Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

China (and a lot of others) will be able kick our ass if we adapt the f-35 says RAND simulation and a lot of experts. US air superiority will be lost.
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https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how ... 95d45f86a5

I worked on that program for 10 years, and I worked at an FFRDC like Rand. Two thoughts:

- I agree with the article that trying to make a joint program was dumb. The promises made in terms of cost, commonality, and performance will not be realized, but it was necessary to sell the program.


- regarding the sim that Rand ran: I've seen many, many of those. Take any of those results with a grain of salt. For example, even thigh the F35 lost that scenario, maybe it did much better than the current fleet. You also don't know what other assumptions were made. Also, the scenario was pretty stressing - a 26 v 76 OCA mission. In other words, we were outnumbered three to one on their home ground.

The big picture is - is our strategy of pursuing quality over quantity the correct strategy?

trailrunner wrote:The big picture is - is our strategy of pursuing quality over quantity the correct strategy?

That is one of the reasons why nazi armor was overwhelmed by the end of WWII. Even though the Tiger and King Tiger were feared by many, they were over-engineered, using expensive materials and labour intensive production methods; Which were hard to replace/repair quickly.

The whole program just reinforces the lesson "Those who don't learn from past mistakes are destined to repeat them". This is one of Rumsfeld's babies along with the Stryker to replace heavy armor. That didn't work out the best either. Then, the Generals fought against fielding MRAPs which were shoved down their throats by politicians (a good decision by the politicians actually), Now they are trying to give the MRAPs away left and right and just like after WWII, the idiots won't have the equipment to fight the next war even though the vehicle convoy escort role will still exist. Rumsfeld was a McNamara clone if I ever saw one.
Throw this in with the Admirals trying to figure out what to do about cruiser replacement/ upgrades https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-na ... b5c0d7186a They are actually talking about pulling half of the 22 ship fleet out of service and overhauling them and then replacing the 11 that stayed in service. They say they can save money by only crewing the 11 that are in service at any time. That would be one per carrier group and that is it. Throw in the fact that only 5 have the vertical launch system used to protect against ballistic missiles and you can see where we have some folks who can't make smart decisions, making decisions.

trailrunner wrote:I worked on that program for 10 years, and I worked at an FFRDC like Rand. Two thoughts:

- I agree with the article that trying to make a joint program was dumb. The promises made in terms of cost, commonality, and performance will not be realized, but it was necessary to sell the program.


- regarding the sim that Rand ran: I've seen many, many of those. Take any of those results with a grain of salt. For example, even thigh the F35 lost that scenario, maybe it did much better than the current fleet. You also don't know what other assumptions were made. Also, the scenario was pretty stressing - a 26 v 76 OCA mission. In other words, we were outnumbered three to one on their home ground.

The big picture is - is our strategy of pursuing quality over quantity the correct strategy?

As a former OR analyst and a frequent user of FFRDC material, this insight is dead on.

If we can knock down 10+:1 then quality wins. Training gave us 13:1 in Viet Nam which flies in the face of the commie saying "quantity has a quality all its own."