The US is threatening #Canada (again) if we don't buy their F-35s.

@elasticsoul oh... let's play this game:
"Because of the US tariffs, Canada has not enough money to buy F-35 Jets"
It makes no sense, but Trump does not make sense, so he will understand.

@su_liam @elasticsoul @troy_frizzell

By my profoundly uninformed back of the napkin calculations, one should be able to scare up more than half million basic, disposable drones for the cost of one F35

I’m imagining the effect of lifting a cloud of a couple hundred of these into the flight path of a fighter jet, especially if they could be remotely detonated above the flight path to create a plume of shrapnel… ‍️

@DavidM_yeg @su_liam @elasticsoul @troy_frizzell Yes. Ukraine defence against what was the second strongest army in the world (and now the second strongest in Russia) has completely changed the technology of war.

@DavidM_yeg @elasticsoul @troy_frizzell That’s how I’m seeing it. The one limitation I’m seeing is altitude. Modern aircraft might be able to fly above the cloud of cheap drones. But what would high altitude drones cost? If they cost 10 times as much as those cheap ones, that’s still like 50,000 drones to shove down the intakes of an attacker. Let’s be more conservative and say 10,000. That’s not a border cloud, but used judiciously it’s an F35 killer.

@DavidM_yeg @elasticsoul @troy_frizzell And after each dead F-35, most of those can be reused. How many Canada geese with a clear and focussed goal of going up a jet intake does it take to kill a fighter? I’d say one could do it if it’s full of metal shurikens.

@DavidM_yeg @elasticsoul @troy_frizzell Double or triple the price, so they don’t have to commit suicide and you have 3,000-5,000 angry killer high-altitude geese that can hunt aircraft again and again. If you could get it up to 100k suicide birds, nothing is flying without permission. Eight of the genuinely best planes in existence(not F-35s) won’t change the air supremacy state. 80,000 drones will ground the USAF.

@DavidM_yeg @elasticsoul @troy_frizzell Realistically, they’ll have to be LOS controlled. Satellites will be denied, and the longer the range, the more effective the jamming. So the operators will be vulnerable, but if you divvy it up 50/50 between expensive anti-air and cheapass DP drones, that’s still 40k for air defense and(250,000 x 8)about 2 million flying claymores. Afghanistan was a snap…

@RichRARobi @elasticsoul Well, why not, but the question is whether the benefit (if any) over traditional launching is worth the time and cost of development.

Wikipedia says that a TAURUS weighs ca. 1.4 tonnes, while the maximum total take-off weight of a typical Cessna 172 is <1.2 tonnes (including the aircraft itself which is 800 kg). Also, I'd assume that a cruise missile needs a certain minimum launch velocity that the aircraft must fly at.

@elasticsoul after threatening to invade Canada surely they’re not surprised that they don’t want to buy their planes?

@alessandro @elasticsoul Why buy any F-35s at all? They have a laundry list of issues, including problems in harsh environments, and apparently the US military has been hiding poor performance compared to older models, like the A-10 warthog. They were over hyped and are not at all worth their asking price.

@NovaNaturalist @troy_frizzell @su_liam @elasticsoul

I’m reminded of a novel I read back in the 80’s (David’s Sling… I think?) that included an interesting look forward at some of this cheap disposable warfare: amongst other things they posited satellites carrying a bunch of mostly inert but self-targeting metal missiles (basically crowbars with control fins and simple sensors) that could function as bunker and silo busters through simple inertia. I’m not sure how practical that specific idea is, but the general idea of being able to cheaply produce essentially disposable weaponry is likely to be revolutionary over the next decades.

@troy_frizzell @su_liam @elasticsoul

The math really starts to be against these impressive, expensive, high tech systems: US has fewer than 3,000 fighter jets of all sorts, and every one destroyed will take millions of dollars and years to replace, and Canada could produce 5 million drones (several thousand for each jet) at the same cost as our 16 new fighter jets.

@pixelcode @elasticsoul

Thinking about weight, etc then, what is needed is a simple straight (?) wing chassis and two electric powered props. Sling the taurus or similar under the wing. Nothing complex, simple controls to get it on its way. Quick would help, and make it as inconspicuous as possible, as stealthy as possible. No landing gear needed, but if possible the chassis should turn back home for re-use!

Take it as far as it can, then release to do the job.

@DavidM_yeg @elasticsoul @su_liam @troy_frizzell one still needs jets to patrol large areas (like our Arctic or Atlantic coasts). Had USA not shied from helping Ukraine, jets would have bombed every border entry point on day 1 on the 2022 war making it much harder for Russia to invade. Could have been Vee different war. War turned to drones because the west refused to give Ukraine the conventional weapons it needed.

@jhooper

Every platform has its issues, and I trust the judgment of the experts who were tasked with making the decision. The Warthog is a grossly overrated and completely different plane - it's like comparing a car to a lawnmower.

@elasticsoul

@alessandro @elasticsoul Yes, and then imagine the lawnmower outclassing the fucking car.

@jhooper

I'm sorry but I can't think of an airplane that would be less suited to our needs than the Warthog. It's the opposite of what we need by any meaningful metric. I'm not sure how you arrived to the conclusion that it outclasses the F-35 at anything other than getting views on YouTube.

@elasticsoul

@alessandro @elasticsoul Stop talking for a minute and focus on what my underlying point is: the F-35 is struggling to compete with a plane designed 50 years ago, and the manufacturer and the US government is trying to hide that fact. If you look into the F-35's development, you'll find a long history of broken promises, disappointing performance metrics, and plenty of manufacturer and US military hiding these reports.

Honestly, if the jet was any good, I don't think the US government would be trying so hard to sell them.

@jhooper

I understand the point you're trying to make - I just don't understand why you're trying to make it. The A-10 is a low-altitude ground support aircraft, which is literally diametrically opposed to what Canada needs. We're not going to be strafing infantry on Ellesmere island. We need something that can patrol huge swaths of land and has excellent sensor and network capability. The A-10 is a slow tub designed to shoot things you can see with your own eyes.

As for the issues with the F-35, yes it's had problems, but find me a military procurement project of that scale that hasn't. The fact remains that it's very well suited for our needs, and the closest comparables are either a generation behind (European jets like Gripen, Rafale, etc.) or unobtainable/undesirable (J-20, Su-57)

I'm not 100% against buying Gripens instead if we can get them ASAP, but their useful life will be shorter.

@elasticsoul

@alessandro @jhooper

I honestly think that the F-35 should be ruled out on strategic grounds. It requires maintenance that only the US can do, the US cannot be trusted to keep them in the air on Canada’s behalf, and the US is currently the country most likely to invade Canada.