank the US military for allowing you this unprecedented stability and peace for so long (I’m not an American so I’m one of those grateful).
Stability and peace? Definitely not in the Middle East.
Leaving those dictators there in place would have provided more stability than the current state of violent chaos and hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees.
I'm impressed with the downvotes on this. Anyone care to back up your tacit disagreement with pax-americana [1]? Is it because you don't think it is true? Is it because you don't like the geopolitical landscape today? Just curious. FWIW I don't think the US forcing democracy on countries was universally good for those countries. In some cases it was, some cases it was wishful thinking and in the worst cases it was pure self interest. But to deny the world peace that resulted from US military dominance is extremely naive, and also blatantly disregards a trend we've seen throughout the course of world history.
The military might be world class and also a mini welfare-state but it has left the rest of the country kinda a shithole (as the president famously described other countries). Literally walked by a huge homeless encampment yesterday where people were shooting up and living in tents.
This government is not of/by/for the people one bit.
The military as 'social welfare' is true in other countries. Example: want to become a civilian vehicle mechanic with a driving license but you failed formal education and can't afford a car? Join the British Army and get into a role that involves driving and maintaining a vehicle (many military trades involve vehicle use).
Those are orthogonal to each other. Lack of money is not a problem the US has, we can borrow what we needed and trim fat later. Lack of political will is the problem. If the things you note were truly considered as problematic as you (rightly, in my opinion) view them by politicians and the public, then petty grievances would be put aside and progress would be made.
Not enough of the public truly cares, and that in turn lets politicians ignore them or use them as pieces on a chessboard to be moved about and sacrificed as needed.
Waiting only makes the situation worse. Medicare for all could be anything from a significant net savings to an insane increase depending on how it’s implemented. Kicking the can down the road just means larger debt payments in the future.
Consider, getting a few stitches is usually more expensive than a dental filling even though it’s simpler, faster, etc. The difference is simply the amount of waste involved. Trimming the fat is difficult because that’s people’s income you’re cutting and they will fight you every step of the way.
PS: Politics is not about petty grievances, but elections can be. Shaping the narrative is how you get people to vote against their own best interest.
> Kicking the can down the road just means larger debt payments in the future.
> Consider, getting a few stitches is usually more expensive than a dental filling even though it’s simpler, faster, etc.
And not getting those stitches can lead to scarring, or infection. There are things worse than debt.
That said, I'm not saying we should just borrow the money to do what we want without considering if we should find a way to pay for it, I'm just saying for things that are really important, money is not an obstacle. The whole point of debt is to allow spending beyond your budget when it's deemed beneficial or necessary to do so.
> PS: Politics is not about petty grievances
Yes, petty grievances are a poor expression for what I was thinking, which is pet issues and turning everything into a chance to bolster your talking point to score political points.
Debt means very different things for the federal government than a personal checkbook. Debt doesn’t create resources or infrastructure from thin air, making it largely useless in an actual emergency. When we needed millions of N95 masks debt can’t simply conjure them from thin air, the same is true of oil or other critical resources.
All debt can do is force the next administration to pay for your spending. Politically it seems great, but economically it’s almost completely worthless. It’s just another political game where you say it’s meaningless when you’re running things and a critical issue when the other party is in charge.
A surplus is by far the more economically efficient option. Build strategic reserves when it’s cheap, and spend them when absolutely critical. But again spending when it’s not obvious you’re raising taxes is the crack cocaine for democracy’s.
> When we needed millions of N95 masks debt can’t simply conjure them from thin air, the same is true of oil or other critical resources.
I understand that, but that's not the context I understood we were discussing, which is "stop funding the military so we can start fixing these other problems like covid or opiates or whatever". In that context, my point was to say that funding for those initiatives is not the limiting factor.
> All debt can do is force the next administration to pay for your spending.
Which is perfectly acceptable and expected in an emergency. I doubt any future administration is going to say "if only Trump didn't spend so much on covid, we're really hurting from that." Going into debt over emergency needs for the country is pretty analogous to floating your house payment or rent on credit for a couple months while you get a new job. You pay for it later, but ultimately it's probably a much better investment than not doing it, as being out on the street has far greater negative consequences (and a negative feedback loop) than the debt usually has. In the same manner, reducing a recession or preventing a depression is generally money well spent.
> A surplus is by far the more economically efficient option.
Sure, but then the whole "reduce this so we can pay for that" doesn't really make sense. I don't think we're really in disagreement, I think we're just slightly contextually misaligned.
No we have fundamental disagreement about government debt. For clarity:
There was absolutely zero need to go deeper into debt over COVID. Further, government waste is not a question of debt without consequences. Paying people to fill out redundant forms or build pointless military hardware means those same highly skilled and capable people can’t being doing something of actual value.
Money is fundamentally an abstraction, and debt is simply another form of taxation. Debt as the least obvious form of taxation has illusionary benefit and real costs.
> No we have fundamental disagreement about government debt.
Since I don't disagree with what you're saying, but also think it doesn't really apply to the specific point I was trying to express, I don't think we do. Apparently I'm just unable to adequately communicate my point.
The only thing additional I can think to say is that you seem to making an argument about how government should be run, which is not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing what's required for our legislators to pass legislation on this today. Freeing up money from other sources is not one of those things, as they could borrow whatever extra they needed if they deemed it necessary.
That assumes two things, the legislature is absolutely willing to go into unlimited debt and they feel the change is critical not simply important/better etc. I don’t think those assumptions hold up in practice.
Everything is a complex series of tradeoffs, not just in what’s useful but also in public perception.
Our defense budget was increased to $700 billion. It was already significantly more than every other country in the world, but the Trump administration decided to throw another $100 billion in for good measure.
> Lack of money is not a problem the US has, we can borrow what we needed and trim fat later.
We can also trim the fat right now, and reallocate spending from programs that murder foreigners to programs that help civilians. For whatever reason, that option doesn't often get brought up in the House.
> Not enough of the public truly cares
I don't think that's the case. The GOP and Trump's cabinet have been using their majority to stop any "socialist" legislature from being passed, while the literal majority of American votes were for a Democratic party presidential candidate.
How much is enough? That's the real problem here. With first past the post voting and electoral college, some Americans' votes are favored over others, and most don't have a real opportunity to vote for the candidate they truly desire.
> Our defense budget was increased to $700 billion.
That doesn't matter. Money is not the problem. Making helping people contingent on also lowering the defense budget doesn't magically make things easier because there's money for it, as money was never the problem. It just means you have two hard things to accomplish instead of one.
> We can also trim the fat right now.
My point was to say money is not the limiting factor.
> The GOP and Trump's cabinet have been using their majority to stop any "socialist" legislature from being passed
Let's not pretend the Democrats have been some bastion of good behavior. They've squandered any high ground they might have had through gamesmanship just as much as the Republicans, but to worse effect because they still try to present themselves as taking the high ground.
> some Americans' votes are favored over others, and most don't have a real opportunity to vote for the candidate they truly desire.
How is this different than it's ever been? The system was designed to be this way. States are supposed to be elevated and have power, only to be offset by the number of constituents they have. States are supposed to be far more important than just some county, they are individual polities with their own laws and are supposed to be used to experiment with different laws specifics of government, and traditionally they were. It's only with the ascendancy of the Federal government and Presidential powers over the last century or so that states have lost of lot of the power they used to hold. In a system where states are supposed to be able to implement their own systems and try new things, it makes sense to allow states themselves a bit more pull than the sum of their people, so they don't get steamrolled.
If we cared about a corona vaccine, it should have been started in 2003 after corona-1. It would have cost almost nothing to do it then, but no funding was provided.
The top 10 leaders of the CDC should get the firing squad for that alone.
We don't have 200,000 deaths from corona, we have that many attributed to corona, most with co-morbidities. Not the same thing.
And covid-19 has deep military implications. China has been in an undeclared war with the US for 40 years, resulting in the world's largest navy. Around 50% of experts consider corona somewhat likely to be lab-released (not wholly man-made, but crossed in a Wuhan lab.)
It makes sense to me that we'd always be working on the next generation fighter, and also hypersonic missiles, which we're behind. (One reason we're behind is that the US was the only real target until recently.)
Regarding universal healthcare, yeah, the US can't and won't do that without a revolution of some kind at this point. The initial Obamacare proposal was single-payer, and that was killed almost instantly.
Why do we even need fighter-jets anymore? Why not just swarms of cheap drones loaded with ammo & cameras that are deployed from a mothership higher up?
Asking as it would seems that somebody is either having a good chuckle somewhere or a misfortunate naming convention given " F-15EX" will bring out the schoolboys in many.
Is the EX extension meaning it's experimental and replacing the X prefix?
So in this case the EX suffix is just a marketing thing chosen by Boeing. It more or less means "extended." The F-15 is an obsolete aircraft from the point of view of procurement, but Boeing has sold the AF on buying a few more of an updated model to extend the life of the F-15 in the fleet for a few more years via the acquisition of new planes directly as well as reducing hours on existing airframes. There's considerable debate whether this is a sensible decision financially for anyone besides Boeing.
If you really want to promote peace, and for some reason cannot reduce military expenditure, the best choice is to co-produce a weapons system with your erstwhile enemy.
They should make a MIG-boeing or Sukhoi-Lockheed-Northrop proposal of real merit.
From what I've read, Lockheed Martin entered a partnership with Yakovlev and essentially funded the last few prototypes after state funding had dried up because of the Soviet Union collapse. Even if they didn't use the exact same engine configuration than the Yak-141 (it's pretty damn close though) I bet those 400 million dollars were well spent to get access to research the Russians had already done in the decade before (even if it just means not repeating the same errors).
> an arm race with China that is outgrowing the US with a comparably tiny spend on defense.
That isn't what they were saying. The point made is that China is spending a tiny fraction of what the US is spending on defense, yet they are managing to keep up in this arms race.
Of course, the US isn't spending its entire budget on building arms; it's also spending a lot dropping an unprecedented amount of bombs in the middle east.
>“We’re going after the most complicated systems that have ever been built, and checked all the boxes with this digital technology. In fact, [we’ve] not just checked the boxes, [we’ve] demonstrated something that’s truly magical.”
Words above are from Will Roper - Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics
Even the Air Force is copying "Apple" speak these days....
100 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadI would think a plane could be lighter and react and maneuver more rapidly, pull more Gs, if there was no human inside.
A real drone bomber is a cruise missile
Although I’m not aware of autonomous systems which shoots something with people onboard. But I disagree the characterization of these systems as “top of the food chain”. This naming would provide food for philosophers, but practically this definition is useless.
We don't even know that there was a pilot. All we know is that a jet aircraft was produced in a fairly rapid timeframe.
For highly fluid, continuously changing environments? Yes. Humans are much more adaptable than computers.
That having been said: there is a YouTube video of a test pilot talking to some folks at MIT(?) and saying that the F35 is basically the future of piloting in that you don't "fly" the plane so much as tell the plane "do action X" and the plane figures out how to do it. So, the next generation of planes are going to be even more of this--effectively a human pilot in theatre commanding a drone swarm.
> I would think a plane could be lighter and react and maneuver more rapidly, pull more Gs, if there was no human inside.
Absolutely. And lots of these will be commanded from a bunker somewhere. The number of these commanded from a pilot in theatre is going to get smaller and smaller.
This place is becoming worse than reddit. Read the articles, dumb dumbs.
If there's a pilot in the cockpit and the data fusion network goes down, the pilot can still stay in the fight.
This seems like a gross underestimation of what a pilot brings to the table; if it were true, the F-35 wouldn't have a gatling gun. Missions like close air support for ground troops are just as important to a modern battlefield as taking down enemy emplacements with a missile.
Also, there are usually some support ships nearby or other planes which can relay the signal.
A ship may be nearby, but a ship's mast is only so tall. Assuming a typical cruising altitude of the aircraft at 10km, and a mast height of 100m (generous), the line of sight radio horizon is 30km. A friendly AWACS gives you about 400km.
Even with satcom, jamming of these links remains a very real concern. GEO coms sats by their nature have a relatively low power signal. Clever modulation can do a lot, but it can't escape the fundamental physics.
Leaving aside the fact that fighter jets can be refueled in flight, why would you build a fleet of remotely operated planes but still keep the pilots in theatre? Now instead of taking down 25 jets individually, your adversary only needs to blow up the room where their pilots are sitting.
The key benefit of remote operation is that the operators can stay far away from the bullets.
Let's say you want to enter a zone where local groups can distribute your communication to your drones. Might be useful to have manned jets.
...”he refused to divulge any aspect of the aircraft’s design — its mission, whether it was uncrewed or optionally crewed, whether it could fly at hypersonic speeds or if it has stealth characteristics.
Those attributes, he said, are beside the point.”
I can totally imagine it being a state secret if it's crewed or not - the enemy not knowing how big a diplomatic incident they'll cause if they shoot one down is an advantage.
Anyway, glad to see the USAF was building something useful in the background. Wouldn’t be shocked if it was a small team with few resources.
The F-35 was a misconceived project and burned money and time in its early stages. It's been beaten back into shape today however, largely because Ash Carter switched Lockhead from a cost plus contract to one where they have the lion's share of any non trivial cost overruns moving forward. How shocking that suddenly LM got the marginal cost to build a new F-35 under 90 million as a result.
Why is this the top rated comment on here? Jesus christ.
His case in point was the B2 which was supposed to got to Lockheed as they had the better tech and could have made it cheaper but instead they gave the contract to Northrop to prevent Lockheed having too large share of the defense pie and to keep Northrop afloat as they were denied other lucrative contracts in the past.
* of course most of the work, being warplanes and a ship, was intended to break things :-/.
This is not terrible in principle (assuming you support having a military at all) in order to preserve a diversity of sources. This mentality (from both military and private sector) is why AMD has a license to produce x86 instruction set hardware (although that license may not matter so much today): up into the late 70s people would not buy parts if there was not an independent second source.
Unfortunately this managed competition was destroyed in the 90s — not the managed part but the competition part.
This same reason justifies the expensive and horrifically distorting agricultural subsidies. The principle is to make sure there is adequate food production even when it is not economically self justifying so that people don’t starve due to lack of food supplies. You can argue that the system doesn’t work properly (hint: it doesn’t) but at the minimal baseline it is better than not existing.
As the 2008 and 2020 crises demonstrate, this kind of baseline diversity has withered away over the last 40 years, especially but hardly exclusively in the US, and made the whole system more fragile.
Also, don’t produce something when it’s cheaper to buy it.
Suppose you buy fighter jets from China, but tensions rise and you somehow cut diplomatic ties. How are you going to get maintenance parts. Very inaccurate example but just to illustrate that yes, economically, your idea makes sense. Geopolitically, it depends.
Buy the planes with spare parts and training. When calculating a price for a plane, include not just the price tag, but also the risks of getting these planes unusable in ten years.
So yes, buying jets from China might be not the best idea even if they initially seem cheaper. But that’s not the case for US jets.
Why? It's hard to predict how relationships with the US will look over the next 40 years (F-18 is 37 years old). Especially with relationships on a downward trajectory during Bush's and Trump's presidency.
Sure, the risk is a lot smaller than with China, but it does exist
Maintaining a Sovereign Nation 101 is that you do not entrust your national security to another country. Sure, it's more expensive to do your own R&D and manufacturing, but you get the peace of mind that your continued existence does not depend on a foreign government's continual blessing.
The only possible attackers then are either NATO states (which are largely democratic and "civilized" so that the people wouldn't tolerate a surprise attack on another "white"-country) or some foes attacking NATO. In both cases they are screwed anyway and unless they decide to attack NATO with an outside foe, I'd be glad to see some American made, Swiss-flown CAP over Europe (which, sincerely is the most likely outcome if Switzerland really is democratic and not just a safe haven for corrupt elites).
I'm afraid this largely underestimates the complexity of designing a combat aircraft. Keep in mind it is useless to be "good enough" for a fighter, you must be on par or superior to the others on at least a some aspects.
Its not only about figuring out next gen avionics (which is a feat on its own with unstable constructions these days), but also integration with radar, weapon systems and overall integration within the battlefield.
Since Suisse align on most if not all levels to west culture/mindset, I would say they should buy/rent some western-built ones. Anyway the idea of surviving major air conflict with any superpower is laughable. If you consider neighbors, France, Germany and possibly Italy would also decimate air force quickly (no clue about Austrians).
Maybe not the highest and most expensive tech since it won't be used in any real conflict anyway. A-10 equivalent would be a good choice for ground support for example.
If they did, it will be very interesting to look at.
On the paper, as it said, it is a variable geometry engine where the bypass ratio can be changed depending in the air speed.
The fan increases in size closer to the ground, and cruise speeds, and shrinks when flying higher, and faster.
Gong to burn some internet points here but this should not be what we are spending money on right now as a nation.
We have >250k (200k official) people dead (excess deaths) from COVID and many more overdosing on opioids or dying from preventable diseases. Handouts to the military-industrial-congressional complex are exactly what we do not need right now.
We need to get Medicare for all and Universal Basic Income passed or otherwise more people will realize that this country does not care about them and only cares about giving the military new toys.
One hell of a welfare system that is.
That said, I know several people personally that joined up due to lack of options, saw combat, and are now profoundly broken, so I don't mean to belittle that point. Just don't oversimplify things to thinking it's the only thing.
That means a 10% risk of being put in a combatant role, which - as you pointed out - is devastating to anyone who joined for the welfare aspect.
Anyone can call 90% an "overwhelming majority", but that really diminishes the issue at hand.
The details vary by service, but generally when enlisting you get a choice between open enlistment or enlistment in a particular specialty or skill set. Again, depending on the service, in many cases you can enlist for a guaranteed job role. Even in the case that you do open enlistment, when it comes down to it, no one in the US military is going to force you to go into combat with a gun to your back commissar style, as that's obviously incredibly likely to backfire, and in the worst case, backfire in a way that gets lots of other people killed to.
My friends that saw combat knew what their options were within the military and what they were signing up for. They may have had an idealized picture of what combat would be like, or the odds of a conflict happening, but they weren't forced into a combat role against their will.
I'm all for criticism of the military system of the US, but that needs to be grounded in reality.
On the balance of the last 70 years, if you live in a developed country you need to thank the US military for allowing you this unprecedented stability and peace for so long (I’m not an American so I’m one of those grateful).
Leaving those dictators there in place would have provided more stability than the current state of violent chaos and hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees.
Look, I like the US, a lot, but let's not lie to ourselves here.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana
This government is not of/by/for the people one bit.
The military as 'social welfare' is true in other countries. Example: want to become a civilian vehicle mechanic with a driving license but you failed formal education and can't afford a car? Join the British Army and get into a role that involves driving and maintaining a vehicle (many military trades involve vehicle use).
Not enough of the public truly cares, and that in turn lets politicians ignore them or use them as pieces on a chessboard to be moved about and sacrificed as needed.
Consider, getting a few stitches is usually more expensive than a dental filling even though it’s simpler, faster, etc. The difference is simply the amount of waste involved. Trimming the fat is difficult because that’s people’s income you’re cutting and they will fight you every step of the way.
PS: Politics is not about petty grievances, but elections can be. Shaping the narrative is how you get people to vote against their own best interest.
> Consider, getting a few stitches is usually more expensive than a dental filling even though it’s simpler, faster, etc.
And not getting those stitches can lead to scarring, or infection. There are things worse than debt.
That said, I'm not saying we should just borrow the money to do what we want without considering if we should find a way to pay for it, I'm just saying for things that are really important, money is not an obstacle. The whole point of debt is to allow spending beyond your budget when it's deemed beneficial or necessary to do so.
> PS: Politics is not about petty grievances
Yes, petty grievances are a poor expression for what I was thinking, which is pet issues and turning everything into a chance to bolster your talking point to score political points.
All debt can do is force the next administration to pay for your spending. Politically it seems great, but economically it’s almost completely worthless. It’s just another political game where you say it’s meaningless when you’re running things and a critical issue when the other party is in charge.
A surplus is by far the more economically efficient option. Build strategic reserves when it’s cheap, and spend them when absolutely critical. But again spending when it’s not obvious you’re raising taxes is the crack cocaine for democracy’s.
I understand that, but that's not the context I understood we were discussing, which is "stop funding the military so we can start fixing these other problems like covid or opiates or whatever". In that context, my point was to say that funding for those initiatives is not the limiting factor.
> All debt can do is force the next administration to pay for your spending.
Which is perfectly acceptable and expected in an emergency. I doubt any future administration is going to say "if only Trump didn't spend so much on covid, we're really hurting from that." Going into debt over emergency needs for the country is pretty analogous to floating your house payment or rent on credit for a couple months while you get a new job. You pay for it later, but ultimately it's probably a much better investment than not doing it, as being out on the street has far greater negative consequences (and a negative feedback loop) than the debt usually has. In the same manner, reducing a recession or preventing a depression is generally money well spent.
> A surplus is by far the more economically efficient option.
Sure, but then the whole "reduce this so we can pay for that" doesn't really make sense. I don't think we're really in disagreement, I think we're just slightly contextually misaligned.
There was absolutely zero need to go deeper into debt over COVID. Further, government waste is not a question of debt without consequences. Paying people to fill out redundant forms or build pointless military hardware means those same highly skilled and capable people can’t being doing something of actual value.
Money is fundamentally an abstraction, and debt is simply another form of taxation. Debt as the least obvious form of taxation has illusionary benefit and real costs.
Since I don't disagree with what you're saying, but also think it doesn't really apply to the specific point I was trying to express, I don't think we do. Apparently I'm just unable to adequately communicate my point.
The only thing additional I can think to say is that you seem to making an argument about how government should be run, which is not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing what's required for our legislators to pass legislation on this today. Freeing up money from other sources is not one of those things, as they could borrow whatever extra they needed if they deemed it necessary.
Everything is a complex series of tradeoffs, not just in what’s useful but also in public perception.
Budget is the intersection.
Our defense budget was increased to $700 billion. It was already significantly more than every other country in the world, but the Trump administration decided to throw another $100 billion in for good measure.
> Lack of money is not a problem the US has, we can borrow what we needed and trim fat later.
We can also trim the fat right now, and reallocate spending from programs that murder foreigners to programs that help civilians. For whatever reason, that option doesn't often get brought up in the House.
> Not enough of the public truly cares
I don't think that's the case. The GOP and Trump's cabinet have been using their majority to stop any "socialist" legislature from being passed, while the literal majority of American votes were for a Democratic party presidential candidate.
How much is enough? That's the real problem here. With first past the post voting and electoral college, some Americans' votes are favored over others, and most don't have a real opportunity to vote for the candidate they truly desire.
That doesn't matter. Money is not the problem. Making helping people contingent on also lowering the defense budget doesn't magically make things easier because there's money for it, as money was never the problem. It just means you have two hard things to accomplish instead of one.
> We can also trim the fat right now.
My point was to say money is not the limiting factor.
> The GOP and Trump's cabinet have been using their majority to stop any "socialist" legislature from being passed
Let's not pretend the Democrats have been some bastion of good behavior. They've squandered any high ground they might have had through gamesmanship just as much as the Republicans, but to worse effect because they still try to present themselves as taking the high ground.
> some Americans' votes are favored over others, and most don't have a real opportunity to vote for the candidate they truly desire.
How is this different than it's ever been? The system was designed to be this way. States are supposed to be elevated and have power, only to be offset by the number of constituents they have. States are supposed to be far more important than just some county, they are individual polities with their own laws and are supposed to be used to experiment with different laws specifics of government, and traditionally they were. It's only with the ascendancy of the Federal government and Presidential powers over the last century or so that states have lost of lot of the power they used to hold. In a system where states are supposed to be able to implement their own systems and try new things, it makes sense to allow states themselves a bit more pull than the sum of their people, so they don't get steamrolled.
If we cared about a corona vaccine, it should have been started in 2003 after corona-1. It would have cost almost nothing to do it then, but no funding was provided.
The top 10 leaders of the CDC should get the firing squad for that alone.
We don't have 200,000 deaths from corona, we have that many attributed to corona, most with co-morbidities. Not the same thing.
And covid-19 has deep military implications. China has been in an undeclared war with the US for 40 years, resulting in the world's largest navy. Around 50% of experts consider corona somewhat likely to be lab-released (not wholly man-made, but crossed in a Wuhan lab.)
It makes sense to me that we'd always be working on the next generation fighter, and also hypersonic missiles, which we're behind. (One reason we're behind is that the US was the only real target until recently.)
Regarding universal healthcare, yeah, the US can't and won't do that without a revolution of some kind at this point. The initial Obamacare proposal was single-payer, and that was killed almost instantly.
Asking as it would seems that somebody is either having a good chuckle somewhere or a misfortunate naming convention given " F-15EX" will bring out the schoolboys in many.
Is the EX extension meaning it's experimental and replacing the X prefix?
The only explanation I can work out would be that the EX is the manufactures code, though I can't find any association of EX with Boeing.
They should make a MIG-boeing or Sukhoi-Lockheed-Northrop proposal of real merit.
Citation needed
That is some dark humour right there.
A budget in minus trillions and an arm race with China that is outgrowing the US with a comparably tiny spend on defense.
I mean why bother with a budget. This thing is clearly going to end in a Soviet-style bankruptcy.
That isn't what they were saying. The point made is that China is spending a tiny fraction of what the US is spending on defense, yet they are managing to keep up in this arms race.
Of course, the US isn't spending its entire budget on building arms; it's also spending a lot dropping an unprecedented amount of bombs in the middle east.
Words above are from Will Roper - Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics
Even the Air Force is copying "Apple" speak these days....