Pentagon’s $55B mystery plane is secret, but debate on cost is appearing

A lot of money could be saved by folding one or two branches together or removing duplicate functions. As in, if it flies its Air Force, if it floats its Navy, otherwise its Army.

I live near Washington, DC, and have worked in the area several times.

Companies that solicit work from the government regularly run TV and radio ads. I'll be listening to the traffic report on WTOP only to be interrupted by a commercial telling me how great Lockheed-Martin is and how many jobs it provides.

The amount of money flowing through DC has made it into a surreal place. Not unusual to walk by a homeless person warming themselves on a steam grate on the way to work -- and then come across a demonstration against some policy or another. Demonstrators are purchase d a la carte online: we need somebody for six hours today willing to carry a picket sign outside treasury. If you're upset about something you purchase some demonstrators, brief them on what to say, then arrange media coverage.

DC was its own little bizarre cloistered world 60 years ago when Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex. It's only gone several levels past that in the ensuing decades.

Further, the US is highly unlikely to be dumb enough to fight a war in China or Russia. That would require ten million soldiers just to get started anyway. It simply isn't going to happen, any more than Russia or China are going to cross the Pacific or Atlantic and invade the US. China has very little capability to project outside its borders, and is in the process of modernizing its military and shrinking its forces. Russia has zero capability of projecting serious conventional might outside of its borders, or those extremely close by.

So what war of attrition is likely to occur? Whatever that is, it'll be fought closer to the enemy's backyard, than the US backyard. The US has military bases all around the planet, nobody else does. So the US can strike, perpetually, at foreign targets via force projection, while limiting damage to its domestic manufacturing capabilities. Said manufacturing capabilities would be, much like WW2, ramped up to meet demand. The US has a massive labor pool, and if desperately needed, could grant citizenship to tens of millions from Latin America in exchange for building armaments in factories. Unlike China, the US is capable of 100% domestic commodity supply, and if pressed can also fulfill all of its own manufacturing and technology needs (which China can as well, but they don't have the domestic commodities the US possesses).

To win a war of attrition, in a conventional war, the US could simply spam the construction of new B-52s and bombs, and then leverage its global bases, pressing an unrelenting bombing campaign taking out all of the enemy's manufacturing capabilities. No present or likely future enemies of the US could strike back at the US domestically for any sustained period of time.

Now, if we're talking China in 30 years, will they be able to project across the Pacific all the way to Hawaii and California? Interesting question, it's going to depend on whether their economy melts down due to the hyper debt accumulation they're undergoing now, and whether they end up in perpetual debt stagnation like Japan (while their demographics melt simultaneously, and the demand for entitlements to take care of the elderly soars, sapping their financial capabilities even further).

Negotiations between Australia and the US have ended with parts for planes being exchanged (trade agreement in late 90s). Extra parts for previous-generation planes are high-value to partners, near-zero marginal cost to the US.

The war in Ukraine in particular will be fought with deniable proxy forces on both sides.

That said, I can also see the other side of this. According to Wikipedia, the US government spent $66 billion dollars on the F22. I'm naive, so I think that we could save $66 billion on that by just not having an F22, but congress disagrees with me and I'm not sure that I'll ever win that fight. However, imagine that start-ups could do the job 10% more efficiently. That's six billion dollars that you just saved.

Now, imagine an entire government agency, like the Peace Corp, but purely dedicated to fighting human trafficking. You could fund that agency for fifteen years on that six billion dollars. If the startup is 20% cheaper, then you could have a second agency of similar size that is dedicated to helping people stop smoking. If the startup managed to be a full 30% cheaper, you can throw in thirty thousand four-year, full-ride college scholarships.

Again, I'd love to have all of that $66 billion spent on other projects, but even funnelling part of that into a different area could markedly improve the world. I'd never work for a start-up that worked on air combat, but I'd be thrilled to free up some of the air combat budget.

So no, drones saturating defenses isn't a serious threat to nations or regional strength, only to very specific targets that are nearby (eg an aircraft carrier & crew dumb enough to park off the coast of Iran, after they acquire such drone technology, and assuming the US has developed no defense for such).

What on earth does that?

"nobody has mentioned Aurora yet?" you've obviously checked nobody mentioned it, so why not just give us the link and say how it's relevant.

"Aw, c'mon" what the hell is that? Who talks like that? What does "aw" mean? You're disappointed nobody has mentioned something is relevant? Why does that upset you? Why shorten "c'mon" from "come on" like that?

Why post this nonsense? Just give us the link and why it's relevant.