The Most Expensive Weapon Ever Built
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The justification, though, is not unreasonable. If you want to project air power, and don't have VTOL, you need a full sized air base or carrier within range. With VTOL, you can operate from a smaller firebase or a small carrier.
The US's small carriers are the USMC's amphibious assault ships, the Wasp and America classes. The US currently has 9 of these, and is building more of the America class. Each is a self contained package of military power - about 1700 Marines and their gear, helicopters, VTOL fighters, Osprey VTOLs, landing craft, and missiles. Everything you need for a small war. That's where the F-35 was supposed to be useful.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW28Mb1YvwY [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pweY5y5eRI
Or unmanned aircraft?
What you get is the ability to stay aloft for longer, since no pilot needs a break, but you're still limited by fuel, albeit with ariel refueling, and weapons, if you're actually going to carry out attacks. You also get increased maneuverability from not having to keep a pilot alive and healthy, not sure how much that will help anything though. Maybe they'll be able to dodge missiles a little better? Probably the biggest change is that it's much less politically provocative to shoot down a drone, and much less politically risky to lose one, so they may be deployed more readily and in larger numbers.
A large portion of the carrier space is dedicated to serving the enormous number of people that are needed to operate it. If you had only 20 people it could be a much smaller vessel.
And if the army was allowed to build close air support aircraft they would and wouldn't use Attack Helicopters.
This isn't a matter of efficiency it's a matter of services jealously guarding their turf.
Moral wil sink for 20 years, but any major conflict should snap 'em out of that.
To answer your question directly, I hope you care because you vote, and because regardless of what you think we fight and die for you because we believe your life and liberty are precious. Mistakes and inefficient equipment and organizational structures cost lives (maybe mine, certainly others). And if a "better" organized military only results in us being a little happier day-to-day, is that really so much to ask?
Obviously moral is very important, I don't mean to dispute that. I was saying I don't care for the branches' cultural continuity prima faciae. A temporary drop in moral is bad, but if the new organization really is better the drop should only be temporary and moral should recover long term.
The second part of my argument is a mere whip that if we got ourselves into a "big moral/self-evidentally important war", that would bost moral more than the reorg would hurt it.
I hope you give a shit about the effectiveness of theprotection others are delivering you. The sort of person who works well in the Air Force is not the same sort of person who works well in the Army is not the same sort of person who works well in the Navy is not the same sort of person who works well in the Marine Corps. The jobs of the services are fundamentally different, as are the mindsets & aptitudes of those in them.
The Air Force is a mid-century corporation: it has metrics and deliverables (literal deliverables), and is oriented towards long-term sustainment of whatever it is asked to do. It's very, very good at building an organisation to do the same thing for years, with good morale for its people because they are never tasked too hard, and excellent safety results because that's important when operation a mid-century concern. On the downside, most of it is not really all that flexible, and its culture is not, in the main, oriented towards enduring long-term suffering (there are exceptions). If you have something you want done, you ask the Air Force. If you ask an Air Force officer to secure a building, he'll buy it.
The Army is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. It's all about mass, directed according to very strict orders. If you need to pave 1,000 miles of road, the Army Corps of Engineers will do it, according to its plans. If you need to garrison a town, the Army will do it, all nicely and neatly and according to plan. If you have a problem someone's faced before, you want the Army. There's a field manual for everything: a field manual for improvised munitions (because of course there's a manual for improvisation), a field manual for executions, a field manual for skiing. If you ask an Army officer to secure a building, he'll surround it and not let anyone in or out without authorisation.
The Navy is a floating, violent industrial plant. It never does the same thing twice; it's always going to one new port or another. It's not as laid-back as the Air Force, nor as regulation-bound as the Army. It speaks an entirely different dialect of the English language, for no particularly obvious reason. If you have a problem that no-one has ever seen before, you ask the Navy for a solution. If you ask a Naval officer to secure a building, he'll make sure a sailor sweeps & swabs the decks, and puts out the lights.
The Marines are a cult. They worship at the shrines of Chesty Puller, Dan Daly, Smedley Butler & John Basilone. They think that war is a racket, but they don't particularly care: they enjoy the racket. If you absolutely, positively need it dead or destroyed within 24 hours or less, you call the Marine Corps. If you ask a Marine to secure a building, he will take it by force, killing or capturing everyone inside. If he does a particularly good job of it, he'll be deified and join the pantheon along Puller &c.
If you put someone well-suited to the Marine Corps in the Air Force, he'll be fired for getting into a little trouble on the weekends. If you put someone well-suited to the Navy in the Army, he'll go out of his mind from boredom. If you put someone well-suited to the Air Force in the Army, he'll be miserable and quit. If you put someone well-suited to the Army in the Navy, he'll just be generally appalled.
The different services have different roles, different strengths and different weaknesses. Those differences are why they are well-prepared for a major conflict.
The U.S. Army, when not in combat, is a resource pool. Deployment involves pulling together various units and equipment from different locations and sending them somewhere. The mix of units depends on the task. "Moving Mountains", by Gen. Gus Patronis, describes how this was done for the Gulf War.
The Army is not allowed jets per the same post WWII regulations that separated the Army Air Corps to form the Air Force service branch.
Like, if you play EVE, would you really rather have a more widely-available Thanatos if it meant giving up Ishtars?
Also there are carriers that carry full sized aircraft that are smaller than US Marine carriers like the French Charles de Gaulle.
The US marines would like full sized aircraft carriers just like the army would like CAS jets.
The Harrier works on the same principle.
But if course we need more carriers because we aren't at war and no one risks attacking us for fear of nuclear annilation.
Popular culture has it that this was a key capability of the Harrier in the Falklands War, where they were up against the much faster Mirage, but VIFFing allowed the harrier to unpredictably move out of a pursuing Mirage's flight envelope.
What might these be?
Edit: Hey, maybe the submitter knows. Zero comments and the username "adir-one".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
https://www.defensetech.org/2013/12/24/report-israel-passes-...
What is the overlap in military utility between a fighter plane and a drone?
How important are top-gun style "dogfights" in modern warfare?
If everyone has stealth aircraft, how do they even find eachother to fight? How do missiles work?
More generally, what role(s) do fighters play in modern warfare?
When was the last time the US used a fighter jet for something that a drone could not have done?
Current generation drones are (as far as I am aware) designed to be piloted remotely, and aren't really designed to shoot down other aircraft.
2. With missiles that can strike an enemy from beyond visual range [1], it is often argued that dogfighting is no longer important. Current generation missiles are supposed to be pretty good.
3. There are degrees of stealth, and improvements to detection systems also continue. As far as missiles go, people have generally had a hard time shooting down stealth aircraft, though it is possible.
4. Combat against other aircraft, and close air support (CAS), where the fighter is attacking ground targets. Modern jet fighters don't do a great job at CAS, with the exception of the A-10, because of operational cost (too high), speed (too high), and loiter time (too low). There have been proposals to deploy propeller-powered aircraft such as the Super Tucano for CAS, because enemy aircraft haven't been a problem in recent conflicts.
5. Probably yesterday... if you count flying patrols.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond-visual-range_missile#...
Current generation drones are (as far as I am aware) designed to be piloted remotely, and aren't really designed to shoot down other aircraft."
Right. There has been discussion of a drone version of the F-35. I couldn't find much recent discussion, which probably means it's now behind the veil of classification. One thing to remember is that as you need more speed, range, and payload that will be directly reflected in the size of the aircraft. Small drones can't carry a lot of weapons, fly particularly fast, or very far.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08...
I read an interesting article fairly recently where Russian ideas for unmanned fighter aircraft were discussed - the approach there looks to be manned "leader" aircraft directing larger numbers of unmanned drones. This is probably how the West will go as well, since it's important to have local C&C in case communication systems are compromised. It also at least gives the appearance of "human in the loop" rather than fully autonomous lethal operations.
"2. With missiles that can strike an enemy from beyond visual range [1], it is often argued that dogfighting is no longer important. Current generation missiles are supposed to be pretty good."
While this is all highly classified, it's unlikely that any adversary's long-range radar guided missiles will work against the F-22 or F-35 (or B-2 for that matter) at anything like their maximum range. A guess would be that if the missile had a max range of 100 miles against a Gen4 target, it would have an effective range of 10 miles or less against a Gen5 target.
The Achilles heel of stealth aircraft is IR detection. There is no getting around the laws of thermodynamics and waste heat. There are some mitigations that help, such as rectangular cross section engine exhausts, but LWIR missiles detect the thermal radiation from the rigid body (hardbody) of the aircraft and home in on that.
Note the mention of the "backup" IR sensor (BTW the described system is quite interesting in other ways):
http://www.popsci.com/china-new-long-range-air-to-air-missil...
It is worth noting that having a high-quality IR sensor on a hypersonic missile is a very tough problem due to heating.
"3. There are degrees of stealth, and improvements to detection systems also continue. As far as missiles go, people have generally had a hard time shooting down stealth aircraft, though it is possible."
If you're able to locate the stealth aircraft in time, IR missiles can be effective. The problem is that it's likely the first realization you'll have a stealth aircraft is around is when it launches a missile at you. One virtue of sensor fusion and networked aircraft is that aircraft further back (including AWACS) can use radar, then deliver targeting information to aircraft closer to the enemy. The F-35 can also cue weapons from other platforms - recently there was a successful test where an F-35 successfully guided a Navy SM-6 SAM against an air target. The SM-6 has over a 200 mile range...
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/lockheed-martins-f...
Stealth aircraft still reflect radiowaves, they just don't reflect them back at the source. This can be effectively countered by separating radar transmitter and receiver in space.
It is also possible to use existing transmitters (e.g., FM radio, cell towers) to build passive radar that does not emit anything itself.
There are also radar absorbing materials and coatings involved, though to be sure they don't absorb everything. The modern curved stealth airframes also diffuse the return, weakening it considerably.
"It is also possible to use existing transmitters (e.g., FM radio, cell towers) to build passive radar that does not emit anything itself."
Sure, although stealth aircraft are most vulnerable to long wavelength radar, which lack precise positional detection.
Also, if you're using cell/FM etc. transmitters, those are easily shut down by strikes on power stations, or EMP.
An interesting, revolutionary approach is quantum radar, which uses entanglement to detect photon interaction with the target. It's pretty far from prime time though.
http://www.popsci.com/china-says-it-has-quantum-radar-what-d...
Cell tower signals have higher frequency than VHF, which makes position estimation easier. Cell towers will work for a few days even if power grid goes down. There are too many of them to take out individually. Nuclear blast has EMP powerful enough to burn them, but by that time you probably no longer need stealth.
With access to baseband code in modern cell phones it might be possible to build distributed passive radar surreptitiously. There is enough processing power, exact time and location from GPS, and communication over LTE.
Air forces played huge role in WW2. Fighters were important for establishing air control and that determined outcomes. There have been few examples since. The 1967 war between Israel & the Syrian-Egyptian alliance and follow up in 1973 were influential conflicts between modern (at the time) air forces.
In 1967, Israel won the air-war early. This basically won the war and fighters played a primary role. In 1973, Egypt successfully established a forward front using ground forces. Their missile air-defence made this possible, missiles made fighters ineffective in a limited area. If modern missile defence can do this for a 100x larger area, fighters might be confined to a much smaller role.
That was 45 years ago. Who knows where we are now, what's redundant and what's crucial. When WW2 broke out, there was a long process of figuring out what worked in a modern war. It's hard to know in advance. Big gun ships were thought to be very important, but aircraft carriers and smaller battle ships ended up being more important.
The US, Russia etc haven't fought a modern enemy in 2 generations. That's like building factories for 40 years which may one day need to produce goods. There's a high likelihood you are building the wrong thing entirely.
Here's a link to an article about a cheap drone being shot with a Patriot missile: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39277940
The F35 is entirely unsuited for low altitude operations, or dog fighting with other fighter planes. It's only good for hiding miles away at higher altitudes and firing missiles.
They're designed to shoot jets and helicopters, big things with a well-defined thermal or radar image.
We don't have drones big enough to carry the weapons load of a B52, and those capabilities are pretty far off. Buts it's still hard to imagine a scenario where you need a F-35 to protect a B-52, there simply isn't an effective air threat to us outside of China/USSR and those wars would be nuclear.
A scenario like war with Iran makes more sense, but it's likely that very quickly their fighters are swept from the sky (Iraqs lasted days). At that point the air defense is all SAM sure and the F-35 is not the best tool for that. And F-22s are probably close to as effective as F-35 in air to air combat. So why do we need 2,400 F-35s?
Stealth isn't like a Star Trek cloaking device - they're still detectable, just not as much. Lets them get closer to targets before being detected, but if you fly a B-2 right over a radar site it's likely to get picked up.
Missiles can be guided by a more powerful ground radar or an AWACS aircraft, and some are capable of optical and heat-seeking operation.
Modern medium-range air-to air missile (AMRAAM AIM-120D) has optimal launch distance (best probability of kill) roughly 100 km. (max range 160+ km).
Short range IR-guided missiles have range 20-30 km. Optimal range closer to 20 km.
While modern missiles can be launched from almost any position, good Pk (probability of kill) from long range is not realistic unless the fighter is flying high speed, at high altitude towards the target. Medium and long range missiles spend energy accelerating to maximum speed and climbing up to thinner atmosphere for their mid-course flight. Flying fast and high towards the enemy increases the range of the missile.
After launching medium-range air-to air missile (AMRAAM) within 100 km it takes only 20 seconds before fighter meet at the close range where IR-quided missiles are used. F-35 have sustained rate of turn between 5-20 degrees per second (depending on altitude, speed, loading). Flying high speed at maximum altitude leaves little or no room to turn and keep standoff distance. If the enemies keeps coming there will be almost certain dogfight.
The advantage of stealthy F-35 against conventional 4 generation fighter is that it can get radar lock from long range, and the missile can maintain that lock from longer distance. Being first in position to launch is huge advantage and it forces enemy to start evasive maneuvers.
Enemy will adapt it's strategy against F-35 of course. IR-sensors help to negate some of the radar stealth advantage and the technology is advancing fast. Carrying more decoys, chaff helps also. Using drones in air combat will change many things.
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>If everyone has stealth aircraft, how do they even find eachother to fight? How do missiles work?
IR-sensors are added into medium and long range missiles. This has not happened yet, but it's almost certain development.
>If everyone has stealth aircraft, how do they even find eachother to fight?
There are two major tasks when trying to shoot down an airplane: detecting it and bringing a missile to it. Detecting a stealth fighter is possible with a long wavelength radar[1]. The problem is that the precision of location it provides is not sufficient for targeting the airplane, because an air-to-air missile needs to be very close to target in order to shoot it down (think <10 meters). Short wavelength radars are typically used for targeting airplanes as they provide very precise location. But such radars can "see" stealth fighters only at very short distances, when it's too late to counteract.
So the idea of fighting one stealth fighter with another would be a) bring our fighter into the approximate area where the hostile fighter is, and b) let the pilot figure out the enemy's exact location using an on-board short wavelength radar and/or FLIR [2].
Since (b) can happen at rather large distances (think 40-50kms) it is believed that a dogfight is very unlikely nowadays, because modern air-to-air missiles allow shooting down reliably the adversary long before two planes become close enough for a dogfight.
[1] https://theaviationist.com/2014/03/27/vega-31-shot-down/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_looking_infrared
>How do missiles work?
There are two ways how missiles target airplanes. The problem with missiles is that they are too small to have a powerful radar sufficient for long-range targeting. Therefore one way is to "highlight" the target by a powerful radar (typically ground-based) so missiles can use the "reflected" signal for navigation. That's how long-range surface-to-air missiles typically work.
Air-to-air missiles operate at shorter ranges and typically use infra-red detectors for navigation. Stealth fighters emit only slightly less heat radiation than regular fighter jets and therefore very vulnerable to IR targeting.
I believe there are various combinations of both approaches, but that's another story.
However, calling the F-35 the "most expensive weapon ever built" is extremely misleading. This video explains it better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyHlp7tJrxY&feature=youtu.be... ("F-35 Lightning II: Busting Myths - Episode 2").
The entire video series is well worth a watch if you have any interest at all in the subject.
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The $1.1 trillion cost is for research, production, maintenance, fuel, and weapons for 2500 planes from the time they first started flying in 2006 until they retire in 2065. When you do the math, this plane is actually cheaper than some other planes. The main reason for the huge dollar number is that it's the first plane to be fully accounted for over the lifetime of the entire program.
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Again, the above is just paraphrasing the claims in the video. They are not my claims.
Given the complexity of something like the F-35 it's not hard to imagine that backdoors could be addded undetected.
Could be anywhere along the spectrum from monitoring telemetry, to monitoring communicatatioms, to remote override of weapons and flight control.
It sounds technically feasible, but the cost of getting caught would be huge. Besides, who needs backdoors when your software has vulnerabilities?
Yes, and they've been inadvertently revealed at least once. On mobile so I can't find a source atm but it was concerning some french equipment.
It's not as big an issue as you might imagine, largely because nations tend to only sell military equipment to other nations that have aligned interests.
That seems short sighted since weapons like these can be in service for decades. World politics can change immensely in that amount of time.
Eventually we'll end up fighting against weapons that we've supplied to the enemy.
After their revolution, I'm sure a lot of people had the same worry as you!
They haven't been fielded against us, though they are still in operation... ;)
And Exocets were "fire and forget" missiles with 3 mins to target flight time. They had no need for a remote control system once launched. They flew only a couple meters above the sea, and didn't turn on radar until half way into flight, making them extremely hard to detect until the last seconds.
Super improbable that any backdoor ever existed.
The linked PDF, however, states (http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/668986.pdf#page95):
"The Navy awarded a construction contract for CVN 78 in September 2008 when 5 of the ship's 13 critical technologies were mature and with only 65 percent of the ship's three-dimensional model complete. Since then, the lead ship's procurement costs have grown by almost 23 percent from $10.5 billion to $12.9 billion—the limit of the ship's current legislated cost cap—with four technologies still immature. The ship's critical technologies continue to experience developmental challenges, which poses risks to the ship's testing and delivery schedule. CVN 79 is also subject to a cost cap of $11.5 billion and its program office has adopted a new two-phased approach to construction to manage its costs. While this strategy may enable the Navy to meet the cost cap, it will also transfer some ship construction to the phase following delivery."
Wow.
* “Magic Helmet” for F-35 ready for delivery | Ars Technica || https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/magic...
It's also been reported that the helmet is a safety risk because of its weight.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/8146/has-israel-actuall...
Perhaps I'm too used to engineering style writing which just cuts to the chase. Is it common for book reviews to include those bloats?
A. After the letters, I only read front-to-back, so I don't waste time skipping back and forth. (Exceptions made for authors I really like.)
B. I skip a lot, and I'm willing to stop reading any article at point, even several pages in.
C. I pass them on to my neighbor, which helps me not feel guilty for B.
On the other hand, how many people can tell the difference between a F-35 and a F-16 streaking by at 500mph, dropping a bunch of bombs with no warning whatsoever? It also wouldn't be too surprising to see some unfortunate Syrian soldiers tell their superiors that they were hit by F-35s when they actually have no idea what hit them. Makes them look less bad that they failed to stop an attack by a super-high-tech jet, and probably good for surviving it. It would even fit for the Israelis to subtly encourage any such rumors, if they could.
Wikipedia has the F-35 research, development, testing, and evaluation cost at $55.1 billion so far (and this doesn't include procurement, operation, etc.).
Perhaps this is a sign of the increasing centralization of capital in the US?
felt like I've seen this complaint about the performance of the JSF not too long ago. Maybe things have gotten better?
It's role is to be a standoff weapon that can shoot opposing fighters out of the sky at long range before their sensors can detect it. The problem with that is at 1,200 MPH closing speed they go from long range to dog-fight in less than 5 mins, and closing speeds can easily be twice that.
The other problem is it has limited other roles. It's too fragile and lacks the ammo capacity for ground attack. It can be effective at taking out ground targets from a distance, but that's not what ground forces need, they need a tough plane with lots of ammo to fly slow and low with great loiter time.
Stand-off is useful for SAM sites, but that's a damn expensive plane for a role far cheaper drones are perfect for.
Is this true ?
But no, Israeli aid wouldn't be top of the list of things to cancel if I had the power. I'd start with actual enemies, like Saudi Arabia and Palestine.
The Israelis have an interest in stopping advanced weapons going to Hezbollah, but have no interest in fighting a war against the Assad regime.
The Assad regime doesn't have anything to gain by complaining about it either. They look weak if they talk about it and don't respond, and the last thing they need right now is to either look weak, or pick a fight with one of the most powerful militaries in the area. They've got enough on their plate trying to exercise physical control over their country and retain some semblance of legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Who else is going to complain? Russia would rather keep it quiet - an attack against their ally means they have to either respond, or look like they're abandoning them. Russia doesn't want to be seen as abandoning their allies, or to pick a fight with a strong American ally, possibly drawing American into the fight. America doesn't have anything to gain either - they don't want to castigate a close ally over a relatively low-impact mission to suppress terrorist activity, and they sure don't want Israel going to war against the Syrian regime.
We have many people on this planet still suffering from problems that could be solved with a fraction of that money.
Please do not support these destructive projects with your work. You can make a change!
From my own experience I can tell you that you will have a much better life avoiding to work for these neanderthal-minded war prophets.
Many people working in war industries are getting very, very ill, physically and psychically, because it is against your human desire for harmony to make yourself part of a giant killing machine.
Love and Peace!
Probably just 10% of the annual DoD budget bent towards education of girls and women and for free global birth control would stop our insane population growth. Slow growth is the only hope for the planet. Do not see how not funding weapons without the global education of females will fix anything. The root cause is not too many weapons systems, it is too many people.
It might be interesting for you to learn that the biggest problems we have today on this planet are produced by countries that are not "over-populated".
Also it seems logical that people believing in that "too-many-people"-ideology (that is actively spread by many military neanderthalers btw) should use their freedom to give a good example of how to solve that problem by killing themselves, not others.
Secondly, how can an un-necessary plane be a "backbone"? The nuclear triad is our backbone. The F-22 is more capable than the F-35 in most measures. The F-35 can't dogfight, can't ground support, and is too expensive to be a good fighter bomber.
The reality is it's going to cost less than $1.5T, because it's going to get canceled after three or four hundred planes, and our cost per unit is going to be extraordinary.
Nuclear triad is defense against 3 countries in the world who can realistically hit USA (Russia, China, somebody else). F-35 will project power to the rest 193 countries and hostile organizations. There is a little way nuclear weapon could help USA to fight ISIS or Al Kaida. F-22 is very niche product. Less than 200 jets is too little to support USA's global ambitions, and they can't be air-carrier stationed, and project power across the globe. It is not clear if dogfight is the thing in the modern world. Also F-35 may be good for ground support, future will show.
We literally have zero need to protect power across the globe. Our presence in the middle east is extremely costly and counterproductive to our security. And without the F-35 we project power great with a navy bigger than the entire rest of world combined. We have 12 carriers, mostly 100k tons, and Russia/China combined have two 50,000 ton carriers.
And the F-35 is guaranteed to be terrible at close air support. No F-35 pilot is going to slowly loiter their supersonic within visual range of their targets and without doing that they can't see exactly what they are shooting. Their gun only has 4 seconds of ammunition, the A-10 can fire much more powerful rounds for nearly 30 seconds. The F-35s gun won't even be operational for another 2-3 years.
If we need to fire miesiles from stand off distances drones already do it much cheaper. The F-35 is like the he german navy trying to load up on battleships instead of carriers before WW2, an expensive and easily avoided mistake.
ISIS potentially can have/get manpads, and MANPADS can have big advancements in foreseeable future. Also US can face contested environment in operations similar to Kosovo war, operations in Libya, Iraq, Panama, where local army had more advanced SAMs in possession with needs to suppress them.
> We literally have zero need to protect power across the globe. Our presence in the middle east is extremely costly and counterproductive to our security.
This is question of policy, and is a mess for me. I am not going to speculate about this.
> And the F-35 is guaranteed to be terrible at close air support. No F-35 pilot is going to slowly loiter their supersonic within visual range of their targets and without doing that they can't see exactly what they are shooting.
The main weapon for ground support planned to be SDB2. Also optics/targeting system is presumably much more advanced on F-35 comparing to A-10.
The SDB2 costs quarter million a pop, and the F-35 is still 5 years away from being able to field one. If used in standoff mode the F-35 is a poor choice, not only can drones deliver the SBD2, B1 can carry more than 20x more of them and loiter far longer. If used in the other modes the A-10 could be adapted to carry twice as many, deliver them just as effectively and with its huge big gun and ability to safely loiter close offers a much better follow up punch.
I'm saying this because the article state that the F35 is slower than other fighters so if it's possible to jam communications and radar, this plane may have a disadvantage in this kind of situation.
Jamming doesn't make radar useless. The jammer has to be close or put out a tremendous amount of power to be effective. And the F-35 can counteract jamming to an extent through frequency hopping and signal processing.
Never, ever have to worry again! :-)
This was a significant part of GDP and please also consider that the US had a much smaller population to bear the costs.
* The price of the Manhattan Project | Restricted Data || http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-m...
* The 10 Most Expensive Weapons in the World - 24/7 Wall St. || http://247wallst.com/special-report/2012/01/09/the-10-most-e...
EDIT: Worth mentioning that we aren't done paying for WWII-era weapons.
* America's Atomic Time Bomb: Hanford Nuclear Waste Still Poses Serious Risks - SPIEGEL ONLINE || http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/america-s-atomic-t...
* Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II procurement - Wikipedia || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
The truth is that military spending, benevolent and power checked leaders, and government at least capable enough to not collapse in on itself are all essential.
The hard question is only how to attain these and in the right balance. Too much military spending surely will cause unnecessary suffering, too little has been proven just as capable as ending in ruin.
No one reasonable is in favor of abolishing the militaries of powerful nations entirely but disarmament is something that we (as humans) should work towards. Not just for the money it would save, but because it brings nations together. See: START
"Si vis pacem, para bellum" ("If you desire peace, be prepared for war.") is just as true today as it was in Vegetius' time.
We're just saying that the F-35 doesn't seem to be an effective or efficient way of preparing :)
Waste
If you count the cost of production, not just R&D, then the atomic bomb wasn't even the most expensive weapon of WWII. That honor goes to the B-29.
I read the article wrong, moved a comma over... good catch.
Were you reading it as $30 trillion? I could totally see accepting that if you hadn't previously known the true figure.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/the-berensteain-bears-con...