Hacker News Reader

Comment by elevaet | Hacker News Reader

Is it a better strategy to have your combat opponent underestimate, or overestimate your specs?

There's an interesting example of exactly this in missile development. Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain, and as a result had a more advanced design for a while.

Similar story with the Buran: they over-estimated the Space Shuttle's military capabilities on the assumption that the true intended mission profiles were being hushed up and ended up with a fully automated exoatmospheric nuclear bomber.

So it's a dodgy strategy if it's intentional: you've got to bet that your opponent will run out of cash before they can field the superweapons you've made them build; or that once built they won't be able to afford enough of them to make a difference.

The F-15 was way ahead of any other fighter jet for years because someone managed to convince whoever was paying that the MiG-25 was a super plane (it really wasn’t)

And the MiG-25 itself was designed because the USSR was spooked by the XB-70 Valkyrie which was a supersonic strategic bomber that flew higher and faster than any existing Soviet interceptor.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyri...

The Valkyrie never was productionized and only 2 aircraft were ever built.

And sadly only one survives to this day due to an absolutely incredible mid air disaster during what was an otherwise “routine” photo op flight.

In case anyone is wondering, since it was a photo op flight, there's a photo of it shortly after the midair collision, missing a vert stabilizer. The fireball is the F-104 that contacted it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyri...

Apropos of nothing but F-4 Phantoms still look badass and gorgeous.

Y'all seeing a pattern here? I don't think it's intentional but our fears drive us to escalate and pour money into things to counter things that don't really exist in the ways that we fear.

And, I just want to stress here, the BILLIONS we pour into these weapons systems are billions that we don't spend on building highways, schools, etc. You know, the actually useful stuff that benefits the average citizen.

The US is flanked by two friendly neighbors and separated from our nearest peer adversaries by thousands of miles of ocean. Neither China or Russia has any ability to project significant assets with a blue water navy. Yet we're still spending 700B+ / yr on defense? We could defend US soil with a tiny fraction of that. Our entire military-industrial complex is a pure grift the likes of which the world has never seen.

The US Department of Defense is there not to defend US soil, as you state, but rather to defend US interests. And US has plenty of interests (which have a meaningful effect on bulk of US citizens) that require action on the other side of the oceans - USA is getting quite a better deal in terms of international trade and the global flow of wealth than it would if it would be isolationist and just defend its soil.

I remember this old quote:

" Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we build weapons that don't work to counter threats that don't exist. "

> Russia over-estimated the capabilities of a generation of the Sidewinder missile and built their equivalent to match what they thought it must contain

No. The K-13/AA-2 Atoll is a literal copy of an AIM-9 reverse-engineered from an example captured by the Chinese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-13_(missile)

He is talking about the Vymple R-73 which was meant to counter the capabilities of a project that got cancelled, but they thought has become classified.

Yep. I can neither remember nor find my copy of Ron Westrum's China Lake book to check which feature it was, but it was one of helmet-mounted targeting or thrust vectoring. I think it was the latter but wouldn't put money on it.

From the Art of War:

All warfare is based on deception.

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

Depends whether your goal is to get what you want without fighting, or to win a fight.

Getting what you want without fighting is winning the fight.

Both.

You want to make your opponent to vastly overestimate your power where you are in fact weak so they don't even try it and underestimate your clear advantages so if they get any funny ideas they'll get their ass kicked.

I think the goal is the specs are different enough to assume different capabilities.

Whether a gun fires faster or slower isn’t good or bad, it just drives how it’s used.

I'd guess it's always a weakness if you mispredict the other side's performance, whatever the circumstance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com