Remix clone Hacker News

Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things.

Flying high might make it invisible for human observers but the idea is that it’s not invisible in that wavelength, therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it.

Also, this is a brand new machine that is still not ready. Just write it off, liquidate any useful work that might have been done on it and go all in drones. What’s the point of insisting on a job not done when already looks obsolete?

▲

lm28469 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If a bunch of microphones and binoculars would defeat stealth fighters (or any kind of jets) don't you think someone in the US, Chinese or Russian army would have thought about it ? Just as a reminder the thing is coming at mach 1.5-2 and as soon as it can it'll send a little present coming your way at mach 2-4

> therefore it must be possible to create devices that can detect it.

What's the probability some over worked dude who tweet 20 times an hour came up with something the US military–industrial complex hasn't thought about in the last 50 years ?

Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast

https://defence-blog.com/bayraktar-tb2-drones-saved-the-coun...

btw his brand new idea is at least a hundred years old: https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eyPsCUn0O68/V8jmQwIYR5I/AAAAAAAAK...

▲

red-iron-pine an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Remember the early Ukraine invasion when a couple of bayraktars almost single handedly saved the country during the initial wave ? It was neither stealthy nor fast

The Bayraktars are the budget-drone option. A big part of their success was less that they're good, and more that the Russians kept all of their EW and AA turned off to achieve tactical surprise. Which they sort of did, but not enough to anchor the fight, and the budget drones were effective at killing a lot of AA early on, increasing their window of lethality.

Once they got their EW & AA game together the Bayraktars stopped being dangerous very quickly.

▲

orwin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I highly doubt f35 will use supersonic speed for anything else than repositioning/travel. In combat theaters i doubt it speed will go higher than Mach 0.8.

And anyway, if you want CAS, to stop an army, A-10 will probably be a dozen time better suited than any multirole, and especially the f35 with its ridiculously low availability rate, or even better in that particular case, an AC-130 (that is probably able to direct a drone fleet in its latest revision, but that was speculation last time i checked)

(the A-10 is the best modern plane in my opinion, i really like the F15, f18 and Rafale (those curves!), because i really like the idea of aircraft carrier but that plane is the best.)

▲

mrtksn 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Ukrainians already built a microphone network to detect incoming missile and planes.

	▲	hkpack 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Microphone network is mostly used for low speed and high noise Iranian Shahed drones which are also made from composite materials and have very low radar visibility. (For example, Moldovan military recently mentioned that they cannot detect them with their old USSR-made radars). When one is flying towards you, you hear it from few kilometres away for minutes as it has very loud petrol-powered engine. In contrast, when you hear low passing cruise missile, you will have just few seconds until it passes over you.

▲

invalidname 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He is wrong about that with the current technology. All you have to do to see that is look at Israel vs. Iran. In a decade drone technology might be enough to do something similar to what the F35 does, but right now the F35 is still the peek of technology. There's a reason Israel ordered more of them.

AI might be able to do a dogfight which is great in terms of flight envelope, but completely unnecessary in modern stealth warfare. Despite everything you heard, stealth does work. It isn't perfect but it destroyed Russia's top of the line anti-aircraft missiles in Iran without a problem. The planes are ghosts, by the time you see them it's already too late.

Drones have the advantage of reduced risk to the pilot but since a human sitting at the base will have to deal with signal delay, transmission jamming and low resolution... The difference in having a pilot physically present is huge. AI is unpredictable and unreliable e.g. Iranians were able to fool a US army drone by sending it signals that made it land. Then they took it apart and reverse engineered it.

▲

mangamadaiyan 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Musk can be many bad things, but he is also right in some things

Indeed. A broken clock also tells the time correctly twice a day.