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Comment by Quanticles | Hacker News Reader

My biggest concern about F-35's is how quickly they can be made in wartime situations. They have so many sophisticated instruments... can they really be mass produced? In WW2, Germany had the best tanks, but the Soviets and the Americans overwhelmed them with numbers. You can say that WW2 is an old war, but if you're wrong do we really have a reliable plane that we can mass produce anymore?

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In modern, high-intensity warfare, you fight with what you have. The days of producing a Liberty ship a day are way past our industrial capability, and the technology in the F-35 and fighters of its caliber limit the ability to mass produce in anything close to WW2 quantities.

You could say that about the initial stage of the war, but can you maintain an occupying force for years against a sophisticated country? In that case, we would eventually run out of F-35's due to sabotage or maintenance issues.

This idea that the only thing that matters is what you already have creates a race - can you crush resistance before those who are resisting realize that you have limited long-term capability?

The weapons used in an occupation are vastly different than what you use to initially defeat an opponent. Most occupations are faced with insurgencies equipped with small arms, not 5th generation aircraft.

In Iraq, we had time to spool up production of MRAPs to counter IEDs, and were pretty quick to deploy equipment that would aid in COIN warfare.

But MRAPs would be shit in a real war against a peer grade opponent; too heavy, too slow, confined to roads, poor overall performance.

that germany had the best tanks is a bit inaccurate. The t-34 was better than almost everything else out there when it came out. easily outclassing common german tanks. the improved models could compete with the tiger and panthers (though there were few of these)

though the big issues with the tiger and panther was the horrible maintenance issues.

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