Comment by regularfry
4 years ago
There's an interesting example of exactly this in missile development. Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain, and as a result had a more advanced design for a while.
Similar story with the Buran: they over-estimated the Space Shuttle's military capabilities on the assumption that the true intended mission profiles were being hushed up and ended up with a fully automated exoatmospheric nuclear bomber.
So it's a dodgy strategy if it's intentional: you've got to bet that your opponent will run out of cash before they can field the superweapons you've made them build; or that once built they won't be able to afford enough of them to make a difference.
The F-15 was way ahead of any other fighter jet for years because someone managed to convince whoever was paying that the MiG-25 was a super plane (it really wasn’t)
And the MiG-25 itself was designed because the USSR was spooked by the XB-70 Valkyrie which was a supersonic strategic bomber that flew higher and faster than any existing Soviet interceptor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyri...
The Valkyrie never was productionized and only 2 aircraft were ever built.
And sadly only one survives to this day due to an absolutely incredible mid air disaster during what was an otherwise “routine” photo op flight.
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Y'all seeing a pattern here? I don't think it's intentional but our fears drive us to escalate and pour money into things to counter things that don't really exist in the ways that we fear.
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> Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain
No. The K-13/AA-2 Atoll is a literal copy of an AIM-9 reverse-engineered from an example captured by the Chinese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-13_(missile)
He is talking about the Vymple R-73 which was meant to counter the capabilities of a project that got cancelled, but they thought has become classified.
Yep. I can neither remember nor find my copy of Ron Westrum's China Lake book to check which feature it was, but it was one of helmet-mounted targeting or thrust vectoring. I think it was the latter but wouldn't put money on it.