With that in mind, if you were to say the US should spend more on cargo planes and humanitarian aid drops and less on fighters like F35s and starting unnecessary conflicts around the globe, I'm totally with you.
Why not? Because there are too many in power who think that their identity is more valuable than human life. That power is perpetuated by the tip of the spear that is the F35.
So, not only do we _take that power from them by turning the F35 into a Real Peace Machine™_, we do it with haste in order to address the current immense crimes the warrior narcissists have already committed.
Spend a billion dollars to make these devices, de-commission the F35's from the task of bomb dropping, paint it pink and turn off its stealth, and have them drop the cluster medical kits immediately.
Oh, of course this is a fantasy, but what means of peace didn't start out as a fantasy, eh kids?
The point is not just to turn the F35's into peace-making devices - but to remove their potential future use by warrior narcissists to commit more heinous crimes against humanity.
Two factors: save the children. Stop the warrior narcissists from further atrocities.
Full-scale de-weaponization of everything. No exceptions.
Since the "ceasefire" about 21,000 tons of medical aid has entered Gaza. The amount of water already delivered is also immense and if you were to replace/complement this with desalinization you need to build a proper desalinization plant or repair the one that was already there. Let's fantasize about what more is needed and working with the different parties to get there. An F-35 can carry about 10 tons. So you'd need 2000 sorties to deliver a similar amount under the most ideal conditions each sortie costing something like $100K. A C-130 about 20 tons and has about x3-5 less operational cost per hour. It's not just about carry capacity it's about systems to deliver them (like parachutes or whatnot) which a C-130 is already fitted with. So for air delivery of stuff (which is ridiculously low volume and expensive) the C-130 is the preferred choice between the two. We also happen to have an inventory of things on pallets that are ready for C-130s. It's still not a great choice anyways. A commercial truck can carry 40 tons and operating costs would be something like $100 and the trucks are also already there and moving. If we need to get more of those that's what we should work on (and for all those options you need to work with the people on the ground and in the region. The problem isn't capacity/capability it's the politics and the situation on the ground.
If we're fantasizing maybe start with Lennon's "Imagine no religion" ;)
Religions are just a subset of that identity. Warrior narcissists will subjugate any human organization to build their mirror - religion, government, media - anything.
Sure, we can discuss the logistics. We, the peace-makers, should be smashing the mirror no matter what it takes. For me, that is efficiently represented by the de-weaponization of all the things, not just the F35.
But, still. Use the F35 to drop cluster medical kits. That'd cost a pittance and it would make far more peace than the million dollar GRU or glide kit.
Your "pittance" and mine must be very different.
If you were performing this function on behalf of any charity you would be prosecuted for this type of grossly, objectively inefficient resource allocation.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Operating and maintenance expenses dominate all aircraft expenditures - "already there" is completely false. Putting these aircraft in the boneyard and writing off the R&D expenses is the only logical answer to "peaceful use."
An F-35 can get somewhere "quickly" when it's ferried there by a fleet of tankers and logistic support - but at that point, you just fly the C-130 directly to where it is needed.
No single day makes the difference in any of the situations you've proposed, and no operation to get a payload-laden F-35 anywhere it needs to be is organized in a day.
> Spend a billion dollars to make these devices, de-commission the F35's from the task of bomb dropping, paint it pink and turn off its stealth, and have them drop the cluster medical kits immediately.
There's no expense that justifies keeping these aircraft in operation for any peaceful purpose. Basically every modern cargo or passenger aircraft is better at the tasks you're describing and can do it cheaper.
Taxation is inherently backed by violence, so it's amazing how you can casually just suggest "spend a billion dollars" and not see the cognitive dissonance you're spewing.
Accomplishing all of this random humanitarian shit costs money (a proxy for human labor output), money comes from somewhere, and it isn't going to be given to your causes voluntarily.
Ah, yes there is: the expense of the children with severed limbs dying every single minute under the rubble that was placed upon them by the very F35's you worship.
If it was "efficient" and "cost effective" to use the F35 to murder tens of thousands, its even more efficient and cost effective - and urgent - to de-weaponize them and use them to drop cluster medical kits.
>humanitarian shit
Listen, warrior narcissist, I'm sick of your shit. Smash your own mirror.
We paint the F35's pink to make amends for the murder they have caused.
Now you are standing on the graves of hypothetical children? Expense is real: you suggested an extremely poor way to allocate finite resources. More hypothetical children could be helped by putting the F-35s in the boneyard and using conventional cargo planes, so by your own twisted logic, are you not part of the problem?
> If it was "efficient" and "cost effective" to use the F35 to murder tens of thousands
Ignoring the emotional component: even pro-military detractors of the F-35 program argue that it isn't cost effective or efficient to use the F-35 for what it was actually designed to do. Hence why the F-16 keeps getting new avionics, engines, payloads, etc.
You would choose helping save 100 children so you can paint an aircraft pink rather than 10,000 for the same resource allocation.
b) de-weaponize all the things - take the mirror from the warrior narcissist immediately - and "paint those F35's pink" (its a metaphor, relax) - disable their stealth, and have them and their pilots serve the human beings whose lives they have spent years obliterating, as amends to the rest of the human species whose lives they are making utterly miserable with their actions ...
But yeah, your ideas are cool too. I'm waxing philosophical because we all know, the bombs are going to continue to drop, no matter what we peace-makers say and do on HN ..