[radicalethics]

I wonder what the motivation behind this is. Tactically, why ever show your latest weapon? What is the strategic purpose of this? It's like if I message my opponent in SC2 and tell them exactly what I'm going to tech to. That's ... insane right? Why would anyone do that?

[bityard]

This isn't a new weapon, this is a test platform for various ideas, none of which are new or secret. Also, there are not many groundbreaking advancements left in military aviation. Most are just fairly incremental engineering or manufacturing improvements. (Military space technology might be a different story, though.)

The only other nation with the potential to develop a high-tech military plane that could rival US technology would be China. But if we ever got into a war with China, they wouldn't need superior technology to win. They could win via superior manufacturing capacity and the sheer number of people they can draft into service at a moment's notice.

[logicchains]

>They could win via superior manufacturing capacity and the sheer number of people they can draft into service at a moment's notice.

Even with their manufacturing capacity they don't have remotely enough boats to get a nontrivial fraction of those people to the US mainland, and the majority of those people can't swim, so they wouldn't help in taking the US mainland, a requirement to "win" a serious war. Their entire armed forces is also almost completely lacking in combat experience, and in their last skirmish (against some unarmed Indian soldiers in the mountains) 30+ soldiers Chinese tragically drowned, due to the aforementioned lack of swimming ability.

[wewtyflakes]

How China frames victory and how the US frames victory needn't agree, and likely wouldn't. That being said, framing victory as only counting if there is a wholesale land invasion seems odd, as I suspect neither side would want to actually do that... so who 'wins'?

[foobarian]

They could just cease all shipping. The consequences would be legendary.

[jiggawatts]

I don't know why you're being downvoted because clearly modern warfare is as much (or more) about the economic warfare aspect as the military one.

There are some rather bizarre examples such as Gaza attacking Israel, despite getting something like 50% of their electricity and 10% of their fresh water from Israel!

Attacking the supplier of critical civilian and industrial inputs would seem like a mistake nobody in their right mind would make, but... there you go.

I wouldn't be surprised if a future conflict with China over Taiwan would be primarily economic.

They threaten to stop shipping, we threaten to cut off the Internet and their banking, etc...

Similarly, the most knowledgeable experts are predicting that China's strategy with Taiwan will be to simply blockade the island and wait for them to capitulate.

Last but not least, this is also Iran's current strategy. By halting shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, they're waging war on the global economy much more effectively than bombing a few small military air strips in the region.

[benjcpalm]

It's not a tactical choice- it's strategic deterrence, and it's not insane at all!

The US has always had a policy of messaging programs, with a lean toward classifying some percentage of the specific capabilities.

There's a reason that F-35 program was publicized by the US government as the program was under development. It makes the US air force even scarier, which discourages adversaries from thinking about conventional warfare with America.

That said- you won't see any detailed pics of the inside of an F35 cockpit, or a detailed look at the heads up display in the fancy helmet. That's top secret, because those making those details public don't offer enough additional deterrence to justify the risk to the program.

[bityard]

Yes, but even if the US didn't release the specifications of the F35, other countries around the world would rapidly figure out most of the capabilities anyway from photos, videos, and casual observation. (In other words, they'd know soon enough WHAT it can do but not necessarily HOW it does it.)

[Alan_Writer]

I think they just show what it can be seen, like any country with advance military developments.

They won't show you everything.

Have you ever heard about those sound/sonic (or something similar) weapons the US used in Maduro's kidnap operation? Venezuelan soldiers said (pero some publications on the internet) that they never saw anything alike, leaving them completely disoriented and helpless?

Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or solid materiales, and the same time, bacome invisibles.

It's more than sci-fi.

[blincoln]

> Soldiers now can even see thermal figures through walls or solid materiales

I have a thermal imager. They can't see through walls in the sense you're imagining. If there's an electric heating element inside a wall or a ceiling, you could get an image of that. If there's a camera or other active electronics hidden in a wall or object, you can see the heat from that.

You wouldn't be able to see a person in an adjacent room through the wall between the two rooms, unless the wall was made specifically of thermally-transparent material.

I've heard rumours of "see through walls" equipment in the US military before. If they really have something like that, it would have to be using technology other than thermal imaging.

[laughing_man]

Normally these kinds of press releases come out to generate public support for funding. I remember when the B-2 was super, super secret. No photos, "we don't know what you're talking about" answers from the military.

But when it looked like it might get cancelled pictures and exhibitions of it were suddenly everywhere.