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Comment by trident5000 | Hacker News Reader

You cant seriously have a modern military without this so better to just get it done with rather than China (really any country) only have the tech.

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Well also if the US ends up in a scuffle with a super power, air superiority will more or less decide which conventional force achieves its objectives.

There's a joke dating from the Cold War.

Two Russian generals sipping coffee in Paris. One asks the other, "So who won the air war?"

It's an old joke. Some generals from Iraq may want to talk about how many tanks were left after the air war was lost.

One cannot easily discuss tanks in Iraq without mentioning the Battle of 73 Easting at least in passing. Superior armament, training, and tactics make a huge difference.

https://www.historynet.com/learned-battle-73-easting.htm

TL;DR: As part of that engagement, a troop of 9 US tanks and 12 APCs encountered one of Iraq's finest tank brigades. They destroyed ~50 Iraqi tanks, 25 APCs, 40 trucks and more in 23 minutes without taking any casualties.

> Superior armament, training, and tactics make a huge difference.

The Republican Guard was absurdly outmatched.

Re: training... arguably, the encounter occurred in the way it did due to (then) Captain McMaster's aggressive advancement leading to the necessity of ignoring regimental orders not to become decisively engaged.

What made the decisive difference was technology, specifically, infrared sighting and laser range-finders available to and used only by one side.

Can you explain this joke?

I believe the implication is that wars are won by taking and holding ground.

They're "sipping coffee in Paris" as in they've beaten NATO and occupied Continental Europe. They're asking "who won the air war?", with the implication that they don't really care because they won the part that mattered.

Thanks!

I think that is pretty narrow sighted. A new major world war could be won with viruses, bacteria, drones, small robots, hacking financial systems, space lazers, genetically enhancing your population for financial domination, etc.. Air superiority is possibly a factor in some possible versions of war, but the reality is that it mostly gives us an advantage that allows us to press our will upon lesser militaries. That doesn't mean it couldn't be the dominant factor, but I imagine a major war between any super powers would be so costly to human life (since we are so good at killing now), that alternatives to traditional means of takeover would probably be preferred.

Or may be the next world war will be won by a country that doesn't fight it.

China is building international super highways for trade, continent wide trade belts and inter-continent markets.

I don't think the US is lucky enough to get a war now. Countries will just maintain some minimum deterrence in the form of missile forces. So that they don't get out right invaded or sanctioned. Beyond that it will just be trade war and which country has citizens lined up to work 20 hour shifts. What makes all this so easily possible is we are not making new leap frog success in science(physics) anymore. Eventually engineering everywhere will catch up with science. In short every one can and will have weapons to deter invasions and sanctions.

The problem for west is not that a war will happen, but that it won't.

Every once in a while the world arrives at a paradigm change where everything changes. And no matter how good you are at the old game, it doesn't matter because the game has changed. We are likely at that place now.

You're failing to define what the objectives are. Wars have objectives, that's why people fight them.

The US and China have no ability to occupy each other's lands, nor interest in doing so. Neither do they benefit from out right destruction of infrastructure because that escalates to a nuclear conflict which wins no one anything.

The most plausible engagement is US intervention in the strait of Taiwan to thwart a Chinese invasion and occupation. And that war is essentially conventional: it results from US fleets being out of position and internal politics making it look like a good opportunity.

I'll have a go: obscene profits for arms traders; industrial activity for the hangers-on; corraling votes for the wartime polieticians.

Counterpoint: you don’t need a war for the arms industry to make a profit. What you really need is the potential for a war. Whether the armaments are fired, or lay dormant in storage for several decades makes no difference to the contractor because they are sold either way. As for votes, The last US president to start a war became very unpopular because of it.

Wouldn’t they sell quite a lot more if they were being used?

We’re talking governments, not consumers. The government can do all kinds of crazy stuff to contractors that economic theory doesn’t account for, such as dictating the amount of profit the contractor gets to make and mandating that the weapon system be manufactured by another company because of any number of reasons. A war, or any kind of emergency, can increase the odds of the government doing crazy stuff. It’s not good for a contractor when the government decides they should make 5% profit when the stock market that year is going up by 10%.

Having a large, old inventory of weapons the government maintains can be profitable for the contractor because they can sell support for those systems that no one else can. This support alone can employ hundreds of engineers and bring millions a year to a contractor. You can’t do that if the weapons are all fired.

This is all in service of keeping the government happy. The government, state department specifically, can decide which countries the contractor can export the weapon systems too. The set of countries the government will allow this for will be bigger if there is no conflict the government is involved in.

Defense contracting is a very counter intuitive business.

That depends on whether the air-defense laser research everyone's hyped up about produces something useful in the next few decades.

Sounds like our respective leaders are pitting us all against each other to farm us for the technology that enables our oppression.

sounds like the fundamental dilemma in existence, that an individual is a free agent in a prescriptive system. can businesses be free agents? certainly someone is excited about laser missile defense, and certainly the economy of ideas is in play.

While we’re at it we need to remove the stigma of working on this type of software. China and Russia are plowing full speed into this technology with their best engineers. We must encourage our bright engineers to work on this tech.

What will Russia and China donor they come out ahead with AI weapons? Whatever they want.

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