Comment by poof131 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by poof131 | Hacker News Reader

Too funny, I went through flight school with Colin. Great guy and glad to see he picked up command but disagree with him on the benefits of BFM and the true value of manned fighter jets over the coming decades. The US military is caught between two wars. One, against opponents who can’t really hit back where fighter jets are overkill. Better off with AC-130s and the like. The other against opponents who can hit back, where the battle will be won or lost in space, cyber, economically, and possibly through nuclear warfare. Even with regards to fighters, the amount of money spent on BFM is really a boondoggle. It’s like spending billions training the infantry to knife fight. It’s not Vietnam and the last gunfighter with regards to missiles and targeting. Is not the AIM-9X targeting AI itself?

A great book that rings more true than ever talks about the obsolescence of weapons systems. I believe it was Freedman[1] A key thesis is that as a predominant weapon system becomes more vulnerable, it becomes more expensive, as it’s burdened with more defensive measures to survive from cheaper more expendable systems. In World War 2 the canonical example was the battle ship and the aircraft. Now it’s the fighter jet and the missile (or drone) etc. Just look at the ridiculous state of the JSF.

Manned missile trucks are valuable for countering electronic attack, but not dogfighting. Still, practice dogfighting is one of the most fun things you can do, too bad it hasn’t really been applicable since Vietnam. This post from the other day reminded me how fun it is and seems like a great fit for VR.[2] Onward last Samurais! Just try not to spend all the taxpayers money on the way out.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Future-War-History-Lawrence-Freedman-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24255191

I've been clocking in 10+ hours/wk dogfighting in VR with a decent HOTAS setup since quarantine. You're absolutely right about how fun it is. No other VR experience has been such a consistent draw for me. It's just an excellent place between a fast paced shooter and a strategy game. I love thinking about relative energy and the capabilities of the enemy plane and how they match up with mine in order to come up with an engagement strategy. I also love the tension as you identify a target and you're both trying to come into the engagement from a favorable position. It reminds me of match sprints in track cycling. Very much recommend it.

I started watching some DCS dogfights on YouTube because of the last MSFS post. It looks incredible. If I could afford it, I'd definitely buy a stick/throttle and try to get into it.

Particularly Growling Sidewinder has a lot of great videos and I can't stop watching them.

https://youtu.be/ziCQqmEllZo

A great analysis by Mover, a real pilot and DCS player.

https://www.cwlemoine.com/about/

Do you do anything to deal with the motion sickness, or did you just never experience it?

I can play games where real-world motion matches in-game motion (Beat Saber, PokerStars VR, Superhot VR, Zombie Training Simulator, Space Pirate Trainer, etc.), but any sort of driving or flying makes me sick. Even games that make me use the controller to walk long distances make me dizzy and nauseous.

I love flying. For the first three weeks or so of consistently playing I would get pretty motion sick after about 30 minutes of playtime and near throwing up after 45. That's usually when I would stop and then I'd spend another half hour or so walking around the neighborhood to give me something to concentrate on other than the awful nausea.

Then one day I was flying, and then I was flying and then I was still flying 4 hours later with no sickness. It hasn't come back since.

The military understands this. The f35 is designed for long range kills.. not dog fighting.

But the ability to control the plane is the minimum capability of an AI. And in combat, controlling a plane includes the capability to deploy countermeasures and take evasive action to avoid getting shot down, and defend itself to stop an attack.

I doubt the purpose of this was to create a great dog fighter... but rather it was to prove it's minimum capabilities work so they can continue developing it to operate in more dangerous/common situations... like taking out ground assets in the initial wave; or adding it to existing drones so they can take some defensive measures automatically; etc.

Dogfight may happen again, see for instance : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WlTlhbYZcQ

And the analysis of this incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy16Bv14I-c

I mean an interesting question and to your point is: how have wars been won in the past decades - or not been won.

To me it seems that almost all wars of the past decades transformed into: “irrespective of your weapon superiority - it will all cumulate into asymmetric partisan wars that drag on for years and cannot be won”.

In the end it almost feels like “whoever drops more ordinances on the civil population to irrevocably break their morale may come out as a winner a bit more”.

How can wars be realistically be won today?

Thanks for the book reference.

Having read some some history, the obsolescence of weapons systems is indeed a cultural problem that people become unprepared for in the euphoria of advancements. Classic example being Syracuse vs Rome, where Rome was held back by the weapons of Archimedes only to be sacked after the Syracusans decided to have a party and left a gate open.

Are manned missile trucks even valuable for countering electronic attack? I'm thinking "no". A missile truck can definitely be AI'ed or controlled remotely. Perhaps only CAS can't be made unmanned.

Cost is a huge problem. We now have unmanned carrier launched refueling trucks that I bet are incredibly cheap. Make them a tad bigger, put missiles in them, and you have a super cheap replacement for the F-35. The F-35 can stick around in small numbers for when you really need a human, if you really need a human in the cockpit. Cost has to drive us to this.

The MQ-25 unmanned carrier launched tanker has a unit cost of about $180M. That's more expensive than many manned aircraft. It is in no way cheap.

Suspect that includes all the R&D amortized over the couple of vehicles that have been built. The actual device if it's ever fielded wouldn't be anywhere near that price.

No that's total expected program cost divided by the planned total of 72 aircraft, not just the first couple. These are extremely expensive machines no matter how you slice it.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/08/30/us-navy-selects...

I don't understand why people persist in the fantasy that removing pilots will make aircraft cheap. That doesn't align with reality. There are some cost savings but when evaluated on a full program lifecycle basis they are relatively small.

It’s 4 vehicles. That’s basically an R&D program, not a procurement.

They’re paying Boeing to learn how to build them.

Did you read the article? Expected program cost is $13B for 72 vehicles.

I must have misread something, but those numbers don't make any sense. That article must be misunderstanding what the contract actually is.

F18s cost only a little more than a third of that per unit.

I don't know about dogfights, but there's plenty of engagements with enemies who don't have much of a space or nuclear force, but fight jets are still not an overkill: https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/israel-has-taken...

You can conceptualize all you want about dog fights, the truth is nobody wants to be the pilot having fired all the missiles and having nothing left to engage the remaining enemy planes.

It's a bit like saying a soldier doesn't need a bayonet / combat knife. 99.99999% of the time yes, but would you bet YOUR life on it?

The question isn’t “do pilots want it”, it’s “does the taxpayer want it”?

I get the line of thought and the idea of inflated military budgets but I'm not sure your average Joe should get any say in whether a new weapons system should be funded or not. They have no military expertise and no concept of what might be necessary to win the next war. While I do think there needs to be more oversight over how budgets are allotted to military projects, it shouldn't be decided by "do taxpayers want to pay".

So, you're a fan of military juntas then? That's what you get when you remove a civilian guiding hand from military policymaking. I'll give you that civilians absolutely need to keep their nose out of the how, but guidance in terms of the what is absolutely essential. Otherwise you get the MacArthurs of the world calling the shots.

The military industrial complex is absolutely a beast that requires oversight and restraint. Just as the intelligence complex does. I wish more people understood and appreciated it. It doesn't need to be dismantled by a long shot necessarily, but BS needs to be called.

I'm sure there are civilian experts and they absolutely should be involved, as well as elected representatives who are (preferably) guided by experts. Your average citizen has no business chiming in.

Since there is military competition between countries, it’s more like, if we choose A and China chooses B, are we still at an advantage or will China overwhelm our superior trained manned fighters with lots of cheap drones?

How much of a chance do you have if you don't have missiles, but your enemy still has some? Isn't it better to just retreat?

If your enemy still has missiles and you proceed to give him ample time to shoot them at your tail while you peacefully retreat, you might regret the approach.

I know very little about air-to-air combat, but I had the impression that the effective range of missiles is such that you'd have a hard time reaching your enemy before they had ample time to fire at you.

> How much of a chance do you have if you don't have missiles, but your enemy still has some? Isn't it better to just retreat?

It probably depends on the situation and what you do. IIRC, missiles lose effectiveness at the kinds of short ranges where you'd use guns. In some situations, running might put you in a more vulnerable situation while closing to a gunfight might even things up.

If you are within a certain distance you can stay outside of the weapons engagement zone for missiles. Retreating at that point presents a target for a short range missile. Missiles are great in themselves because they force your enemy to stay out of your WEZ while you are slotting in for a guns kill.

If they try to extend out for a better turn rate you hit them with the missile. If they turn too hard they lose energy and you can gun them. The fights tend to end earlier because it's so much easier to make a mistake.

Also with missiles, countermeasures can be employed which are pretty effective. Can't fit much brain in a 40G missile that is mostly solid rocket and explosives. Missile warning systems and automatic countermeasures are remarkably effective. Not so much against 30mm

Having a cannon instead of nothing gives you possibilities, like having a Swiss army knife in a jungle survival scenario.

Yes you're probably going to die, but at least you are not a sitting duck.

They even give pilots a pistol or a sub-machine gun in case they eject over enemy territory. It's probably dead weight, but if it can save someone once, why not? I wouldn't go without it even if intellectually I know I'm not going to take down the whole enemy army with a 15 shots pistol.

> Just look at the ridiculous state of the JSF

A bit tangential but I'm curious. Can you enlighten me, or point me to where can I read more about it?

No shortage of criticisms -- literally "JSF problems" into google/bing/duckduckgo will find you plenty.

Also keep in mind that these are billion-dollar programs, so expect to get a lot of FUD and propaganda from the government contractors building them. I remember riding the DC Metro and rolling my eyes when I saw ads for the F-22 at Metro Center and Dupont Circle.

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