• zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    pointing to 40 year old stealth technology

    China's not going to know what hit them! Totally worth killing several million people with easily treatable medical conditions.

    • RamrodBaguette [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      What's funny is that the State Department and Hollywood are apparently less self-deluded about America's shrinking technological edge than this fool, going by the latest Top Gun movie where the entire premise is compensating for that with raw skill.

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        be america

        want to bomb :us-foreign-policy:

        spend a trillion dollars on a new airplane

        doesn't fly in the rain

        send a fifty year old aircraft with a sixty year old pilot instead

        die from preventable illness

        fuck yeah

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Remember in ww1 how most of the imperial powers had a real fucking hard time cause they hadn't had a fair fight in almost a century?

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      The west loves to make fun of Russia now but they're basically running a massive live fire exercise on NATO equipment and tactics in Ukraine right now. It's a lot like the Winter War imo. Even if it doesn't end in a decisive victory, Russia can't really lose against Ukraine, and like the Winter War they are going to learn a lot of lessons and adjust their doctrines for future conflicts accordingly.

      Meanwhile it seems we didn't seem to learn anything from getting humiliated in Afghanistan a couple years ago and instead opted to just memory hole it on a national level.

    • RamrodBaguette [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I mean, there was the Franco-Prussian War and the Crimean War.

      Granted, there was a huge-ass gulf of tech and tactics between then and WWI.

  • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    A reminder that the F-22 had to use two missiles to shoot down a large, barely moving, unpropelled, baloon.

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      To be fair even though it is incredibly pedantic and meaningless at this point etc using two missiles to confirm kills is standard air doctrine and really would be far more embarrassing if the 1 in 1,000,000 chance the stupid pilot shot the missile wrong(e.g too far away or from too far below etc) than just using two and getting it done.

      But yeah it seems even the first one missed anyway so I'm not even sure what that says about them.

    • hahafuck [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That only seems silly if you don't agree the real purpose of a military is to fire as many missiles as possible

    • captcha [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Most sources say it used a single sidewinder missile. Where are you hearing it used two missiles? It is weird that a heatseaking missile took out a cold balloon.

      • Tankiedesantski [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Looks like I was thinking of another balloon that was shot down by an F16 and two missiles.

        https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unidentified-object-shot-down-lake-huron-missile-missed-general-mark-milley/

  • MaoistLandlord [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It's because we spend all our money on bombs. And that's a good thing :so-true:

      • NPa [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        "I hope you enjoyed our temporary Jordan Peterson exhibition, next, if you'll look to the left here, we have the Matt Yglesias Wing, containing only the finest examples of dipshittery."

        • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Matt's living brain in a jar with eyeballs, forced to watch and hear all the dunks of the visiting schoolchildren, but eternally unable to reply

          • NPa [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago
                (muffled gurgling)
            

            :matt-jokerfied: :speech-l:

          • ProfessorAdonisCnut [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Musk gets the same treatment, but with cybernetic enhancements to bring his brain up to average human intelligence so he can understand what an idiot he was all his life

  • Cunigulus [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    China's J-20's actually look like a much better platform than the F-35 for conflict in that theatre. F-22's still look scary good tho.

    • ultraviolet [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The development of the J-20 also costed like a fraction of the F-35

      • Upanotherday [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        To be fair they got any of the good or useful research and engineering of the f35s for free.

        :xigma-male:

        • Nephhours [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          So why is everyone always mad at China for allegedly stealing IP like military stuff ?

          Like who cares and also military stuff is for killing people I'm pretty sure "stealing" the plans and copying them is significantly less bad

          • pyrpelo [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            So why is everyone always mad at China for allegedly stealing IP like military stuff ?

            because westerners are the ultimate bootlickers of property owners.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      There's also only like 200 F-22s in existence. There are 10x as many FA-18s and 20x as many F-16s still in service.

  • Goblinmancer [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Cuban microwave weapon >>>>>> the entire united states military

  • RamrodBaguette [comrade/them, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Love the quotes around "Free". A strawman as if people arguing for something well-within the US's capabilities aren't aware it has to come from somewhere.

  • GarfieldYaoi [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Because CHUDs are too insecure with their masculinity to run a country?

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Reminder the Pentagon still has no answer to China's JY-26 "Skywatch-U" UHF 3-D long-range surveillance radar system, which is portable and cheap

    • wwiehtnioj [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      China also doesn't have free healthcare so I guess the USA is going to discover that the hard way.

        • ZoomeristLeninist [comrade/them, she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          the CPC started healthcare reform in 1996. since 2013, 95% of the population were covered by health insurance. and today the health status of China's populace is similar to "other countries with advanced economies"

          claims sourced from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)32136-1/fulltext