And giving pilotless future of combat air, a tail sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter will work great in pilotless version not needing all that folding/tilting hardware. A pilotless would also not have to have at least double engines/etc for reliability (and the monstrosity of interconnect between those 2 engines like V-22 has and X-76 is bound to have).
The Osprey has a reputation, for sure, but it's mid-pack. They called the F-104 the widow maker for a reason, for example. And the F-16 has a fairly high accident rate, too, slightly higher than the Osprey. Though I think the F-16's history is a bit more lopsided, they made some changes after early production airframes proved pretty accident prone.
Maybe the Osprey's reputation is due not only to the accident rate but also to the fatality rate. A fatal accident in a standard F-16 (not the 2 seater), assuming no one outside the plane is killed, means 1 death. A fatal accident in a V-22 with the same assumptions would have a minimum of 2 deaths (pilot and copilot) at a soft maximum of 26 deaths (2 crew + 24 passengers, possibly more if overloaded).
All flying craft that cannot glide by itself should have failsafe parachutes. If one engine goes out the other engine needs to stop too to prevent flipping. Parachute is easily acceseible behind a red lever with glass to break
The osprey has both engines tied together for this exact reason. One engine can turn both props. It's part of the complexity of the thing. It's just too complex.
The Netherlands had problems with it too. The procurement of the Starfighter was also a huge corruption scandal. Lockheed was a very scummy company in the cold war.
> The Starfighter had a poor safety record, especially in Luftwaffe service. The Germans lost 292 of 916 aircraft and 116 pilots from 1961 to 1989, leading the German public to dub it Witwenmacher ("widowmaker").[0]
That is because the Germans used it as all-weather fighter-bomber with more heavy load, in different airspaces, with different weather and terrain, as opposed to the initial, more air-superiority/interceptor concept. And had a different way of training their pilots. In masses. "Wo gehobelt wird fallen Späne. Ein bisschen Schwund ist immer da."
Other european airforces using them were more lucky, IIRC.
That aside, they could be seen as the exported rests of the bargain-basement of the MIC of the USA, when the USAF/Navy already had better options(seen as a whole weapon-system, not a few speed/climb/altitude records(for the initial, only lightly loaded version) which won't matter in real combat).
The Wikipedia page says this will replace UH-60s, but I just do not see how that airframe is a direct comparable to what’s been a workhorse for decades. Maybe it means only in a long range reconnaissance role? But even then, that mission is primarily owned by UAS platforms now. Confusing.
I imagine UH-60 and variants will continue to serve (who knows, maybe with new airframes) along side the MV-75 for quite a while, in a similar way to how UH-1s continued to be in use well after UH-60s were deployed in large numbers. This Congressional Research Service summary of the FLRAA/MV-75 program states that the Army has plans to continue ordering UH-60s (on the order of 255 between 2027 and 2031) - https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12771
The key requirements that drive MV-75's downsides (size, complexity, cost) is the Army wants to play game in the Pacific. The UH-60 is deeply limited there.
For example, the MV-75's range should let it go (one-way) from Guam to the Philippines, straight from Okinawa to Taiwan (no need to island hop) - potentially as a two way mission. Same as Philippines to Taiwan.
The "comparability" is that the MV-75 and UH-60 can be delivery ~14 troops into an order magnitude similar size clearing.
Sure, its going to take decades to actually make the transition and the UH-60 will remain in service for decades more after that in less demanding roles. I expect by the time this finishes, the MV-75 will be considered another workhorse, if maybe slightly fuzzier and the UH will be an antiquated platform.
But ultimately they both solve the same problem, moving stuff from A to B in rough terrain fast. But with the ever increasing amount of reconnaissance assets, A needs to be further behind the frontline and so range and speed needs to increase beyond what you can manage with a pure helicopter.
It looks like a maintenance nightmare with those clutches to decouple the blades and the mechanisms to have them folded during cruising. Does it even improve substantially in anh metric over the V280 to put money into it?
All military aircraft are maintenance nightmares. They're also extraordinarily loud and devour fuel. These are not intended to entire commercial service where they need to turn a profit for the operators.
Maintenance is an issue for more than just profitability. More maintenance means fewer sorties in a given time period, heavier reliance on and utilization of supply chains, and fewer platforms that can be serviced by a given set of mechanics and facilities.
Just look at WW2: Germany had some fantastic equipment, but they couldn't field it because they didn't have the fuel, spare parts and the maintenance capabilities available. A tiger could kill 10 Shermans, but the Americans could always bring up an 11th Sherman.
For decades we have been able to afford complacency - we strike when we're ready against people who mostly can't strike back. We can afford to be wasteful because we have so much more than anyone we would go up against. No one is seriously threatening our ability to keep our military going. But militaries need to be prepared for peer conflicts where someone could give us a run for our money.
> A tiger could kill 10 Shermans, but the Americans could always bring up an 11th Sherman.
Supply is one part, being able to repair is another. The tiger was a massive pain in the dick to fix. It had a weak gearbox that took _hours_ to get to.
Plus most of the parts were bespoke, which means lots more tooling needed to service everything. The other thing is that germany wasn't actually that mechanised compared to the french, or english
The comparison in tech is apt, but the countervailing argument is that the discrepancy in economies doomed the Nazis in WW2. German was a little powerhouse considering the size of its population, but it only had half the GDP of the US, not to mention the other Allies. Combine this with a smaller population, and it really didn't matter what the Germans did in terms of equipment. They were destined to lose unless they struck gold with a wunderwaffe like the atomic bomb.
In today's world, the US outspends the next 10 countries combined. In normal times, it values the lives of its servicemen, and is willing to spend quite a bit to ensure dominance. So it will often have boutique gear that other countries could never afford.
That's not a countervailing argument, that is the argument. The side able to apply more industrial power defeated the side with more capable but less useful equipment.
The US outspends the next 10 countries combined in peace times. By comparison, Germany outspent the US on its military by a factor of 20 on the eve of WW2. Obviously once the war got going, the US' immense industrial capacity (along with the other Allies; the British Empire and the Soviet Union had the number 2 and 3 GDPs) was unstoppable.
We no longer live in the age where the US represents half of the world GDP and the bulk of that is manufacturing. China's has a larger economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, it has extensive manufacturing capacity, and a vast population. If push came to shove, we wouldn't be able to simply outspend them. In that hypothetical conflict we are the germany with a bunch of questionably useful wunderwaffe.
You're right: we would simply starve them (in addition to strategic bombing of all of these manufacturing centers.)
They do not possess the food calorie production to sustain their population, nor do they have the arable land to magically begin to do so.
> we are the germany with a bunch of questionably useful wunderwaffe.
We have outstanding fast attack submarines which can't be stopped by ASBMs: exactly zero freighters carrying food from South America or crude oil would be permitted.
That was literally Nazi Germany's strategy for defeating Britain. Use advanced submarines to stop trade cutting off supplies of food and fuel from abroad. The Allies just made ships faster than they could be sunk.
Today the US has 55 fast attack submarines, each of which can carry about 50 torpedos at a time. So with 100% of your subs deployed you can sink maybe 250 ships. The US has an inventory of about 1000 torpedos so you can do that about 4 times. Shanghai alone receives 230 ships per day. So The US submarine force is roughly capable of shutting down the equivalent of 1 chinese port for a few days. Realistically, your not even going to get anywhere near that. 30% of your subs are going to be out of service at any given time, more will be transiting between service bases and the war theater, only a portion of those can be spare for commerce raiding, it takes time to locate targets, and you will suffer attrition to ASW. After those first few days it becomes a race between US torpedo production and Chinese ship building. The US can produce 10 torpedos per month; China produces 15 ships per day.
Of course China isn't an island - it can import food from its neighbors by land connections. Nor is it even deficient in domestic food production capability. It grows 700 million tons of grain per year which is enough to sustain 3.8 billion adults. It imports a lot of food in peacetime because people want more than bare subsistence, and certainly interdicting trade will piss them off quite a bit, but it's not going to bring them to their knees.
The idea that in a peer war it will only be them suffering - their trade will be interdicted, their industrial centers will be bombed - and they won't have any means to strike back is exactly the complacency I was referring to. Maybe if war broke out tomorrow it would go that way, but that's merely an argument that China is not yet truly our peer. We must plan under the assumption that somebody, and it might not be China, will in the coming decades reach the point where they can tank a hit from us and hit back.
> That was literally Nazi Germany's strategy for defeating Britain.
And this strategy was enormously effective. Absent U.S. intervention, Europe was fucked.
> The Allies just made ships faster than they could be sunk.
Not "the Allies" - just one Ally, separated by an entire ocean. No such separation exists today.
> Today the US has 55 fast attack submarines, each of which can carry about 50 torpedos at a time. So with 100% of your subs deployed you can sink maybe 250 ships
We had torpedo bombers in 1940, as well, submarines aren't the only ASW mechanism that exists. How many sunken ships in each port will bring them to a grinding halt? Are they magically going to tug millions of tons of steel out of these harbors?
> China produces 15 ships per day
When their shipbuilding operations aren't strategically bombed into oblivion, sure.
> it can import food from its neighbors by land connections
Now it's a World War - why would this be allowed?
> grows 700 million tons of grain per year
With several hundred million of those tons of grain (along with vast amounts of other relevant food calories - livestock, etc.) being grown in the Yangtze basin, courtesy of the fact that the Three Gorges Dam is allowed to exist. Why would the U.S. allow that dam to remain intact? This one structure is a cheat code: knock out 50% of enemy food production, displace or kill hundreds of millions of people creating a mass humanitarian crisis and subsequent Cultural Revolution, and hobble huge amounts of industrial production. Short of theoretical attacks like EMP, no such non-WMD single-point-of-failure exists anywhere in the United States.
Nuclear response is truly the only thing keeping the peace.
PRC has CONUS conventional strikes now, bump 20 refineries and US lose 50% of oil, everything down stream from transportation to industry to agriculture, comparable to to hypothetical three gorges. Hypothetical because US doesn't have munitions to penetrate gravity damn as thick as three gorges (gbu57 included), nor any survivable platforms that can deliver fires at scale to PRC. Ultimately, US MIC not remotely calibrated for PRC sized adversary. So the real answer is now that PRC can conventionally hit US, given PRC have 4x more concrete to crack, varied energy mix vs CONUS dependence on oil, US more strategically vulnerable (from energy to input for calories). At peer war scale, 1 dam might as well as be 20-30 refineries. Extrapolate to other CONUS targets, boeing, f35, spacex manufacturing, data centeres, payment processors... i.e. strategic infra US spent 50 years to sustain hegemony. US more to lose from less set targets and less ability to reconstitute. PRC loses most of PLAN they can rebuild in a few years, US loses most of USN and it will take decades. PRC has 4x more nodes for same relative level of homeland disruption, arguably has better fire projection than US in actual shooting war, as in none of US projection assets can likely survive to deliver fires at scale, vs sheltered PRC global strike missile complex that skips middle men delivery platforms. TLDR global strike = CONUS is Japan now. PRC is also Japan, but PRC is 4 Japans.
I was on a film shoot that was interrupted by a pair of F-18s going low and slow on burners that took forever for audio to give the all clear. The killer part was we were in a downtown park, and could not determine why in the world they would have been performing that maneuver there. There were more than windows shaking.
Comanche was cancelled, and even it was loud and gulped fuel. The "stealth" Blackhawk derivative used in the Bin Laden raid might be quieter, but it definitely gulped a ton of fuel. Fuel consumption is just an accepted issue with helicopter technology.
The V280 is designed to be cheap (a very relative term here).
Reading between the lines, I suspect "fast, but also expensive" was a design option that popped up and was not chosen earlier in the V280 program and now Darpa wants to pay to see where it goes.
I've had to eat some humble pie and moderate my assessment of the F-35. It still does have a lot of issues, for sure, but it turns out if you divide an eye wateringly large number by another impressively large number, the result can be a lot better than I thought it would be.
It's lot more about operational costs and project deliverables than plain sticker shock, and it is turning out to be a capable platform.
> I've had to eat some humble pie and moderate my assessment of the F-35
Same for me. I was surprised to hear that it actually competes favorably on price. And aside from early griping that it couldn't beat an ancient F-16 in a dogfight, it seems pretty capable in that regard too. Saw a demo at the last airshow I went to and that plane was defying physics. I love the 16, always will, but I definitely don't think it would hang with an F-35.
In a real fight, the F-35 smokes the F-16 beyond visual range before the F-16 even knows there is a problem. The radar and electronic warfare capabilities are incredible.
Isn't modern tactics to not use onboard radar but to be driven in by airborne radar from AWACs? Or is it used once in the furball as the jig is up at that point?
My very amatuer understanding is that modern combat for the US is based on a 'combat network', which creates a massive situational advantage by connecting all sensors - on satellites, planes, drones, ground radars, from intelligence, etc. - in a network and sharing the data across the network.
The F-35 is designed as a node in that network, and afaik is one of the most advanced sensor nodes. It also receives data from the network, but it is a major contributor (partly due to operating in front, often in enemy territory, etc., afaik).
Part of using the network data is having an onboard computer that can make sense of it. Even in older planes without the network input and with smaller sensor areas, pilots faced cognitive overload from trying to interpret relatively raw data from a half-dozen or more sensors each on their own output device (screen, etc). - what's a bird, what's an ally, what's a non-combatant, what's an enemy and what's a missile - all while piloting a plane, being shot at, etc. F-35's have a computer that integrates the inputs, refines the data, identifies objects, and displays that in a unified UI on ~1 screen.
Another reason for the investment in its sensors is that situational awareness is considered by far the most decisive factor in air combat. Whoever sees and shoots first tends to win. Also, it needs to survive and be effective if cut off from outside communications.
Modern tactics are to use every radar around via datalink (AWACS, Ground Station, stealthy drones flying ahead). The onboard radar is last resort, but still very capable.
Useless tidbit about myself: Back in the mid-90s I was in the USAF in the 552nd Air Control Group, and the team I was on specifically did the 'external test' of the data link. Spent a lot of time in a simulator pushing buttons pretending to be an AWACS guy on a plane while recording all of the data, then later painstakingly comparing that data to the manual log and radio recordings.
I would be interested to see how far they've brought the technology in the intervening, uh ... 30 years. Damn. That old computer (old by technology, ours was pretty new in practical terms) was the only mainframe I've ever used. Booted it up by loading a tape reel and programming registers. I still remember that the 'happy' code was something like 0B00BE in between cycles, anything else and it had crashed.
The US is stuck with older F-16s than the current export models with advanced radar. They're gradually being upgraded with some Block 70 components. That requires the new cockpit so it isn't just a quick part substitution.
all these cost assessments are numbers on a spreadsheet. let's see what the numbers look like after 20 years on the line, with SrA mechanics and most flight hours by new Lt's and Captains.
if they over-estimate the engine rebuild time, or if it really takes 2 hours instead of 30 minutes to remove and replace an avionics box (as was forecast), the calculation can veer in the other direction quickly.
i predict the F35 will be the most expensive by flying hour of any (line) aircraft that has come before it.
Right, that may well all be true, but the capabilities it brings to the table could still be worth it. I'm not saying I know the answer, but it's a lot more of an open question than I thought it would be a few years ago.
The sticker price is competitive but the cost per flight hour and the availability factor is pretty horrifying. Factoring in the cost of flying and the availability makes the Grippen about half the cost.
I wonder if the flight hour cost of F 35 includes the maintenance it's undergoing when it's not available.
The Gripen is a fantastic jet, but you're basically describing the difference between a fourth and fifth generation platform. When Saab and Embraer roll out their own fifth-generation jets, they will also have to contend with expensive RAM coating and complex internal hardpoints.
Putting aside the export market, it's a small miracle that the F-35 turned out as well as it did. Having a mostly-common fighter airframe shared between the Navy, Marines and Air Force was a pipe dream in the 90s. America is lucky the program didn't collapse entirely.
4th generation platforms like Grippen are not survivable in a modern air defense environment without complementary 5th generation platforms to establish air superiority. You can't avoid having a fleet of something like F-35 to gain control of the airspace.
There is an argument that all manned fighters are already obsolete thanks to the proliferation of cheap drones and that establishing air superiority is a very different task now.
There is no such argument among people who actually know how this stuff works. Cheap drones might work pretty well for trench warfare in Ukraine but it's impossible to build a cheap drone that would be effective in a conflict with China over Taiwan. The distances alone mean that aircraft must be large just to get there, and thus not cheap regardless of whether there's a crew onboard.
Autonomous flight control software is still only able to handle the simplest missions. Maybe that will change in a few years but for now anything complex requires a remote pilot, and those communication links are very vulnerable.
There really is not, this argument was a total discredit of Elon Musks opinions on anything military. Case in point, Iran has been a major user of these drones yet they’ve been out of the game against an enemy with a real air force
Torpedo boats didn't make Battleships obsolete. Aircraft carriers did. Because they could do the same role but better.
AntiTank rifles didn't make tanks obsolete. Neither did anti-tank mines. Nor anti-tank rocket launchers, nor anti-tank artillery, nor really freaking good anti-tank missiles, nor anti-tank helicopters etc etc. Turns out, putting a box of steel around soldiers is pretty much always better. IFVs are even less survivable than a tank in all cases and they have only become more important and prominent because what capability they provide is what matters.
Artillery and Air power did not make the army obsolete. Air power did not make Artillery obsolete though the USA wanted that reality.
Submarines didn't make any boat obsolete.
SAM systems did not make planes obsolete. Hell, America decided the solution to missiles aimed at your planes was fly planes at the missile launcher! And it works because war is stupid.
"Cheap drones" only work against things that haven't yet adapted to cheap drones in the exact same way that Navy had to adapt to anti-ship missiles. With EW, those "cheap" drones get less cheap. With any sort of advancement in protection, those drones get less cheap. War is about achieving physical control, and you can't really do that with cheap drones. There's always back and forth in weapons systems. We still use bayonets in the right circumstances!
Cheap drones cannot establish air superiority, and certainly not air supremacy. Actual air combat drones are far more expensive, involved, and in development than quadcopters.
The primary power drones bring is ISR, making the entire battlefield utterly transparent, including at nighttime. That's insane, and really really bad for any of us who might be forced to fight in the future, as lethality to the average soldier is likely to go up.
Wildly dependent on your definition of "modern", which mostly depends on your potential adversary. The Russia/Ukraine, and the new war in the Gulf have shown numerous ways in which 4th generation jets, and more importantly cheaper missiles and even more cheap drones can perform supression of enemy air defences and/or air support. Unless you're fighting the US or China, 4th gen jets are plenty. And even against US and US defended locations, cheap drones and missiles have been able to influct some pretty serious damage to critical infrastructure (like extremely expensive and rare radar systems). An adversary not crippled by extreme sanctions and corruption for decades might have been able to achieve even more, even with the total lack of airpower.
4th generation aircraft are not sustainable in modern combat without a wide array of assistance from EW etc. The losses of aircraft in Ukraine on both sides are horrifying. The only reasons the Ukrainians persist is because they have no choice. The Russians can sit outside of the Ukrainian engagement range and lob semi-smart bombs, or air to air missiles at any Ukrainian aircraft that show up on their radar.
The real reason stealth is needed is as a counter to GBAD. Modern anti-aircraft missiles are incredible lethal.
"4th generation aircraft are not sustainable in modern combat without a wide array of assistance from EW etc. "
But isn't that true of the F35 as well?
On it's own, I doubt it would survive much longer on the eastern front in Ukraine.
In Iran the F-35 also did not fly around freely while the ground radars were active. They had to be taken out first. For that stealth was probably useful (and in general it is).
But it is not making them invisible - and cheap sensors and AI is likely to counter it soon. Because sensors and analysis will get better over time and sensors also better and cheaper. But the stealth will remain largely the same. It cannot really be upgraded for existing jets.
The F-35 is one of the most advanced EW platforms currently flying. That’s the main reason everyone wants it. It has an exceptional ability to detect modern threats and self-protect against them.
By all accounts the F-35 did fly freely over Iran but the weaponry for killing ground radars are all long-range stand-off weapons so that 4th gen aircraft can use them. Many times those weapons are cued by stealth aircraft within range of the ground radars but launched by 4th gen carrying them from farther away. This is pretty standard US doctrine.
The F-35 specifically was designed for environments like Ukraine. The combat there is shaped by the lack of capability like that from either side.
> cheap sensors and AI is likely to counter it soon.
The burning question is what decision would AI make in Pearl Harbor. Would it have said flock of birds? Would it be keying in on flocks of birds instead?
That's my point. Any battlefield today is "modern", but militaries operate with what they have. From Russia to the Houthis passing via the Houthis, we've seen insane amounts of damage done on "a modern battlefield" with anything from Cold War era equipment to cheap drones assembled by a terrorist group living in the mountains with no industrial base.
Yes, if the US wants to fight China, and vice versa, it needs 5th gen jets. Everyone else doesn't need them. They're nice to have to make your job easier (like Israel vs Iran), but don't guarantee you anything (like Israel vs Iran).
4th generation jets are not designed to survive denied airspace. They're still useful; both sides in Ukraine are using 4th gen jets for air patrol, SEAD, escorts, intercepts and standoff munition launches.
Presuming that state of affairs will persist though is fraught.
It's quite likely that in about 5 years most military installations will have a mix of weapons to intercept those systems - and depending on a number of factors you could easily end up back at low performance drones being so reliably intercepted as to be a waste of munitions to deploy.
WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking: surely the volume of an army would overcome the machine gun.
> It's quite likely that in about 5 years most military installations will have a mix of weapons to intercept those systems - and depending on a number of factors you could easily end up back at low performance drones being so reliably intercepted as to be a waste of munitions to deploy.
That's unlikely. Anti-drone defences will only improve, yes, but autonomous drone swarms numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands are doable today, and few weapons systems can handle the rate of launch/fire required to combat that. Especially if there are follow-up waves mixing drones and heavy missiles against which your anti-drone defences wouldn't be enough.
> WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking: surely the volume of an army would overcome the machine gun.
But building a cheap kamikaze drone costs much less than building a human.
Define cheap and multiply by thousands. Ukrainian front line drones stopped being DJIs years ago.
They're now much closer to $3000 USD+ at the low end for an ISR vehicle. $8000+ for the more capable FPV kamikazes is the estimate for Russian models.
Which is comparable to a 155mm artillery shell. But with a lot less payload.
There's already literally millions of drones being produced and used per year in that conflict - and they've made a big impact, but the stability of the frontline also reveals that the impact of "swarms" is hardly overpowering (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together).
As Iran shows, you don't need overpowering. You need to hit the enemy where it hurts them, like strategic infrastructure.
> "swarms" ... (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together)
On the contrary, a swarm allows you to overwhelm the enemy air defences, which allows you to hit targets, including those same air defences, without having to disable them first. Cf. Iran destroying a THAAD radar.
Right - until anti-air measures designed to deal with voluminous relatively low performance threats get deployed. There's a reason Ukraine has been rolling out old school anti-aircraft and flak guns, and the modern variants are now starting to be produced - i.e. area effect microwave weapons and high energy lasers. Systems which aren't very useful if your adversary is highly capable, but which are effective if your adversary is relatively fragile. Again: volume turned out to be relatively useless in WW1 when the adversary had well placed machine guns.
But it's also an apples to oranges comparison: THAAD is in no way designed to intercept drone threats. The story here is closer to the US started a fight without actually investing in the sort of defenses which would deal with it - i.e. with a rack of Ukranian interceptor drones as part of the air defenses, the THAAD radar likely makes it.
it also has stealth. This is a complete disaster. The only purpose of this stealth ship is to steal leaders and or go inside cave lairs and blow them up.
Cool, I guess this should be able to hover in much more "austere" environments than the F-35B STOVL and the Harrier Jet. Tiltrotor with folding rotor blades sounds very mechanically complex and challenging though.
Usually with these programs, they just commission an artist with some vague description, like they tell him to draw a futuristic VTOL aircraft, these pics have zero bearing on what gets delivered.
Sometimes they even take the piss with this, like in this video for a next-gen engine, where you can see their engine doesn't even fit in their fantasy aircraft:
Isn't this need already met by the Bell V280 that the army already selected for it's Blackhawk replacement? What is the big innovation they are going for here?
+50% top speed over the V280. Bell offered it as an alternative to the V280 in the early stage of the contract, but it was judged too experimental (and probably too expensive). Apparently DARPA is funding further development of the concept.
Why? We just kill everything nowadays with missiles, bombs, and rockets-- heads of government, terrorist leaders, schools... so why are we investing in anything like this?
Seems like some kind of GI Joe fantasy that's gone on for too long.
Google tells me that a Boeing 737 flies (cruises) at 430–470 knots. Also, the A-10 Warthog only cruises at 300 knows.
You wrote:
> Not a substantial enough speed increase to powerfully deter air defenses.
For modern air defenses like the Russian S-400 Triumf, pretty much all of their missiles can easily outrun (or catch!) any modern fighter jet. In your view, what speed would be "substantial enough"?
The role of the Osprey has, as I understand, been to transport troops into an area after it has been bombed to shit. In such a situation you've already destroyed the air defenses (or you're fighting guerillas who are relying on portable anti-air weapons)
I can't imagine what other role a VTOL would eventually play. It's too fragile for CAS, too slow for air supremacy, not enough payload for bombing, and recon is better served by drones or satellites. The only reason to have an expensive, heavy plane take off and land in a warzone would seem to be moving people in and out.
If you look at the V-22 safety record in the context of the level of technical development, it is pretty good (e.g. compare to helicopters and aircraft from the 60s). The first production generation of a brand new type of vehicle is always going to be complicated, and virtually all of the V-22 mishaps come from the "new" components and procedures.
The fundamental tradeoff with tiltrotor platforms is that you trade significantly increased speed for significantly increased complexity. What that means is your battlefield survivability goes up when dealing with any opponent with meaningful air defenses, but at the cost of increasing your "resting" accident rate when most peacetime accidents are consequences of maintenance and/or procedural issues.
Flying military aircraft is inherently dangerous. The US Army had 15 Class A mishaps in 2025, the USN 12, the USAF 14, and 6 for the USMC. The Apache (AH-64) led the Army, and this is a mature airframe, but shit happens.
Because Sikorski can't make them work. Sure, they can take off and fly fast in a straight line, but they haven't been able to demonstrate sufficient maneuverability due to vibration problems in the rotor head. They are also very tall, prohibitively so for existing shipboard hangar, which would otherwise seem to be their advantage over tiltrotor platforms.
Targeting a propeller for both raw lifting capacity as well as speed is quite difficult. I suspect they have different geometry as well.
If you spin a propeller fast enough the tips break the speed of sound, from what I recall that knackers the efficency. To generate lots of lift a bigger rotor is more efficient (hence why helicopters have long rotoblades that don't spin at high RPM)
The longer the blades the faster the tips, which means there is a tradeoff between thrust and speed of the air being yeeted out the back
My armchair general understanding: airspeed at blade tip can't be supersonic all the time, and that caps the max forward speed for prop driven aircraft. Same don't apply to jet engines with air intakes that can restrict and slow air flow
The swedish gripen can do mach2 (2300km/h) and does not need a traditional runway (500 meters of something "flat enough" will do). I assume its way cheaper than something like this.
That doctrine works great for defending your homeland, when you are taking off from your roadside base and coming back home to a road-based airfield already on the map.
My understanding of these VTOL aircraft is they need to travel a long way, quickly, and set down in far less predictable conditions.
Why do you need hover? Its a pretty useless thing that requires shitloads of engineering (for a plane, not a heli). It sounds like a hollywood movie like requirement that is built for the purpose of burning tax payer dollars.
Can't even talk it about it, it's against the guidelines for being political. Asking what we will use this for is similarly political. The only nonpolitical act is admiring the war machine, apparently.
HN hosts plenty of political comments and threads. We just ask that it (a) not be the primary thing people use the site for, and (b) that discussion stay respectful and within the site guidelines.
I know dan, thanks. I'm pointing out the bloodthirsty cowardice of the site and its culture. The capriciousness of moderation is a topic for another day.
These days my vote would go to a quad. Impeller fore, impeller aft and one in each wing. Behind doors, obviously, like the bays for retractable landing gear - this is a solved problem.
They don't have to be efficient, because how much hovering time would you really need? Battery could even exist only in mission specific pods (internal perhaps, when it's a cargo carrier), trade-off as needed.
Thats the point, the more efficient the less supply line you need, which means more autonomy.
I cant find the source but in Afghanistan a large proportion of the Allied casualties were from protecting supply lines.
The thing about quad copters is that they work at small scale because the rotor have almost no inertia. When you scale that up to 2m, then inertia is a bitch. That means you need tilting blades to make up for that lack of control.
BUT
You also need something to be powerful enough to alter the speed of the rotors to get yaw.
Plus you then also need to get them all to rotate so that you can get the efficiency of normal flight.
The reason why the osprey exists is because it has longer range than a helicopter (~1200 miles vs 400) its also faster.
> Plus you then also need to get them all to rotate so that you can get the efficiency of normal flight.
Not when you simply don't use them for horizontal flight. You just shut the VTOL hatches and forget that you aren't a conventional airplane until you want to land but there isn't an airstrip.
Winged operation has to be efficient, no doubt about that. But hovering does not need much endurance when it's only for getting away from the ground and setting down.
Electric has the power density, even more so when you don't need the power for a long time (heat buildup, no need for an equilibrium). Electric suffers from energy density, but that's where the winged mode comes in (old fashioned jet turbine, with the generator slightly larger than usual so that you'll have full batteries for the short landing hover)
I think I'd rather have them working on airplane tech rather than writing airplane tech press releases. With this approach, it's not just a tactical thing; it's relieving the burden of wordsmithing from technical people.
The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up someone to do more design work, it freed someone to interview for a new job. I hope they get it.
> The technical people were never wordsmithing, they just didn't hire a technical writer. Instead of freeing up someone to do more design work, it freed someone to interview for a new job. I hope they get it.
Do technical writers work on press releases? This sounds more like a job for the public relations/corporate communications department.
I have always talked/written like this. now that LLMs do it in a similar enough way, my own writing gets called AI slop. I just wish my rotator cuffs knew I was a robot.
It's probably good signal at least, if not a bit of a harsh thing to say that I don't mean in a bad way, that your writing was bland or mediocre since LLMs are basically regression to the mean.
This administration doesn't really prioritize anything that has to do with intelligence, so advanced research was obviously going to fall by the wayside.
Running exclusively off jet power would require an extremely (impossibly?) strong compressor stage coupled a powerful APU to generate lift. It's definitely not light enough to take off without tiltrotors.
The concept is the compressed air sent through slits in a thruster, creating negative pressure that draws in surrounding air, resulting in increased thrust, there’s a concept already of this, check the above reply.
> Jetoptera is developing VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft that use a "Fluidic Propulsion System" (FPS) instead of traditional rotors or propellers, acting like "bladeless fans on steroids". These systems use compressed air and the Coanda effect to generate high-speed thrust, promising quieter, more efficient, and faster flight (up to Mach 0.8) for aerial mobility.
The difference may be that you, who know more about these things, have in your head the state needed to appreciate the statement. The comment may be brief, but that's because it's compressed, not because (for you) it's shallow. It's like the old joke where the prisoners know all the jokes so well they just call them out by number.
But those of us who know less don't have that information, and since the comment didn't explicitly deliver it, there's no way to learn from it. What to you is a compressed valid opinion ends up landing like a shallow dismissal.
What works better on HN is for the commenter to share some of what they know, so the rest of us can learn, and so the comment itself becomes substantive with supporting information, details, etc. Then we won't just know that you disapprove of, e.g., a particular aircraft design, but will also have some idea of why.
It can be hard to remember to do this, because most of us take the extra state in our heads for granted.
The Osprey killed a lot of Marines over the past decades. It took a while to work out the issues. Hopefully we will remember what the Osprey taught us.
It is a fascinating take. I am curious to understand what model you think would work.
The U.S. effectively has a dysfunctional system with wild mix of "no regulation" and heavy state participation. I am not sure there is any country with a deregulated system where people can enjoy good healthcare. You could theoretically say that Switzerland does this, but the government there requires everyone to have insurance, even though hospitals are 100% private.
There's something hilariously telling about calling yourself the "ultimate" dev while being completely oblivious about who Don Hopkins is, or what his views on this type of subject would be.
The quote is from a slide of an FBI presentation of unclassified information regarding the Epstein files that is hosted on justice.gov itself. What about this is hearsay exactly?
You're calling a direct quote of a testimony given by one of Epstein's victims "hearsay". ctrl+f "bit" in that PDF.
Pretending to be oblivious to the many complaints that the attacks in Iran are another attempted distraction from the Epstein files isn't fooling anyone either.
You may feel like it's "off-topic", but I don't see why people should be allowed to talk about and glorify military techology, but not voice their disgust at it, how it is used, or why.
>___ stated Epstein introduced her to Trump
who subsequently forced her head down to his
exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In
response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked
her out. (date range 1983-1985, ___ would have been
13-15)
Your confession that you would bite Trump's penis too if he forced your head down on it is perfectly understandable, and no one would blame you. And he probably would have punched you in your head and kicked you out too, just like he did to the child he molested. But you're probably not his type: you're not an underaged girl, his own daughter, or a Slovenian prostitute (I presume). You best stick to enthusiastically licking his boots, carrying his water, and defending his integrity.
Anyone can claim anything. That is not proof.
Surely you can see we've been down this road before with fabricated claims.
I do hope that Epstein's inner circle is taken down, but let's get hard evidence.
Some claims from the 80s and old pictures of them together in public is not proof.
There IS more evidence on other people though, and I hope those people get what they deserve. It's fucking sick.
How long can you continue to defend and carry the water for pedos? It's not a good look, and it reflects on your character and personality. Do you think you'll ever get tired of it? Or do you get even more committed and dig in even deeper every time you do it, because of your pride, and refusal to admit you're wrong in the face of enormous piles of irrefutable evidence and an obvious cover-up? Are you actually gullible enough to believe the Department of Justice keeps accidentally illegally withholding millions of documents, so many of which just happen to be about Trump? Or do you just want us to believe you're astoundingly gullible to cover up your much more insidious motives? If the Trump-Epstein Files prove he's innocent like he claims, then why doesn't he release them all without redacting his own and other powerful pedos' names, as promised by his campaign and required by law? And why do you keep pretending to fall for that bullshit hook line and sinker and defending him again and again? Your posting history is so embarrassing -- have you no shame? Are you into public self humiliation or something?
Edit: I have never defended Clinton, and he hasn't been president for decades, and has not started World War III and bombed 170 school girls to distract from the Trump-Epstein Papers like Trump just did. And no, nobody's paying me to school you the truth about Trump by refuting your lies.
>Anyone can claim anything.
And you just claimed Trump broke ties with Epstein in the 80's, which proves you're a liar. And you still have to explain why you believe everything Trump claims without question or evidence.
You have a long well documented track record of HN posts defending Trump, so you're lying through your teeth when you say that you hope all involved are prosecuted. And there you go again lying about how Trump cut ties in the 80's. Your facts are wrong and you know it. Trump never claimed to have cut ties in the 80's, so you're lying about that, and Trump is lying about having a falling out in 2004. Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago until at least 2007. There is a 2011 email from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell discussing Trump and time spent at Epstein’s house, and the infamous and disgusting 2003 birthday letter signed by Trump that appeared in Epstein’s birthday album. In your own words: "It's fucking sick." So stop lying to defend pedos.
Yet you have the audacity to lie that they cut ties in the 80's, directly contradicting what Trump himself has claimed that their relationship lasted decades longer than that, and proving beyond any doubt that you're a liar who is willing to bend the truth by more than two decades to protect Trump, when it's so trivial to prove you're wrong and rub your face in your own lies by simply quoting Trump's own words:
In a 2002 New York magazine interview, Trump said:
"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy... it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
It's as if you WANT to be proven a liar, so you just sharted that totally obvious bullshit about Trump cutting ties with Epstein in the 80's -- "the guy who cut ties back in the 80s" -- so you would get caught red handed lying in this very conversation on purpose. What is wrong with you, dude? Did you think nobody would call you on it? Do you get off on humiliating yourself?
Now let's get to the bottom of why you are so invested in defending pedos by lying. Now that you've just proven again how blatantly and mendaciously you will lie to protect pedos, explain WHY?
I wonder is Iran would have gone different if we had captured the Ayatollah instead of killing him. A stealth drop ship like this would have allowed that to happen. The reason why regimes are more likely to negotiate when you capture their leaders is because you might release them. (not a good day for the usurper.)
I don't think whatever is negotiated with Iran's current regime would actually be honored by them. They may commit something to get their leader back, but won't be keeping the promises.
Their self stated goal is destruction of Israel and US. They could have chosen peace and not have funded proxies across the middle east. Their choice of aggression by whatever means they have at their disposal just shows what their long term strategy would be.
They have shown the intend. They just didn't have the capacity to follow through. Once they gain the capacity, they could go extreme lengths. Just see how they attacked their neighbors who were not party to the war.
A very good response to the parent comment and summary of the current situation.
AIUI the Iranian attack on Arab countries is strategic, increasing energy costs pressures the US to stop military action. However the US and allies were prepared with set aside oil reserves, increasing supplies from other sources, and reducing Iran's ability to interfere with shipping.
Major warfare always has tragic effects, but against regimes actively pursuing destruction of other nations, return of fire is a rational response.
Different engines for different phases of flight? It has been tried many times and never really works. Such craft can be made to fly, but never well. The answer has to come from using one set to power all phases.
Id be interested in seeing a turboprop that can transition to a turbofan/jet once the prop is folded away. The f-35 was a step in this direction.
I wonder what the motivation behind this is. Tactically, why ever show your latest weapon? What is the strategic purpose of this? It's like if I message my opponent in SC2 and tell them exactly what I'm going to tech to. That's ... insane right? Why would anyone do that?
This isn't a new weapon, this is a test platform for various ideas, none of which are new or secret. Also, there are not many groundbreaking advancements left in military aviation. Most are just fairly incremental engineering or manufacturing improvements. (Military space technology might be a different story, though.)
The only other nation with the potential to develop a high-tech military plane that could rival US technology would be China. But if we ever got into a war with China, they wouldn't need superior technology to win. They could win via superior manufacturing capacity and the sheer number of people they can draft into service at a moment's notice.
>They could win via superior manufacturing capacity and the sheer number of people they can draft into service at a moment's notice.
Even with their manufacturing capacity they don't have remotely enough boats to get a nontrivial fraction of those people to the US mainland, and the majority of those people can't swim, so they wouldn't help in taking the US mainland, a requirement to "win" a serious war. Their entire armed forces is also almost completely lacking in combat experience, and in their last skirmish (against some unarmed Indian soldiers in the mountains) 30+ soldiers Chinese tragically drowned, due to the aforementioned lack of swimming ability.
How China frames victory and how the US frames victory needn't agree, and likely wouldn't. That being said, framing victory as only counting if there is a wholesale land invasion seems odd, as I suspect neither side would want to actually do that... so who 'wins'?
I don't know why you're being downvoted because clearly modern warfare is as much (or more) about the economic warfare aspect as the military one.
There are some rather bizarre examples such as Gaza attacking Israel, despite getting something like 50% of their electricity and 10% of their fresh water from Israel!
Attacking the supplier of critical civilian and industrial inputs would seem like a mistake nobody in their right mind would make, but... there you go.
I wouldn't be surprised if a future conflict with China over Taiwan would be primarily economic.
They threaten to stop shipping, we threaten to cut off the Internet and their banking, etc...
Similarly, the most knowledgeable experts are predicting that China's strategy with Taiwan will be to simply blockade the island and wait for them to capitulate.
Last but not least, this is also Iran's current strategy. By halting shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, they're waging war on the global economy much more effectively than bombing a few small military air strips in the region.
It's not a tactical choice- it's strategic deterrence, and it's not insane at all!
The US has always had a policy of messaging programs, with a lean toward classifying some percentage of the specific capabilities.
There's a reason that F-35 program was publicized by the US government as the program was under development. It makes the US air force even scarier, which discourages adversaries from thinking about conventional warfare with America.
That said- you won't see any detailed pics of the inside of an F35 cockpit, or a detailed look at the heads up display in the fancy helmet. That's top secret, because those making those details public don't offer enough additional deterrence to justify the risk to the program.
Yes, but even if the US didn't release the specifications of the F35, other countries around the world would rapidly figure out most of the capabilities anyway from photos, videos, and casual observation. (In other words, they'd know soon enough WHAT it can do but not necessarily HOW it does it.)
I think they just show what it can be seen, like any country with advance military developments.
They won't show you everything.
Have you ever heard about those sound/sonic (or something similar) weapons the US used in Maduro's kidnap operation? Venezuelan soldiers said (pero some publications on the internet) that they never saw anything alike, leaving them completely disoriented and helpless?
Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or solid materiales, and the same time, bacome invisibles.
> Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or solid materiales
I have a thermal imager. They can't see through walls in the sense you're imagining. If there's an electric heating element inside a wall or a ceiling, you could get an image of that. If there's a camera or other active electronics hidden in a wall or object, you can see the heat from that.
You wouldn't be able to see a person in an adjacent room through the wall between the two rooms, unless the wall was made specifically of thermally-transparent material.
I've heard rumours of "see through walls" equipment in the US military before. If they really have something like that, it would have to be using technology other than thermal imaging.
Normally these kinds of press releases come out to generate public support for funding. I remember when the B-2 was super, super secret. No photos, "we don't know what you're talking about" answers from the military.
But when it looked like it might get cancelled pictures and exhibitions of it were suddenly everywhere.
mrDmrTmrJ – 2 days ago
Two articles that cover this in depth are: 1. Revised Fold-Away Rotor Aircraft Concepts Emerge From Special Operations X-Plane Program. December 2024: https://www.twz.com/air/revised-fold-away-rotor-aircraft-con...
2. Bell’s Plan To Finally Realize A Rotorcraft That Flies Like A Jet But Hovers Like A Helicopter. September 2021: https://www.twz.com/41997/bells-plan-to-finally-realize-a-ro...
The second article covers decades of prior wind tunnel testing on the folding rotor concept.
trhway – 2 days ago
sunk investment. The success - it made into production in meaningful numbers - of V-22 means that design will be beaten to death.
Even though Bell X-22 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFdV5CVXGGw) was much better as prop VTOL than V-22, and for jet VTOL Ryan XV-5 Vertifan (look how great it is flying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwvkjFIYWR8 ) was much better than F-35 has been and X-76 will be.
And giving pilotless future of combat air, a tail sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter will work great in pilotless version not needing all that folding/tilting hardware. A pilotless would also not have to have at least double engines/etc for reliability (and the monstrosity of interconnect between those 2 engines like V-22 has and X-76 is bound to have).
moralestapia – 2 days ago
Oof, I wish I had a job like that.
trhway – 2 days ago
username223 – 2 days ago
Focus on something and become one of the best in the world at it. Expertise pays.
dmbche – 2 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidents_and_incidents_involv...
rootusrootus – 2 days ago
hyperific – 2 days ago
ikekkdcjkfke – yesterday
iancmceachern – yesterday
remarkEon – 2 days ago
sedatk – 2 days ago
TitaRusell – yesterday
nstj – 2 days ago
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter
LargoLasskhyfv – yesterday
Other european airforces using them were more lucky, IIRC.
That aside, they could be seen as the exported rests of the bargain-basement of the MIC of the USA, when the USAF/Navy already had better options(seen as a whole weapon-system, not a few speed/climb/altitude records(for the initial, only lightly loaded version) which won't matter in real combat).
conorbergin – 2 days ago
owlninja – 2 days ago
remarkEon – 2 days ago
icegreentea2 – yesterday
The key requirements that drive MV-75's downsides (size, complexity, cost) is the Army wants to play game in the Pacific. The UH-60 is deeply limited there.
For example, the MV-75's range should let it go (one-way) from Guam to the Philippines, straight from Okinawa to Taiwan (no need to island hop) - potentially as a two way mission. Same as Philippines to Taiwan.
The "comparability" is that the MV-75 and UH-60 can be delivery ~14 troops into an order magnitude similar size clearing.
remarkEon – yesterday
joha4270 – 2 days ago
Sure, its going to take decades to actually make the transition and the UH-60 will remain in service for decades more after that in less demanding roles. I expect by the time this finishes, the MV-75 will be considered another workhorse, if maybe slightly fuzzier and the UH will be an antiquated platform.
But ultimately they both solve the same problem, moving stuff from A to B in rough terrain fast. But with the ever increasing amount of reconnaissance assets, A needs to be further behind the frontline and so range and speed needs to increase beyond what you can manage with a pure helicopter.
burnt-resistor – 2 days ago
Any time there are planetaries or splines attached to jet engines, it's a really weak spot. This holds for ordinary turboprops too.
yabones – 2 days ago
GorbachevyChase – 2 days ago
aksss – 2 days ago
laughing_man – 2 days ago
burnt-resistor – 2 days ago
The F-35B can also do Mach 1.6 and the stealth thing.
Some country should give that Pepsi contest winner a demil Harrier in lieu of Frontier Airline miles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico%2C_Inc.
PowerElectronix – 2 days ago
carabiner – 2 days ago
jjk166 – 2 days ago
Just look at WW2: Germany had some fantastic equipment, but they couldn't field it because they didn't have the fuel, spare parts and the maintenance capabilities available. A tiger could kill 10 Shermans, but the Americans could always bring up an 11th Sherman.
For decades we have been able to afford complacency - we strike when we're ready against people who mostly can't strike back. We can afford to be wasteful because we have so much more than anyone we would go up against. No one is seriously threatening our ability to keep our military going. But militaries need to be prepared for peer conflicts where someone could give us a run for our money.
KaiserPro – 2 days ago
Supply is one part, being able to repair is another. The tiger was a massive pain in the dick to fix. It had a weak gearbox that took _hours_ to get to.
Plus most of the parts were bespoke, which means lots more tooling needed to service everything. The other thing is that germany wasn't actually that mechanised compared to the french, or english
jjk166 – 2 days ago
Which is exactly the topic under discussion.
conorcleary – 2 days ago
greedo – 2 days ago
In today's world, the US outspends the next 10 countries combined. In normal times, it values the lives of its servicemen, and is willing to spend quite a bit to ensure dominance. So it will often have boutique gear that other countries could never afford.
jjk166 – 2 days ago
The US outspends the next 10 countries combined in peace times. By comparison, Germany outspent the US on its military by a factor of 20 on the eve of WW2. Obviously once the war got going, the US' immense industrial capacity (along with the other Allies; the British Empire and the Soviet Union had the number 2 and 3 GDPs) was unstoppable.
We no longer live in the age where the US represents half of the world GDP and the bulk of that is manufacturing. China's has a larger economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity, it has extensive manufacturing capacity, and a vast population. If push came to shove, we wouldn't be able to simply outspend them. In that hypothetical conflict we are the germany with a bunch of questionably useful wunderwaffe.
15155 – yesterday
You're right: we would simply starve them (in addition to strategic bombing of all of these manufacturing centers.)
They do not possess the food calorie production to sustain their population, nor do they have the arable land to magically begin to do so.
> we are the germany with a bunch of questionably useful wunderwaffe.
We have outstanding fast attack submarines which can't be stopped by ASBMs: exactly zero freighters carrying food from South America or crude oil would be permitted.
jjk166 – yesterday
Today the US has 55 fast attack submarines, each of which can carry about 50 torpedos at a time. So with 100% of your subs deployed you can sink maybe 250 ships. The US has an inventory of about 1000 torpedos so you can do that about 4 times. Shanghai alone receives 230 ships per day. So The US submarine force is roughly capable of shutting down the equivalent of 1 chinese port for a few days. Realistically, your not even going to get anywhere near that. 30% of your subs are going to be out of service at any given time, more will be transiting between service bases and the war theater, only a portion of those can be spare for commerce raiding, it takes time to locate targets, and you will suffer attrition to ASW. After those first few days it becomes a race between US torpedo production and Chinese ship building. The US can produce 10 torpedos per month; China produces 15 ships per day.
Of course China isn't an island - it can import food from its neighbors by land connections. Nor is it even deficient in domestic food production capability. It grows 700 million tons of grain per year which is enough to sustain 3.8 billion adults. It imports a lot of food in peacetime because people want more than bare subsistence, and certainly interdicting trade will piss them off quite a bit, but it's not going to bring them to their knees.
The idea that in a peer war it will only be them suffering - their trade will be interdicted, their industrial centers will be bombed - and they won't have any means to strike back is exactly the complacency I was referring to. Maybe if war broke out tomorrow it would go that way, but that's merely an argument that China is not yet truly our peer. We must plan under the assumption that somebody, and it might not be China, will in the coming decades reach the point where they can tank a hit from us and hit back.
15155 – yesterday
And this strategy was enormously effective. Absent U.S. intervention, Europe was fucked.
> The Allies just made ships faster than they could be sunk.
Not "the Allies" - just one Ally, separated by an entire ocean. No such separation exists today.
> Today the US has 55 fast attack submarines, each of which can carry about 50 torpedos at a time. So with 100% of your subs deployed you can sink maybe 250 ships
We had torpedo bombers in 1940, as well, submarines aren't the only ASW mechanism that exists. How many sunken ships in each port will bring them to a grinding halt? Are they magically going to tug millions of tons of steel out of these harbors?
> China produces 15 ships per day
When their shipbuilding operations aren't strategically bombed into oblivion, sure.
> it can import food from its neighbors by land connections
Now it's a World War - why would this be allowed?
> grows 700 million tons of grain per year
With several hundred million of those tons of grain (along with vast amounts of other relevant food calories - livestock, etc.) being grown in the Yangtze basin, courtesy of the fact that the Three Gorges Dam is allowed to exist. Why would the U.S. allow that dam to remain intact? This one structure is a cheat code: knock out 50% of enemy food production, displace or kill hundreds of millions of people creating a mass humanitarian crisis and subsequent Cultural Revolution, and hobble huge amounts of industrial production. Short of theoretical attacks like EMP, no such non-WMD single-point-of-failure exists anywhere in the United States.
Nuclear response is truly the only thing keeping the peace.
maxglute – yesterday
jcgrillo – 2 days ago
dylan604 – 2 days ago
giancarlostoro – 2 days ago
Steal helicopters have entered the chat.
greedo – 2 days ago
cucumber3732842 – 2 days ago
Reading between the lines, I suspect "fast, but also expensive" was a design option that popped up and was not chosen earlier in the V280 program and now Darpa wants to pay to see where it goes.
Zigurd – 2 days ago
XorNot – 2 days ago
simonh – 2 days ago
It's lot more about operational costs and project deliverables than plain sticker shock, and it is turning out to be a capable platform.
rootusrootus – 2 days ago
Same for me. I was surprised to hear that it actually competes favorably on price. And aside from early griping that it couldn't beat an ancient F-16 in a dogfight, it seems pretty capable in that regard too. Saw a demo at the last airshow I went to and that plane was defying physics. I love the 16, always will, but I definitely don't think it would hang with an F-35.
esseph – 2 days ago
dylan604 – 2 days ago
mmooss – 2 days ago
The F-35 is designed as a node in that network, and afaik is one of the most advanced sensor nodes. It also receives data from the network, but it is a major contributor (partly due to operating in front, often in enemy territory, etc., afaik).
Part of using the network data is having an onboard computer that can make sense of it. Even in older planes without the network input and with smaller sensor areas, pilots faced cognitive overload from trying to interpret relatively raw data from a half-dozen or more sensors each on their own output device (screen, etc). - what's a bird, what's an ally, what's a non-combatant, what's an enemy and what's a missile - all while piloting a plane, being shot at, etc. F-35's have a computer that integrates the inputs, refines the data, identifies objects, and displays that in a unified UI on ~1 screen.
Another reason for the investment in its sensors is that situational awareness is considered by far the most decisive factor in air combat. Whoever sees and shoots first tends to win. Also, it needs to survive and be effective if cut off from outside communications.
wkrp – 2 days ago
rootusrootus – 2 days ago
I would be interested to see how far they've brought the technology in the intervening, uh ... 30 years. Damn. That old computer (old by technology, ours was pretty new in practical terms) was the only mainframe I've ever used. Booted it up by loading a tape reel and programming registers. I still remember that the 'happy' code was something like 0B00BE in between cycles, anything else and it had crashed.
/end trip down memory lane
dylan604 – 2 days ago
dylan604 – 2 days ago
kevin_thibedeau – 2 days ago
budman1 – 2 days ago
simonh – yesterday
Zigurd – 2 days ago
I wonder if the flight hour cost of F 35 includes the maintenance it's undergoing when it's not available.
bigyabai – 2 days ago
Putting aside the export market, it's a small miracle that the F-35 turned out as well as it did. Having a mostly-common fighter airframe shared between the Navy, Marines and Air Force was a pipe dream in the 90s. America is lucky the program didn't collapse entirely.
jandrewrogers – 2 days ago
jandrese – 2 days ago
nradov – 2 days ago
Autonomous flight control software is still only able to handle the simplest missions. Maybe that will change in a few years but for now anything complex requires a remote pilot, and those communication links are very vulnerable.
bigyabai – 2 days ago
edgyquant – yesterday
mrguyorama – yesterday
Torpedo boats didn't make Battleships obsolete. Aircraft carriers did. Because they could do the same role but better.
AntiTank rifles didn't make tanks obsolete. Neither did anti-tank mines. Nor anti-tank rocket launchers, nor anti-tank artillery, nor really freaking good anti-tank missiles, nor anti-tank helicopters etc etc. Turns out, putting a box of steel around soldiers is pretty much always better. IFVs are even less survivable than a tank in all cases and they have only become more important and prominent because what capability they provide is what matters.
Artillery and Air power did not make the army obsolete. Air power did not make Artillery obsolete though the USA wanted that reality.
Submarines didn't make any boat obsolete.
SAM systems did not make planes obsolete. Hell, America decided the solution to missiles aimed at your planes was fly planes at the missile launcher! And it works because war is stupid.
"Cheap drones" only work against things that haven't yet adapted to cheap drones in the exact same way that Navy had to adapt to anti-ship missiles. With EW, those "cheap" drones get less cheap. With any sort of advancement in protection, those drones get less cheap. War is about achieving physical control, and you can't really do that with cheap drones. There's always back and forth in weapons systems. We still use bayonets in the right circumstances!
Cheap drones cannot establish air superiority, and certainly not air supremacy. Actual air combat drones are far more expensive, involved, and in development than quadcopters.
The primary power drones bring is ISR, making the entire battlefield utterly transparent, including at nighttime. That's insane, and really really bad for any of us who might be forced to fight in the future, as lethality to the average soldier is likely to go up.
sofixa – 2 days ago
Wildly dependent on your definition of "modern", which mostly depends on your potential adversary. The Russia/Ukraine, and the new war in the Gulf have shown numerous ways in which 4th generation jets, and more importantly cheaper missiles and even more cheap drones can perform supression of enemy air defences and/or air support. Unless you're fighting the US or China, 4th gen jets are plenty. And even against US and US defended locations, cheap drones and missiles have been able to influct some pretty serious damage to critical infrastructure (like extremely expensive and rare radar systems). An adversary not crippled by extreme sanctions and corruption for decades might have been able to achieve even more, even with the total lack of airpower.
greedo – 2 days ago
The real reason stealth is needed is as a counter to GBAD. Modern anti-aircraft missiles are incredible lethal.
lukan – 2 days ago
But isn't that true of the F35 as well?
On it's own, I doubt it would survive much longer on the eastern front in Ukraine.
In Iran the F-35 also did not fly around freely while the ground radars were active. They had to be taken out first. For that stealth was probably useful (and in general it is).
But it is not making them invisible - and cheap sensors and AI is likely to counter it soon. Because sensors and analysis will get better over time and sensors also better and cheaper. But the stealth will remain largely the same. It cannot really be upgraded for existing jets.
jandrewrogers – 2 days ago
By all accounts the F-35 did fly freely over Iran but the weaponry for killing ground radars are all long-range stand-off weapons so that 4th gen aircraft can use them. Many times those weapons are cued by stealth aircraft within range of the ground radars but launched by 4th gen carrying them from farther away. This is pretty standard US doctrine.
The F-35 specifically was designed for environments like Ukraine. The combat there is shaped by the lack of capability like that from either side.
dylan604 – 2 days ago
The burning question is what decision would AI make in Pearl Harbor. Would it have said flock of birds? Would it be keying in on flocks of birds instead?
sofixa – 2 days ago
> have no choice
That's my point. Any battlefield today is "modern", but militaries operate with what they have. From Russia to the Houthis passing via the Houthis, we've seen insane amounts of damage done on "a modern battlefield" with anything from Cold War era equipment to cheap drones assembled by a terrorist group living in the mountains with no industrial base.
Yes, if the US wants to fight China, and vice versa, it needs 5th gen jets. Everyone else doesn't need them. They're nice to have to make your job easier (like Israel vs Iran), but don't guarantee you anything (like Israel vs Iran).
slaw – 2 days ago
bigyabai – 2 days ago
slaw – 2 days ago
bigyabai – yesterday
XorNot – 2 days ago
It's quite likely that in about 5 years most military installations will have a mix of weapons to intercept those systems - and depending on a number of factors you could easily end up back at low performance drones being so reliably intercepted as to be a waste of munitions to deploy.
WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking: surely the volume of an army would overcome the machine gun.
sofixa – 2 days ago
That's unlikely. Anti-drone defences will only improve, yes, but autonomous drone swarms numbering in the thousands to tens of thousands are doable today, and few weapons systems can handle the rate of launch/fire required to combat that. Especially if there are follow-up waves mixing drones and heavy missiles against which your anti-drone defences wouldn't be enough.
> WW1 after all was based on exactly this thinking: surely the volume of an army would overcome the machine gun.
But building a cheap kamikaze drone costs much less than building a human.
XorNot – 2 days ago
They're now much closer to $3000 USD+ at the low end for an ISR vehicle. $8000+ for the more capable FPV kamikazes is the estimate for Russian models.
Which is comparable to a 155mm artillery shell. But with a lot less payload.
There's already literally millions of drones being produced and used per year in that conflict - and they've made a big impact, but the stability of the frontline also reveals that the impact of "swarms" is hardly overpowering (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together).
sofixa – 2 days ago
As Iran shows, you don't need overpowering. You need to hit the enemy where it hurts them, like strategic infrastructure.
> "swarms" ... (the obsession with them is also weird - if you had thousands of assets in the air, the last thing you'd do is put them all close together)
On the contrary, a swarm allows you to overwhelm the enemy air defences, which allows you to hit targets, including those same air defences, without having to disable them first. Cf. Iran destroying a THAAD radar.
XorNot – yesterday
But it's also an apples to oranges comparison: THAAD is in no way designed to intercept drone threats. The story here is closer to the US started a fight without actually investing in the sort of defenses which would deal with it - i.e. with a rack of Ukranian interceptor drones as part of the air defenses, the THAAD radar likely makes it.
UltraSane – 2 days ago
throwaway2037 – yesterday
UltraSane – 10 hours ago
roysting – 2 days ago
rluna828 – 2 days ago
budman1 – 2 days ago
lazzurs – 2 days ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airwolf
throwaway2037 – yesterday
porphyra – 2 days ago
lproven – yesterday
AFAICS it's a turbojet tilt-rotor with folding rotors? Is that a fair summary?
Sounds fun but also somewhat terrifying. The more complexity, the lower the MTBF.
ceejayoz – 2 days ago
torginus – 2 days ago
Sometimes they even take the piss with this, like in this video for a next-gen engine, where you can see their engine doesn't even fit in their fantasy aircraft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCHun6rxQm0
dylan604 – 2 days ago
huflungdung – 2 days ago
rozab – 2 days ago
smlacy – 2 days ago
idontwantthis – 2 days ago
Tuna-Fish – 2 days ago
brk – 2 days ago
kuprel – 2 days ago
gorkish – 2 days ago
doublerabbit – 2 days ago
meroes – 2 days ago
Seems like some kind of GI Joe fantasy that's gone on for too long.
gorgoiler – 2 days ago
reactordev – 2 days ago
The Osprey is amazing, can’t wait to see what the X-76 can do.
elif – yesterday
I guess the idea is that you ground transport it past air defenses and accomplish objectives?
throwaway2037 – yesterday
You wrote:
For modern air defenses like the Russian S-400 Triumf, pretty much all of their missiles can easily outrun (or catch!) any modern fighter jet. In your view, what speed would be "substantial enough"?elif – yesterday
https://www.twz.com/air/new-hypersonic-strike-recon-aircraft...
jrjeksjd8d – yesterday
elif – yesterday
jrjeksjd8d – yesterday
0xWTF – 2 days ago
ocdtrekkie – 2 days ago
cpgxiii – 2 days ago
The fundamental tradeoff with tiltrotor platforms is that you trade significantly increased speed for significantly increased complexity. What that means is your battlefield survivability goes up when dealing with any opponent with meaningful air defenses, but at the cost of increasing your "resting" accident rate when most peacetime accidents are consequences of maintenance and/or procedural issues.
greedo – 2 days ago
laughing_man – 2 days ago
wartywhoa23 – 2 days ago
Or I guess you mean /stellar?
jdkee – 2 days ago
einpoklum – 2 days ago
mikkupikku – 2 days ago
cpgxiii – 2 days ago
bilsbie – 2 days ago
KaiserPro – 2 days ago
Targeting a propeller for both raw lifting capacity as well as speed is quite difficult. I suspect they have different geometry as well.
If you spin a propeller fast enough the tips break the speed of sound, from what I recall that knackers the efficency. To generate lots of lift a bigger rotor is more efficient (hence why helicopters have long rotoblades that don't spin at high RPM)
The longer the blades the faster the tips, which means there is a tradeoff between thrust and speed of the air being yeeted out the back
numpad0 – 2 days ago
rluna828 – 2 days ago
aussieguy1234 – 2 days ago
phplovesong – 2 days ago
gorgoiler – 2 days ago
My understanding of these VTOL aircraft is they need to travel a long way, quickly, and set down in far less predictable conditions.
phplovesong – yesterday
Zigurd – 2 days ago
phplovesong – yesterday
RandallBrown – 2 days ago
phplovesong – yesterday
qwerty_clicks – yesterday
giraffe_lady – yesterday
dang – yesterday
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
giraffe_lady – yesterday
dang – yesterday
giraffe_lady – 17 hours ago
dang – 13 hours ago
bilsbie – 2 days ago
usrusr – 2 days ago
They don't have to be efficient, because how much hovering time would you really need? Battery could even exist only in mission specific pods (internal perhaps, when it's a cargo carrier), trade-off as needed.
KaiserPro – 2 days ago
Thats the point, the more efficient the less supply line you need, which means more autonomy.
I cant find the source but in Afghanistan a large proportion of the Allied casualties were from protecting supply lines.
The thing about quad copters is that they work at small scale because the rotor have almost no inertia. When you scale that up to 2m, then inertia is a bitch. That means you need tilting blades to make up for that lack of control.
BUT
You also need something to be powerful enough to alter the speed of the rotors to get yaw.
Plus you then also need to get them all to rotate so that you can get the efficiency of normal flight.
The reason why the osprey exists is because it has longer range than a helicopter (~1200 miles vs 400) its also faster.
usrusr – 2 days ago
Not when you simply don't use them for horizontal flight. You just shut the VTOL hatches and forget that you aren't a conventional airplane until you want to land but there isn't an airstrip.
Winged operation has to be efficient, no doubt about that. But hovering does not need much endurance when it's only for getting away from the ground and setting down.
Electric has the power density, even more so when you don't need the power for a long time (heat buildup, no need for an equilibrium). Electric suffers from energy density, but that's where the winged mode comes in (old fashioned jet turbine, with the generator slightly larger than usual so that you'll have full batteries for the short landing hover)
bilsbie – 2 days ago
dash2 – 2 days ago
newer_vienna – 2 days ago
NitpickLawyer – 2 days ago
irl_zebra – 2 days ago
bigfishrunning – 2 days ago
palmotea – 2 days ago
Do technical writers work on press releases? This sounds more like a job for the public relations/corporate communications department.
binkHN – 2 days ago
irl_zebra – 2 days ago
jdiez17 – 2 days ago
notahacker – 2 days ago
O5vYtytb – 2 days ago
jdiez17 – 2 days ago
esseph – 2 days ago
irl_zebra – 2 days ago
jacquesm – 2 days ago
bigyabai – 2 days ago
ambicapter – 2 days ago
browsingonly – 2 days ago
ambicapter – 2 days ago
bigyabai – 2 days ago
tamimio – 2 days ago
bigyabai – 2 days ago
tamimio – 2 days ago
bigyabai – 2 days ago
They are still very deeply limited by compressor technology, regardless of whether they use combustion or electric propulsion.
EA – 2 days ago
tamimio – 2 days ago
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/jetoptera-bladeless-hsvtol/
> Jetoptera is developing VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft that use a "Fluidic Propulsion System" (FPS) instead of traditional rotors or propellers, acting like "bladeless fans on steroids". These systems use compressed air and the Coanda effect to generate high-speed thrust, promising quieter, more efficient, and faster flight (up to Mach 0.8) for aerial mobility.
sylware – yesterday
crimsoneer – 2 days ago
greatgib – 2 days ago
dang – 2 days ago
rcMgD2BwE72F – 2 days ago
logotype – 2 days ago
newer_vienna – 2 days ago
HumblyTossed – 2 days ago
dang – 2 days ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
HumblyTossed – yesterday
dang – yesterday
But those of us who know less don't have that information, and since the comment didn't explicitly deliver it, there's no way to learn from it. What to you is a compressed valid opinion ends up landing like a shallow dismissal.
What works better on HN is for the commenter to share some of what they know, so the rest of us can learn, and so the comment itself becomes substantive with supporting information, details, etc. Then we won't just know that you disapprove of, e.g., a particular aircraft design, but will also have some idea of why.
It can be hard to remember to do this, because most of us take the extra state in our heads for granted.
HumblyTossed – yesterday
01100011 – 2 days ago
thatmf – 2 days ago
bak3y – 2 days ago
vicnov – 2 days ago
The U.S. effectively has a dysfunctional system with wild mix of "no regulation" and heavy state participation. I am not sure there is any country with a deregulated system where people can enjoy good healthcare. You could theoretically say that Switzerland does this, but the government there requires everyone to have insurance, even though hospitals are 100% private.
bak3y – 2 days ago
What I am dead certain of though is that involving the government in it will be worse, not better.
sega_sai – 2 days ago
stevenwoo – 2 days ago
DonHopkins – 2 days ago
theultdev – 2 days ago
Side note: do you seriously believe that garbage?
Same old photos, same claims with no evidence, same anonymous phone calls.
Point to the actual smoking gun if you're going to post that drivel. But you can't because there isn't anything of substance there.
This is tabloid stuff. Doesn't belong here. You would think a user with that much karma would know that.
vanderZwan – 2 days ago
theultdev – 2 days ago
I respect people's opinion in their domain.
His take was pretty much just hearsay.
Very poor taste, doesn't belong here.
btw: ult is a project, I'm the dev of it. but yes I am that too (jk?).
vanderZwan – 2 days ago
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01660...
theultdev – 2 days ago
Where does it "all connect for you" in that document I guess is what I'm saying.
Really trying to understand the theory here.
vanderZwan – 2 days ago
Tasteless joke, dude.
You're calling a direct quote of a testimony given by one of Epstein's victims "hearsay". ctrl+f "bit" in that PDF.
Pretending to be oblivious to the many complaints that the attacks in Iran are another attempted distraction from the Epstein files isn't fooling anyone either.
You may feel like it's "off-topic", but I don't see why people should be allowed to talk about and glorify military techology, but not voice their disgust at it, how it is used, or why.
DonHopkins – 2 days ago
>___ stated Epstein introduced her to Trump who subsequently forced her head down to his exposed penis which she subsequently bit. In response, Trump punched her in the head and kicked her out. (date range 1983-1985, ___ would have been 13-15)
Your confession that you would bite Trump's penis too if he forced your head down on it is perfectly understandable, and no one would blame you. And he probably would have punched you in your head and kicked you out too, just like he did to the child he molested. But you're probably not his type: you're not an underaged girl, his own daughter, or a Slovenian prostitute (I presume). You best stick to enthusiastically licking his boots, carrying his water, and defending his integrity.
theultdev – 2 days ago
There IS more evidence on other people though, and I hope those people get what they deserve. It's fucking sick.
DonHopkins – 2 days ago
Edit: I have never defended Clinton, and he hasn't been president for decades, and has not started World War III and bombed 170 school girls to distract from the Trump-Epstein Papers like Trump just did. And no, nobody's paying me to school you the truth about Trump by refuting your lies.
>Anyone can claim anything.
And you just claimed Trump broke ties with Epstein in the 80's, which proves you're a liar. And you still have to explain why you believe everything Trump claims without question or evidence.
You have a long well documented track record of HN posts defending Trump, so you're lying through your teeth when you say that you hope all involved are prosecuted. And there you go again lying about how Trump cut ties in the 80's. Your facts are wrong and you know it. Trump never claimed to have cut ties in the 80's, so you're lying about that, and Trump is lying about having a falling out in 2004. Epstein was a member of Mar-a-Lago until at least 2007. There is a 2011 email from Epstein to Ghislaine Maxwell discussing Trump and time spent at Epstein’s house, and the infamous and disgusting 2003 birthday letter signed by Trump that appeared in Epstein’s birthday album. In your own words: "It's fucking sick." So stop lying to defend pedos.
Yet you have the audacity to lie that they cut ties in the 80's, directly contradicting what Trump himself has claimed that their relationship lasted decades longer than that, and proving beyond any doubt that you're a liar who is willing to bend the truth by more than two decades to protect Trump, when it's so trivial to prove you're wrong and rub your face in your own lies by simply quoting Trump's own words:
In a 2002 New York magazine interview, Trump said:
"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy... it is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."
It's as if you WANT to be proven a liar, so you just sharted that totally obvious bullshit about Trump cutting ties with Epstein in the 80's -- "the guy who cut ties back in the 80s" -- so you would get caught red handed lying in this very conversation on purpose. What is wrong with you, dude? Did you think nobody would call you on it? Do you get off on humiliating yourself?
Now let's get to the bottom of why you are so invested in defending pedos by lying. Now that you've just proven again how blatantly and mendaciously you will lie to protect pedos, explain WHY?
theultdev – 2 days ago
dzhiurgis – 2 days ago
DonHopkins – 2 days ago
dzhiurgis – 2 days ago
theultdev – yesterday
I truly think he's schizo.
dzhiurgis – yesterday
rluna828 – 2 days ago
ivell – 2 days ago
Their self stated goal is destruction of Israel and US. They could have chosen peace and not have funded proxies across the middle east. Their choice of aggression by whatever means they have at their disposal just shows what their long term strategy would be.
They have shown the intend. They just didn't have the capacity to follow through. Once they gain the capacity, they could go extreme lengths. Just see how they attacked their neighbors who were not party to the war.
jrapdx3 – 2 days ago
AIUI the Iranian attack on Arab countries is strategic, increasing energy costs pressures the US to stop military action. However the US and allies were prepared with set aside oil reserves, increasing supplies from other sources, and reducing Iran's ability to interfere with shipping.
Major warfare always has tragic effects, but against regimes actively pursuing destruction of other nations, return of fire is a rational response.
otabdeveloper4 – 2 days ago
Yeah, I saw that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode too.
Sadly, we might need some more intensive vibranium research before it becomes reality.
trelliumD – 2 days ago
FrankBooth – 2 days ago
rkomorn – 2 days ago
adolph – 2 days ago
https://www.twz.com/38435/this-is-all-the-survival-gear-that...
throwaway2037 – yesterday
rkomorn – 2 days ago
sandworm101 – 2 days ago
Id be interested in seeing a turboprop that can transition to a turbofan/jet once the prop is folded away. The f-35 was a step in this direction.
radicalethics – 2 days ago
bityard – 2 days ago
The only other nation with the potential to develop a high-tech military plane that could rival US technology would be China. But if we ever got into a war with China, they wouldn't need superior technology to win. They could win via superior manufacturing capacity and the sheer number of people they can draft into service at a moment's notice.
logicchains – 2 days ago
Even with their manufacturing capacity they don't have remotely enough boats to get a nontrivial fraction of those people to the US mainland, and the majority of those people can't swim, so they wouldn't help in taking the US mainland, a requirement to "win" a serious war. Their entire armed forces is also almost completely lacking in combat experience, and in their last skirmish (against some unarmed Indian soldiers in the mountains) 30+ soldiers Chinese tragically drowned, due to the aforementioned lack of swimming ability.
wewtyflakes – 2 days ago
foobarian – 2 days ago
jiggawatts – 2 days ago
There are some rather bizarre examples such as Gaza attacking Israel, despite getting something like 50% of their electricity and 10% of their fresh water from Israel!
Attacking the supplier of critical civilian and industrial inputs would seem like a mistake nobody in their right mind would make, but... there you go.
I wouldn't be surprised if a future conflict with China over Taiwan would be primarily economic.
They threaten to stop shipping, we threaten to cut off the Internet and their banking, etc...
Similarly, the most knowledgeable experts are predicting that China's strategy with Taiwan will be to simply blockade the island and wait for them to capitulate.
Last but not least, this is also Iran's current strategy. By halting shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, they're waging war on the global economy much more effectively than bombing a few small military air strips in the region.
benjcpalm – 2 days ago
The US has always had a policy of messaging programs, with a lean toward classifying some percentage of the specific capabilities.
There's a reason that F-35 program was publicized by the US government as the program was under development. It makes the US air force even scarier, which discourages adversaries from thinking about conventional warfare with America.
That said- you won't see any detailed pics of the inside of an F35 cockpit, or a detailed look at the heads up display in the fancy helmet. That's top secret, because those making those details public don't offer enough additional deterrence to justify the risk to the program.
bityard – 2 days ago
Alan_Writer – 2 days ago
They won't show you everything.
Have you ever heard about those sound/sonic (or something similar) weapons the US used in Maduro's kidnap operation? Venezuelan soldiers said (pero some publications on the internet) that they never saw anything alike, leaving them completely disoriented and helpless?
Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or solid materiales, and the same time, bacome invisibles.
It's more than sci-fi.
blincoln – yesterday
I have a thermal imager. They can't see through walls in the sense you're imagining. If there's an electric heating element inside a wall or a ceiling, you could get an image of that. If there's a camera or other active electronics hidden in a wall or object, you can see the heat from that.
You wouldn't be able to see a person in an adjacent room through the wall between the two rooms, unless the wall was made specifically of thermally-transparent material.
I've heard rumours of "see through walls" equipment in the US military before. If they really have something like that, it would have to be using technology other than thermal imaging.
laughing_man – 2 days ago
But when it looked like it might get cancelled pictures and exhibitions of it were suddenly everywhere.