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by JumpCrisscross 207 days ago
> the obvious order when you can't do both is you build enough military to feel safe first, then you try for the tech race

Literally zero actual wars with a technological component have progressed like this. (The first tradeoff to be made is the one Russia is making: sacrificing consumption for military production and research. Guns and butter.)
1 comments
mk89 206 days ago
That's not true. Mass/quantity can still resist/delay/push back until you're exhausted and done.

We're not anymore in the swords vs guns era. We're talking about hypersonic missiles vs super intelligent hypersonic missiles. Still, all it takes is 1 dumb missile to pass through the defenses and an entire city can be wiped off. At the end of the day, they don't care if a missiles didn't reach the precise target. As you can see in Ukraine, Russia is bombing all types of buildings, they don't give a damn about schools, kindergarten or so.

The tech component is not everything.

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JumpCrisscross 206 days ago
> We're not anymore in the swords vs guns era. We're talking about hypersonic missiles vs super intelligent hypersonic missiles

These are still hypotheticals. Every war since the Civil War has had a decisive technological component. If the model doesn't apply there, this time probably ain't different.

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mk89 206 days ago
Like the Vietnam War? Or the wars in Afghanistan...?
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JumpCrisscross 206 days ago
> Like the Vietnam War?

Yes. Concern around Soviet space and missiles capabilities overtaking America’s directly lead to Kennedy changing his mind on no boots on the ground.

(The Vietnam War started with America betting on BVR, with the long-seeing but minimally-agile F-4 Phantom. Soviet MiG-21s, on the other hand, blended into civilian traffic. This lead to disaster. When the MiG-25 rolled out, we countered with the F-15 Eagle. But it came too late, which meant we couldn’t establish air superiority with long-range aircraft alone.)

Note: I’m not saying this was the decisive component. It was one among many, and not the most important. But if we had F-15s at the outset, when the Soviets had MiG-21s, there is a better chance the skirmish would have stayed in the skies and Vietnam would have stalemated like Korea.

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