[spwa4]

Military procurement is not about what is the best system, it is about who gets the money.

Plus every other party has far inferior fighters to "the West" anyway. And then you calculate ... you are not going to successfully defend against the F-35 in a war with the US. Not going to happen. Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine, so take the cheapest.

The US got guaranteed this business because of international treaties ... which Trump has abandoned. But no worries, I'm sure he'll just make a "deal" and fix things again, right? Meanwhile I suggest you invest in EU weapons manufacturers, who are a lot cheaper than the US ones.

[qwytw]

> Against Russia/China or anyone else ... every fighter jet will do fine

Will it though? Underestimating your (potential) enemies might not be the smartest idea. Of course as the war in Ukraine has shown jet fighters might not even be that relevant anymore if you can't take our your opponents air defenses.

[scott_w]

That’s because Russia and Ukraine don’t have the capabilities of NATO. Russia is completely incompetent. Ukraine was incompetent and has spent most of the war trying to remedy that.

NATO doctrine is to start by controlling the skies. I can see a world where a lot of the strategies we see start to crumble when a jet or bomber can pick off key targets at will on and off the battlefield.

[Tadpole9181]

> jet fighters might not even be that relevant anymore if you can't take our your opponents air defenses

One of the design variants of the F-35 is designed to penetrate air support, no?

[spwa4]

One thing I've been wondering about: a jet powered cruise missile is less than $50000. A propeller powered cruise missile can be built for under $10000. Both have ranges over 1000km. The US has, grand total, about something like 40000 interceptors.

That means enough propellor powered cruise missiles to guarantee US air defense penetration is (a lot) cheaper than ONE F-35 (and they can still go ~500km/h), jet-powered ones cheaper than 2, maybe 3 and that's not counting equipping the F-35 with something to shoot, and of course there's the suspicions that F-35s have kill switches that Trump half-confirmed (yet another brilliant move there, Mr. Orange President).

How many of those interceptor rockets are available to be loaded into actual equipment in less than the 6 hours it takes jet powered cruise missiles to reach the US? I don't know, but let's go with 10%. In other words: the defense that Israel mounted against Iran is pretty much same effective defense the US would have if Russia started ... The US wouldn't be able to shoot down more of those, even if Russia had 100x more rockets than Iran.

Oh you want to shoot them down using bullets? Ok, halfway we have those cruise missiles switch to a ballistic trajectory. At that point it will be difficult to shoot them down, but that's not really the point. They're ballistic, and the problem with ballistic rockets is that they're like an (explosive) rock. You can shoot it ... but that only causes momentum exchange ... it doesn't actually give the rocket a different trajectory. In other words: it'll still hit it's target, just with less accuracy (and if the guidance remains intact, not even that). You have to hit it hard enough to get it to break up, which means rockets, which the US doesn't have enough of. Which nobody has enough of.

(this is a theme that will come up often once hamas or hezbollah start firing rockets at Israel again. The new laser interceptors have to hit the rockets BEFORE they're ballistic, in other words, what they do is make hamas fired rockets hit Gaza or South Lebanon ... Guess who will be blamed for intercepted rockets hitting houses, hospitals and kindergartens in Gaza and Lebanon?)

[scott_w]

You’re overstating how good guided munitions are. They’re not magic. The further out from the target, the harder it is to hit that target. There’s a reason the USA flew a B2 stealth bomber into Iran instead of lobbing munitions over. And they could only do that because Israel had wiped out their AA capabilities.

Guided munitions are a piece of the puzzle but I don’t think we’ve seen evidence that they can fully replace the ability to point to something on a map, fly planes over and make that thing not be on the map any more.

[qwytw]

> There’s a reason the USA flew a B2 stealth bomber into Iran instead of lobbing munitions over

Wasn't it because the only optional they had if they wanted to do any damage was the GBU-57 (which probably wasn't close to being enough but still..)?

Cruise missiles are offer pretty decent precision for ground targets (supposedly around 5 meters).

[scott_w]

But even with that you need to find targets, for which only piloted stealth jets work. Then at that point, you may as well drop some ordnance on it while you’re there.

The thing is, we can sit here on HN thinking we’re so clever but ACTUAL MILITARY LEADERS want to use F-35s so they clearly have insight and knowledge that we don’t.

[cm2187]

Well, technically Pakistan shot a Indian Rafale with a Chinese made missile a few months ago, which created some consternation in France. I heard the French explaining it away, as India trying to bomb some Pakistani territory without hitting the Pakistani military, hence putting their jet fighters in unecessary harm's way. I am not qualified to draw my own conclusions on the quality of Chinese weapons but it seems to imply they can certainly do significant damage.

[slaw]

Rafale was shot down by J-10 plane using PL-15 missile. Rafale, Eurofighter and J-10 are old 20+ years designs. Europe has nothing equivalent to Chinese J-35 or even previous generation J-20.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_J-35

[actionfromafar]

To be fair, China doesn't have anything like the J-35 either, it's a prototype.

[cm2187]

And I hope they removed the Lockheed Martin logo from the CAD files before sending them to manufacturing!

[spwa4]

I don't think their manager will allow that, since all their aircraft designers work at Lockheed Martin during the week ...

[mcphage]

> Europe has nothing equivalent to Chinese J-35 or even previous generation J-20.

How many J-35s does China have?

[LargoLasskhyfv]

According to Wikipedia: 8+, so more than eight?

[mcphage]

That’s… not really very many.

[slaw]

8+ J-35, 1 prototype J-36, 1 prototype J-50 and 250+ J-20. Europe has nothing like that.

[slaw]

None of European jet fighters can stand against Chinese, but China is far away.