A-10C Thunderbolt II makes a comeback

[Smitty-48]

BUMP

Per 100,000 hours flown, the non combat loss rate of the twin engine F/A-18; is 4.9

For the comparable F-16; it's 4.1

Twin engines do not make any difference to the loss rate.

[nmoore63]

Spending money developing cutting edge manned military tech is a massive waste of resources.

Tech revolution in the next great war will be too fast.

Manned machines will be the wooden boats.

[Speaker to Animals]

Another thing: the stat for hours flown is bullshit. Really, the most relevant stat is per sortie since the risk between a short sortie and a long sortie doesn't go up much. It's a similar trick to what they do when they try to argue flying an airline is safer than driving. It's not. They are just using a statistic based on distance traveled rather than individual trips when most of the risk of flying is around take off and landing. When you use the more accurate statistics, it turns out that driving is slightly safer.

Likewise, the only real metric that makes sense for crash rates is the rate of airframes that crash per sortie, but I am not sure if anybody would use that or keep track of it. The only stat we really kept track of was the annual rate and -- news flash -- F-16s were a fucking trainwreck.

Using the per 100000 hours stat is fucking ridiculous.

[Smitty-48]

Spending money developing cutting edge manned military tech is a massive waste of resources.

Tech revolution in the next great war will be too fast.

Manned machines will be the wooden boats.

Unmanned machines to conduct the full spectrum of capabilities of manned machines, are simply more expensive, the pilot in the F-35 is simply cheaper in this generation than replacing that pilot with fully autonomous.

The greatest expense in the plane, is the 24 million lines of code to run it, if you take the pilot out, more code, more expensive.

When code becomes cheaper than pilots, then it will be the age of full autonomy, but you're simply a generation or two away from that right now.

[Speaker to Animals]

Another big eye-opener is the number of crashes of F-16s due to things like engine failure, which an F-15 would likely survive. I don't know if this has changed, but the really high crash rate of the F-16 used to derive from what would have been survivable failures in an F-15, namely engine failure. If the engine fails on a single-engine aircraft, it's crashing. The rest of the crashes that make up the rates are similar: pilot error, maintenance mistakes, battle damage, etc. Those things don't change. It's the stuff that would have been survivable had the aircraft two engines that matter.

[Smitty-48]

BUMP

Per 100,000 hours flown, the non combat loss rate of the twin engine F/A-18; is 4.9

For the comparable F-16; it's 4.1

Twin engines do not make any difference to the loss rate.

[nmoore63]

Spending money developing cutting edge manned military tech is a massive waste of resources.

Tech revolution in the next great war will be too fast.

Manned machines will be the wooden boats.

Unmanned machines to conduct the full spectrum of capabilities of manned machines, are simply more expensive, the pilot in the F-35 is simply cheaper in this generation than replacing that pilot with fully autonomous.

The greatest expense in the plane, is the 24 million lines of code to run it, if you take the pilot out, more code, more expensive.

When code becomes cheaper than pilots, then it will be the age of full autonomy, but you're simply a generation or two away from that right now.

Technology will make that jump the second we have a great war and risk and collateral damage concerns go out the window.

It will remain generations away, until its need today, then it will be here instantly.

[nmoore63]

Spending money developing cutting edge manned military tech is a massive waste of resources.

Tech revolution in the next great war will be too fast.

Manned machines will be the wooden boats.

Unmanned machines to conduct the full spectrum of capabilities of manned machines, are simply more expensive, the pilot in the F-35 is simply cheaper in this generation than replacing that pilot with fully autonomous.

The greatest expense in the plane, is the 24 million lines of code to run it, if you take the pilot out, more code, more expensive.

When code becomes cheaper than pilots, then it will be the age of full autonomy, but you're simply a generation or two away from that right now.

Technology will make that jump the second we have a great war and risk and collateral damage concerns go out the window.

It will remain generations away, until its need today, then it will be here instantly.

To be clear, I am not advocating to build the unmanned crap now either, I agree whatever you would come up with still be ineffective and working with the current paradigm.

[Smitty-48]

Spending money developing cutting edge manned military tech is a massive waste of resources.

Tech revolution in the next great war will be too fast.

Manned machines will be the wooden boats.

Unmanned machines to conduct the full spectrum of capabilities of manned machines, are simply more expensive, the pilot in the F-35 is simply cheaper in this generation than replacing that pilot with fully autonomous.

The greatest expense in the plane, is the 24 million lines of code to run it, if you take the pilot out, more code, more expensive.

When code becomes cheaper than pilots, then it will be the age of full autonomy, but you're simply a generation or two away from that right now.

Technology will make that jump the second we have a great war and risk and collateral damage concerns go out the window.

It will remain generations away, until its need today, then it will be here instantly.

Well, for today, the defense budget is $200 billion 1980's dollars, and for that price, the Air Force cannot afford Commander Data, so in the meantime, the plane is mostly autonomous, but the pilot is there to do make the most expensive decisions and be accountable for the actions, until such time as code can do it for the same price, and the United States forgoes the laws of armed conflict.

[nmoore63]

Spend money: on infrastructure, soldiers/training, and produce whatever we currently can mass produce.

Developing the next superjet to be piloted by people should be an incredibly low priority.