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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

Stingers aren't a critical part of the US military though. We go for air supremacy through fighters, Patriots, and NASAMs.

The Russian-Ukraine War, with no direct US involvement, is a weird edge case we weren't prepared for.

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But they are. In any remotely evenly matched conflict neither side will have air supremacy. Patriots and NASAMs can not kill things they can't see--against aircraft flying a treetop level their engagement range is very short. However, aircraft flying at treetop level are very vulnerable if they fly too close to a MANPAD launcher. Flight time will be a few seconds and the desired engagement is from behind--about your only chance of beating it is automated flare dispensers or anti-missile lasers (blinding the seeker, not actually killing the missile.) An aircraft that could fly home crippled from a marginal hit will still go in because the pilot has no altitude to trade for time.

Ukraine isn't an edge case, Ukraine is what you would expect from anything less than a turkey shoot. It's just we haven't been in anything other than a turkey shoot since the Stinger came out.

If you find yourself in a fair fight then you need to rethink your strategy.

If you're the attacker, then sure.

Currently, there is no air force in the world that will match the US. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to see a combination of aircraft that can match up.

The US Air Force is the largest one in the world. The second largest? The US Army. 4th largest? US Navy. I think the USMC is #7 or so.

That doesn't mean the US will have air supremacy in every situation or even air superiority, but it's unlikely to be close to even for long, if it ever is.

None of that airplanes, except perhaps a few very secret ones, is going to fight in Ukraine. As other comments explain, the important point is what air defense weapons can be sent.

That's not the point - if the United States is actively taking part in a war, which it is definitely not currently in Ukraine, we will have air superiority.

No, US did have air superiority, but not supremacy in Balkan operation.

Good, I'm glad you agree with me.

Not really. I meant that Balkan operation was nowhere even close in technological terms to the full-scale Russian invasion, supported by their most advanced air tech.

> ... despite a world-class air force’s best effort against a second-rate defense, the United States never gained air supremacy. High-value intelligence platforms such as the E-8 Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System were prohibited from flying over land where their sensors were most useful and instead had to stand off outside the threat region.

So during the Balkan conflict, Serbia was able to send up fighters to challenge the NATO air fleets? Nope. They had to rely (and did an exceptional job) on their SAM systems and radars.

I'm not doubting USA air superiority in any plausible war, but it doesn't matter because what's needed is vastly different: reinforcing Ukrainian air defense, without sending planes to fight.

A military that cannot send stingers to allies, right now, is objectively not very capable; focusing on air superiority might be the best choice after all, but it cannot be an excuse for late stingers.

You don't have to go back too far for Russia to be viewed as a legitimate military threat who could roll through europe. I wonder if there are anything other than turkeys for the us military to shoot.

This not really well supported by basic constraints, nor by history. On the constraints side, nukes alone preclude this possibility, but even against non-nuclear enemies - war against people that can (and do) fight back is extremely difficult, grueling, and brutal. And the outcome is never certain. Both the USSR and the USA lost to Afghanistan, the US lost to Vietnam and 'drew' against North Korea (with the backing of an at the time poorly developed China), Russia lost a war to Chechnya, and much more.

Nuclear powers feared conflict between each other not because one or the other's conventional army (or arms) were superpowered, but because it dramatically increased the chances of a conflict escalating to the nuclear level - which could well be the end of both civilizations, if not the better part of the entire human species.

It is debatable whether USSR has lost to Afghanistan because it left behind a functioning secular state which happened to outlive the USSR itself.

Any even matched conflict the US would get in is a shooting war with a nuclear power, which is the very last thing that anyone wants.

Anyone planning for that war needs to stop whatever the hell they are doing and start planning for how to avoid it instead.

Is there any air war that the USAF would not be in a turkey shoot that is not a direct war against China? Let's be realistic here... The US expects to have full air supremacy against most any adversary. They certainly would against Russia. Despite Russia having a few exceptional air superiority fighers. They're only "as good or worse" as the best American equivalents and they might have one tenth as many as the US does.

Russia denies air supremacy with a spectrum of anti air defences, not air superiority fighters.

IIRC Russia is at 99% air defence effectiveness vs the start of the Ukraine war; i.e. it has not been materially degraded at all, despite HARM anti-radar missiles and so forth given to Ukraine.

I meant vs the USAF, with modern stealth multi role jets such as the F35. We can target their anti-air for long range GMLRS artillery / precision artillery like Excalibur, or with cruise missiles like tomahawks. The SEAD / DEAD missions seem quite appropriate for F35s.

Though I don’t full agree with Russia only using ground based air defense as the few newer generation jets Russia have are shooting down a lot of Ukrainian jets. They fly higher, faster, and can both lock and engage Ukrainian jets before the Ukrainian have even detected them.

Well, to be fair the the Ukrainians, they're flying old old Flankers and Fulcrums. Compared to Su-35 etc, it's no contest.

I think that the USAF will have its hands full overcoming Russia's A2AD environment, assuming it's set up and competently managed. The range on S300/S400 makes it hard to use anything other than Tomahawks and stealth aircraft to target. It definitely won't be like Baghdad during DS.

In the first 48 hours of the Afghanistan war, a tomahawk was launched, on average, every 12 seconds. To pivot back to near peer threats like china, the US Marine Corps now has a ground based tomahawk launcher[1] they can setup on small islands. Also, the US has a crapload more stealth aircraft than the Russians and the maintenance is actually performed on them.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/first-marine-corps-tom...

You're seriously comparing the air defense capability of Afghanistan against a near peer? I love the Tomahawk, and I think it still has some use until LRSO comes into inventory in significant numbers, but I think it's going to struggle against China if it comes to that. Even with saturation attacks, you'll have to have a lot of luck and careful planning to overwhelm China's A2AD.

HARM are operating at basically few percent of their capabilities, due to

- old C versions from early 90s - only working on pre-programmed target mode - no targeting pods like AN/ASQ-213

Indeed. Very little of what the US has sent Ukraine is the latest and greatest, though I’d expect that to change in the near term future.

Nobody's realistically trying to take down the Russian air defense network because they're not conducting strikes into Russian territory.

They would take down short range AA if they could because it would permit the use of ground attack aircraft.

While your comment could be true, if it were phrased as a hypothetical, there isn't anything that could bring an "evenly matched conflict" to the US. The US military capability is literally approaching two orders of magnitude greater than almost everything else on the planet.

And nobody flies aircraft at "treetop level", with the possible exception of the A10 which is designed to and actually has flown home successfully after a missile hit. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/a-10-pilot-explains-how-the-...

Also there is no such thing as a "MANPAD", it's not a plural -- it means "Man-portable air-defense system".

IIRC, at least on the original Stinger, the heat signature of the trees and other objects on the horizon confuses the seeker head so you need a clear shot. You also need the target to be a certain distance away, otherwise the rocket can't maneuver toward it. Something close and literally at treetop level might not be an ideal target.

> And nobody flies aircraft at "treetop level", with the possible exception of the A10...

Helicopters fly this low all the time.

not where this kind of threat exists.

Stingers are just a symptom of the bigger problem like I mentioned, US also has shortages in artillery, Javelins, rockets, and many other things

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-pric...

https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages

this whole situation shows deep issues in how the US military does procurement and also basic forecasting/planning

I don’t disagree that it shows these issues, but identifying these empirically is one of the reasons the US likes to constantly inject itself into international conflict.

It's a symptom of the US itself having no intention nor need of fighting a very protracted war in the style of WW1 utilizing artillery.

The US only has a shortage of Javelins because they have sent so many into Ukraine. In the past half a century the US hasn't had to supply a military conflict as it has with Ukraine v Russia, and almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion. The notion of literally planning for every possibility is absurd, and if the US military tries to do that regarding a budget, it'll just get that much more flak for spending policies.

Armchair Internet users will proclaim the US military should know all and see all and know exactly how many Javelins it will need based on knowing every single conflict that will happen before it happens. And if they make a mistake, and spend a lot of money on weapons they don't need, then they must be attacked for the ridiculous spending. The armchair crowd can't have it both ways.

> almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion

I’m surprised by this. There were articles and discussions on it for years. The water supply to Crimea was sore point. In the immediate lead up to war the troop build ups were in the news.

We in the eastern Europe were screaming about Russian plans for invasions for at least a decade, and were brushed off because grownups knew better.

Weird edge case? Nonsense, proxy wars are the norm. Just because Stingers aren't a critical part of the US military doesn't mean you throw away the documentation and specification. Any military procurement should include reference material on the entire manufacturing pipeline as part of the deliverables - the manufacturer can keep the rights but military assets are too important to risk permanent loss.

Yup, all documentation and tooling should be retained except when specifically ordered otherwise by the DOD. (I'm thinking of the F-14 where they deliberately destroyed the ability to maintain them when they were retired because they wanted to ensure Iran couldn't maintain theirs.)

The article doesn't say anything about the documentations and specs being destroyed, just that the tooling etc will need to be dusted off and new workers trained. The biggest issue is legacy chips and electronics that are no longer made. These will need to be replaced and the Stinger basically redesigned with a new seeker head.

Keeping this production line hot would be extremely expensive, and since none of our allies were buying any and the US military expects to have air superiority/supremacy in any conflict they fight, this is a tempest in a teapot.

Yup. The US uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin for portable antiarmor, and it's still in production.

If the US Army or Marines needs to defend against air attack, they expect to have their own air support available.

And can they produce "fighters, Patriots, and NASAMs" fast enough when they run out of them?

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