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Comment by yabones | Hacker News Reader

If we held a war, all of these fancy planes would be gone in the first week. So would all the aircraft carriers, a good number of ships, and likely all of the stealth bombers too.

That's the funny thing about modern military tech, it only really works correctly in peacetime when the wars are fought against poorly equipped insurgents & rebel forces. "Stealth" only works on very old radar systems, any 1st world country has the capabilities to detect a B2 or an F35.

After the second month of conflict, the only equipment left would be mid century jets that can be quickly built in single factories, without the complicated supply chains that F35 was built around. That's what matters, mass production and numbers - not $2B jets that can be shot down by a $100K missile system strapped to the back of a truck.

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> If we held a war, all of these fancy planes would be gone in the first week. So would all the aircraft carriers, a good number of ships, and likely all of the stealth bombers too.

Saying this does not make it true. Warfare is far more complex than you're making it out to be. Care to back up this statement with an explanation?

While most radars can detect a stealth fighter, few systems are able to hold a lock on them. E.g. no system that Russia or China currently possess.

That's one reason why search and targeting radars are not the same thing. Missiles are fired (and aircraft are sent) in the general area of the detected aircraft, where they'll pick up the enemy aircraft on X-band more easily.

And don't forget the networking. It won't just be the one targeting radar; networked missile groups have existed for decades.

This idea that Russia and China can't "lock on" assumes that the Russians and Chinese are idiots. They've been busy trying to improve the odds of a stealth kill ever since the F-117A went public, and probably before. LO helps, but it's not magic.

Yes, there are no Russian and Chinese systems that can maintain weapons lock on a stealth fighter. Not airborne and not ground based. Russia scrambles to gain this capability with its latest s-300 upgrade (s-500), but so far it's not operational.

This is why everyone in the world is queued to order F-35s: it's the world's only operational multirole stealth fighter you can buy, and it has no peer adversaries yet. Goes against the popular Internet wisdom of how crap F-35 are, but they sell like hot cakes.

The S-500 is meant more for ICBMs and cruise missiles.

The S-400 variant is claimed to be effective against LO aircraft, but since only Russia, China and Turkey operate the things, we cannot say either way. We definitely cannot claim it's ineffective against LO aircraft.

ABM capability is touted since the original 1980s S-300, it's nothing new.

The struggles with S-500 are well documented, much discussed on Russian arms nerds forums and absolutely have all to do with the challenges posed by F-35.

No doubt, but that is tangential to what the S-400 is claimed to do, and if you don't mind me being blunt: neither us, nor any Russian forum goers, know if the S-400 is actually reasonably effective against LO aircraft. Maybe not even the Russians and American militaries do.

Where the original claim comes from -- that Russia and China cannot shoot down an F-35 -- is beyond me. It is as daft as claiming that S-400 makes stealth useless. I take issue with such confident grand claims.

I don't expect a rerun of WW2. It's hard to tell exactly how things would turn out, but the concept of having factories beyond the reach of enemy bombers is obsolete with today's aircraft. It's more likely that whoever wins the first few battles will have an immense advantage over the other, which will be reduced to guerrilla tactics.

This is all assuming it's a total war without nukes though, which is fanciful.

A conventional war between nuclear powers over a third country (Taiwan?) could maybe possibly happen by attrition, but more probably by attrition of war morale, rather than war materiel.

Finally someone who understands this! All modern weapons are no doubt very effective, but they are also very complex ,take long time to build, need specialized factories and skilled workers and the result is that there aren't that many stockpiled. Because that's not only expensive, weapons also deteriorate and might malfunction if stored for extended period of time. Most of the fancy toys would run out after 1st month of actual war (assuming non-nuclear conflict, of course).

But if you don’t have those fancy planes, guns, tanks, etc. but your enemy has, that first week will (somewhat) be of the “when the wars are fought against poorly equipped insurgents & rebel forces.” type for your enemy.

After a week, they will still have many of their fancy planes, and, likely, will have destroyed a lot of your infrastructure, killed your pilots, etc.

I think you need both fancy planes and the ability to rapidly ramp up production of less advanced weaponry.

Aircraft carriers at sea are harder to sink than you think, and the ocean is big enough that you probably couldn't find them either.

They are also very big, making them easier to find with satellites. Also don't forget that those subs are not just randomly wandering around, you can bet both Russia and China are keeping track of approx. location of every carrier group very carefully.

True, but they can't get a sub close enough without being detected.

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