US managed to build up a lot of mythology around their military capabilities over the years, and actually putting that to a test was a huge blunder. Before the war started, most of the world was convinced that NATO military was superior to Russia in practically all the respects. They were supposed to have better training, better tactics, better tech, etc. Nobody seriously questioned that.
Then things got put to the test and turns out that Russian army is far more effective on the battlefield. All the NATO weapons proved to be ineffective, their tactics don't work, and they're not able to adapt the way Russia is. Drones are a perfect example of that. Russia started out lacking in this department, and now it managed to develop and put cheap and effective drones into production at scale.
This war exposed NATO as the emperor with no clothes.
One of the few good things about this. Seeing Leopards getting swatted and Javelins fail to make a difference, all while watching NATO deplete it's stocks, has likely done a lot to hurt NATO's intimidation factor.
Also, I don't think anyone is going to miss that the US fragged Europe's energy supply to make them dependent on US energy, or that the US is gutting the EU's industrial sector. With BRICS gaining steam this was a bad time to play that hand (I hope).
NATO invincibility myth being shattered is really important because now everyone can see that NATO can be fought and it can be defeated. And completely agree that the relations between US and Europe are very likely to sour going forward. Once it starts sinking in that Europe got cynically used by US, there's going to be a backlash.
Once it starts sinking in that Europe got cynically used by US, there's going to be a backlash.
i wouldn't hold my breath. it isn't like this is the first time europe's been fucked over by the US. we'll probably come crawling back like we always do
don’t think anyone is going to miss that the US fragged Europe’s energy supply to make them dependent on US energy
Except for every lemmy lib, it seems. I doubt they are representative of the overall sentiments in Europe and certainly not the world, but I would argue they are representative of the liberal worldview, that seems fairly universal regardless of geography
i think the scales have tipped on some illusions about NATO technology & doctrine but to blow this up to "no clothes" veers into underestimation. NATO, for the deficiencies still has a shittload of military equipment and personnel
Sure, NATO still has a lot of equipment and personnel, but it's no better than the equipment and personnel China and Russia have. Meanwhile, where we see NATO shitting the bed is the logistics side of things. The thing that turned out to be most important in this war is just being able to produce large volumes of ammunition. NATO is not capable of doing that at the moment.
Seeing NATO gear falter may increase confidence in the systems of other countries and bolster arms trading between non-western-aligned nations. Not a good thing per-se, but it might be a check on NATO. If someone builds an air defense system that can kill F-35s NATO is militarily broken I think.
If an F-35 ever gets within the range of S-400 systems it's toast. There's a reason US flipped out when Turkey got them and refused to supply F-35s. Even a German radar vendor says it was able to track F-35 back in 2018
The whole stealth thing is incredibly overblown in my opinion, and it's another example of hyped up military tech that's not going to perform as expected if it's ever tested.
I've heard the overwhelming focus on radar invisibility in a small number of radar bands doesn't translate to the whole thing being radar invisible.
I was also thinking about, with neural nets and large learning models, you could probably train a system to look for F-35 shaped anomolies in a radar network's data the same way they train models to look for signs of cancer in a lung. One radar might not be able to see it reliably, but what about a series of networked radars using different wavelengths and methods, all networked together to create a single data stream for interpretation?
in all likelihood everyone's had this technology for a while now. i lean a bit towards giving the f35 the benefit of the doubt though, and just assume that its signature is small and fuzzy enough for it to have a smaller confidence interval than other less stealthy aircraft
same goes for submersible gliders equipped with passive sonar systems, just saturate an area with those and suddenly the ashbm kill chain is a lot more cloud cover resistant than nafo would have you believe
That's my expectation as well, and on top of that, the jet necessarily produces emissions in a lot of different spectrums, such as heat and sound. So, I can't see how you hide something like a jet from an integrated system that observes and integrates data across multiple spectrums. Back when computing power was low this was likely not practical to do, but it's definitely something that would be done today.
It's rumored that both China and Russia have radar systems capable of detecting stealth aircraft. Nobody will know for sure unless shots are fired though and hopefully that never happens.
The other area where America has a military tech lead is in submarines (at least over China, question mark about Russia). However, there are also rumors that China has found some sort of countermeasure as evidenced by that American sub crashing into an underwater mountain last year. Either the US Navy is so fucked up that they're crashing subs into immovable objects (honestly not impossible given that their ships hit shit all the time) or China has a weapon that can fuck with their systems.
I definitely hope we never find out as it would mean WW3 and a likely nuclear holocaust. I do expect that stealth air craft detection is possible, especially with modern technology where you can integrate multispectrum data. Radar is just one way to look for the aircraft, it produces a whole spectrum of emissions, such as heat and sound. These are pretty much impossible to hide, and I imagine that once you see an anomaly in one spectrum it allows to check more closely across different spectrums to home in on the target.
In terms of subs, Russia and US are about even in terms of the number of subs, while China has the most at the moment. Russian and Yasen class subs can carry more weapons, and in particular hypersonics which US doesn't have. I imagine there's been a lot of tech transfer happening between Russia and China here as well which is what allowed China to develop their own fleet so rapidly. Also agree that the most likely scenario is that US sub got intercepted as opposed to having run into the ocean floor all on its own.
If someone builds an air defense system that can kill F-35s NATO is militarily broken I think.
Remember that Iranians shot down the most modern and expensive US stealth drone worth 200 million with a soviet missile from 60's with domestically build guidance system. And F35 isn't even any particular breakthrough compared to earlier stealth designs, i would say Russia is quite capable of that.
Note how US try to push F-35 down the throats of their allies but don't even want to try it in Ukraine. I suspect getting it shot down would botch the sales, not to mention it could prompt something like a real investigation of that entire project which is like pandora box of corruption.
Yeah, I don't think anybody expected that drones would play such a huge role. It does make sense in hindsight though, surveillance is incredibly important for knowing what the enemy is doing, and for coordinating artillery fire. Meanwhile, cheap kamikaze drones are a really cost effective way to take out multi-million dollar tanks. What's interesting is that it looks like Russia invested a lot more into electronic warfare prior to the conflict and they're able to jam western drones and guided weapons.
I'm guessing that in the future, as jamming becomes more prevalent, we'll see more push for development of autonomous weapons. And that's a bit of a scary thought when you consider the implications.
US managed to build up a lot of mythology around their military capabilities over the years, and actually putting that to a test was a huge blunder. Before the war started, most of the world was convinced that NATO military was superior to Russia in practically all the respects. They were supposed to have better training, better tactics, better tech, etc. Nobody seriously questioned that.
Then things got put to the test and turns out that Russian army is far more effective on the battlefield. All the NATO weapons proved to be ineffective, their tactics don't work, and they're not able to adapt the way Russia is. Drones are a perfect example of that. Russia started out lacking in this department, and now it managed to develop and put cheap and effective drones into production at scale.
This war exposed NATO as the emperor with no clothes.
One of the few good things about this. Seeing Leopards getting swatted and Javelins fail to make a difference, all while watching NATO deplete it's stocks, has likely done a lot to hurt NATO's intimidation factor.
Also, I don't think anyone is going to miss that the US fragged Europe's energy supply to make them dependent on US energy, or that the US is gutting the EU's industrial sector. With BRICS gaining steam this was a bad time to play that hand (I hope).
NATO invincibility myth being shattered is really important because now everyone can see that NATO can be fought and it can be defeated. And completely agree that the relations between US and Europe are very likely to sour going forward. Once it starts sinking in that Europe got cynically used by US, there's going to be a backlash.
i wouldn't hold my breath. it isn't like this is the first time europe's been fucked over by the US. we'll probably come crawling back like we always do
Yeah, they'll just blame Russia while the US continues to empty Europe's pockets.
"No Korea doesn't count because muh human waves."
"No Vietnam doesn't count because trees. Also, muh KDR."
"No Iraq doesn't count because muh insurgency."
"No Afghanistan doesn't count because muh mountains."
"No Ukraine doesn't count because muh..."
Except for every lemmy lib, it seems. I doubt they are representative of the overall sentiments in Europe and certainly not the world, but I would argue they are representative of the liberal worldview, that seems fairly universal regardless of geography
i think the scales have tipped on some illusions about NATO technology & doctrine but to blow this up to "no clothes" veers into underestimation. NATO, for the deficiencies still has a shittload of military equipment and personnel
Sure, NATO still has a lot of equipment and personnel, but it's no better than the equipment and personnel China and Russia have. Meanwhile, where we see NATO shitting the bed is the logistics side of things. The thing that turned out to be most important in this war is just being able to produce large volumes of ammunition. NATO is not capable of doing that at the moment.
Seeing NATO gear falter may increase confidence in the systems of other countries and bolster arms trading between non-western-aligned nations. Not a good thing per-se, but it might be a check on NATO. If someone builds an air defense system that can kill F-35s NATO is militarily broken I think.
If an F-35 ever gets within the range of S-400 systems it's toast. There's a reason US flipped out when Turkey got them and refused to supply F-35s. Even a German radar vendor says it was able to track F-35 back in 2018
https://www.c4isrnet.com/intel-geoint/sensors/2019/09/30/stealthy-no-more-a-german-radar-vendor-says-it-tracked-the-f-35-jet-in-2018-from-a-pony-farm/
The whole stealth thing is incredibly overblown in my opinion, and it's another example of hyped up military tech that's not going to perform as expected if it's ever tested.
I've heard the overwhelming focus on radar invisibility in a small number of radar bands doesn't translate to the whole thing being radar invisible.
I was also thinking about, with neural nets and large learning models, you could probably train a system to look for F-35 shaped anomolies in a radar network's data the same way they train models to look for signs of cancer in a lung. One radar might not be able to see it reliably, but what about a series of networked radars using different wavelengths and methods, all networked together to create a single data stream for interpretation?
in all likelihood everyone's had this technology for a while now. i lean a bit towards giving the f35 the benefit of the doubt though, and just assume that its signature is small and fuzzy enough for it to have a smaller confidence interval than other less stealthy aircraft
same goes for submersible gliders equipped with passive sonar systems, just saturate an area with those and suddenly the ashbm kill chain is a lot more cloud cover resistant than nafo would have you believe
That's my expectation as well, and on top of that, the jet necessarily produces emissions in a lot of different spectrums, such as heat and sound. So, I can't see how you hide something like a jet from an integrated system that observes and integrates data across multiple spectrums. Back when computing power was low this was likely not practical to do, but it's definitely something that would be done today.
It's rumored that both China and Russia have radar systems capable of detecting stealth aircraft. Nobody will know for sure unless shots are fired though and hopefully that never happens.
The other area where America has a military tech lead is in submarines (at least over China, question mark about Russia). However, there are also rumors that China has found some sort of countermeasure as evidenced by that American sub crashing into an underwater mountain last year. Either the US Navy is so fucked up that they're crashing subs into immovable objects (honestly not impossible given that their ships hit shit all the time) or China has a weapon that can fuck with their systems.
I definitely hope we never find out as it would mean WW3 and a likely nuclear holocaust. I do expect that stealth air craft detection is possible, especially with modern technology where you can integrate multispectrum data. Radar is just one way to look for the aircraft, it produces a whole spectrum of emissions, such as heat and sound. These are pretty much impossible to hide, and I imagine that once you see an anomaly in one spectrum it allows to check more closely across different spectrums to home in on the target.
In terms of subs, Russia and US are about even in terms of the number of subs, while China has the most at the moment. Russian and Yasen class subs can carry more weapons, and in particular hypersonics which US doesn't have. I imagine there's been a lot of tech transfer happening between Russia and China here as well which is what allowed China to develop their own fleet so rapidly. Also agree that the most likely scenario is that US sub got intercepted as opposed to having run into the ocean floor all on its own.
Remember that Iranians shot down the most modern and expensive US stealth drone worth 200 million with a soviet missile from 60's with domestically build guidance system. And F35 isn't even any particular breakthrough compared to earlier stealth designs, i would say Russia is quite capable of that.
Note how US try to push F-35 down the throats of their allies but don't even want to try it in Ukraine. I suspect getting it shot down would botch the sales, not to mention it could prompt something like a real investigation of that entire project which is like pandora box of corruption.
The advancement in drone warfare over 18 months is honestly shocking
Yeah, I don't think anybody expected that drones would play such a huge role. It does make sense in hindsight though, surveillance is incredibly important for knowing what the enemy is doing, and for coordinating artillery fire. Meanwhile, cheap kamikaze drones are a really cost effective way to take out multi-million dollar tanks. What's interesting is that it looks like Russia invested a lot more into electronic warfare prior to the conflict and they're able to jam western drones and guided weapons.
I'm guessing that in the future, as jamming becomes more prevalent, we'll see more push for development of autonomous weapons. And that's a bit of a scary thought when you consider the implications.