Skynet

"It’s not Mildred sitting at a switchboard saying ‘Joe, you go to the corner of 42nd and Broadway,’ no it’s the AI. It’s not that hard given the state of current computing to imagine a system where the targeting grid is quote commanding and control itself.”

"Just as it took the brutal reality of naval warfare in the Pacific to shift the Navy’s love from the battleship to the aircraft carrier, it may take the catastrophic failure for limitations of exquisite tactical aircraft to overwhelm the forces keeping them drinking up most of the trough.

The corrective is not to abandon the F-35 but to redefine its role. A smaller fleet should be reserved for the missions that truly require its unique capabilities — penetrating advanced air defenses, gathering intelligence in contested environments, and orchestrating distributed networks of unmanned systems. The marginal procurement dollar should shift toward platforms that are cheaper to build, easier to replace, less dependent on vulnerable forward infrastructure, and expendable in ways that manned fighters are not.

The lesson of the Iran campaign is that the F-35 performed superbly in exactly the kind of fight it was built for. The lesson for force designers is that the next war may not be that fight. The future of airpower belongs to a larger orchestra, many of its instruments unmanned, inexpensive, and replaceable. Prudence demands that the United States start building it now."

The world has changed in many ways. Countries might now consider having weapons systems that are less-dependent on the US/China/Russian triumvirate. And much of the defensive threats don't require stealth - they require availability on short notice and the ability to work in various conditions (cold/hot/etc).

The A10 Warthog is still in service due to the outsized volume of some incredibly wrong voices being able to shout down modern understandings of warfare. The role of CAS as an extension of the ground troops themselves controlled by infantrymen with tooling to automate that job is the future but the military industrial complex moves slowly.

This would be an interesting article 4 years ago. Now I think it's old news and we've got the War Department spending $50bn on a new autonomous warfare wing.

I think ultimately the real weapon of mass destruction will be long-range drones the size of a DJI drone, each holding a small but extremely powerful explosive.

And then send millions of them, with specific single targets. Each AI controlled to target single weakpoints in buildings, bridges, or even specific people. You can't stop a million of them even with EMPs because you can just end a million more. You can destroy entire cities with a technology like this. If each drone costs $10,000 and you send a million of them that's only $10 billion for a war and complete destruction of your enemy.

So we’ve made a small number of exquisite King Tigers, and they’re making huge numbers of Shermans?

tiktok is the ultimate weapon still, nothing bombs minds more than that

The F-35 was specified when the Joint Strike Fighter program began in 1995, with the development contract awarded in 2001, and the first flight in 2006 or thereabouts.

Of course it was built for a different war... the use of drones didn't proliferate until after the 2010s and really more since the 2020s with Russia/Ukraine.

So, thanks Captain Obvious and arm-chair quarterback, for the insightful article.

Bizarre to call this an F-35 problem, it's with the entire US supply chain and the F-35 is the least of it.

The F-35 at least has been produced in quantity and the unit cost has come down and they're finally rolling out some decent upgrades. Yes it's a messed up program in so many ways as its literal decades of history shows but:

The bigger issues is our industrial base cannot replace our many missile systems quickly enough, including surface to air, antiship, and surface to surface. We can't build ships or planes very quickly, either.

We are woefully low on stocks and can't meet commitments in NATO, mideast, and against China and N Korea. Taiwan is and has been waiting years on billions in backorders.

The other issues is everything is as expensive as f-ck. We're shooting down dirt cheap drones costing in the thousands with missiles costing in the millions. The article at least mentions this.

And what is the proposed solution to this? A giant, expensive, long range fighter that will coordinate expensive drone buddies (google NGAD). Because we think it's realistic to try and defeat Chinese forces when we're thousands of miles from base and they're at home.

First off we need to replenish systems we already know how to make and that are effective. We need to learn to build sh-t quickly, at home and with allies, and it's bizarre no politician has taken the lead on this because it involves popular stuff like spending government money, creating blue collar manufacturing jobs, growing small businesses with more reliable gov contracts, and so forth.

Then we need to develop cheaper systems including lots of drones, anti drone stuff, and low cost interceptors and antisurface missiles.

Then we need to reform contracting infrastructure and rules to move much much faster and with less cost to experiment and iterate more rapidly going forward like the Ukrainians (and even the Iranians) are doing.

We need to do all of this and quickly and no one from either party is providing leadership. This is the biggest reason the US and west are at risk of becoming paper tigers - we have cut our infrastructure and defense spending and microoptimized inventory to the point where we can't restock quickly enough to be a credible deterrent force.