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Nice. NASA and Airbus have both flown blended-wing unmanned test aircraft.

Not sure what role this serves for the USAF. It's a transport. Wider loads? Stealth?

The US has had total air superiority in every conflict since the Korean War. That's over. The Ukraine war makes it clear. Against a competent opponent, most of what flies will die. There are just too many man-portable and truck-mounted systems that can take down aircraft. Zipping over hostile territory in helicopters is pretty much out. Flying big, fat transports over contested territory is out. Anything that flies over hostile terrain had better be able to hide, evade, counter, and fight back.

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> The US has had total air superiority in every conflict since the Korean War. That's over. The Ukraine war makes it clear. Against a competent opponent, most of what flies will die.

Not sure how you work that out. The state that spent half a century focusing on air defence to take out the USAF hasn't even substantially reduced the pathetically small and outdated fixed wing capability of the Ukrainian air force, and neither side has done much damage to the other side's airborne logistics, which is where this would fit. It's not been a great war for helicopters, but neither this project nor the US fighter capability that their superiority rests on is going anywhere close to frontline portable air defence systems.

The Ukraine war doesn't show anything different from other wars in regards to air superiority. You think the US flew all their slow, vulnerable stuff over contested territory with lots of AA? No, they didn't and they don't. The Gulf War basically started with wiping out AA defenses. Establishing air superiority takes time and bombs. Ukraine simply doesn't have any of the equipment necessary to do it. Apparently neither does Russia, to the surprise of pretty much everybody. That has zero bearing on what the US/NATO is capable of.

> Not sure what role this serves for the USAF.

Long range anti-ship missile deployment over the Pacific. A design like this can cover large areas and deploy autonomous weapons from long range.

Weapon development of the US military is almost entirely focused on China and its growing fleet. There are several air launched anti-ship missile platforms under development right now, including swarm attack, stealth and hypersonic missiles. The US is looking for an efficient, long range, high endurance standoff bomber for these systems. It doesn't need stealth; they'll operate from behind air defenses. It needs high efficiency, large fuel capacity and large payload capacity.

And that is exactly what you're looking at here.

>There are several air launched anti-ship missile platforms under development right now

Specifically, Rapid Dragon, a rack that lets a C-130 (or any cargo aircraft with a big enough bay) drop a dozen JASSM and LRASM stealthy cruise missiles at a time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)

All of the above, you can’t wage an air-war without tankers, logistics, and large, antenna covered advanced warning and control aircraft (see the AWACS). It’s well known that the CCP has specifically targeted development of long-range air to air missiles so that they could target these types of aircraft behind the front line.

Unfortunately I’m less than optimistic about this particular program actually producing a functional aircraft. The company here is asking for way too little time and too little money to produce a full-sized manned demonstrator IMHO. Especially for a company that has no track record of actually producing full-scale, manned aircraft. It seems like they’re trying to get additional private investment to build their demonstrator but who knows.

Russia would fall like Iraq if we were to attack. Their ground-based anti-air would be hit as soon as even one missile is fired, every radar would be hit within minutes of powering on, their aircraft wiped out as soon as they were within range. With air supremacy we'd be able to fire a precision strike on every piece of active artillery and supply truck. They'd be left with nothing but men starving in trenches and running out of bullets, waiting for death as the sappers close in. It's a crying shame we don't send Ukraine even a tenth of our equipment.

The is the kind of delusional thinking that has NATO forcing Ukraine to use western strategy and then getting slaughtered for it.

The US has never defeated a peer army since WW2, in which the USSR did most of the work. Russia has fifth gen fighters, the S400, and very capable EW and artillery. To pretend they would roll over is pure fantasy.

They wouldn't roll over but they would get crushed. Our BVR, cyber, and stealth capabilities far exceed theirs.

In any case, we will never fight a hot war with a nuclear armed country ever again. Nuclear deterrence works, and the nuclear bomb has thankfully ended modern warfare between nuclear-armed countries.

The era of superpowers sending men off to die is over, at least between nuclear-armed countries (but not so much between a nuclear and non-nuclear country.)

There's no point in discussing this because no one is going to invade Russia. They have nuclear weapons. Even if they didn't, I'm not seeing anyone in the West edging for a war with them.

With this said, all that advanced tech and yet they're shitting their pants in Ukraine against old equipment. Something doesn't fit here.

Regarding training the new forces on western strategy, I'm not sure what else NATO countries could do. That's how they train their own forces. There was a failure to provide the resources (especially air ones) to put our tactics into practice, but NATO can't train Ukraine to fight like Russia/Ukraine/USSR...

And yet they struggle to take one of the poorest countries in Europe with a fraction of the population of the US. But I'm sure their dozen maybe kinda stealthy fighters with little training will be able take on literally hundreds of jets with competently trained pilots.

> struggle to take

I wonder if the couple hundred billion dollars we're sending there, along with "volunteers" that all seem to have CIA operator type resumes, are in any way connected to that.

This has been by far the most successful war-marketing campaign I've seen in my life though. Who would've thought that to sell left leaning/"progressive" people on a military conflict, all you need is social media heavy campaign memes (russian warship, ghost of Kiev etc) with google-translate Cyrillic typeface, and wrap everything in yellow and blue.

I wonder how the current support measures up to NATO's forces and the wartime production capabilities of its members. Iirc the support to Ukraine is a fraction of what the coalition employed in the first gulf war.

Ukraine used to be one of the most prolific black market military arms dealers.

We should absolutely avoid sending Ukraine any modern equipment. As soon as the war is over, they'll sell it on the black market to countries that will gladly reverse engineer what we've built.

And as an aside, I have no interest in funding proxy wars with my tax dollars. Let's not return to a Cold War era. Entering this conflict was absolutely absurd.

An Ukraine that relies on the West for most of its equipment, is under Russian threat, and wants to join the EU/NATO will go around selling the West's equipment? Makes little sense to me.

The West, and more specifically the US, is doing what they said they would do if Russia invaded Ukraine. This was done publicly and apparently privately too. So if this is a proxy war, then it's different from most proxy wars.

I don't like war, but when you have someone that wants to expand their borders, sometimes you save a lot of money and lives by ending the problem at the start. If Ukraine goes well, why not do the Baltics next? What about all those ethnic Russians in need of "saving" in Kazakhstan? It might even give China some ideas. So be careful: by not doing anything and saving your precious tax dollars, you might end up spending more in the future.

Wars of expansion should be costly and expensive, otherwise everyone would just start wars.

And that cold war era... isn't that what's we're already walking to with China? The sanctions, China's claims in the South China sea, etc? Russia in Ukraine are just a side show.

> I don't like war, but when you have someone that wants to expand their borders, sometimes you save a lot of money and lives by ending the problem at the start. If Ukraine goes well, why not do the Baltics next? What about all those ethnic Russians in need of "saving" in Kazakhstan? It might even give China some ideas.

So what? How is this our problem?

The US enjoys a massively strong dollar as the world's reserve currency and all the economic discounts that entails primarily because governments around the world believe they will deal with trade disruptions through their unrivaled monopoly on violence. The US would face significant trouble economically if that goes away.

Already the lessons taken by all senior politicians and bureaucrats globally from the US and Western Europe turning a blind eye to the original occupation of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is that everyone needs access to an option to rapidly acquire nuclear weapons and to never give them up if you have them. You may have forgotten amidst the news cycles that the first inclination of the West was to offer Zelensky a ride out of Kyiv rather than defend it from Putin's occupation but I assure you no government has forgotten.

Why do you think Saudi Arabia is now actively establishing relationships with Iran - because they somehow suddenly realised that they should put aside their 1300 year old Shia - Sunni conflict for humanitarian reasons?

You'll understand how it's your problem when you try to buy the latest SoC and can't because the TSMC fabs were destroyed during the invasion of Taiwan (or something like that).

Okay, so we protect TSMC. What does Ukraine offer us?

There's nothing more aligned with the US's moral reason for being than to defend a sovereign democratic country from being invaded by a nasty, brutish dictatorship.

Something to atone for our sins (invading Iraq the second time and hanging the Kurds out to dry the first time, among others) and build back goodwill among other nations.

We spend almost a trillion dollars a year on the military and equipment that's untested in battle, so let's see how well it would really work -- we're learning a lot already but we don't know if our good stuff is really as good as we think.

Yes, "we" protect TSMC and others like them by providing Taiwan with weapons that makes a war/invasion very expensive and show that anyone that does that will have a though time.

But you "have no interest in funding proxy wars with [your] tax dollars" or to "return to a Cold War era", so I guess fuck Taiwan and TSMC.

Ukraine? I'm less familiar with Ukraine, but on top of having a friendly country in that part of the world and US influence (which is part of what makes the US the country it is, something you benefit from), didn't the US and the EU use some of their rocket engines or something like that? Not saying we can't survive without them, but to say there's nothing there also doesn't make sense.

After reading some of Putin's reasoning to invade Ukraine and what he said about other countries in eastern Ukraine being essentially part of Russia, I have to ask what's cheaper (since you care about your tax dollars)? To send them equipment or to be dragged to a proper war with Russia after they decide to invade NATO countries? What's hit to the global economy and how much will it affect your wallet? Assuming that you care about anyone other than yourself, how much will this affect people around you?

> wants to join the EU/NATO will go around selling the West's equipment

Yes, you clearly have never set foot in "eastern" Europe. And I'm saying that as someone that grew up there.

I'm not saying that some guy won't try to make a buck, but the incentive for those in power to allow that to happen is small when they depend on the west to maintain current weapons and get new ones. The F-16's won't fly for long without spare parts.

Turkey bought the S400 and got kicked out of the F-35 program (even after paying for the planes)... and they're NATO members.

xvector is a troll or a tankie. No use talking to them, but thank you for responding so the impressionable don’t think their ideas are normal.

"Everyone that disagrees with me is a Russian bot!" Okay.

Not getting involved in irrelevant, needless wars isn't exactly a fringe take.

Anyways, your comment history shows that you're such an angry/bitter/dismissive person that I don't expect you to engage in any discussion in good faith. So that'll be all from my end. Have a good day.

Let's return to a Cold War era. Supporting Ukraine in a proxy war allows us to bleed Russia to death with zero US casualties and fairly minimal expense. We're not sending them any of the really secret stuff anyway.

Ok, Vladimir

This is all assuming that Russia doesn't resort to nuclear, biological, or chemical attack.

In a conventional war, its true. NATO, or the US alone, or even some individual NATO members on their own, would cakewalk over Russia faster than the coalition did in the Gulf War.

Unfortunately, its pretty hard to tell what their actual red line is for going nuclear which radically invalidates the preceding paragraph.

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