7 ms·

How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program pr

How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? Looked at from a policy maker's viewpoint, things look very different.

jazzypants 4mo ago
If we have military hegemony, then why can't we open the strait of Hormuz?
- krapp 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - hattmall 4mo ago
    This maybe a bit of sarcasm, but it's actually accurate. The information was so contrived that multiple firms sent physical analysis to observe the strait in person. They all have said that the strait remains active with decreased but consistent transit. Regardless of who claimed the strait was open or closed. It's the reason oil markets are so hesitant to bid up futures contracts.
- jimbob45 4mo ago
  After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, it’s ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
  - ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
    But the difference between Vietnam and Iran is that Trump had a plan to get out of Vietnam.
- mothballed 4mo ago
  The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
  - helsinkiandrew 4mo ago
    > The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground It doesn’t matter what the reason, if you can’t do something you can’t do it.
    - mothballed 4mo ago
      I'm not interested in a lengthy semantic debate about what "can" means but I'd hope we could agree at least one possible interpretation includes things you're unwilling but able to do.
      - runako 4mo ago
        Generously, what difference does it make to any person if you technically achieve some result but in practice are not able to realize that end state?
        urams 4mo ago
        Is it the case that if someone doesn't do something some time then they can't do that thing? Like, if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him and said "dunk this!' and Lebron said "no, I'm not willing to" does this mean Lebron can't dunk? Because personally, I'd still take Lebron on a basketball team even if he wasn't willing to dunk the ball that one time.
        runako 4mo ago
        > if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him Yes, this is a terrible analogy for the war in Iran. Hugely unpopular, costing Americans vast sums of money daily, headed for possible catastrophe. Very much not a low-stakes "Lebron walks by" situation. Better analogy with Lebron would be: championship game with a title on the line. He gets possession as time runs down and the team needs him to score or make a play that scores. It's not okay for him to then say he's fully capable of scoring but doesn't want to at just that moment for reasons. NB: this is not to say the US military couldn't cause untold damage on the region. This is obvious, anybody can look at recent history to see that the US military is more than capable of destroying a country in the region. Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.
- kortilla 4mo ago
  Because it would require a boots on the ground invasion to occupy the entire portion of Iran overlooking the Strait. The strait is physically open but no insurance company will cover massive oil carriers because they are so easy to hit with small weaponry from the ridges of Iran.
  - amunozo 4mo ago
    So effectively, there is no military hegemony, as the U.S. cannot afford the costs of using it.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
    Why doesn't the US government just insure them itself then? A quarter of a billion dollars is a major risk to an insurance company with no internal capacity to mitigate the risk itself, but it's not even a rounding error in the federal budget and the US government would then be expressing confidence in the ability of its own military to ensure safe passage. And even if they had to pay a claim, it would cost the population less than the higher gas prices, since increasing supply lowers the market price for all supply, not just the incremental units.
    - throwaway173738 3mo ago
      That would require an act of Congress. So implicitly, the majority party in the House and Senate don’t want to do this. Ask yourself, who is in power right now?
  - sofixa 4mo ago
    > Because it would require a boots on the ground invasion to occupy the entire portion of Iran overlooking the Strait. Which even the morons who started this conflict know is suicidal because Iran has literally at least a million loyal fanatics (Basij, the same organisation doing unarmed meat waves against Iraq)!ready to die for the regime, and the terrain is in their favour. So that's not military hegemony.
altcognito 4mo ago
Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash. The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that. Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.
wbl 4mo ago
In the right case just one. The US invasion of Afghanistan required some extremely rare language knowledge to be successful.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
jimbokun 4mo ago
Manned aircraft are largely a waste of money in the era of drone warfare.
erickhill 4mo ago
Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead. Everything is changing. Including our influence.
- hattmall 4mo ago
  That isn't really accurate, small drones are enough to antagonize regional neighbors. They are far from being able to project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
  - esikich 4mo ago
    How not? Precision kills with 0 warning. You can just bring one on a plane to whatever country and have the thing charge with solar/powerlines until your target is getting coffee outside on a nice day. Or whatever.
    - hattmall 4mo ago
      Ok, I'm not even sure what to reply here, that makes no sense and doesn't accomplish any of the things I mentioned. It's also not even particularly feasible and just not at all how any sort of wartime operation is likely to work at scale. But I am sure of who I wouldn't put in charge of critical military operations.
      - rulesilol 4mo ago
        [flagged]
  - vlovich123 4mo ago
    Something tells me a war with china isn’t going to be carriers duking it out but carriers filled to the brim with aviation and naval drones that seek and destroy enemy craft. As Iran has shown, you don’t need to attack the USA directly to destabilize its influence. The US market economical influence has been far more important for force projection and stabilizing trade than anything else and by all accounts Trump has pissed away allies on that front too. US force projection for trade stabilization is for minor things like protecting against pirates - you don’t need million dollar missiles for that.
mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago
If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen
isodev 4mo ago
All it takes is one announcement that the US is cutting on efforts to understand future climate disasters for that “influence” to disappear. You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.
idiotsecant 4mo ago
Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire. For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get? I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished
- hattmall 4mo ago
  I'm sorry, but this is like the most ignorant take ever. The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved. Iran and their regional proxies have been almost the only source of middle eastern discontent in the last two decades. The stability of the region is already vastly improved from any time in the past and the dismantling of the IRGC will create a wave of vastly improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of people. Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI. https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-development-crosses-new-threshold-launch-2025-national-report-marks-turning-point https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-...
  - bruce511 4mo ago
    I think it's fair to say that pretty much no-one is a fan of the Iranian Regime. (And we'll ignore for the moment that the regime is a a direct by-product of previous US intervention.) The regime is all kinds of bad, but you cannot change govts from without. Stability comes from people changing govts from within. Every time the US has changed a govt to support themselves it has ended badly. This latest war has not unseated the IRGC, indeed it has entrenched it further. This is not surprising; they are the largest organised structure in the country. There are no other structures of comparable size or influence in the country. Unfortunately the US military does not just project power. To justify its existence (far beyond the realm of self defence) it actively creates and enjoys conflicts. And increasingly those conflicts are showing the real limitations of military power projection. By contrast the soft influence projected by technological leadership, USAid etc are much more influential. It's not surprising that support for these alternatives are the first target of a govt susceptible to being influenced. A trillion $ industry will not go quietly into the night. Yes, of course, the US could deploy troops into Iran. They could topple the IRGC if desired. But it would be very expensive politically. (And I don't mean to the Republicans, but that also) but to the Military Industry. Because the electorate clearly indicated that after Afghanistan the appetite for foreign wars is dwindling. Another debacle in Iran (even more than the debacle it is now) would be disastrous. I have no love for the Iranian regime. But no military intervention from outside has the ability to improve it. And the Iranian people will not support a US puppet govt - that influence was burned in 1956. Govts change when people inside rise up to change them. Recent examples in Afghanistan, South Africa, Romania and even Iran (1979) show this over and over again. Interestingly the Soviet Union fell because the satellite states broke away. Because the people in Poland, Hungary etc rose up. Not because of outside intervention. This latest war in Iran follows a long tradition of US and UK meddling in the region, all of which is designed to get oil, not create stability. Indeed this latest foray has created instability in the supply of oil, and that is an unforgivable sin to the US public.
WillowWithAWand 4mo ago
The frustrating thing for me, having worked as an avionics technician, is that the F-35 is actually a waste of all that money
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
hsbauauvhabzb 4mo ago
None if catastrophic climate change kills everyone.
runako 4mo ago
Curious -- from where do you think the basic research originated that allowed the F-35 program to exist at all? We are certainly not naive enough to think that Lockheed Martin does basic research.
intended 4mo ago
America had scientific hegemony and political influence over its allies. All of tech traces its roots to American academia. American tech enthralls more of humanity than American military has ever fought.
- holgerschurig 4mo ago
  Nah, I'd say that common "americans" (really: US citizens) are perhaps a bit on the dumber site. Not only confuse they constantly a continent (America) with a country (USA), they also have no idea about history. Or logics. You wrote "ALL of tech" ... no lets check. Cars - Germany (Gottlieb Daimler, but he didn't patent it), Germany (Carl Benz which made the first patent). Motorbikes - Germany (Gottlieb Daimler) Train - invented in Germany Radio transmission - UK (James Clark Maxwell described them theoretically), Germany (Heinrich Hertz created/used them first in experiments) X-Ray - Germany (Gustav Röntgen) Telephone - Germany (Philipp Reis, your Bell bought examples and reverse engineered them) Bookpress with movable letters - Germany (Johannes Gensfleisch a.k.a. Gutenberg) Lightbulb - Germany (Heinrich Göbel) Periodic system of elements - Russia (Dimitri Mendelejew) and Germany (Justus Lothar Meyer) Dynamo / Generator - Germany (Werner von Siemens) Vaccination - UK (Edward Jenner) Gliding plane - Germany (Otto Lilienthal) Pain killer - Germany (Felix Hoffmann, Aspirin) Relativity theory, Quantum theory - Albert Einstein, Planck, TV - Germany (Manfred von Ardenne) Cathod ray tube in TVs - Germany (Conrad Röntgen experimentally, Ferdinand Braun with horizontal and vertical directivity of the ray) Computer - France (Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace) for mechanical ones and Germany (Konrad Zuse) for electric ones Atomic fissure, used in plants and bombs - Germany (Otto Hahn) Chip cards - Germany (Jürgen Dethloff, Helmut Gröttrup) MP3 music compression - Germany (Fraunhofer Institut) Electricity - actually already in ancient greek they used electrostatic charging of amber. And one century before Christ they had actual batteries in Bagdad! But then a plethorary of european scientists brought the work forward: UK (William Gilbert, Francis Hauksbee, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday), Germany (Otto von Guericke, Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist, Georg Simon Ohm, Carl Friedrich Gauß), Italy (Luigi Galvani, Allesandro Volta), France (Charles du Fay, Charles Augustin de Coulomb, André-Marie Ampère), Netherlands (Pieter van Musschenbroek), Denmark (Hans Christian Ørsted). I actually terminate this electricity list here. I could go on and on. Also note that physical units named after their discoverer indicate some kind of importance of the relevant invention. So we have e.g. Volt, Ampere, Coulomb, Farad, Gauss, Watt, Ørsted, Tesla, Weber as units. None of them is based on USA's academia. If we look at unit names outside of electricity we also find outdated ones like Röntgen or Curie. And still used ones like Plack constant, Newton, Pascal, Kelvin, Becquerel, Gray, Sievert. So where are the USA american ones if "all" of technology is supposed to stem from their academia? IF we want to trace the roots, then perhaps we need to go back to antique greek philisophers. Because western academia itself traces itself there. But then again ... something like that existed also in ancient India and maybe China.
asdff 4mo ago
Well, US is actively pulling back from doing just that as well and leaving the job to NATO.
Descon 4mo ago
I hope Canada cancels our contract to buy these from USA. I don't care the cost, it's not worth it.
cco 4mo ago
Not nearly as clear cut as you make it out. We haven't been able to produce a complete F-35 since Feb 2026 because we lack the necessary rare earths to do create their electronics. Why? Because we stopped doing that work (and science) in the 90s and now China produces over 90% of rare earths on the planet and said the US can't have any for military purposes (its being negotiated). There are zero under and post graduate programs that specialize in rare earth extraction and refining outside of China. None. And China has barred their scientists from collaborating with any colleagues from the US on the topic. Sooooo, you're right, the F-35 program offers a lot, but can it do so "by itself" and does it provide that value in an economically viable way? Much less clear cut of an answer.
- lopsotronic 3mo ago
  Block 4 is the only version they'd dare put up against a peer air defense, and Block 4 is delayed, delayed, delayed, and . . nowhere in sight, at the moment. There has been two and a half decades of FUD billowing around the entire program, like the world's most expensive fart, so don't expect to know the truth until they fly the thing past Zamami Island in anger. But I personally will be mentally prepared for disappointment, with some bitter despair as digestif.
ElProlactin 4mo ago
> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? Well, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for months despite Iran's military supposedly being decimated, and the President of the United States is now threatening to bomb one of our closest Mideast allies (Oman), a reasonable person might ask where this military hegemony and political influence you're referring to is.
whateverboat 4mo ago
Without those people being trained at the level of grad school in workforce, you would not have enough people to even maintain a good checklist for F35. The program will go down within a year. Grad schools do more than research, they train people for these industries, for the shop floor.
andrepd 4mo ago
> the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides Hilarious to say this, given the very public and very significant failures of US foreign policy these past couple decades, not least of all the current special military operation.
lostlogin 4mo ago
> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? All good questions 3 years ago. How many would rely on US weapons or their US relationship today? And then there is the unimpressive show in the Middle East.
estebarb 4mo ago
The F35 program is essential! When the USA will finally conquer free healthcare?
kakacik 4mo ago
After potus ordered massive degradation of F16 radars used by Ukraine on his emotional whim making them useless, which btw were gifted by other NATO countries (!!), nobody, absolutely nobody wants US jets anymore, F35 or not. Every single European country that already ordered them had immediately afterwards long hard talks about completely cancelling those orders and most ended up at least loweing massively the ordered amount (I presume due to contractual requirements and some money already sent, nobody expected backstabbing crooks on the other side when they were signed). At this point its trojan horse and much worse than having nothing - it gives illusion of certain (extremely expensive) capability, but only if you lick specific ass hard and frequently enough, peppered with a billion here and there flowing in the right hands. Even then, the other side may be licking harder and thats it. Its ridiculous, and intensively insulting to every decent human being.
orwin 4mo ago
Yeah, 11 f35 lost to motor/software issues. Only modern war plane that have those issues. Its minumum speed is worse than the f16, which make drone interception an issue (f16 are already a bit to fast for that according to Ukrainians), despite a pretty low takeoff speed. It should be capable of less, i'm pretty sure it's software limiters tbh, the wing design seems fine, even if the weight is a bit high (i mean, you don't need to be able to fly at 15 knot like a Rafale, but still). It _still_ have cooling issues that brick it if you don't bring an external cooler after it landed (which is crazy to me, how did Lockeed not fix that? it's like half the reason why the availability rate is so low). The availability rate is slow (as said earlier) but it is still more expensive than other jet yearly, despite 2/3rd of the flight hours. F35 pilots now have less flight hours per year than recommended by NATO (a lot less) (which used to be below US standards btw), and while US f35 pilot still have more hours than their russian conterpart (~145 vs 120), it is very possible that smaller countries who made the mistake of buying them without an economy strong enough to bear the costs might fly their pilot less than 100 hours per year and complete the rest in sims (which, as demontrated by the russian, is a _very_ bad idea) (i'm afraid Greek pilots will suffer from this, which would be a shame) On the "political influence", it's wrong. Selling the F35 cost the US influence in Norway (thank you wikileaks). In fact, each time the f35 lost a competition, political influence was expended to make the country still buy it. Imho, scientists and scientific conferences are a better way to get influence over allies and adversaries (Cas9 is probably the best example, without Doudna having an international recognition and the conference being hosted in the US, Charpentier might have gone to another RNA specialist) [edit] to be clear, i think the f35 is a great plane for the US, and a good plane for rich countries who want to go on offensive wars, mainly due to its EW capacity that are second to none and its ability to penetrate enemy territory (which is second only to other US planes). I do also think that it still needs _massive_ improvements to be usable by regular, defensive armies, and the US expending political power to sell it to countries who don't want/need to attack their neighbors was a mistake. Also, not a good cold weather plane, which make it even worse for Norway and Canada. Also i think its software impairs it, because the wing design seems almost perfect for its missions, and at least on paper, the reactor seems great too

jazzypants 4mo ago

If we have military hegemony, then why can't we open the strait of Hormuz?

krapp 4mo ago
[flagged]
- hattmall 4mo ago
  This maybe a bit of sarcasm, but it's actually accurate. The information was so contrived that multiple firms sent physical analysis to observe the strait in person. They all have said that the strait remains active with decreased but consistent transit. Regardless of who claimed the strait was open or closed. It's the reason oil markets are so hesitant to bid up futures contracts.
jimbob45 4mo ago
After all has been said about the ages of Biden and Trump, it’s ironic that having presidents with experience living through Vietnam and the Soviet-Afghan war has been so useful for their two terms.
- ZeroGravitas 4mo ago
  But the difference between Vietnam and Iran is that Trump had a plan to get out of Vietnam.
mothballed 4mo ago
The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground and put those boots up the ass of the people controlling Hormuz. Which absolutely cannot be achieved purely by air.
- helsinkiandrew 4mo ago
  > The US could/can, they're just not willing to undergo the mass casualties it would take to put boots on the ground It doesn’t matter what the reason, if you can’t do something you can’t do it.
  - mothballed 4mo ago
    I'm not interested in a lengthy semantic debate about what "can" means but I'd hope we could agree at least one possible interpretation includes things you're unwilling but able to do.
    - runako 4mo ago
      Generously, what difference does it make to any person if you technically achieve some result but in practice are not able to realize that end state?
      - urams 4mo ago
        Is it the case that if someone doesn't do something some time then they can't do that thing? Like, if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him and said "dunk this!' and Lebron said "no, I'm not willing to" does this mean Lebron can't dunk? Because personally, I'd still take Lebron on a basketball team even if he wasn't willing to dunk the ball that one time.
        runako 4mo ago
        > if you were playing basketball and Lebron James walked by and you threw the ball to him Yes, this is a terrible analogy for the war in Iran. Hugely unpopular, costing Americans vast sums of money daily, headed for possible catastrophe. Very much not a low-stakes "Lebron walks by" situation. Better analogy with Lebron would be: championship game with a title on the line. He gets possession as time runs down and the team needs him to score or make a play that scores. It's not okay for him to then say he's fully capable of scoring but doesn't want to at just that moment for reasons. NB: this is not to say the US military couldn't cause untold damage on the region. This is obvious, anybody can look at recent history to see that the US military is more than capable of destroying a country in the region. Rather, this is an object lesson that war is politics by other means, and here we tried to do war without any politics and it has not gone well for us.
kortilla 4mo ago
Because it would require a boots on the ground invasion to occupy the entire portion of Iran overlooking the Strait. The strait is physically open but no insurance company will cover massive oil carriers because they are so easy to hit with small weaponry from the ridges of Iran.
- amunozo 4mo ago
  So effectively, there is no military hegemony, as the U.S. cannot afford the costs of using it.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
  Why doesn't the US government just insure them itself then? A quarter of a billion dollars is a major risk to an insurance company with no internal capacity to mitigate the risk itself, but it's not even a rounding error in the federal budget and the US government would then be expressing confidence in the ability of its own military to ensure safe passage. And even if they had to pay a claim, it would cost the population less than the higher gas prices, since increasing supply lowers the market price for all supply, not just the incremental units.
  - throwaway173738 3mo ago
    That would require an act of Congress. So implicitly, the majority party in the House and Senate don’t want to do this. Ask yourself, who is in power right now?
- sofixa 4mo ago
  > Because it would require a boots on the ground invasion to occupy the entire portion of Iran overlooking the Strait. Which even the morons who started this conflict know is suicidal because Iran has literally at least a million loyal fanatics (Basij, the same organisation doing unarmed meat waves against Iraq)!ready to die for the regime, and the terrain is in their favour. So that's not military hegemony.

altcognito 4mo ago

Except they've traded it all away with idiotic chest thumping. There was a bargain on the table for the US, and we've just chucked it in the trash. The military isn't some limitless resource, and lead by incompetence, it is useless. There are no policy makers in this administration, they go on vibes and bad ones at that. Even a guy named mad dog said that diplomacy was cheaper than bullets.

wbl 4mo ago

In the right case just one. The US invasion of Afghanistan required some extremely rare language knowledge to be successful.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

jimbokun 4mo ago

Manned aircraft are largely a waste of money in the era of drone warfare.

erickhill 4mo ago

Wouldn't take very many at all, we've now learned these past four years (and even the past 2 months). All you need are drones, that are pennies on the dollar cheaper than trillion-dollar militaries. Depending on the munition, a single bomb we drop on Iran could cost between $40,000 and a couple million dollars. Think of all the high-end drones you could buy instead. Everything is changing. Including our influence.

hattmall 4mo ago
That isn't really accurate, small drones are enough to antagonize regional neighbors. They are far from being able to project influence, stabilize international trade, or even remotely protect a territory from an enemy that isn't concerned with civilian casualties.
- esikich 4mo ago
  How not? Precision kills with 0 warning. You can just bring one on a plane to whatever country and have the thing charge with solar/powerlines until your target is getting coffee outside on a nice day. Or whatever.
  - hattmall 4mo ago
    Ok, I'm not even sure what to reply here, that makes no sense and doesn't accomplish any of the things I mentioned. It's also not even particularly feasible and just not at all how any sort of wartime operation is likely to work at scale. But I am sure of who I wouldn't put in charge of critical military operations.
    - rulesilol 4mo ago
      [flagged]
- vlovich123 4mo ago
  Something tells me a war with china isn’t going to be carriers duking it out but carriers filled to the brim with aviation and naval drones that seek and destroy enemy craft. As Iran has shown, you don’t need to attack the USA directly to destabilize its influence. The US market economical influence has been far more important for force projection and stabilizing trade than anything else and by all accounts Trump has pissed away allies on that front too. US force projection for trade stabilization is for minor things like protecting against pirates - you don’t need million dollar missiles for that.

mx7zysuj4xew 4mo ago

If policymakers genuinely cared they wouldn't have let things get so bad that allies are considering to have orders cancelled for the Saab JAS 39 Gripen

isodev 4mo ago

All it takes is one announcement that the US is cutting on efforts to understand future climate disasters for that “influence” to disappear. You’re right that it’s all policy making and that’s why you’re supposed to elect competent politicians and administrators.

idiotsecant 4mo ago

Does the F35 do that? Wasn't Iran shooting those down recently? If there's anything Iran has taught us it's that airpower doesn't win wars, allies do. The US will leave the middle east with their tail between their legs. This is the beginning of the end of the American Empire. For the privilege of spending enormous sums of treasure flying around dropping bombs on brown people what did we get? I would have rather seen that spent on giving lunch to every school age child or paying graduate students a wage above poverty level. At least something useful would have been accomplished

hattmall 4mo ago
I'm sorry, but this is like the most ignorant take ever. The world is essentially one life supported regime away from having a level of stability in the middle east that has quite literally never been achieved. Iran and their regional proxies have been almost the only source of middle eastern discontent in the last two decades. The stability of the region is already vastly improved from any time in the past and the dismantling of the IRGC will create a wave of vastly improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of people. Iraq has for the first time ever entered in the high category of HDI. https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-development-crosses-new-threshold-launch-2025-national-report-marks-turning-point https://www.undp.org/arab-states/press-releases/iraqs-human-...
- bruce511 4mo ago
  I think it's fair to say that pretty much no-one is a fan of the Iranian Regime. (And we'll ignore for the moment that the regime is a a direct by-product of previous US intervention.) The regime is all kinds of bad, but you cannot change govts from without. Stability comes from people changing govts from within. Every time the US has changed a govt to support themselves it has ended badly. This latest war has not unseated the IRGC, indeed it has entrenched it further. This is not surprising; they are the largest organised structure in the country. There are no other structures of comparable size or influence in the country. Unfortunately the US military does not just project power. To justify its existence (far beyond the realm of self defence) it actively creates and enjoys conflicts. And increasingly those conflicts are showing the real limitations of military power projection. By contrast the soft influence projected by technological leadership, USAid etc are much more influential. It's not surprising that support for these alternatives are the first target of a govt susceptible to being influenced. A trillion $ industry will not go quietly into the night. Yes, of course, the US could deploy troops into Iran. They could topple the IRGC if desired. But it would be very expensive politically. (And I don't mean to the Republicans, but that also) but to the Military Industry. Because the electorate clearly indicated that after Afghanistan the appetite for foreign wars is dwindling. Another debacle in Iran (even more than the debacle it is now) would be disastrous. I have no love for the Iranian regime. But no military intervention from outside has the ability to improve it. And the Iranian people will not support a US puppet govt - that influence was burned in 1956. Govts change when people inside rise up to change them. Recent examples in Afghanistan, South Africa, Romania and even Iran (1979) show this over and over again. Interestingly the Soviet Union fell because the satellite states broke away. Because the people in Poland, Hungary etc rose up. Not because of outside intervention. This latest war in Iran follows a long tradition of US and UK meddling in the region, all of which is designed to get oil, not create stability. Indeed this latest foray has created instability in the supply of oil, and that is an unforgivable sin to the US public.

WillowWithAWand 4mo ago

The frustrating thing for me, having worked as an avionics technician, is that the F-35 is actually a waste of all that money

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

hsbauauvhabzb 4mo ago

None if catastrophic climate change kills everyone.

runako 4mo ago

Curious -- from where do you think the basic research originated that allowed the F-35 program to exist at all? We are certainly not naive enough to think that Lockheed Martin does basic research.

intended 4mo ago

America had scientific hegemony and political influence over its allies. All of tech traces its roots to American academia. American tech enthralls more of humanity than American military has ever fought.

holgerschurig 4mo ago
Nah, I'd say that common "americans" (really: US citizens) are perhaps a bit on the dumber site. Not only confuse they constantly a continent (America) with a country (USA), they also have no idea about history. Or logics. You wrote "ALL of tech" ... no lets check. Cars - Germany (Gottlieb Daimler, but he didn't patent it), Germany (Carl Benz which made the first patent). Motorbikes - Germany (Gottlieb Daimler) Train - invented in Germany Radio transmission - UK (James Clark Maxwell described them theoretically), Germany (Heinrich Hertz created/used them first in experiments) X-Ray - Germany (Gustav Röntgen) Telephone - Germany (Philipp Reis, your Bell bought examples and reverse engineered them) Bookpress with movable letters - Germany (Johannes Gensfleisch a.k.a. Gutenberg) Lightbulb - Germany (Heinrich Göbel) Periodic system of elements - Russia (Dimitri Mendelejew) and Germany (Justus Lothar Meyer) Dynamo / Generator - Germany (Werner von Siemens) Vaccination - UK (Edward Jenner) Gliding plane - Germany (Otto Lilienthal) Pain killer - Germany (Felix Hoffmann, Aspirin) Relativity theory, Quantum theory - Albert Einstein, Planck, TV - Germany (Manfred von Ardenne) Cathod ray tube in TVs - Germany (Conrad Röntgen experimentally, Ferdinand Braun with horizontal and vertical directivity of the ray) Computer - France (Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace) for mechanical ones and Germany (Konrad Zuse) for electric ones Atomic fissure, used in plants and bombs - Germany (Otto Hahn) Chip cards - Germany (Jürgen Dethloff, Helmut Gröttrup) MP3 music compression - Germany (Fraunhofer Institut) Electricity - actually already in ancient greek they used electrostatic charging of amber. And one century before Christ they had actual batteries in Bagdad! But then a plethorary of european scientists brought the work forward: UK (William Gilbert, Francis Hauksbee, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish, Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday), Germany (Otto von Guericke, Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist, Georg Simon Ohm, Carl Friedrich Gauß), Italy (Luigi Galvani, Allesandro Volta), France (Charles du Fay, Charles Augustin de Coulomb, André-Marie Ampère), Netherlands (Pieter van Musschenbroek), Denmark (Hans Christian Ørsted). I actually terminate this electricity list here. I could go on and on. Also note that physical units named after their discoverer indicate some kind of importance of the relevant invention. So we have e.g. Volt, Ampere, Coulomb, Farad, Gauss, Watt, Ørsted, Tesla, Weber as units. None of them is based on USA's academia. If we look at unit names outside of electricity we also find outdated ones like Röntgen or Curie. And still used ones like Plack constant, Newton, Pascal, Kelvin, Becquerel, Gray, Sievert. So where are the USA american ones if "all" of technology is supposed to stem from their academia? IF we want to trace the roots, then perhaps we need to go back to antique greek philisophers. Because western academia itself traces itself there. But then again ... something like that existed also in ancient India and maybe China.

asdff 4mo ago

Well, US is actively pulling back from doing just that as well and leaving the job to NATO.

Descon 4mo ago

I hope Canada cancels our contract to buy these from USA. I don't care the cost, it's not worth it.

cco 4mo ago

Not nearly as clear cut as you make it out. We haven't been able to produce a complete F-35 since Feb 2026 because we lack the necessary rare earths to do create their electronics. Why? Because we stopped doing that work (and science) in the 90s and now China produces over 90% of rare earths on the planet and said the US can't have any for military purposes (its being negotiated). There are zero under and post graduate programs that specialize in rare earth extraction and refining outside of China. None. And China has barred their scientists from collaborating with any colleagues from the US on the topic. Sooooo, you're right, the F-35 program offers a lot, but can it do so "by itself" and does it provide that value in an economically viable way? Much less clear cut of an answer.

lopsotronic 3mo ago
Block 4 is the only version they'd dare put up against a peer air defense, and Block 4 is delayed, delayed, delayed, and . . nowhere in sight, at the moment. There has been two and a half decades of FUD billowing around the entire program, like the world's most expensive fart, so don't expect to know the truth until they fly the thing past Zamami Island in anger. But I personally will be mentally prepared for disappointment, with some bitter despair as digestif.

ElProlactin 4mo ago

> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? Well, given that the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for months despite Iran's military supposedly being decimated, and the President of the United States is now threatening to bomb one of our closest Mideast allies (Oman), a reasonable person might ask where this military hegemony and political influence you're referring to is.

whateverboat 4mo ago

Without those people being trained at the level of grad school in workforce, you would not have enough people to even maintain a good checklist for F35. The program will go down within a year. Grad schools do more than research, they train people for these industries, for the shop floor.

andrepd 4mo ago

> the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides Hilarious to say this, given the very public and very significant failures of US foreign policy these past couple decades, not least of all the current special military operation.

lostlogin 4mo ago

> How many million graduate students do you need to give the US the military hegemony and political influence over allies and adversaries that the F-35 program provides ? All good questions 3 years ago. How many would rely on US weapons or their US relationship today? And then there is the unimpressive show in the Middle East.

estebarb 4mo ago

The F35 program is essential! When the USA will finally conquer free healthcare?

kakacik 4mo ago

After potus ordered massive degradation of F16 radars used by Ukraine on his emotional whim making them useless, which btw were gifted by other NATO countries (!!), nobody, absolutely nobody wants US jets anymore, F35 or not. Every single European country that already ordered them had immediately afterwards long hard talks about completely cancelling those orders and most ended up at least loweing massively the ordered amount (I presume due to contractual requirements and some money already sent, nobody expected backstabbing crooks on the other side when they were signed). At this point its trojan horse and much worse than having nothing - it gives illusion of certain (extremely expensive) capability, but only if you lick specific ass hard and frequently enough, peppered with a billion here and there flowing in the right hands. Even then, the other side may be licking harder and thats it. Its ridiculous, and intensively insulting to every decent human being.

orwin 4mo ago

Yeah, 11 f35 lost to motor/software issues. Only modern war plane that have those issues. Its minumum speed is worse than the f16, which make drone interception an issue (f16 are already a bit to fast for that according to Ukrainians), despite a pretty low takeoff speed. It should be capable of less, i'm pretty sure it's software limiters tbh, the wing design seems fine, even if the weight is a bit high (i mean, you don't need to be able to fly at 15 knot like a Rafale, but still). It _still_ have cooling issues that brick it if you don't bring an external cooler after it landed (which is crazy to me, how did Lockeed not fix that? it's like half the reason why the availability rate is so low). The availability rate is slow (as said earlier) but it is still more expensive than other jet yearly, despite 2/3rd of the flight hours. F35 pilots now have less flight hours per year than recommended by NATO (a lot less) (which used to be below US standards btw), and while US f35 pilot still have more hours than their russian conterpart (~145 vs 120), it is very possible that smaller countries who made the mistake of buying them without an economy strong enough to bear the costs might fly their pilot less than 100 hours per year and complete the rest in sims (which, as demontrated by the russian, is a _very_ bad idea) (i'm afraid Greek pilots will suffer from this, which would be a shame) On the "political influence", it's wrong. Selling the F35 cost the US influence in Norway (thank you wikileaks). In fact, each time the f35 lost a competition, political influence was expended to make the country still buy it. Imho, scientists and scientific conferences are a better way to get influence over allies and adversaries (Cas9 is probably the best example, without Doudna having an international recognition and the conference being hosted in the US, Charpentier might have gone to another RNA specialist) [edit] to be clear, i think the f35 is a great plane for the US, and a good plane for rich countries who want to go on offensive wars, mainly due to its EW capacity that are second to none and its ability to penetrate enemy territory (which is second only to other US planes). I do also think that it still needs _massive_ improvements to be usable by regular, defensive armies, and the US expending political power to sell it to countries who don't want/need to attack their neighbors was a mistake. Also, not a good cold weather plane, which make it even worse for Norway and Canada. Also i think its software impairs it, because the wing design seems almost perfect for its missions, and at least on paper, the reactor seems great too