Why the F-35 Isn’t Good Enough for Japan | Hacker News Reader

Why the F-35 Isn’t Good Enough for Japan

thediplomat.com

35 pointsJerry259 comments

Australia couldn't be more eager to spend tens of billions on this white elephant.

But of course anything the U.S. says is good for Australia just has to be, right?

We'd have been better off spending billions buying anti ship missiles.

No you were right with the second sentence. We're better off spending our defence budget doing what the US says.

Unless we're going to nuke up, our defence strategy is being an actual powers bitch. Solid relations with the US will go a lot further than some anti ship missiles.

Except right now, you may be paying for a lot of nothing because US relations change from tweet to tweet. I mean, I know politics is playing for the long run in these things, and Trump won’t be there in 10 years, but his voters might, and if the US is really closing up, then the powers at be near Australia just might end up being China.

That's certainly the risk when going for this sort of strategy. Basically prepaying and hoping the stronger party will actually deliver when the time comes.

Id be interested to see how that would play out though. Like at what point in poor military decisions do generals ignore the president? Like hypothetically if China started landing troops and pillaging, and the pres have the military a stand down order, I can only assume hed get ignored/a bullet.

I wonder where letting allies fall lands in that. If military command/intelligence has data showing that to be safe the US needs allies, and that if they don't defend Australia then the rest of their allies will immediately all run to hide behind whoever, then what are the chances of the president waking up to a spook in his bedroom telling him that if he doesn't change his decision then he's going to have a heart attack very soon?

It would be worth reconsidering if and when the Trump influence proves itself to be durable, not before, not reflexively.

The thing to remember is that Trumpism is a combination of cynicism towards prior experts/elites, and Donald’s extreme narcissism. The latter is certainly not durable.

There is no doubt that Trump is the temporary protest vote, but nationalism is on the rise everywhere. Before WWII America was perfectly fine minding its own business, and it might be dangerous to plan for their internationalism to recover post Trump.

After a lifetime of being anti nuke, I do now believe Australia has to "nuke up".

I also believe now that we need at least 2 very large U.S. bases on our soil, and if the U.S. aren't interested then maybe the U.K. or the Europeans.

Expansionist countries could easily see Australia right now as a virtually undefended, resource rich sweet piece of fruit to be plucked, and given that Australia's traditional allies seem to be internally engaged, there's plenty of room for such expansionists to start laying the foundations that will allow them to exert such control in the future.

Who exactly would have capability and resources to mount an invasion and then supply the necessary force to occupy a territory the size of Australia.

China.

Also worth noting that the force needed to occupy a country is mainly proportional to the population.

Indonesia is right next door and outnumber us 10 to 1.

India and China are also reasonably close.

The only thing we want is to beat you at cricket.

- India.

A blue water Navy, not proximity, is what is required to invade and control Australia. India and Indonesia are a non-starter given that prerequisite, and China is probably 10-20 years away from being able to accomplish this (if they chose to do it). Plus the Chinese are more concerned with the South China Sea and regional naval superiority when compared to invading continents.

Also, Pine Gap. All of the China is coming and the US is going to leave us hanging out to dry hubbub conveniently ignores this fact.

Current navy size seems less relevant than what it could be if they were planning to invade Australia. If I decided to invade an island nation my first step would be to build enough boats.

No invasion would be needed.

All thats needed is to get several thousand armed people to take control of Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne parliament and hold all the politicians under lock and key. And whilst Australia is too stunned to work out what has just happened, land ships and troops in Sydney then Melbourne.

There you have it - control of Australia.

All we need to do is put a bell on the cat!

Several thousand armed people acting in concert without detection?

The Australian military would also still exist even if such a thing could be done.

Not to mention that then landing ships in Sydney and Melbourne would not be allowed by the US.

The Australian populace wouldn't just take it either.

The US may decide that we are past our best before date and choose to cut and run rather than take on a land war in Asia.

>>> Several thousand armed people acting in concert without detection?

You haven't heard of tourists?

You just described a (shitty and likely to fail) invasion.

China is a very real threat to Australia. They are already unhappy about how close we are to the US, our freedom of navigation routes through the South China Sea and our perceived anti-China rhetoric around national security.

And just to show you that they aren't messing around. They just funded the development of a port in Vanuatu which many have suspected as being suitable for future naval purposes:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-great-wharf-from...

I think this would be a huge miscalculation for China. First it would enrage Western governments, especially the US and UK. Second, I'm not completely convinced China would win. Australia is a very large country, with a population that has basically nothing in common with the Chinese. It would be very difficult to stop guerilla warfare even if they controlled the cities. Plus, China knows how ridiculously complicated this kind of stuff is to win in the long run. Look at Vietnam and Korea. I think China would be more likely to attempt stronger alliances now that US leadership is basically gone for 2-6 more years.

If China is a threat to Australia, maybe we shouldn't have sold them the port of Darwin...

You don't have enough money to nuke up, unless you plan a much bigger defense budget.

Really ? Australia has the 13th highest GDP in the world.

Higher than Israel, Pakistan and North Korea which all have them.

They can't really afford them, either.

You'll also need missiles capable of hitting your adversary, and you won't find much help building them cheaply.

> As a single engine light platform with a small arsenal of just four air-to-air missiles

It is quite the opposite, it is a lardy brute heavier than Japan's two previous top-line fighters:

Maximum take-off weight tonnes / installed thrust tonnes / length

F-35A 31.8 / 19 / 15.7

F-15C 30.8 / 22 / 19.4

F-4E 28 / 16.4 / 19.2

And for comparison:

F-22 38+ / 32 / 18.9

Both the F-15 and 22 show their air superiority primary mission with higher thrust-to-weight ratios, which approach unity once transit field is burned off. But the F-35 is not a light fighter, it is a modern-day F-4. Maybe it should have been named Phantom III...

I think they refer to the fact that only 4 AIM-120 missiles currently can fit F-35's internal bay. It is promised to be fixed in the future, with 6 missiles be places inside.

My understanding is that an F-35 carrying AIM-120s (AMRAAMs) is kind of a stopgap measure anyhow. The AMRAAM was designed to be deployed externally on the F-15 and F-16; the next-generation missile will be smaller and designed to be deployed in internal bays, therefore increasing the number that can be carried.

My memory said that the new missile was called the "NRAAM" or something similar, but I can't find reference to it anywhere after a brief search. Maybe that idea was scrapped?

I never heard about any planned AMRAAM successor.. Also those missiles would have shorter range if being smaller..

I suspect someone within the US Military or Lockheed Martin is putting Japan up to this in order to build a case to get the F-22 back in production. I'm unconvinced Japan really sees the F-35 as inadequate.

Japan would be better off with the F-22 but I don't believe Lockheed would want to restart production on that. Such a decision would disturb the perfect political engineering Lockheed has done by spreading out the F-35 logistics across all 50 states.

I believe it would require Congressional approval at this point to sell the F-22 to foreign powers.

What a frigging boondoggle that thing is. I'm disgusted that we've spent so much money fiddle-frigging around on it. At best it's a technological dead end - manned aircraft in the roles envisioned for it will seem increasingly silly in the coming years.

Unmanned aircraft works as a strike fighter once air superiority is established but I don't see how it can replace a stealth air superiority jet at this time.

I am mostly making this up, but it would seem to me that a fleet of autonomous drones would be far superior to any fighter. You could get many drones for the price of one fighter. They can carry more fuel and/or ammunition, and they could fly maneuvers that are impossible with human pilots. I could also imagine that if you have several planes in one area, you could better defeat stealth by having each plane "paint" laser targets for the others, or by using their radars together.

All that matters is which side has the superior platform. Ever seen hornets raid a hive of honey bees?

Is it possible to have air superiority because of missiles fired from the ground? A bit less heroic than manned fighter jets in dogfights, but ...

It seems difficult to create a platform which securely moves said missiles. Although ships somewhat fill this role, they're still huge fairly immobile targets. I think the high speed ceiling/mobility of the sky is what makes a flying missile delivery platform better than one based on land or sea.

Don't submarines fill this role?

The US already uses them that way, albeit mostly for submarine-to-ground missiles instead of submarine-to-air.

Submarines usually don't have good radar, so they can't lock on difficult air targets.

That makes sense, I guess I assumed they just need to surface briefly then it's all the same.

And how you will bring those missile on enemy territory? Also dogfight is not a thing for many years, modern jets can also use missiles..

> Also dogfight is not a thing for many years

We don't know if it's a thing. The past 40 years has been 1st and 2nd world nations showing how much of an advantage 2+ generations of technology brings.

There are missiles fired from the ground which have long range. Since they don't have to be carried by a plane, they can be bigger.

Or if you really want missiles fired from a plane, they can be fired from an unmanned plane.

> There are missiles fired from the ground which have long range. Since they don't have to be carried by a plane, they can be bigger.

Current generation of US surface to air missiles has range of about 200 miles, which is not that much.

> Or if you really want missiles fired from a plane, they can be fired from an unmanned plane.

Maybe, but what exactly you propose? Remove pilot from F-35? Or build something completely new?

My suggestion is to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on longer-range SAMs and more fragile, unmanned, missile-carrying aircraft cheaper than the F35.

Sorry if this isn't obvious, I've seen lots of other people (including people in the military) suggest the same thing.

Ok, let's assume your aircraft succeeded to gain air superiority, now you need to do actual bombing of enemy territory with air defense. What now? F-35 has some edge by being stealthy. It can track and target moving targets, it can do CAS. Will your fragile aircraft survive in such conditions?

Do I get to include the effect of having a lot more stuff because I didn't have to pay for manned F-35s?

Also, do I get to track moving targets from low Earth orbit using small-ish satellites, or is that right out?

Your very aggressive conclusions are based on very unclear assumptions.

I didn’t conclude anything! I’m just suggesting alternatives to the status quo.

But it's a shitty air superiority platform, compared to its specialized predecessors, as the article highlights.

It's only a matter of time before anything manned aircraft can do, unmanned will be capable of. And likely more, since the unmanned won't have to keep the meat-bags behind the yoke alive or conscious.

Cannot drones be jammed which would effectively make them useless?

Humans can be blinded quite easily. Surely nobody would rely completely on a flight control system that can be completely disabled with a twenty cent laser operated by untrained personnel?

Autonomous aircraft will be designed to operate with no communications, since they need to be able to land at an airstrip after a mission with potential damage.

That may be true, but the linked article paints the F-35 in a pretty negative light as an air superiority platform.

The F-22 is no doubt better but the F-35 would still dominate against anything else. Quite effortlessly in fact. My take is the US Military wants F-22s back in production and they are working with Japan to help build a case so congress will pass it. "We already have a customer who wants 150 Raptors, yada yada yada American jobs." That's the way I read this. Japan is in no position to refuse the F-35 given its capabilities thats why I think the DOD is somehow behind this.

Yeah, the article's predictions were pretty heavy-handed and curiously specific.

The article hinted that Japan might be eager to share development of the F-22... perhaps if the production lines were restarted, Mitsubishi could do the assembly of surplus F-22 parts with less cost.

Though, I'm not sure we'll have time to make any F-22s before Japan really needs them in the air.

Good point. For sure Japan wants in on the development. Jobs is how politicians justify the insane price tag to tax payers. If Japan lowers the cost of F22 to below the F35 that would be a huge blow to the JSF.

Isn't the F-35 already more costly than the F-22 without Japan's involvement?

> The F-35 has less than half the range of the larger F-22 and lacks the Raptor’s advanced long ranged air-to-air missiles

What long range missiles? I thought the longest range missiles carried by both fighters are the AMRAAMs.

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