Comment by ActorNightly
7 hours ago
There are 2 things that are VERY classified when it comes to US military.
First is missle defense capability
Second is sonar.
I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.
TLDR; US is never going going "win" wargames because its not a good idea to showcase the true capability. Same reason why F22 and F35s "lose" to other jets - US purposefully nerfs them and flies them at decreased envelopes.
Or maybe the Typhoon is actually better than the F35 and F22 at dogfighting and general "within visual range" combat. But its unlikely that would really matter in a real war, F35 doesn't need to be good at those things if it just shots you down long before you know its there.
F35 maybee. F22 has never been publically flown within its actual combat envelope. Super maneuverability probably makes it possible to notch the living fuck out of heat seakers, i.e turn past 180 degrees, afterburner out.
Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?
Also ignore me, all I know about air combat I learned from top gun and iron eagle.
Well in Ukraine both sides are generally too afraid to get their jets anywhere near the frontline and just use them to launch long range cruise missiles and such from a safe distance.
Air defences are just too effective and modern jets are so expensive that nobody can really afford to risk losing them.
Maybe F-35 could change that, it seemed very efficient in Iran. But AFAIK Iran didn't have anything better than the S-300 so it wasn't exactly a fair fight...
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Rules of engagement and the fact that nobody was properly trained on tactics that worked with the missiles. IIRC only the air force added a gun to the F4, the Navy just improved their training regime, and ended the war with better kill ratios than the air force.
Plus the early missiles just had some problems that were fixed over time.
> Isn’t that like how the F4 didn’t need to be good at dogfighting because it would shoot enemies down from BVR (first versions didn’t even have a gun, only missiles) and then rules of engagement over Vietnam nullified that advantage?
Not only ROE limitations, but unreliable missile technology (see the "Red Baron" reports for example) and bad tactics as well. The Navy was better than the USAF in both respects.
That's one way to nerf them, force them to fight in situations they would never find themselves in.
In real life, if they can't neutralize the threat in BVR they just turn around and run before getting in range.
Their stealth allows them to get the enemy in range before the enemy has them in range. It's like a boxer with a long reach: jab and move.
The F35 RFQ specification had two bullet points:
0) Spread the pork into as many congressional districts as possible
1) Omae wa mou shindeiru
I’m sorry, but you clearly don’t know anything about the F 35 development program. It is held up as an exemplar case of preventing congressional pork, as every single development and integration contract was competitively won on a best-value basis.
> I believe something like 10 years ago, the declassified sonar capability was that it could reconstruct a 3d image of a goldfish 10 miles away.
I'm in optics, not sonar, but I have a hard time believing that sound waves are such unbelievably reliable tools for accurate FFT's of a target. Ultrasonics begin at 100 mm, while "long" visible light is 200x shorter (and wavelength is proportional to resolvable detail). Noise and dispersion in the ocean are significant.
Reminds me of when the CIA planted stories that they could recover data from multiply-erased hard drives using electron scanning microscopes. Possibly - one bit at a time.
Phased radar is a thing. Phased sonar is also a thing. Couple that with a bunch of ML and its very doable.
I think it’s pretty clear that these shiny super expensive weapons systems will be overwhelmed by cheaper autonomous systems like drones . They are good for bullying less capable adversaries but I think in an all out war they won’t have a good time. As far as I have read the F22 has never been used in combat because it’s too expensive to lose.
F22 has never been used in combat because nobody wants to go up against it. We deploy F22s and enemy is basically like "well we cant see it and it probably out turns any of our shit, so whats the point"
Drones are cheaper, but also not robust like human operated machinery. Great for bombing, not so great for air supreriority. UCAVs may be cheaper in getting missles off, but comms are easy to disrupt and ai capabilities arent there
Ehhh I think it’s all moot. These high end weapons aren’t 1000x better than 1000 cheaper weapons that cost 100000x less.
How many jet powered or submersible drones can an aircraft carrier defend against?
Not an aircraft carrier but a destroyer or battleship in a group certainly has awacs that can knock shit out of the sky pretty reliably, and probably something anti torpedoe as well.
But how many can they knock out? Patriot air defenses are extremely effective. But on some level they’re not very useful if the interceptor missiles are materially more expensive than the things they’re intercepting against a foe of equalish economic means.