Obama proposes to cut funds to the F-22 and other military projects.

[Hack&Lube]

For any jet aircraft buffs who like jets, future technology, drones, artificial intelligence, etc. there's an excellent anime series called Yuzikaze that is set in the near future and about a pilot's relationship to the burgeoning intelligence of his plane.

And it's really beautiful and not crappy like that Stealth movie.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

And war will change again. We've seen how fast the concepts and strategies of war changes. It wasn't that long ago that we look looking a piece meal strategies involving mass armor and air superiority. Now we're fighting insurgencies that don't represent nation states. But those nation states are out there, they're still advancing standardized military technology at a rapid rate.

Nobody, including the Russians and the Chinese, is anywhere close to American military capability, nor are they going to be in 10-15 years. They simply do not have the economic and technological base to compete, and you need both to do so - look at what happened to the Soviets, who despite devoting 1/3 of their economy to competing with the US military and starting from a position where they were AHEAD of the US, ended up bankrupt with huge quantities of obsolete and decidedly inferior weaponry to show for their efforts after 40 years of trying.

Military technology now turns over in decades, not in any short-term period. The US still uses the Abrams (circa 1980) as its main battle tank, Nimitz class carriers (circa 1975) as the backbone of its fleet, M-16s (circa 1964) to equip its infantry, and Apache gunships (circa 1986) as anti-armour platforms. The genius of the US has been in upgrading this equipment so that it remains technologically superior regardless of its putative age, and no matter what the Russians, Chinese, or anyone else does in the way of new weapons systems in the next couple decades, the US is still going to retain a wide spectrum of weapons dominance.

Questioning the purpose of the weapons they are going to develop is just good policy - the easiest way to lose your advantage is to build lots of weapons without a useful purpose, like the Nazi obsession with V weapons or the Iraqis buying SCUDs. The F-22 is not exactly useless, but certainly its hard to see why there would be a need for 600 of them when the current fleet could shoot down the entirety of the Russian/Chinese/Indian/European air forces without losing more than a plane or two to bad luck.

[Azure]

Well, the way I read it, the F-22 is supposed to replace the F-15, and the F-35 is supposed to replace the F-16.

So, its not ALL about being able to shoot down the entire Russian/Chinese/Indian/European fleet with the F-22s on hand, its about replacing the old planes with new ones.

If the F-35 is capable of replacing both the F-15, and F-16....great, but that isn't what it was designed to do, so I would imagine there is a good reason for that.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by jammies

The F-22 is not exactly useless, but certainly its hard to see why there would be a need for 600 of them when the current fleet could shoot down the entirety of the Russian/Chinese/Indian/European air forces without losing more than a plane or two to bad luck.

I wouldn't go that far but your probably close right now, the Russians do have some mean radar systems being put into the Sukhoi's, apparently when it see's what looks like a flock of birds it can count how many. If it can't count they fire away.

They are also developing a variable speed missile (as is the US) that once it gets close to it's target it will slow down/creep above or below and pounce. counter measures would be very difficult.

You had to know the Russians and Chinese wouldn't just sit there and not try to figure out how to see these "stealth" aircraft.