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Comment by skhr0680 | Hacker News Reader

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)

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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. "

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