[SllX]

I don’t see any that as an argument against achieving and maintaining Technological superiority. If, hypothetically, you had to discard one in favor of the other, military superiority would win out in terms of priorities, but the US has and should maintain both.

[7952]

This is really difficult to think about because the US is able and prepared to spend limitless amounts of money compared to other countries. You could argue that there is an opportunity cost to developing the F35. But has the US really limited expenditure in other areas as a result?

It seems to me that the US strategy depends on adversaries playing by the same rule book and trying to compete using similar technology. In that environment the US is absolutely going to have superiority in military capability and technology because they can spend such vast quantities of money.

The risk comes when an adversary throws out the rule book and looks for technology and tactics that nullify that advantage and are affordable. The US could be found lacking, but I don't suppose that is a fault with the F35 program exactly. And I guess that a lot of the individual technologies developed as part of the F35 program are useful in their own right.

[SllX]

Apologies for the later reply, it has been a busy couple of days.

Certainly there is an opportunity cost in any large-scale expenditure, but the technology developed for the F-35 will be useful beyond just the F-35.

The United States has maintained technological and military superiority over its competition precisely because it is willing to invest large sums of money into the Military-Industrial Complex. The Space Race was one expression of this, and the United States and global economy has been coasting off the technology and discipline developed precisely to safely land a man on the Moon and safely return that same man home.

Yes, there are risks to putting too much money into extremely large capital expenditures which can potentially be lost in war but that is 1. the nature of war and 2. the US Military generally looks to be effective in all theaters of war, whether their opponent is following the same the rule book or not. The Air Force has their missions, and the Army, Marines, Coast Guard and Navy have theirs.

At the scale of the Department of Defense's budget though, opportunity costs don't mean the same thing to them that they mean to you or I though. They are operating arm of the largest economy of the world and should be viewed through that lens.