\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe F-22, in particular, is more analogous to an exotic supercar or even\n a high-end race car than anything else. It requires dozens of hours of \nmaintenance for every single flight hour and deep maintenance \ncan take days or even many weeks to accomplish, depending on what is \nneeded to be done and availability of spare parts, which can be scarce.
okay those are very sexy planes, but
\n:Last week I saw a few \u201cHow is the US actually going to build enough of our high-tech shit so we don\u2019t run out in a week if there\u2019s a war?\u201d discussions. There\u2019s this common claim that the US military is very reluctant to orient itself towards counterinsurgency for fear of not being able to fight a major war, but perhaps with the high-tech focus it\u2019s the worst of both worlds, too expensive to blow up insurgents and too expensive to replace if there\u2019s a major war.
\n\nyouzicha said: I think there is a general expectation that big wars will be short. The other day I was reading about the war games at U.S. Naval War College in the 1980s. Apparently the first ones failed to reach a conclusion within 30 simulated days, so in 1985-88 they did a super-big continued game to investigate a \u201cprotracted\u201d war\u2014which in that case meant something like 60 days. If those are the timescales, you can probably do the whole thing just from existing stocks.
what would the\u00a0\u201cbig war\u201d even be, these days?
\nback in the\u00a0\u201880s it was obviously a Soviet takeover of Western Europe, but now it\u2019s what, China taking Taiwan? or establishing a new Asian Empire?
\nChina taking the First Island Chain.
\nRussia desperately using up their existing army to try to anchor on the Carpathians. (They\u2019re losing half either way)
\nWierdly\u2026 Saudi Arabia vs. Iran.
\n\u2014
\nIf I had to pick one, I\u2019d bet on the Russians, if I had to pick two I wouldn\u2019t because the Iran-Saudi thing will start the China thing.
\nonly hope is that war gets so expensive that we revert back to symbolic football.
\nThe other possibility I discussed is that the whole war becomes an omnishambles and both sides basically totally fail to deploy their forces to the battlefield.
\n
The American experience of previous allies (USSR, China, Iran) turning against them, plus the fact that service/upgrade contracts are a big part of how they disguise their vassals\u2019 imperial tribute, means that US weapons systems are basically designed to degrade or fail when removed from their US-sourced logistics trains
Like how the ground vehicles run on jet fuel turbine engines, how the Stingers we gave the mujahadeen didn\u2019t come back to bite us cause they run off of battery/coolant packs that degrade in a few years
In contrast Soviet designs were made to be reproducible and user-serviceable in rough primitive conditions, which is why RPG-7s were part of all the \u201890s and \u201800s wars and how China was able to break away from the Soviet alliance and become self-sufficient so quickly
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