I had another post that was like a three page breakdown of ways that I, an amateur outsider whose military experience extends to a lot of Total War and two gun-fights during which I wasn't armed or intentionally participating, could identify serious, SERIOUS problems with the F-35 platform, ranging from "They can only carry one third the ordinance of an F-16, meaning they'll need to fly three times as many sorties from the same ships and spaces despite requiring vastly more maintenance and upkeep" to "Lol plane has 8.6 million lines of code going back decades. I wonder what happens when the Pilots helmet suffers a hard crash to BSOD?" to "The US air force can only keep 2/3s of these notoriously delicate and finnicky planes operational during peacetime when there is no war placing stress on production and logistical supply chains" to "Huh, it says the helmet is heavier than a normal pilot's helmet. I wonder what that does to the pilot's neck when they have to look all over the goddamn place because they have a Valve Index strapped to their face and they have to fly three times as many sorties to drop the same bomb load?"

The thing has so fucking many layers and layers and layers and layers of public, simple, not at all secret or related to spooky high tech stuff problem. And the US ain't got a good warfightin record no matter how much koolaid people drink. And this is the lynch-pin of their air-superiority for probably the next 30-50 years. And the vaunted "Stealth" technology only works in specific EM bands, while easy enough to see in other bands that you could probably wire a large learning model up to a bunch of different radar installations and have it look for F-35 shaped patterns in the data, making it's core defense and the justification for the whole stupid white elephant worthless. And radar as a whole has been getting better over time while the F-35 is as stealthy as it's ever likely to get. And it's entire utility in a near-peer conflict seems to be based on the priggish refusal of NATOids to even consider the idea that competitor anti-air systems could seriously threaten them.

And if the F-35 is anything less than the miraculous wunderwaffen it's promised to be then NATO just... stalemates. They can't win without 100% air superiority because all their other weapon systems either don't work or have glaring problems that make them questionably useful at best. The Abrams can't cross most of the bridges in the world, drinks jet fuel, is expensive to repair, and can't survive hits from modern ATGMs anyway. Americas IFVs continue to suck just as they always have. All the magic artillery systems keep going wildly over budget, and unless something changed they can't even keep them fed in a limited proxy war against Russia. The Navy is a clownish mixture of antiques and hyper-tech systems that don't actually work, and those pesky Chinese diesel/electric subs keep penetrating their defense line while NATOids scream "ANTI SHIP MISSILES AREN'T REAL AND THEY CAN'T HURT ME!" AFAIK the US doesn't really have an answer to networked drone swarm warfare that seems like it's going to explode in to an arms race any day now. And the Army is in the process of replacing the proven M4 family, arguably one of the only US weapons that has actually seen extensive use against meaningful opposition in it's intended role, with new guns equipped with very cool, very expensive, very useful, very electronic and battery powered gun sights and equipment.

Like each piece of the US army is really cool if you keep it in a climate controlled room and never expose it to anything that has any chance of all of actually hurting it, but the whole fucking system starts to look pretty fragile outside of that garage. All of NATO's combat successes are against people armed in most cases with pre-digital weaponry, and even then the badly outgunned and outsupplied peasants the US fights score the odd victory, sometimes using literal junk - The US army was barely able to hold the Green Zone for most of the Iraq war because people kept burying barrels full of explosives from old artillery shells under the roads. The IRA had been using the same tactics since the 1970s, the US's pet kingdom was able to study the tactics up close and very personally, and the US still had a terrible time coming up with effective defenses and counter measures. Now they can mostly protect themselves from IEDs most of the time, as long as they're IEDs built in garages using whatever can be scrounged locally. How are they going to do against loitering smart munitions cranked out of Chinese factories by the 10s of thousands?

And, like, even numerically - What the fuck do NATOids expect to do to China without a general nuclear strike? They think that their paltry arsenal of bombs is somehow going to flatten the geographically massive country of China's industry? They think they could ever mobilize enough ground troops to occupy a meaningful part of a country with four times the population and a massive, massive, and from what I understand very proud and nationalistic populace? Like do they think that they're going to just take Beijing, install a KMT puppet, and call it a day?

All this NATO masturbation seems centered on an obsessive need to believe that China will attack the ROC. That's the only scenario they seem to think about - the USA valiantly defending Taiwanese Microchips from Chinese aggression. Beyond that... what the hell do they think is going to happen? A couple of carriers are going to neturalize all the defenses across the entire Chinese coastline? Do they think a few dozen F-35s with paltry 5000lb bomb loads are going to bomb Chinese cities in to submission after decades and decades of proof that you can't win wars with air power? After the abject failures of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where objectively pathetically equipped and trained Militias kept Americans running around in hopeless circles trying to gain some kind of meaningful control for decades, they think they're going to be able to occupy the worlds largest high tech economy? Literally with what fucking army? Do they think all 68 million of the notoriously unhealthy, unmotivated, hopeless, and hostile Zoomers are going to sign up to go die in Taiwan for the glory of Capitalism?

I honestly don't know what the entire fuck they think will happen, because I don't see any way a weak country with military industry that is almost 100% corruption, two equally inept political factions that everyone hates, a demoralized, unmotivated, unhealthy, and impoverished population, an economy in the terminal phases of auto cannibalization, and a military absolutely reliant un grotesquely expensive unproven wunderwaffen is going to be fucking China in a war of aggression conducted across all of the fucking pacific in one direction and the entire rest of the world in the other, at a time when the enemy abso-fucking-lutely can engage in conventional weapon strikes against targets on the US mainland.

Just that, the ability to drop conventional weapons on factories in the US with sub-meter precision, is unprecedented in history and should be seen as an enormous X-factor in any conflict with Russia. Have they even considered what the American public is going to do when interstate bridges getting blown up by ICBMs, or a missile takes out the last Cracker Barrel in the county?

Also, lol, the PRC has apparently had 100 ICBM launchers, both static silos and vehicles, three years ago. Now they have 450 combined silos and vehicles. The US still has more nukes, though, don't worry, it's all gonna be okay, we're still going to win and be home in time for christmas!

It's so fucking stupid. We look a lot more like the Nazis attacking the Soviets than the other way around, Except that the Chinese have vast advantages that the Soviets never dreamed of, starting with the goddamn pacific ocean.