[sololipsist]

Why? Air superiority is important for power projection.

Edit:

So I'm getting a comments here that are much lower-quality than I expect from this place.

Geopolitics is not like interpersonal relationships. There is nobody governing governments. It's a free-for-all, literally the state of nature. In societies it seems like "Might makes right" is a dated concept, but you have to remember that's within the frame of a governed society. Geopolitically we're literally in a kill-or-be-killed mode.

There is no game-theoretical solution to geopolitics except to be able to defend yourself with deadly force. At a minimum you must be able to inflict enough damage on other geopolitical entities to disincentivize them from projecting their power within your borders. A better solution is to have as much be able to inflict so much damage other geopolitical entities can't do this to you so that you have the choice to deploy that power wisely, as opposed to not having the opportunity to deploy it wisely.

The military dominance of the US post-WW2 has unambiguously been a stabilizing force on the world. I understand that doesn't guarantee it will continue to be so, but that isn't an argument against game-theoretical geopolitical realities.

We can't let the fact that we're inside a governed society make us forget what it's like outside a governed society. Acting like geopolitical dynamics are like social dynamics is profoundly stupid.

[throwaway0255]

Your comment post-edit is pretty much the reason I read HN.

This model of geopolitics as an ungoverned society of nations is something I’ve never considered.

Then, the natural tendency of people within governed societies to analyze geopolitics as if governed social dynamics applied to it could clearly lead to some disastrous conclusions.

It also illuminates the tension between people who greatly value our military, and people who are just frustrated with it and casually declare from their bedrooms and TV studios that we should cut spending in half because it’s all such a waste. As if nations are nice people, and as if a weapon provides no value unless it is used.

Both groups mostly want the same things: a safe place to live, explore, work, have friends and family, and enjoy their lives. They just have a different model for how they understand geopolitics and the state that it’s in.

Lately I’ve noticed an increase in politically-motivated downvotes on HN. I think that’s really unfortunate. This was probably comment of the year for me.

[sololipsist]

Appreciate it.

It also reveals a weird logic I can't wrap my head around. If you vote, and you think others should vote, you believe that we have significant influence on politics. So if we abandoned our military dominance, what other country is going to fill that power vacuum? Do we trust their country with that power, a country which might or might not have a government that is influenced by its populace? Honestly, who are the other players that would likely make such a move... China, Russia, and the EU? Well, unless you're particularly fond of two of those governments, I don't like your odds.

Isn't it better to just keep the military dominance here, with a government influenced by the people, pretty much half of which are strongly opposed to the mobilization of that power? Absent some unintuitive answer to that question, I don't see the consistency of a person who thinks we should "get out and vote" genuinely wanting to degrade US military dominance.

[pohl]

Air superiority is the role played by the F-15 Eagle and the F-22 Raptor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_superiority_fighter

[mulmen]

The Wikipedia definition of air supremacy [1] does not restrict the role to air-to-air fighter aircraft. Also, air supremacy is a stated mission of the F-35 [2].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_supremacy

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightni...

[cryoshon]

yeah, that's the kissinger line of thought. "realism". except it doesn't hold up to reality, at least not in the modern or even the premodern era.

iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard.

the answer is that nobody cares to. just as you don't bother taking a free cupcake at a catered event because you're not hungry, the world's governments do not necessarily increase their own power on the international stage with perfect game-theory play.

so, "air superiority is important for power projection", sure. if you were playing perfect game-theory and optimizing your country's power to the very limit of what is theoretically possible, you'd always buy the best air superiority solution. except we don't really see anyone else doing that. russia doesn't, and china doesn't. why? the answer is that they are sated with their current solution, even if it isn't the maximum possible solution. they're not interested in exerting the effort that it would take to build something like the f-35 because they recognize that it wouldn't improve their state's power enough that it would enable them to do anything new, nor is doing anything new such a big concern given that their main security issues are internal rather than external.

true geopolitical "realism" is realizing that the idea of 100% pervasive and cynical power maximization is an artifact of the american mind. countries are far more benign than kissinger ever expected.

[AnimalMuppet]

First, yes, Iceland would be easy to occupy. In fact, it's already happened once - the UK occupied it during WWII (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Iceland).

But holding it would be a problem, for anyone except the US or the UK. Let's say China occupied Iceland. How are they going to send supplies to their troops there? Well, by air or by ocean. That's going to be... problematic. It's going to be much more problematic if NATO lives up to its charter and defends its' member Iceland.

[sololipsist]

> iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard.

> the answer is that nobody cares to.

This is an over-simplification of truly mind-boggling caliber.

[AnimalMuppet]

This is an incredibly unpersuasive response. You don't like the post? Fine. But correct it rather than just dissing it.

[sololipsist]

Some things don't deserve a response. In that cases it's perfectly acceptable to note this and move on with your life.

If you correct every brain-dead thing people tell you on the internet, either never say anything remotely controversial so you don't get ill-informed but confident replies, you spend all day correcting people, or you literally just started saying things on the internet to tell me how to live my life.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Some things don't deserve a response.

But you responded anyway. You just didn't respond with anything useful. So what you did, essentially, was waste 10,000 people's time by having them look at your non-response "response".

[sololipsist]

okay mom ::rolls eyes::

[cryoshon]

no more of an over-simplification than kissinger's concept of realism, to be blunt.

countries routinely do things that are contrary to the interest of maximizing their net power, and claiming "but it's anarchy out there!" isn't very accurate.

[sololipsist]

I didn't say a word about Kissinger.

If you need to pretend someone is arguing something they've never argued so you can disagree with them, you really need to take a step back and ask yourself what the fuck you're really doing.

[gaius]

iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile

Iceland is a founding member of NATO and is located in the backyard of two of the world’s most powerful navies. The Royal Navy spent the entire Cold War thinking about GIUK. Arguably its a free-rider in NATO but the idea anyone could invade it is laughable

[Faaak]

Do you really think that someone would attack the USA if they hadn't air superiority ?

[stcredzero]

Taiwan would fall. If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship.

Nowadays pretty much, if one side can establish air superiority, the other side is relegated to guerilla tactics. In terms of geopolitics in 2018, it's pretty much about air and naval bases.

[ceejayoz]

> If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship.

This is a little bit silly. South Korea was ruled by various dictatorships for decades after the war. North Korea still is.

[stcredzero]

> > If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship.

> This is a little bit silly. South Korea was ruled by various dictatorships for decades after the war. North Korea still is. In South Korea today, you have one of the most vibrant economies in the world.

Sorry, but you're more than a bit silly. South Korea was ruled by dictatorships, post Korean War. However, this was a transitional period to today. In South Korea, you don't have camps where entire families are sent, basically to die, because someone said the wrong thing.

One half of my family is from present-day North Korea. My grandfather was a physician and entrepreneur. He had to move the family south because he could see what was coming. My mother remembers being smuggled in a pitch-black compartment of a freighter. She also remembers walking down the road with the family's belongings strapped to her back. A stack of bills, thick from wartime inflation, likely saved the life of my grandmother.

I and my sister wouldn't even exist, were it not for the Korean War and US intervention. All you have to do, to see the difference between the Koreas, is to look at nighttime pictures from orbit. All of the vibrancy of present-day South Korea was enabled by the intervention. The amount of human happiness that was allowed and the amount of human misery that was avoided by that is vast.

[dragontamer]

Power-projection is about using our resources to most effectively influence others. Its not about defense, but about offense.

IIRC, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were supported by two Super-Carrier strike-groups stationed in the Indian ocean. Super-carriers, by themselves, can take on multiple foreign army bases.

Super-carriers however, are very weak defensively. If any war were to seriously start vs the US, the super-carriers would almost instantly fall to a series of cruise missiles (aka: suicide drones from the 1970s). I mean, we've got some anti-missile protection ships around them, but its cheaper to build 2000 cruise missiles than 1 super-carrier + its fleet of aircraft.

-------

Anyway, the point of power-projection is that these bases are mobile. As we finish up our job in Afghanistan / Iraq, we can move these super-carriers elsewhere for support. Puerto Rico was serviced by a super-carrier Abraham Lincoln for instance (hospitals on board, + Helicopters delivered supplies), while the Super-Carrier Ronald Regan helped Japan clean-up the Fukashima Nuclear disaster.

Power-projection is more than just killing people. Its about building mobile bases around the world which can help people during disasters.

In fact, I'd argue that these super-carriers primarily deal with diplomatic details and are near useless in a conventional war.

Anyway, the F35 air superiority is an important piece of a super-carrier. Winning any dogfight by destroying approaching aircraft before they're even on the horizon is an important piece of the puzzle... keeping the Super-carriers well defended.

Furthermore, the F35's stealth capabilities project power many miles away. Remember that an F35 looks like a baseball to radar installations, its stealth capabilities are incredibly advanced, and only a few nations can even detect the thing. So the radius that these aircraft project beyond the mobile Super-Carrier Strike Force is huge, and a huge benefit to the USA.

Obviously, no sane person wants to actually use these weapons to kill people. But they can be used to get an edge on diplomacy. In the worst case, if we are forced to use military might to solve a problem, the F35 will be useful.

[sololipsist]

People forget that gunboat diplomacy is literally a violence deterrent. There is no better solution to geopolitcal mass-murder than to be so god-damn scary we can resolve things without death.

Sure, you can do a lot of bad shit with gunboat diplomacy - but giving up dominance doesn't eliminate bad shit, it just creates a power vacuum - which will be filled either by another geopolitical entity with the capability to do that bad shit or geopolitical violence on a massive scale.

Getting rid of our army does not lead to peace. I can't understand how any adult thinks it will, or is willing to act like it will.

[maxxxxx]

"Anyway, the point of power-projection is that these bases are mobile. As we finish up our job in Afghanistan / Iraq, we can move these super-carriers elsewhere for support. Puerto Rico was serviced by a super-carrier Abraham Lincoln for instance (hospitals on board, + Helicopters delivered supplies), while the Super-Carrier Ronald Regan helped Japan clean-up the Fukashima Nuclear disaster."

I know that's reality but using aircraft carriers for disaster relief is an awfully expensive way to do this.

[dragontamer]

I'm unsure if any other sea-bearing vessel has a ton of helicopters that can deliver supplies to and from a remote area (ie: Puerto Rico once all the roads were wiped out by Hurricane Maria).

Helicopters need an area to land and refuel. The pilots need an area to sleep. Carriers seem like the ideal service vehicle.

And sure, the Nimitz class carrier, with two nuclear reactors and outfitted with enough weaponry to take on entire countries... is a bit overkill. But there are benefits to a mobile super sea-base.

The alternative is to build a ton of smaller carriers... but smaller carriers can't launch airplanes. You need a large area so that planes can land. Airplanes like Airborne early Warning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_early_warning_and_con...) can be launched from super-carriers.

Once you have radar-dishes in the air however, you now need to think about how to defend those radar-dishes from enemy fighters. And then we get the F35.

[jeffcore]

While carriers are certainly used in this role, I've taken part in two such missions while deployed with the USS Ronald Reagan, there are ships that are more capable in handling humanitarian and disaster relief, and non-combatant evacuation efforts, such as LHDs -- which also have a larger complement of helicopters/V-22s and ground-troop support than a carrier.

[dragonwriter]

> The alternative is to build a ton of smaller carriers... but smaller carriers can't launch airplanes.

Outside of the US supercarriers, all other carriers are smaller, and many launch planes (often V/STOL aircraft, particularly commonly Harriers.)

[dragontamer]

Fair. But still, the point stands. The shorter the runway, the fewer planes you can launch.

And yes, there's a catapult to help launch the planes, but the longer the runway, the less stress you put on the planes, and the more kinds of airplanes can land on your carrier.

US Supercarriers have more than just fighter-jets, they also have larger cargo aircraft like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_C-2_Greyhound. Capable of delivering 5-tons of cargo over 1300 miles.

I don't believe Britain (which does have fleets of smaller carriers) have any support for such a large cargo-aircraft. They're limited to helicopter delivery. Long-range delivery is most efficient with wing-aircraft.

I'm not an expert on the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier. Are you aware of any cargo-aircraft ability of the smaller carrier? (And mind you: The Queen Elizabeth is the 2nd largest carrier-class in the world. So even if it can do it, the fact remains that you need to build BIG carriers if you wish to support remote delivery of cargo through aircrafts)