Is the US military high tech or do they just want us to think that so we’ll accept the high cost of war?
Cus I saw tawp gun and was layke, omg thos planes r so fast expensive$. But that’s military propaganda.
I was listening to Robert Higgs, and it peaked my interest when he said that the current war isn’t nearly anywhere close to the scope in terms of manpower and equipment used during WWII yet we still managed to spend 1 trillion dollars.
Well, it’s not the same 1 trillion. But yeah, the costs of those current wars are much lower than the WWII, specially when it comes to human capital, what the amount of death in 5 years of this current war is smaller than a single day bloody day of WWII, but this doesn’t make the war any good.
No, I mean, is the US military as high tech as they want us to think it is.
It`s high tech alright, but it is useless type of hi-tech. Take F-22 for example, it is very hi-tech, but it is not any better than your standard F-15 or F-16. In fact in many ways it is inferior. Same thing with Stryker, F-35, V-22 and so on.
The military industrial complex totally stopped pretending they are even trying to design a weapon system which is cost effective and mass produceable. Now they just make crap which the military doesn’t even need and doesn’t even work very well even if they had a need for it.
It is an undisguised wealth transfer.
I glanced at the wiki article and it looked like a bunch of military propaganda. Where can i find info about the weaknesses of the F-22 compared to 15/6’s?
I thought the F-35 are supposed to replaced the F-15/16.
In what ways the F-22 is inferior to the F-15 and F-16 except price and maintance for being stealth?
The F-35 that is a POS who relies solely on being stealth, but the F-22 is all around incredible.
At the Battle of Vienna, the Hussars of Poland rode into battle wearing highly elaborate decorative wings on their armor, which served no tactical purpose whatsoever but was a display of the wealth and sophistication of the unit.
The U.S. military toys serve about the same purpose.
I had to look that up (the winged armor). Pretty neat.
EDIT: Now that I think of it, it may have given them some kind of primal, psychological edge over their foes. Who wants to mess with a dude with wings?
It would appear that an angel is charging to kill you.
Not very useful against Muslims however. I don’t think they have an angel iconography.
The U.S. military is too high tech. Those costs are largely made up by the cost of the equipment, which are many times the cost of equipment used during WWII in real value. For example, the same class ship today that were lost by the dozens during the Second World War could cripple a country economically. The same goes for most European countries. Spain fought a multi-decade long war in North Africa in the early 20th century, yet a week-long war with Morocco could cripple Spain economically (well, Spain prior to the depression).
I second this, to claim that the F-22 is inferior to other air-superiority planes available would require some corroborating evidence.
For the type of war the US is currently pursuing it’s all useless, expensive junk. Hence the hundreds of thousands of “boots on the ground”.
The enemy can make fertilizer bombs for free because they get the materials donated to them from aid groups and US forces. The US spends millions of dollars on a couple Hellfire missiles that won’t do nearly as much damage, physically and psychologically, compared with an IED.
counterpunch.org periodically runs articles bashing the F-22 and I remember reading an article in a similar vein at the American Conservative.
In any case remember that F-22 costs 350 million, where an advanced F-16 variat costs 60 million. Also there simply is no need for a new fighter, who is it supposed to fight? Russians have some updated fighter designs but they are not being mass produced. But most importantly with so much money being spent on hardware the flight hours afforded to fighter pilots has actually been cut to as low as one half of the hours they were given in 70s. Pilot training is by far the most important single factor determining success in aerial engagements but it has been downsized because the corporations do not directly profit. And do allow me to mention another thing here: Lockeed-Martin has stopped designing planes for the market. While Boeing still has a civilian branch that competes on the market, building and selling passanger planes, Lockeed-Martin has gotten so bloated and inefficient company that it finds itself unable to do make anything that would be cost efficient anymore and so just makes stuff for the military.
You may also want to check g2mil.com for criticism of V-22. Now that is the biggest pile of crap ever. With today’s technology its premise is simply unachievable.
Well mate the F-22 is less maneuverable than either the F-15 or the F-15. It has a lower thurst to weight ratio and about the same wingload ratio than an F-15. Also I am told that its “stealth” capabilities are a scam because while the plane itself may be stealthy it has a very powerful active radar so the enemy, while not being able to easily detect the fuselage of the plane, is going to detect its radar.
The F-22 being an air superiority fighter should by all logic replace the F-15, but it is so expensive that mass production is not practical, so the F-15 is supposed to get replaced by a mix of F-22s and F-35s (that is until the cost for F-35s starts to climb). F-35 being a more all-around fighter should replace the F-16 and A-10, but anybody can see that it is ill suited to replace the A-10. It is more vulnerable and simply flies at too high speeds to be useful for direct ground support. A-10 however is not sexy enough and is very cheap. A cardinal sin in the age when the point of weaponary has become not so much to be good at engaging the enemy, but as a medium by which a wealth transfer to the military-industrial complex is achieved.
The US’s biggest tech competitor for fighter planes would be the EU and their “Eurofighter”. As the big boy of NATO the US will always want to have superior equipment, meanwhile, imperial hegemony dictates that all member nations of the EU must standardize their militaries asap.
To expand my answer to your original question I should mention the “network-centric warfare”. This is a concept demanding very high technology. But it is also a totally insane concept that is destined to be utterly defeated. Its premise is that every single unit on the battlefield is feeding data to the higher ups who are then able to direct them with total central control as if in a computer game. It is a bureaucrat’s wet dream (and there is no one more bureaucratic than the military), initiative of officers on the ground replaced by a totally centralized decision making by people who are not anywhere near the action (but are supposedly better qualified to direct the units because they get a lot of GPS data and other crap). This ability for information sharing provided by technology is great, but it would be logical to use it as a way to augment the decision making of the units in the fight, not to use it as a way to justify wholly replacing officer initiative by decision making from the high command.
Both false informations, The F-22 has 2-D vectorial thrust, what makes him considerably more agile than the F-15, specially in low speeds.The F-15 has neither vectorial thrust or Fly by Wire, so by no means it’s able to be more agile than the F-22.
The F-22 radar is an AESA type, not PESA. It’s basically impossible to track down an AESA radar, since it’s not a spinning big antenna, but dozens of little modules changing frequencies and the direction of their beams millions of times per second. You really thought the guys who spent 20 years made the plane wouldnt think of a radar that didn’t spoil it’s stealth capability? As a matter of fact, an AESA radar planned as an upgrade to the B-2.
Now the F-35 is just a bad plane, extremely heavy for it’s size whose development is a mess, with it’s costs approaching the F-22, and a mess that won’t ever be cancelled, since a lot of countries have promised to acquire it. And just the thought of the F-35 replacing the A-10 makes me cringe too.
By the way, the V-22 is actually getting good reviews in the battlefield, and you can colour me surprise on that.
Well yes new US fighter designs make sense as a pissing contest. Other than that a new fighter does not make much sense. In a war between two air forces all sort of other factors where the USAF is vastly superior to any competitor, such as AWACS planes and bombers to attack the enemy’s runways and hangars, come into play that it does not even need a superior fighter design to be assured of achieving superiority.
But designing a new fighter plane is the best deal a corporation can get. It is so sexy that you can be developing it for 20 years and run up the costs into high heaven with much less consequence than if you were developing say a new machinegun. In fact from the point of view of the corporations it is better if their fighter is not very good and is too expensive to be mass produced. This assures them that another plane will have to be designed shortly, their previous one being a de facto failure (but still oh so hi-tech and sexy). I am not saying it is a conspiracy, but when you have incentives aligned in a certain way you do not need a conspiracy.
Very true. One need only look at the recent Airbus civilian and military aircraft development fiascoes.
And what is precluding the military from ordering a new variant of their old planes (with superior weight to thrust ratios) that would incorporate vector thrust? As I recall that is what Russians did.
I’m told it’s location can not be tracked down, but its activity can be detected. The opposing force will not know where such a radar is, but will know one is about.
Anyway mate you seem to be quite informed about this, why don`t you tell us your opinion? Do you think F-22 is a disappointment or do you think it is worth its cost? Do you think USA has a need for such a plane?