Sources:
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/03/the-f-47-fighter-cost-problem-no-one-wants-to-touch/
https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/iran-shahed-drones-gulf-patriot-air-defence-cost-crisis/ (assuming 2 missiles to each drone and the lowest estimate of drone costs)
War is literally a racket.
To some, it's Cuck porn
What? War is more team sports than actual team sports
I've been debating if I want to ever explain my answers with this account. It feels like it would kill the joke.
I'm only going to make an exception here because this circumstance is particularly funny to me and I plan on deleting it shortly: This is Cuck porn to the taxpayers who are having their money sent to fund the wars they don't wish to participate in. They are being made to watch.
We are so close to inventing Arsenal Birds IRL.
You see, you're approaching this from all the wrong angle. Big misconception.
You're looking at this as if the US is trying to maximize its military capability, but that's a mistaken assumption. Actually, the US is trying to maximize the amount of public funds funneled into defense contractors. And for that purpose, this is a very viable solution.
I think we've just found out you can't beat poor countries using modern tactics and equipment with a military that was built to cannibalise your country's wealth. You might do some damage, but you just end up another poor country.
TBH the US learned that over 50 years ago with the Vietnam war. I'm pretty sure herodotus wrote about it like 2500 years ago too.
I mean yeah, the Vietnam war could have been permanent Lunar base money. The money spent on the last few wars could have made America into a place nobody would ever leave willingly, but instead it's looking like an empire's last gasp.
The chuds watching 300 thinking their side is Sparta and not Persia....
I mean really, Sparta was xenophobic, massively right wing, and all talk - they were nowhere near as badass as their histories make them out to be. Compared to how tolerant and multicultural the Achaemenid Empire was at the time, chuds might be right.
But think of all the shareholder value created along the way
I'm assuming you don't need to waste an F-47 for each drone, right?
If current F-47 can be retrofitted for dual porpoise... It might make a better value proposition?
Sorry, I'm not very knowledgeable, I don't live on a war driven economy.
For $300 million, they better be quad dolphin
It looks like the F-47 would be able to manage up to 8 drones. Is that a lot? I don't know.
At the same time? Or it's to be scrapped afterwards?
My understanding is that the US drones are missile platforms. They launch their shit, then return to base; while the cheaper Iranian drones are kamikaze.
My reading is that the technology gives a crazy edge to quantity over quality, cheap over expensive, and the Pentagon's asking, "How do we make these as expensive per unit as humanly possible?"
It's fine. It makes us less effective militarily, drains the treasury faster, drives up bonds, accelerates an Argentina/Greece style debt crisis that will be the end of the empire... so it's all good. Just wish I lived somewhere else is all.
My understanding is that the US drones are missile platforms. They launch their shit, then return to base; while the cheaper Iranian drones are kamikaze.
Yeah, that's the idea here, particularly when it comes to the kind of drones being integrated with next generation fighters. The big notion most 6th gen fighter projects are moving towards is turning the plane into a mobile command and control centre, and using drones as the weapon delivery systems. So if you're, for example, trying to shoot down an enemy fighter using a missile, instead of putting yourself in missile range to do it you send one of your drones forward and have it launch a missile. If your drone gets splashed in return, oh well. These aren't cheap drones that we're talking about, they're basically fighter planes in their own right, but most militaries would much rather replace a plane than replace a pilot. That's why ejector seats exist.
This actually does make a lot of sense as a concept. Basically every plane becomes a whole flight or even a small squadron. This drastically cuts down on the number of pilots you need to achieve the same effect in the air, and pilots are a really, really expensive and very limited resource.
The F-47 isn't really a counter to Shaheds. There are ways to counter Shaheds, and the US desperately needs to invest in them, but that's not really what their 6th Gen fighter program is about, any more than it's the purpose of GCAP or whatever madness Saab is cooking up. 6th Gen fighters are built to take out the Russian and Chinese air forces. When one F-47 can basically counter a dozen Migs, that gives you a huge advantage.
Thanks for explaining the logic! It does make sense in an A2A context. Everything is about range.
But more broadly, I wonder what "air superiority" means in 2026. Even if you shot down every plane the enemy had, they can still deny you unchallenged access to their airspace. It looks like that's what happening in Iran. We're dropping standoff munitions at the border and sending missiles, not dropping gravity bombs directly overhead.
Seems ground defense can now match air offense at a fraction of the cost. "The assignment", as I see it, is to build a cheap, robust military backed by an industrial base that can pump out munitions.
I think that's a serious misreading of what's happening in Iran.
Air superiority still matters a lot. But the way you establish air superiority is by systematically annihilating the enemy air defenses.
Remember all those Tomahawks, ATCMS, and other PrSMs the US absolutely dumped into Iran until their supplies started to run low? Yeah, you're supposed to use those to kill the enemy's air defence. That's exactly what they're good at. Instead the US just kind of threw them at whatever, including girls schools. Then they threw their aircraft at a still largely functional air defence network and were surprised when they got shot at.
The same thing is happening in Ukraine. Russia wasted their high end cruise missiles blowing up apartment buildings and then sent poorly trained pilots to fly so low and slow that they could be hit by MANPADS.
That's not supposed to be possible. Shoulder mounted anti air is basically useless against a jet fighter flown by a competent pilot (they're meant for killing helicopters). The only reason Ukraine is killing Migs with them is because the Russian pilots are so bad.
Nothing has changed about the importance of air superiority. We're just watching two object lessons in how to completely fuck up getting air superiority.
My guess is the US didn't take out Iranian air defenses because they can't; maybe it's memory or imagination, but I thought they're underground until they're in use, or they only turn on when there's been a visual, or there are a ton of cheaper decoys, or a combination of the three.
Damn, that's pretty embarassing for the Russians, though.
Underground air defense systems aren't a thing. The US is perfectly capable of identifying likely Iranian air defence sites. In theory.
They just suck at this. There's no excuse for it. Iran isn't pulling some crazy James Bond villain shit. The US Military is just run by total fucking clowns, because they hired an alcoholic TV personality to run the show and he chased out everyone with an ounce of competence.
This is something a lot of people just don't seem to grasp, and I've been saying it for a very long time.
If you spend a six or even seven figure sum to successfully intercept a five figure piece of ordinance, that's actually a win for whoever fired it.
Only if you ignore the cost of letting them bomb whatever they want.
Nope, you've missed the point even after I've explained it.
Yes, you need to intercept that missile or drone, because it's headed towards something worth far more than the missile.
But, because the cost of a successful intercept is so high, your enemy can just keep spamming cheap ordinance at your until you run out.
In a longer war you're only delaying that point a little bit until you run out of the deluxe turbo pro interceptors you make 100 of per year.
Of course ýou'd want to consider the value of the target.
So let's consider a 10-story building costs $16 million to build. The enemy sends 3 20k drones out to destroy it. You counter with 6 missiles, for a total of $24 million. You've now, in a single afternoon, spent $8 million more than the building costs to rebuild.
The building obviously has utility, and might generate some income on its own, but the enemy has basically given you economic damage that is even greater than destroying the building. They spent 60k and you spent 24 million, a multiplier of 400!
Then the enemy sends 3 more drones, you're out of interceptors, and you lose the building anyway. Total cost to them: 120k. Total cost to you: $40 million. The funny thing is that by sending in 3 extra drones to destroy the building, the multiplier DROPS to 333. If they wanted to purely drain your treasury, they'd try not to destroy your buildings to motivate you to keep intercepting drones!
Wars run on money. GRRM knew exactly what he was doing when he made the Iron Bank a major political player. You need money to win wars, and even if you win the war, you may have indebted your government so much it can't recover.
One of the common themes of the fall of empires is that they own the fiat currency, therefore it is very easy for them to borrow money. So they keep borrowing money, and borrowing money, and borrowing money, until the day comes that they are spending most of their budget covering the interest.
Wars are the number one way empires run up their budgets.
The next step is the empire, losing its grip on the world, and becoming financially less stable, starts paying higher interest rates.
This is where on the map, we'd put a big arrow with the text: YOU ARE HERE (meaning the US). Bond yields are rising.
The next step is when even the interest become unaffordable, which triggers even higher rates, which cycles into higher taxes, lower services, which trigger less investment, and then it's a vicious cycle to total economic meltdown.
It's more likely they're protecting an aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but yes, you're very much right. You can just bleed someone dry with cheap ordinance.
This is why we need to get rid of the $4,000+ bullet proof vests which protect against $0.40 bullets.
You can typically just shoot the person back, and deal with the problem that way.
Hitting a drone is like winning a prize at the carnival.
The assignment is to keep the media off of trumps global child sex trafficking ring
Logistics has been the king of wars for over a century. Only absolute FUCKING MORONS think a techno driven war machine is a good idea.
FUCKING MORONS with in-ground pools behind their houses in Maryland.
Logistics determine the war since war exists.
Why don't they just make the drone swarms able to assemble into an F-47 like a Megazord?
Open to discussion because I frankly don't know what I'm talking about, but I have a growing suspicion, given the US's recent performance, that the true purpose of the military budget is congressional pork.
Eisenhower described the problem in 1961. so for at least 65 years a significant factor of foreign policy has been rich executives of arms manufacturers and military contractors who profit from war making "donations" to politicians who decide when to go to war, and who and how much to award military contracts to. it's called the military-industrial complex
It's true what you said about the interceptor which is why Ukraine uses interceptor drones against shahed types. Patriot was only used against ballistic missiles before they ran out.
It always has been. They understood the assignment very well. Funnel money from the public to defense contractors.
Why would they care? It's free money to them. 🤢🤕
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