It's a "good deal" for both sides.
Finland will be an asset for NATO, not a cost. We already have a credible NATO compatible military. We just don't have nukes, and in wartime materiel replenishment would be a problem.
https://www.ft.com/content/e85825af-5172-44c4-9662-f7ceca40e...
Also Finland just bough 64 F-35:s - as a Finnish tax payer for US industry - you are welcome.
64 F-35 at my calculations comes at approximately 5 Billion dollars, this is excluding spare parts and training. Finland military complete spending/defense budget for 2019 was $3.97B.
Edit: Actually it seems my calculations where off by 50%. This will cost you 10 Billion...
"Audit clears Finnish F-35 buy amid rising spending on pandemic, Ukraine"
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/03/28/audit-c...
Source: https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/the-lockheed-martin-f-35a-lig...
Finnish air-force is quite professional and skilled in what it does.
As a software geek I presume they spent the money wisely and with sufficient knowledge of what they are doing. Norway has 24 F-35:s in operation so if there were obvious deficiencies those would likely have been heard over the grapevine as nordic forces are quite close.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-...
How are you qualifying whether or not this system is proven?
The reality is that the fight was not fair for the F16 that was loaded with two external fuel tanks, probably to make sure there was no way it could win.
The latest arguments are the F35 did not have yet all the latest software, but for me it's telling the fight was not re-staged again...
Can you describe what you mean by this? Are you suggesting that no F-35 has ever been used in combat operations?
> when trying to do a dogfight with a F16 lost
What's your source for this?
> but for me it's telling the fight was not re-staged again...
Be careful, we're getting close to sounding conspiratorial and we want to make sure to avoid that, because we can't have a discussion at that point.
Yes. Complete zero air superiority combat missions as with the exception of bombing a few ISIS tunnels. But as this article from 2021 mentions, its not combat if the enemy can't shoot back.
"...The United States has been at war continuously since Sept. 11, 2001, yet the F-35 has flown zero combat missions. Zero. When I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, we would say: “That dog don’t hunt.” Perhaps sensitive to the F-35’s disgraceful war record, in 2018 the Pentagon sent a few on missions in Afghanistan and Iraq to notch up combat cred. Never mind that their help comes 15 years too late; the super-expensive F-35 was not designed to take out a weapons cache or a terrorist on a moped. Also, as any grunt will tell you, it’s not “combat” if the enemy can’t shoot back. If engine failure is the biggest threat to survival, then the F-35 might as well be flying over Kansas..."
"The F-35 tells everything that’s broken in the Pentagon" https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/542412-the-f-3...
> when trying to do a dogfight with a F16 lost > What's your source for this?
My source are US F35 pilots...Note how somebody tried to undermine the F16 ( An airplane from the 80's) in the test
"Test Pilot Admits the F-35 Can’t Dogfight" https://warisboring.com/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-can-t-dog...
"...The F-35 was flying “clean,” with no weapons in its bomb bay or under its wings and fuselage. The F-16, by contrast, was hauling two bulky underwing drop tanks, putting the older jet at an aerodynamic disadvantage..."
"...But the JSF’s advantage didn’t actually help in the end. The stealth fighter proved too sluggish to reliably defeat the F-16, even with the F-16 lugging extra fuel tanks. “Even with the limited F-16 target configuration, the F-35A remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement,” the pilot reported..."
"And when the pilot of the F-16 turned the tables on the F-35, maneuvering to put the stealth plane in his own gunsight, the JSF jockey found he couldn’t maneuver out of the way, owing to a “lack of nose rate.”"
"...The F-35 pilot came right out and said it — if you’re flying a JSF, there’s no point in trying to get into a sustained, close turning battle with another fighter. “There were not compelling reasons to fight in this region.” God help you if the enemy surprises you and you have no choice but to turn..."
> Be careful, we're getting close to sounding conspiratorial and we want to make sure to avoid that, because we can't have a discussion at that point.
Did they re-stage the fight? No
I provided my sources. Yeah...very conspiratorial...
As I said, you are approaching that with this idea that the F-35 is this big cover-up. It can't "fight", etc. etc. and I just do not have any interest in treading water near that discussion. It's not at all interesting or valuable in any way.
Anyway:
> Yes. Complete zero air superiority combat missions as with the exception of bombing a few ISIS tunnels. But as this article from 2021 mentions, its not combat if the enemy can't shoot back.
> "...The United States has been at war continuously since Sept. 11, 2001, yet the F-35 has flown zero combat missions. Zero. When I was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, we would say: “That dog don’t hunt.” Perhaps sensitive to the F-35’s disgraceful war record, in 2018 the Pentagon sent a few on missions in Afghanistan and Iraq to notch up combat cred. Never mind that their help comes 15 years too late; the super-expensive F-35 was not designed to take out a weapons cache or a terrorist on a moped. Also, as any grunt will tell you, it’s not “combat” if the enemy can’t shoot back. If engine failure is the biggest threat to survival, then the F-35 might as well be flying over Kansas..."
Just because the F-35 hasn't flown an air-to-air combat mission doesn't mean that it hasn't been involved in combat. You're misunderstanding the role of the aircraft here and defining combat in such a way that unless there's an exact engagement that fits your criteria it can't possible be combat. That's not how anyone in the military actually understands combat. It's not binary, but a matter of degrees.
So not only has the F-35 flown combat missions, the missions it has flown which haven't been dogfights are exactly the kind of missions it was designed for. It's a multi-role fighter, there are different variants for different purposes, including battlefield C&C and target identification where the F-35 isn't even expected to engage but instead use sensors and identify enemy aircraft.
> My source are US F35 pilots...Note how somebody tried to undermine the F16 ( And airplane from the 80's) in the test
That doesn't make anyone an expert. I'm a military veteran - I just have an opinion on the systems I use. It's still an anecdote. Anyway here's another anecdote which contradicts your anecdotes.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/remember-f-16-killed-...
"“I was at Edwards Air Force Base when the test pilots were there and they were writing that original report. It’s been the narrative ever since and I want to say a few things about that. . . . First of all, it should be noted the aircraft (F-35) was in its infancy stages and we were still just trying to learn how to fly the airplane,” Chris “Worm” Spinelli, an F-35 test pilot for Lockheed Martin, told the National Interest. “The entire CLAW [Flight Control Laws] hadn’t been delivered yet so the guys hadn’t really developed tactics, techniques, and procedures, etc. So to say that the F-35 can’t Basic Flight Maneuver [a term for dogfight], I think, is a gross overstatement. Honestly, you know I think it would be quite eye-opening to see an F-35 and an F-16 in a BFM engagement, depending on how it was managed. Certainly, the F-35 has some advantages that the F-16 does not, particularly in its helmet integration, along with its advanced weapons, which are a lot more beneficial in platforms like the F-22 or F-35.”"
The problem here is that you are thinking about aircraft in conventional terms. To the author and this pilot's point, the F-35's goal is to not even engage in a dogfight. It's like arguing that an Army Ranger is a crappy soldier because they can't beat a samurai 1-1. Can a dogfight happen? Sure. But you shoot from far away and the samurai doesn't even know what hit them.
> Did they re-stage the fight? No
Do you know of every single thing that the US military does? Do they publish all reports 100% accurately? Maybe they're publishing info like this so that rival forces feel secure in not upgrading their aircraft? There's no value in re-staging this exact scenario.
tl;dr you are implying that these is this big cover-up and the F-35 can't "beat" a 40+ year old platform and all of this stuff and basing it off of, frankly, no real evidence. You don't know what you're talking about. I don't really know either, but I'm not making strong claims here.
The article you posted was written as a first person account, by a non military Pilot, ex-FoxNews reporter, ex-CNN reporter, ex-Pentagon procurement expert. I quoted the actual F-35 pilot involved in the dogfight with the F-16.
The overall F-35 program is bigger than the PIB of some countries, so from the beginning when the bad news started to come up, there was a strong incentive to present the program on a certain way.
"U.S. Air Force instructs airmen on exactly how to praise the F-35": https://fortune.com/2015/09/25/air-force-f-35/
I think by now the US Air Force already understood the program is a failure.
"The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed": https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-...
Being incorrect or even inflammatory is not a crime. Being unable to voice your opinion just because it makes other people go "yuck" when they hear them is not something I would like to promote or support.
Regarding the nick, my guess is that the author opinions have been controversial for some time, and they probably were banned for voicing them before. After a third time I can see myself making an account with similar name - at least if I was stubborn enough to try again.
Downvote the GP and ignore them all you want - you can fold their comment along with the whole subtree below it - but don't flag the posts. As you can see, if you bothered to read, there's a lot of fact-based refutations offered by other users in this subthread. These are better weapons against disinformation (if it's that) than pretending people believing that disinformation don't exist, and moving them out of sight, and out of mind.
To be honest, I wouldn't be writing this if it was a few weeks ago. I probably wouldn't even have bothered with vouching, and definitely wouldn't spent time reviewing the comment history. I'm lazy, after all. Unfortunately, someone here linked an essay[1] by pg and it changed my mind. We need more, not less, incorrect and inflammatory voices, because sometimes, someone from the flock of crooks actually is right. And we all lose if they're right but keep it to themselves.
> I'm just tired of the USA paying for everything when we don't have the money.
Which seems to be one of the things that made the previous President the President.
I do believe Trump was correct to criticize the lack of defense spending by many NATO countries and I too think Europeans should largely defend themselves. Personally I favor a multi polar world and would like the U.S. to retreat so to speak.
And I want to emphasize DEFENSE. Not "invade other countries in trillion dollar regime change operations". It was US Congress that signed off on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
You should note that even Trump held Finland as a counterexample to European NATO countries that don't pull their own weight.
Finland is not a country that spends all it's money on social programs and doesn't have a military. Instead, we still have mandatory male conscription, and a very well-armed reserve.
Historically, we have trusted our defense in the principle of being strong enough that even if we knew that the Soviets/Russians could eventually beat us, the costs we could inflict on them would massively outweigh any possible benefit from conquering us. This no longer works because in Ukraine Putin has shown that he does not do cost/benefit analysis for his foreign policy.
My personal view on the matter is that I support an imperial retreat by the U.S. The EU needs to listen more to the Baltics regarding defense and foreign policy.
That being said, I understand the american feelings about this, as a lot of stuff have had the wrong priorities in the US for a long time, which I would argue is an internal matter and nothing to do with NATO (or its members).
/offtopic
I support a more isolationist U.S. policy. It’s time for America to engage in an imperial retreat.
It does not do it for free. It gets many benefits from "the rest of the world". Like buying US debt, trading oil in US dollars, access to cheap labor, bigger market etc. etc. Nothing of what it does is "free". This giant war spending also helps them to bomb other countries into oblivion when they feel like.
The people who whine about NATO members "not paying enough" seem to think all the other NATO countries have got rid of their armies and are defended only by US troops permanently stationed there. That's not how it works: They all have their own defense forces. Trump was whining that those are not big enough (and he was probably even [at least mainly] right there), but that just means that if there is a war in any NATO country, it will only be able to do "too small a part" in its own defense, and the other ones (yes, given their size, mainly the USA) will have to help more than they otherwise would. But until that happens, this "missing money" doesn't actually come out of any US budget; it's just not being spent at all.
For once, not even "just another one of Trump's lies", but certainly a huge over-simplification by / for the more naïve of his followers.
Some sized and equipped military force is required for a credible NATO defense from Russia.
The origins of that force's components is a zero sum game. If they don't come from one country, they must come from another.
The US currently spends ~3.5% of GDP on its military. The EU (in total) spends ~1.6%. I believe the UK is at ~2.5%. The NATO target is 2% of GDP. See specifically, graphs 2-4: https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2021/6/pd...
If the US spent less, it's possible Europeans would not choose to make up the difference. But if they didn't, they'd certainly be less secure.
It's a complicated topic, but the idea that the US is paying for more European defense than Europeans is well-supported.
(Fyi Not American.) That seems wrong, because America does already spend so much on their Military budget to have a 'preventative' presence plus standing force ready to respond. They spend each year keeping that force built, trained, operating etc .. regardless of if it's used.
That seems pretty obvious too, I don't know if your argument was made in good faith?
That's like saying a 4WD SUV, which is much heavier because it can in theory go off road at any time, doesn't burn any extra fuel if you never take it off road. Maintaining the capability to send a huge expeditionary force to Europe at any time is mind-bendingly expensive.
>> Trump was whining that those are not big enough (and he was probably even [at least mainly] right there)
If downvotes did not affect the visibility and were called "disagree" it would be fair. Instead they serve as a mob's club in my opinion.
Ukraine is also suffering a lot from this war, even if they don't mention it much. They will feel a lot of pressure to accept a smaller Ukraine in exchange for peace.
So instead, unless Ukraine acceeds to their demands, they will get more and more bloody and bomb it to the ground. If that is the only course of action afforded to them, that is what they will do - as they have done in Afghanistan and Chechnya before.
This is monstrous and disturbing, but doing otherwise is seen as an existential threat to Russia. They have already shown they lack the power to pose any kind of threat to NATO (beyond nukes of course), so their only hope is to go all in on this.
Consequently, he must feel as though a public mobilization would have a higher risk (public opinion?) than reward (additional military manpower?).
In lieu of an influx of manpower, the existing Russian forces seem destined to grind down over time, both in terms of personnel and materiel.
IMO, he annexes Kherson-Crimea-Mariupol-Donbas, and calls it a victory.
Unfortunately, Kherson is still semi-resistant, Mariupol still (somehow!!) has active defenders, and ~1/3 of Donbas is still under Ukrainian control.
Donbas also has the misfortune of being an explicitly delineated area... so there's less wiggle room to redefine it as the portions already under Russian control.
And it's unclear that the Ukrainians would accept the above under any terms. Maybe "give us this and the rest of the country can join NATO"? But Kherson & Mariupol seem huge sticking points.
So the most likely outcome is that the war grinds on, with Russia attempting to achieve the above goals, Ukraine continuing to stubbornly resist (with NATO armaments and supply), and Russia continues to launch long-range strikes against western Ukrainian industry to increase pressure for peace. Which is to say, ugly.
> How much would it cost to continuously occupy a country of 48 million largely hostile people
If Russia limits the territorial acquisition to Russian-speaking regions, they'll be fine. Minorities are almost always strongly in support of unification with their nation-state. Some historical examples - 77% of Sudeten Germans voted for Nazi Sudetendeutsche Partei. 99.7% of Austrians voted for unification with Germany in 1938 referendum. 95.6% of Crimeans voted for unification with Russia. 95.7% of Cypriots voted for unification with Greece in 1950
And above all, right-wing kooks, useful idiots, and outright Putler trolls. Quite a few of the people you mention also seem to belong to at least one of these categories.
> Notice who is pushing the narrative of Russia bogged down - journalists, politicians and their nominees, economists, and people with an active career in the military.
> There are also some dissidents in the West pushing the opposite narrative - ex-marine, retired intelligence officer
> Which group knows more about how a modern war is waged?
Ahem...
> Which group has a better track record so far?
Well, not the ones who said "This will be over in less than a week!" eleven weeks ago.
They are strictly focusing on preventing any greater expansion than what happened prior to the invasion.
There are arguments that Mariupol and maybe even Kherson have a relatively large pro-Russian population compared to other parts but I still believe they want to protect them regardless since they aren’t nearly as large as the more eastern parts and it blocks access to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea ports.
Source?
This is simply not the case, their is intense fighting in the Donbas region by both UA and Foreign legions, and places like Bucha and Kharkiv are all on the East and are all subject to the indiscriminate shelling of residential areas of mainly Ethic Russian Ukrainian citizens in what are some of the worst crimes against of Humanity seen since maybe the Croatian-Serbian conflict.
These places may not be as nationalistic as Lviv, very few places are in fact, but it would be absolutely foolish to say that considering this [0] was just released last month which specifically states it's intention to de-occucpy Crimea from Russia.
And after what is seen in Bucha, Irpin, Kharviv, Mariupol etc... there are no Russian speaking regions who think they are going to be spared from the indiscriminate and needless death they have seen of women, children, men. They now see them for the violent murderers that they are. Those that remained probably left for Russia.
Even the dissenters posting on social media are being tracked down by the Ukrainian military and being arrested/detained which honestly is fucking terrifying, but consistent with it's actual intended use--State surveillance.
This isn't 2014 anymore, where it was mainly the Azov holding off things in the Donbas against Russian sponsored separatists and sympathizers, things have drastically changed and while I doubt loyalty is 100% to he Ukrainian government it's really crazy how united that country has gotten since the invasion. I had mixed feelings of Azov because of how they violently dealt with Russian-leaning supporters back in 2014, but after what they've done in Mariupol it goes to show that it's not something they tolerate any longer. They sacrificed themselves in order to protect them in the steel mill and are bravely still the only thing left from total Russian occupation of Mariupol.
People around here don't know this but Bitcoiners were some of the first non Government affiliated volunteers in Ukraine to help back in 2013 during the Maidan Revolution and then 2014 for the war in the Donbas. This is where our technology got battle tested for real, hence why it has played such a pivotal role in distribution for funds when the Ukrainian Central Bank suspended withdraws of UAH on the day of the invasion just as it did during the capital controls and hyper inflation in 2013/14.
I won't go into a tirade about it, but this is why many of us Bitcoiners get so upset when we hear some misinformed arm-chair coder in the comfort of his apartment in SV tells us why 'bitcoin doesn't matter, no one uses it' type diatribes. It's a waste of my time but all it's all there for people to see that it was critical in both 2014 and 2022 to support Ukraine.
And the fact that you can make such blatantly misinformed statements reflects the level of ignorance on all of the aforementioned topics.
Also, from your wider comment, by the way you phrased it, I can't quite tell who you're saying is shelling ethnically Russian men, women and children in these areas a crime against humanity, the Ukrainian military or the Russians?
Start here [0], this discusses BTC involvement in the Maidan Revolution, and then the come back alive campaign with the Azov in the Donbas region in 2014, and then touches on the Government backed initiative by the Ukrainian Ministry of digital reform in '22. Ultimately, the Zelensky government backed the creation of United24 with BTC at it's core.
It's worth doing your own research, I can assure you it's really worth your time to see how effective open source technology can boot-strap itself so quickly in conflict zones. Ultimately, it's a testament of Human ingenuity and perseverance in some of the most daunting situations.
> Also, from your wider comment, by the way you phrased it, I can't quite tell who you're saying is shelling ethnically Russian men, women and children in these areas a crime against humanity, the Ukrainian military or the Russians?
Sorry?
Even if you were completely lost by what I wrote, are you seriously not aware of what is happening in Crimea, Kharkiv, Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol? It's Russians killing other Ethnic Russians on the Eastern and Southern parts of Ukraine; then turning around and saying it's Ukrainians killing their own citizens as we see Russian soldiers shell, loot, steal, rape, murder all over Ukraine without any hesitation or regard for Human life.
0: https://www.elliptic.co/blog/ukrainians-turn-to-bitcoin-to-c...
It's not like the rest of the world is forcing USA to spend so much on military. Apparently USA just wants to be military superpower.
>We all know Russia will win.
I don't. There is no military victory in sight for Russia as long as supplies keep flowing to Ukraine. Putin can't back up but someone else can, even if they shared Putin's ideology because they can blame Putin for failure. War ends after Putin is displaced or dies.
One. Finland has not been phoning it in. There's a reason Russia has not invaded Finland after they we pushed the fuckers back during WW II. This is not remotely a case of the USA taking care of Finland's defense against russia. I invite you to participate in some of our joint military exercises to find out how things work over here.
Two. Russia cannot win. It has become painfully clear that their outdated mob-run cleptocracy of untrained looters cannot possibly win any type of war. Even with Russia's military doctrine where “send more men” is the main strategy, they cannot win. The math is clear. Russia simply does not have the power to win in any meaningful way.