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Comment by crypto5 | Hacker News Reader

> The nuclear triad is our backbone.

Nuclear triad is defense against 3 countries in the world who can realistically hit USA (Russia, China, somebody else). F-35 will project power to the rest 193 countries and hostile organizations. There is a little way nuclear weapon could help USA to fight ISIS or Al Kaida. F-22 is very niche product. Less than 200 jets is too little to support USA's global ambitions, and they can't be air-carrier stationed, and project power across the globe. It is not clear if dogfight is the thing in the modern world. Also F-35 may be good for ground support, future will show.

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Did you just say we need a $1.5 trillion dollar fighter to fight goat herders? ISIS doesn't have an air force.

We literally have zero need to protect power across the globe. Our presence in the middle east is extremely costly and counterproductive to our security. And without the F-35 we project power great with a navy bigger than the entire rest of world combined. We have 12 carriers, mostly 100k tons, and Russia/China combined have two 50,000 ton carriers.

And the F-35 is guaranteed to be terrible at close air support. No F-35 pilot is going to slowly loiter their supersonic within visual range of their targets and without doing that they can't see exactly what they are shooting. Their gun only has 4 seconds of ammunition, the A-10 can fire much more powerful rounds for nearly 30 seconds. The F-35s gun won't even be operational for another 2-3 years.

If we need to fire miesiles from stand off distances drones already do it much cheaper. The F-35 is like the he german navy trying to load up on battleships instead of carriers before WW2, an expensive and easily avoided mistake.

> Did you just say we need a $1.5 trillion dollar fighter to fight goat herders? ISIS doesn't have an air force.

ISIS potentially can have/get manpads, and MANPADS can have big advancements in foreseeable future. Also US can face contested environment in operations similar to Kosovo war, operations in Libya, Iraq, Panama, where local army had more advanced SAMs in possession with needs to suppress them.

> We literally have zero need to protect power across the globe. Our presence in the middle east is extremely costly and counterproductive to our security.

This is question of policy, and is a mess for me. I am not going to speculate about this.

> And the F-35 is guaranteed to be terrible at close air support. No F-35 pilot is going to slowly loiter their supersonic within visual range of their targets and without doing that they can't see exactly what they are shooting.

The main weapon for ground support planned to be SDB2. Also optics/targeting system is presumably much more advanced on F-35 comparing to A-10.

Let ISIS fire manpads at far cheaper drones.

The SDB2 costs quarter million a pop, and the F-35 is still 5 years away from being able to field one. If used in standoff mode the F-35 is a poor choice, not only can drones deliver the SBD2, B1 can carry more than 20x more of them and loiter far longer. If used in the other modes the A-10 could be adapted to carry twice as many, deliver them just as effectively and with its huge big gun and ability to safely loiter close offers a much better follow up punch.

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