When we listen to the warfighters and engineers versus those who don't fight and those who can't engineer we'll be ready to win the next war.
The military-industrial (and political) complex has fossilized our capacity to develop and field weapon systems. Since preparing for war is one of the President's primary duties, the next (2-3) Presidents must prioritize being prepared for war, as Reagan-esque as possible.
In Canada our military commissioned research that resulted in space exploration being called "sexist, racist, and damaging to the environment" https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canadian-military-commissions-32000-report-on-how-space-is-racist-and-sexist . I submit this as exhibit A in an almost infinite exhibition of bat-shite crazy left-wing temper tantrums that ensures any attempt to do anything of any use to anybody is... "problematic". This might seem like a straw man argument (or is it "straw person"?) but ask yourselves if you can imagine any industrial manufacturer that contracts out to the US military getting built in your hometown without the kind of protest that ends in the epithet "baby killer".
The U.S. Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 since the first one rolled off the assembly line . That is because it does what it’s supposed to do, it’s relatively cheap and its ugly as hell.
This is a pet peeve of mine and if I was wearing my glasses I'd be pushing them up on my nose right now: formation of a vapor cone does not mean a plane is exceeding Mach 1, though it's probably close. Breaking the number causes a strong shock from the tip of the nose. Being close but not quite there forms weak shocks due to localized supersonic flow over parts of the plane like the wings and the canopy.
The US Navy is planning to award a contract for its 6th Gen fighter this year. It's the "manned" component of Navy's next-gen air dominance, which is supposed to include large quantities of wingman drones. This should increase to combat power of each pilot though it will be interesting to see if the complement of manned aircraft in the squadron drops accordingly. There's a sea change brewing around uncrewed platforms that is similar to the demise of the battleship back in the 1920's but prying the pilots out of the cockpit will not be easy. We need a 21st century Billy Mitchell to lead the way.
Doubtful..the Loyal wingman drones are smaller and less capable because.... Making a drone as capable as say an F/A-18 means it's costs essentially as much as an F/A-18 because the vast majority of the costs are the airframe, engine(s) and electronics. A pilot is maybe 10 cubic feet in size and is about 180-230lbs. Not exactly a gigantic amount of fuel or weapon gained by dropping him/her and you can't hack or jam a human brain like you can a network connected drone.
You mean "it's hard to OVERSTATE our vulnerability." Things are often stated most strongly with understatement--as everyone knows. "Global thermonuclear war might cause some unpleasantness for the survivors," for example.
Unmanned ships are asymmetric attacks, which are beneficial to the defending party but disadvantageous to the attacking party. Therefore, it is more likely that Taiwan will use a large number of unmanned ships to sink Chinese warships. On the contrary, the United States does not intend to land and occupy China, so it is not easily affected by asymmetric attacks.
The primary way for the U.S. to assist Taiwan in defending itself (aside from supplies in advance) is the Navy. Our large ships (which have to be large to cross the ocean) are quite vulnerable to asymmetric attacks, including both unmanned ships and hypersonic and other missiles. We don't want the Abraham Lincoln repeating the fate of the Moskva. If China blockades Taiwan, we'll be hard-pressed to break the blockade.
In WWII most planes were made from plywood , and we realized that to make them really go you needed a big engine and lots of guns , the production line was made and we pumped them out by the 100 of thousands. You could 3d print a drone frame in about 1 hour add the motors electronics GPS cameras sensors in about another hour and have it flying around 3 hours later . The problem is most (if not all) components are made in China , maybe Trump has the right idea here bring manufacturing back to the US ? I make drones all the time it's easy but everything I buy is in China , is that a problem ?
At the begins of the war Aluminum was still hard to make and the flying fortress bomber was mostly plywood. The PPY was plywood my dad flew in them , so at the end of the war it was almost all Aluminum , many converted over etc . So yes , but Aluminum is better because it's lighter but not stronger depending on how it broken etc . Drones by our US. forces are really over made today , like 30,000 dollars and up , but you can take hobby drones make them out of poster board and fly them in most weather miles and deliver a pay load for about $200 today . A crude example but the idea is you can get really cheap with this stuff today , so what are we waiting for ? The problem I can guess is the GOV is making this and thus $$$$$ .
One of the constraints to the US shifting to this military production will be the legacy defense contractors who will not want to change their business model from multimillion dollar planes and ships to thousand-dollar drones. The lobbying will be ferrous.
I think that the real constraint to US military production would be the shortage / near absence of the aforementioned contractors. While the left had been fretting about the nefarious powers of the US Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), it all but ceased to exist. In the early to mid-nineties following the collapse of the USSR and end of the Cold War, there was a virtual slaughter of military contractors, and those who survived had to consolidate and streamline their business models with all sorts of economies, efficiencies, etc. This was all precipitated by the event known as the "Last Supper" which took place in 1993. OSINT analyst and a retired senior NCO Ryan McBeth has a pretty good rendition of the topic of the US MIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2gIId1dpDs As the result, the MIC retained some pretty unique capabilities, but it is completely out of Schlitz when it comes to capacity. Thus, we ended up with military-industrial bonsai tree of sorts.
Our bloated government is beyond repair. We are 32 trillion in debt with big increases daily. No country needs to attack us with weapons, they just need to stop buying our bonds to cripple us.
When we listen to the warfighters and engineers versus those who don't fight and those who can't engineer we'll be ready to win the next war.
The military-industrial (and political) complex has fossilized our capacity to develop and field weapon systems. Since preparing for war is one of the President's primary duties, the next (2-3) Presidents must prioritize being prepared for war, as Reagan-esque as possible.
Here is how you fight the next war.
<a href="https://interestingengineering.com/culture/china-national-day-drone-show-break-world-record">China: 10,197 drones break world record in Shenzhen Bay light show</a>
In Canada our military commissioned research that resulted in space exploration being called "sexist, racist, and damaging to the environment" https://nationalpost.com/opinion/canadian-military-commissions-32000-report-on-how-space-is-racist-and-sexist . I submit this as exhibit A in an almost infinite exhibition of bat-shite crazy left-wing temper tantrums that ensures any attempt to do anything of any use to anybody is... "problematic". This might seem like a straw man argument (or is it "straw person"?) but ask yourselves if you can imagine any industrial manufacturer that contracts out to the US military getting built in your hometown without the kind of protest that ends in the epithet "baby killer".
The U.S. Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 since the first one rolled off the assembly line . That is because it does what it’s supposed to do, it’s relatively cheap and its ugly as hell.
This is a pet peeve of mine and if I was wearing my glasses I'd be pushing them up on my nose right now: formation of a vapor cone does not mean a plane is exceeding Mach 1, though it's probably close. Breaking the number causes a strong shock from the tip of the nose. Being close but not quite there forms weak shocks due to localized supersonic flow over parts of the plane like the wings and the canopy.
The P-51 did not remain "in service" in any meaningful capacity (i.e. combat role) beyond the mid 1950's.
The US Navy is planning to award a contract for its 6th Gen fighter this year. It's the "manned" component of Navy's next-gen air dominance, which is supposed to include large quantities of wingman drones. This should increase to combat power of each pilot though it will be interesting to see if the complement of manned aircraft in the squadron drops accordingly. There's a sea change brewing around uncrewed platforms that is similar to the demise of the battleship back in the 1920's but prying the pilots out of the cockpit will not be easy. We need a 21st century Billy Mitchell to lead the way.
Doubtful..the Loyal wingman drones are smaller and less capable because.... Making a drone as capable as say an F/A-18 means it's costs essentially as much as an F/A-18 because the vast majority of the costs are the airframe, engine(s) and electronics. A pilot is maybe 10 cubic feet in size and is about 180-230lbs. Not exactly a gigantic amount of fuel or weapon gained by dropping him/her and you can't hack or jam a human brain like you can a network connected drone.
You mean "it's hard to OVERSTATE our vulnerability." Things are often stated most strongly with understatement--as everyone knows. "Global thermonuclear war might cause some unpleasantness for the survivors," for example.
The word for this is litotes.
Unmanned ships are asymmetric attacks, which are beneficial to the defending party but disadvantageous to the attacking party. Therefore, it is more likely that Taiwan will use a large number of unmanned ships to sink Chinese warships. On the contrary, the United States does not intend to land and occupy China, so it is not easily affected by asymmetric attacks.
The primary way for the U.S. to assist Taiwan in defending itself (aside from supplies in advance) is the Navy. Our large ships (which have to be large to cross the ocean) are quite vulnerable to asymmetric attacks, including both unmanned ships and hypersonic and other missiles. We don't want the Abraham Lincoln repeating the fate of the Moskva. If China blockades Taiwan, we'll be hard-pressed to break the blockade.
In WWII most planes were made from plywood , and we realized that to make them really go you needed a big engine and lots of guns , the production line was made and we pumped them out by the 100 of thousands. You could 3d print a drone frame in about 1 hour add the motors electronics GPS cameras sensors in about another hour and have it flying around 3 hours later . The problem is most (if not all) components are made in China , maybe Trump has the right idea here bring manufacturing back to the US ? I make drones all the time it's easy but everything I buy is in China , is that a problem ?
They were mostly aluminum with some exceptions like the Mosquito, but yes they were simpler and were made quickly in great volume.
At the begins of the war Aluminum was still hard to make and the flying fortress bomber was mostly plywood. The PPY was plywood my dad flew in them , so at the end of the war it was almost all Aluminum , many converted over etc . So yes , but Aluminum is better because it's lighter but not stronger depending on how it broken etc . Drones by our US. forces are really over made today , like 30,000 dollars and up , but you can take hobby drones make them out of poster board and fly them in most weather miles and deliver a pay load for about $200 today . A crude example but the idea is you can get really cheap with this stuff today , so what are we waiting for ? The problem I can guess is the GOV is making this and thus $$$$$ .
The money we wasted on the F35 is a crime. Outsource that stuff to spacex or something.
That's.... Not how any of that works
One of the constraints to the US shifting to this military production will be the legacy defense contractors who will not want to change their business model from multimillion dollar planes and ships to thousand-dollar drones. The lobbying will be ferrous.
I think that the real constraint to US military production would be the shortage / near absence of the aforementioned contractors. While the left had been fretting about the nefarious powers of the US Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), it all but ceased to exist. In the early to mid-nineties following the collapse of the USSR and end of the Cold War, there was a virtual slaughter of military contractors, and those who survived had to consolidate and streamline their business models with all sorts of economies, efficiencies, etc. This was all precipitated by the event known as the "Last Supper" which took place in 1993. OSINT analyst and a retired senior NCO Ryan McBeth has a pretty good rendition of the topic of the US MIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2gIId1dpDs As the result, the MIC retained some pretty unique capabilities, but it is completely out of Schlitz when it comes to capacity. Thus, we ended up with military-industrial bonsai tree of sorts.
There will be a reckoning and it is going to be very painful. I doubt Americans realize how painful.
This is very disconcerting. Seems our bloated federal government is focused on everything except that which it ought to be doing
They spend most of their time trying to raise funds for election campaigns!
Exactly! Pathetic
Very interesting article, very interesting analysis and conclusions. We would be wise to listen.
What is the old adage? The best defense is a good offense.
Also, "Quantity has a Quality ( ... $/unit ) all of its own."
And vice versa, both are necessary.
Our bloated government is beyond repair. We are 32 trillion in debt with big increases daily. No country needs to attack us with weapons, they just need to stop buying our bonds to cripple us.