The article smells of AI psychosis. They are already "orchestrating".
In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
Now they struggle against Iran and "orchestrate" F-16s that can be shot down instantly by AA weapons. Since COVID the world has collectively lost its mind.
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The scope of the first Iraq war was to force them out of Kuwait. That is very different then the invasion of 2003. If you just think about it this should be obvious.
I mean the lack of clear goals in American wars just reinforces their point
Unless those very F-16s shred their way through the AA weapons first, that is. Or follow up once the stealthier, more survivable platforms pave the way.
Iran had a solid AA system - and the level of impunity with which US operated with over Iran should give every country that wants to rely on its AA a pause. US SEAD/DEAD capabilities are fucking scary.
Of all the things that went wrong with Iran: USAF's capability to get in, punch through AA and rain fires from the sky sure wasn't one.
Oh what a great CIA campaign that would be to give the impression that U.S. military isn’t up to par - to motivate and trick our enemies into making stupid moves while we keep our true cards hidden.
Such a crazy thought.
*Losing war after war after war* victory! My beautiful cards… they remain a mystery
You say that, but that's literally a Russian conspiracy theory with Ukraine: The US baited Russia into thinking the US was weak because of Afghanistan, and then Russia got all ballsy and walked into Ukraine and it was a trap.
The joke is Russia has always been incompetent.
McCain was actually on the money in 2008. He was in the audience when Putin gave that famous "warning to the west" speech in Germany [1].
The quip that Russia is a "gas station with nuclear weapons" about sums it up. The United States being weak or not really has nothing to do with it. They counted on Zelensky cutting and running, the attempted decapitation of Kyiv failed. Russia is swirling the toilet. Without the energy reserves their oligarchs would be worthless. Since most of what is actually valuable about their country is land (where the resources sit) that is sparsely inhabited the end state of China controlling most of what is now Russia is inevitable. By failing in Europe and tying himself to China, Putin has ensured Russian power will continue to erode. Of course, it's not great for China, having to deal with two nuclear armed pariahs on their borders.
The United States is truly blessed simply by being two oceans away from anyone who could remotely challenge it. Properly understood, the Monroe (or "Donroe" doctrine) is less about foreign intervention and more an understanding that if a peer power ever emerged in the Western Hemisphere, most of what appears to make the United States singular would rapidly disappear.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ58Yv6kP44
Decades of utter incompetence somehow ended yesterday?
> Now they struggle against Iran
Are they? F-16 wasn’t designed to operate in modern denied environments and more jet damage has been done from friendly fire than Iran.
it may have not been designed to, but it has been modified to.
there may not be any stealth, but there are other countermeasures against missiles, AA, and other fighters.
Yes but everyone knows you can't eliminate the risk from modern MANPADs even with fancy electronic systems and flares. They are conducting combat flights over a country with thousands of chinese MANPADs, the fact they haven't lost more planes is really a great achievement. The losses from Iran have been shockingly low given the intensity of the operations.
The US lost 73 planes in Desert Storm to Iraq and that war only lasted 43 days.
> In the first Iraq war, they went in and won. In the second one, it took years to sort of occupy the country.
The objectives for the two wars were incredibly different, making this an apples to oranges comparison. In the first war, the objective was to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait (achieved) and then to contain the Iraqi military within Iraq (achieved). In the second war, the objectives were much broader and much harder to achieve. They achieved some objectives (toppling the existing government, defeating the existing military), and then utterly failed in nation building and got into a protracted conflict with state and non-state sponsored military groups.
I wouldn't call nation building a failure. It made significant progress.
Some nation building occurred, but mostly corruption. This was after the first war where they deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure like power plants, water treatment plants, hospitals and such to create a failed nation. A country that was one of the most modern and developed middle eastern countries before the war.
Because the most powerful military in the world can only do so much when ordered to execute a crap strategy by civilian leadership. Desert Storm worked because it followed the Powell Doctrine and was bounded to ejecting Iraq from Kuwait. Iraqi Freedom muddled through incoherently because the Bush and Obama administrations didn't want to understand the actual problem set they were faced with, but ultimately ended up with a reasonably stable country after way too much effort and time. Iran is what happens when you have an administration who thinks you can win a war by "just bombing things," which is ironically the stereotype most of the internet has about any kind of military action.
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I feel that, "Everyone else is mad" is a really big red flag for one's own mental health and emotional state, rather than an accurate rendition of reality.
I think that the strange comma placements are a red flag.
> The article smells of AI psychosis...
China has been doing something similar since 2020 [0] and something we've experimented [1] on for decades [2][3].
They have traditionally been used as target aircraft for training, but a subset are now being used as testbeds for networked ops.
[0] - https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2021/10/20/c...
[1] - https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/467196/first...
[2] - https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1045...
[3] - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QF-4E_GulfofMexico_1...
Drones really changed the equation more than Covid. Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots. This would have been big 20 years ago. Now the cheap drones make it not the biggest deal anymore.
Which cheap drones? Specifically which systems are currently out-competing F-16s in air to air combat in either trials or combat?
> Autonomous F-16's already can win against all human pilots.
In a dogfight?
As I understand it, they done this in simulation, and the human pilots did not fare well.
I don't know of the computer aircraft were able to fly beyond human limits (i.e. they don't black out) or not. If the computers can actually fly to what the airframe is capable of, they would have a distinct advantage over the human pilots.
They did a small set of tests with one Pilot IIRC?
I think they did it in simulation with several.
In any case, dogfighting is commonly done because it's great training but in most cases, you expect most Air to Air combat being flinging missiles at each other.
s/most/all/g
The simulator is not the aircraft.
The first time an airline pilot flies a new aircraft type in the real world they fly it with a plane full of passengers. All the training up to that point is done in a simulator.
Now that first flight is with an experienced training captain but the point is the simulator is good enough that the FAA has signed off on using that as the primary training device.
It's been this way for at least 25 years.
no airline will take the risk. they will have a check ride, with an instructor.
Many of the crash reports from the likes of Mentor Pilot on YouTube call out insufficient type-experience as a cause of accidents. Sometimes it's "the same" type, but the manufacturers manipulated the situation, the changes mean unfamiliarity and that leads to deaths.
Not giving pilots live training on new types is for financial reasons. It doesn't cause more deaths than the cost differential between training and compensation allow for.
with respect to assessing tactics, it is very close.
Simulator tech has come a long way. I wouldn't say a simulator invalidates the result.
human pilots have physiological constraints that AI doesnt.
onboard computers are not immune to G's but have a substantially higher threshold until physical mechanisms fail due to strain.
Is that hard to believe? It's got to be one of the easiest situations for AI to win in. You probably don't even need any fancy modern AI; I would have thought MPC would do most of the job.
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What are you talking about, Iraq fell in a month not years.
Did it? You mean operational govt fell. The country was fought over for 10 yrs, which the U.S. then backed out.
Israel got a regime change while U.S. tax payers received the bill.
In the end, it’s still a country.
I'm not saying that the war didn't go on for 10 years, it did. Baathist government fell and the US led Coalition Provisional Authority took over running the country. You have US troops in the whole country and US control of all civil institutions. The only way that's not "occupying" the country is if you redefine what the word mean. With your definition France, Norway, Denmark, Poland, and many more were not occupied during ww2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Plac...
Bush Sr knew to keep the foreign-compromised media out of the war and so accomplished the objectives of the war swiftly. Bush Jr had to deal with the media second guessing everything.