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Comment by hoorayimhelping | Hacker News Reader

The A part of the F/A 18 means Attack. Usually Attack aircraft are capable of close air support, which is a huge and integral part of our military tactics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_air_support

Without close air support, troops on the ground can't overwhelm enemies with firepower. Without air superiority, we don't provide close air support. Our strategy dictates air superiority to enable our tactics of close air support.

The reason there's only been one dogfight in the past 20 years is not because these fighters aren't effective, or because they're a relic of the past. It's that they're too effective. We own the sky and nobody is capable of challenging us.

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Okay, but in that case, is it kind of weird that we keep trying to sell our fighter jets to other countries?

They’re generally allied nations in NATO with compatible technical standards. NATO really doesn’t need member-states with planes that can’t fit American missiles - plus it saves the purchasing country the huge expense of having their own R&D programmes for domestic planes.

As for other countries: it’s still in your geopolitical interests to have countries who aren’t allies using your gear - not just for the money - but because it means you already know their weaknesses and you can sell them nerfed “export editions” to ensure you have technical superiority and to lock them in to buying parts, accessories, training, and upgrades (and successors!) from your own nations’ defence contractors and you can saturate a market that your geopolitical rivals (Russia, PRC, Iran, etc) would otherwise have access to, thus weakening their sphere-of-influence.

For a recent example of it going wrong, see the S-400 sale to Turkey.

Arms sales are an ugly thing - but if NATO states didn’t sell arms to Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, etc what would the alternative be?

> Arms sales are an ugly thing - but if NATO states didn’t sell arms to Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, etc what would the alternative be?

Education and health care?

> Education and health care?

I wish - I really do :/

When countries set their budgets for the year - they'll set aside, say, 15% for defense - if their DoD reports to the cabinet that none of the superpowers will sell them new toys then that government's cabinet is not going to suddenly craft a new budget and divert that money that would have gone to new fighter-planes or small-arms to other civilian areas - that money will certainly stay with their military who will find some creative use for it.

...and that's the best-case scenario - for a country that isn't expecting hostilities.

What I meant by that was that if NATO doesn't sell to a third-world (using the strict/classical definition of "third-world") nation who is looking to buy arms then a rival power or superpower will - they may even give-away some amount of arms gratis to sweeten the deal and to "thank" the country for leaving or even reconsidering the NATO/OEDC sphere-of-influence - obviously Russia isn't the Soviet Union and they don't have the same expansionist goals, but I believe we're seeing the PRC making its moves. The PRC hasn't yet fired-up its export economy for defence gear yet - but I believe it's inevitable.

I stress that I don't want to start-up any Sinophobic sentiment - but what I'm seeing the PRC do is exactly the same thing I'd expect to see from any rising superpower looking to preserve their unending explosive economic growth... history doesn't exactly repeat itelf, but it often rhymes: the PRC wants influence, apparently to benefit itself (and I am concerned about the signs of Han ethnonationalism being the motivation behind their foreign and domestic policy objectives - and the PRC doesn't stand for the same principles I do) - I'm concerned where it will end-up. So if it means having to sell arms to countries (as part of an socio-economic-military package) to keep them in NATO+OEDC (which _generally_ value the things that I value) with the view of keeping them out of the PRC's SoI then that's something I'll have to accept.

I would argue that Russia very much has expansionist goals. I used to vacation in the Crimea as a kid with my family. Suddenly it wasn’t a part of Ukraine anymore a couple of decades later. Putin very much seems to want to put the USSR back together and I can’t see that stopping anytime soon.

Right - but I understand capturing Crimea was about securing access to the Black Sea before Ukraine eventually joins the EU or NATO. I feel it was a long-term strategic goal rather then an ideological or nationalistic goal.

When I think of the SU’s expansionist goals I think of Seven Days to the Rhine rather than territorial gains of convenience - so I apologise for being vague in my original comment.

I know the same argument applies to the PRC: their occupation of the South China Sea is opportunistic and strategic and so is more comparable to Crimea - it’s not like China is invading Vietnam or South Korea with intent to annex them.

> seems to want to put the USSR back together and I can’t see that stopping anytime soon

The USSR is dead and gone and no one in power in Russia wants it back, save for pensioners who had a better deal back then.

Putin wants the Russian Empire back, which held Poland, the Ukraine, most of the Baltics, etc.

Why be a Premier when you can be a Tzar?

In general, no; we sell a lot of equipment to countries that we might otherwise be protecting with our own hardware and personnel at great cost. Selling the equipment is cheaper.

It is weird that we sell F-15s to Saudi Arabia.

The prince's checks cash, but they're dilettantes when it comes to warfighting. So no worries.

[1] Iraq 1 & 2

[2] Yemen

It is worrying if you're, say, an avionics SWE in that industry. I could realistically see myself working on military tech with the expectation and understanding that they would be deployed (i.e. will kill people) with goals that I support in some way. I'd be mortified if I learned that weapons I worked on were being used the way I hear Saudi Arabia is using them - it's enough to make me want to preemptively sabotage my own work if I was working in that industry :/

No one at LockMart, Boeing, Northrop or whomever makes bombs today is losing any sleep over it anymore than all those Linux contributors here who made the NSA’s or Facebooks infrastructure be the best it can be.

There are differences between being a general contributor to Linux vs. intentionally working on deterrent systems (strategic nuclear weapons systems) vs. working on "regular" munitions and weapon systems though.

Simple economics of keeping the defense industry employed when they're not producing the equipment you need and doing the R&D for future needs. And you don't just want them on a retainer as workers' skills will lapse.

Also the jets sold overseas are generally "export" quality and have downgraded features or require embedded expertise to maintain.

That's what I was getting at. Dogfighting ("that aspect") isn't all that useful for the US.

I don’t think that’s quite true. In a post Cold War world, the assumption is that it’s pointless to engage NATO forces in air-to-air combat due to the level of capability.

That calculus is different where combatants are more closely matched (e.g. India and Pakistan), or it may change as opponents improve their capabilities.

Just seems like a lot of time and money when spending less would just mean losing more (probably much cheaper) aircraft before you get air superiority.

how is more, cheaper planes supposed to cost less ?

The amount we spend to have "the best", per aircraft, is exponentially higher than what "good enough" would be. And not just purchase price. Training, maintenance, longevity of the platform, etc.

Cost vs effectiveness isn’t linear though. An air superiority jet that’s far more advanced and expensive isn’t just a bit more effective, it utterly dominates cheaper less effective opponents.

Also per unit costs are misleading. You can’t easily quadruple Or 10x your number of air bases, number of trained pilots and air crew, number of aircraft carriers to carry all your cheap and cheerful swarm fighters.

A lot of fast jet economics is driven by getting maximum utility out of deployment capacity and support infrastructure that is itself irreducibly expensive.

Ever heard about artillery? Or even rocket artillery?

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