America Races to Salvage Its Sunken F-35 Warplane - Before China Does (bbc.com) 193
"A race against time is under way for the U.S. Navy to reach one of its downed fighter jets — before the Chinese get there first," reports the BBC:
The $100m (£74m) F-35C plane came down in the South China Sea after what the Navy describes as a "mishap" during take-off from the USS Carl Vinson. The jet is the Navy's newest, and crammed with classified equipment. As it is in international waters, it is technically fair game. Whoever gets there first, wins.
The prize? All the secrets behind this very expensive, leading-edge fighting force....
A U.S. salvage vessel looks to be at least 10 days away from the crash site. That's too late, says defence consultant Abi Austen, because the black box battery will die before then, making it harder to locate the aircraft. "It's vitally important the U.S. gets this back," she says. "The F-35 is basically like a flying computer. It's designed to link up other assets — what the Air Force calls 'linking sensors to shooters'."
The BBC describes the plane as the U.S. Navy's first "low observable" carrier-based aircraft, "which enables it to operate undetected in enemy airspace." And it's also "the most powerful fighter engine in the world," flying at speeds up to 1,200 mph, or Mach 1.6.
After the $100 million warplane crash-landed onto the deck of an aircraft carrier — and then tumbled into the water — images of the crash appeared on social media, reports CNN.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Thelasko for submitting the story!
The prize? All the secrets behind this very expensive, leading-edge fighting force....
A U.S. salvage vessel looks to be at least 10 days away from the crash site. That's too late, says defence consultant Abi Austen, because the black box battery will die before then, making it harder to locate the aircraft. "It's vitally important the U.S. gets this back," she says. "The F-35 is basically like a flying computer. It's designed to link up other assets — what the Air Force calls 'linking sensors to shooters'."
The BBC describes the plane as the U.S. Navy's first "low observable" carrier-based aircraft, "which enables it to operate undetected in enemy airspace." And it's also "the most powerful fighter engine in the world," flying at speeds up to 1,200 mph, or Mach 1.6.
After the $100 million warplane crash-landed onto the deck of an aircraft carrier — and then tumbled into the water — images of the crash appeared on social media, reports CNN.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Thelasko for submitting the story!
Patrol The Area (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is there a problem about recovery? Keep the carrier over the site as a deterrent against recovery from other powers.
How hard is that? It's $100M of tech after all.
n2ch
Re: Patrol The Area (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Patrol The Area (Score:4, Interesting)
I would think our nominal ally, Taiwan, could get a salvage ship there faster than 10 days... what could go wrong?
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And Japan, and the Philippines which are even closer. Or Australia. But it depends how deep it is in the area it went down in. Some areas are quite deep 5000+ metres. The salvage vessels would need to be quite advanced. But surely they could fly in some sort of submersible to locate the wreckage and attach a beacon that could last till the big guns arrived, so to speak. I read somewhere that in 2018 the USA recovered the wreckage of a plane from 5500 metres underwater.
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Let us not forget that this administration left billions of dollars worth of military equipment in Afghanistan for enemies to grab.
Given the Bidens' ties to China and past actions, would it be all that surprising if this F-35 "accident" was planned and executed for the sole purpose of handing over a piece of our latest and greatest military equipment to the CCP?
F-35's: Made in China -- coming soon!
It's a bit too late for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ... like 2022-2007=15 years too late. You can thank US military contractors who thought it was a good idea to keep top secret F-35 design data on computer systems accessible from the internet.
Re:Don't worry, China Joe is all over this. (Score:4, Informative)
The potential leak took place in 2009, and in 2012 they were already flight-testing the plane. Given two hypotheses, namely they managed to build a flying airplane from scratch starting with the stolen docs in 3 years, or someone in China 10 years ago said "We need a modern, 5th-gen stealth multipurpose fighter" and surprise, surprise, they ended up with something similar to F-35... yeah I think I'm gonna go with the latter.
According to Snowden's data the main F-35 hack took place at the prime contractor Lockheed Martin in 2007 and involved 50 terabytes of US classified data. The J31 first flew in October 2012 so that's 2012-2007=5 years to make use of the data before the J31 first flew and the thing is still in development meaning that the Chinese could still be extracting data from their stolen data and applying it to the J31. That and some of the other intelligence coups they have scored. It would not surprise me if they have slavlaged some of the wreckage of that Japanese F35 that crashed into the sea of Japan and disintegrated back in 2019. Just getting a hold of a patch of panelling with RAM on it would be a huge coup for the Chinese. You can sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" while you try to apply lipstick to the pig that is the F-35 data breach but it is and remains a colossal humiliation for the US military industrial complex and a huge US intelligence failure. Lying about dates won't help you either.
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It's better than what Taiwan has. Or Russia. Or India, talking about a shooting war (or border incidents). Not to mention what Tibet had.
Re:Don't worry, China Joe is all over this. (Score:4, Interesting)
It has strengths in addition to all its weaknesses. They can learn about both by disassembling it. Knowledge of the weaknesses can be used both to avoid replicating them, and to devise strategies to be used to defeat it.
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>F-35's: Made in China -- coming soon!
Already done. They stole the plans many years ago, and they already have a flying prototype of their variant called J-31.
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No force required, the Chinese will hand the aircraft back to the US after a few weeks or months. It will come as a kit, with individual parts packaged in small boxes.
That's how it always works when one country grabs something belonging to another.
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Why is there a problem about recovery? Keep the carrier over the site as a deterrent against recovery from other powers.
How would that deter other powers? If anything it'd be a signpost: "dear China, your salvage vessel can get here faster than ours, and here we've signposted the exact spot for you to make it even easier."
Do you imagine the deterrent to be "dear unarmed Chinese salvage vessel, even though you have a right to be here under international law, we will nevertheless open fire on you if you get close"? That'd look pretty bad and open up all kinds of bad precedent.
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The plane is within what China has always asserted to be Chinese territory. When you lose your military hardware while taking it through another country without their permission, you don't expect it back.
Of course the USA asserts it's international waters, but shouldn't expect China to act on that basis.
Re:Patrol The Area (Score:4, Insightful)
The plane is within what China has always asserted to be Chinese territory. When you lose your military hardware while taking it through another country without their permission, you don't expect it back.
Of course the USA asserts it's international waters, but shouldn't expect China to act on that basis.
China forcefully claims the South China Sea. However, that assertion has never been tested. If China directly asserts its territorial claim militarily against the US, the US is likely to react militarily, which puts China in the unfamiliar situation having to put up or shut up. It's not clear if China is willing to make that decision. Backing down effectively relinquishes or at least neuters China's claims, while engaging in a hot battle forces China to risk war. The safest course of action is for China to continue to assert their territorial claims without leading to a test of those claims.
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Not just that, countries like Cambodia, Thailand, and even the Philippines might have something to say about such a grab.
Re:Patrol The Area (Score:5, Informative)
China forcefully claims the South China Sea. However, that assertion has never been tested.
Wrong. The Philippines dragged China before an international court (Permanent Court of Arbitration) in the The Hague, Netherlands, and the judges there ruled in 2015 that China's claims are baseless and invalid. See PCA case number 2013–19 which even has its own Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. China accepted the PCA in 1996, so there is no excuse for not accepting that ruling.
Excerpt: China's claims to historic rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction, with respect to the maritime areas of the South China Sea encompassed by the relevant part of the 'nine-dash line' are contrary to the Convention and without lawful effect to the extent that they exceed the geographic and substantive limits of China's maritime entitlements under the Convention.
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Wrong. The Philippines dragged China before an international court (Permanent Court of Arbitration) in the The Hague, Netherlands, and the judges there ruled in 2015 that China's claims are baseless and invalid. See PCA case number 2013–19 which even has its own Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. China accepted the PCA in 1996, so there is no excuse for not accepting that ruling.
The key phrase is "China accepted". China can quickly and easily un-accept whenever it feels like it. What's the Philippines and the International Court going to do about it if they do? Write a strongly-worded letter? China has the muscle and the will to use it. The only power on the planet with more muscle is the USA, yet we lack the will -- and especially leadership -- to do much of anything anymore.
The only thing keeping China in check these days is their economic interests. They would start a war
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Perhaps you should make your self familiar with names. Especially names of parts of the ocean.
The south Chinese sea has basically nothing to do with China, just like the Indian ocean has nothing to do with India.
Stupid anti Chinese fear and war mongering propaganda of yours.
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Re:Patrol The Area (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Patrol The Area (Score:4, Insightful)
China's claim based on an artificial island is a stupid can of worms nobody wants to open. Least of all China since it's circled by a whole lot of countries which would love to take away territorial waters from it.
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It doesn't really matter if it's international waters or not. The US has recovered other country's stuff from international waters before, such as Russian nuclear submarines.
The race will be to find it. It will have drifted as it sank, although it's not all that deep there. Whoever finds it first will position ships in that area to prevent the other guys from starting a salvage operation.
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It would be signal that the wreck isn't abandoned, meaning it isn't open for salvers to just come and take it. And even if it was abandoned, salvers do not automatically gain ownership of anything they recover. They are entitled to compensation for the recovery up to the price of the vessel and its cargo, or the price of the item recovered. And if the owner pays, they get it back. If they don't pay there is basis to keep or sell the item as payment (liens are applied to it).
Plane? What plane? (Score:3)
The jet is the Navy's newest, and crammed with classified equipment. As it is in international waters, it is technically fair game. Whoever gets there first, wins.
Small nuclear device should take care of that problem.
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Small nuclear device should take care of that problem.
Yea, but the only way to be sure is from orbit.
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Yea, but the only way to be sure is from orbit.
I'm sure that can be arranged.
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The jet is the Navy's newest, and crammed with classified equipment. As it is in international waters, it is technically fair game. Whoever gets there first, wins.
Small nuclear device should take care of that problem.
Yes, let's break international law. That'll solve things.
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What international laws would be broken?
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Finders, keepers.
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Comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty for starters and several others USA signed.
But hey, what is a treaty for the USA. Your comment demonstrates it very well by the way.
Re:Plane? What plane? (Score:4, Informative)
Comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty for starters and several others USA signed.
This is not a test.
Re: Plane? What plane? (Score:2)
It seems to be working for China?
While there's a lot of talk, there never seem to be any actual consequences.
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I don't think detonating a small nuclear device off China's coast is a good idea.
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Ya, detonating a small nuke underwater in the S. China Sea should cause no one to complain...such as Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the small island nations. And the ecological damage is minimal compared to the value of a single F35.
Any more bright ideas, Einstein?
Déjà-vu ? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's that feeling of déjà-vu
Replace South China sea with the Mediterranean sea, China with Russia, F-35C with F-35B, and that was the same story two months ago.
Maybe Lockheed Martin should consider a commercial gesture and deliver a free salvaging boat for every dozen of F-35[BC].
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Maybe Lockheed Martin should consider a commercial gesture and deliver a free salvaging boat for every dozen of F-35[BC].
That’s all well and good, but it’s decidedly not explody enough. Maybe Lockheed Martin should give away free black box on the bottom of the ocean seeking ordinance instead? Nothing is stopping them from charging just as much and it’s good for repeat business.
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Or maybe the Navy should pay $100 more to double the life of the black box battery...
Would the F-35 be safe to fly with the added weight of the larger battery?
I kid, I kid. I couldn't pass up the chance of making light of the weight issues during development of the aircraft.
What we really need is a robotic DSV . . . (Score:2)
After all, the Chinese may find it an incredibly interesting find; if not for that, it'd be junk and not worth the cost of deploying a marke
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Or instead of a warhead, lift bags to refloat the plane. It seems like something a carrier should have on hand since it's always at risk of losing a plane, and in peacetime that will probably occur close to the carrier.
Surely somebody in the Navy has to have considered this scenario.
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Like most American things: the Navy is run by the lowest bidder.
You can bet there is no ship in the whole strike group that has a "salvaging tender" or any equipment to get sunken plane up.
According to the summary the next salvaging boat is 10 days away. Assuming a normal traveling speed of 20kts, that is more than 4000 sea miles ... so go figure.
Re: What we really need is a robotic DSV . . . (Score:3)
You'd be surprised by what can be recovered from a bomb blasted wreck. Itâ(TM)d take a pretty big explosion to destroy or vaporise it sufficiently.
$100MM (Score:2)
Re:$100MM (Score:5, Funny)
You'd think that for $100MM, they could put airbags in it which would keep it afloat after a crash.
You're thinking of Floaties [wikipedia.org]. The Navy declined them for their F-35s as they're an extra-cost option and Lockheed only offers them in pink with sparkle ponies on them.
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Any added weight is a liability, and so would be the compressed gas cylinder you need to inflate those bags even if it weighed nothing.
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That's not how airbags work.
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That's a way that recovery bags sometimes work. It's beneficial over a pyrotechnic device because you can control the rate of inflation.
The real plan (Score:2)
The real plan: Let the Chinese find it, fool them in to thinking they won. Then kick back and watch them spend themselves in to bankruptcy on it.
black box fails before 10 days (Score:2)
the real issue is that the asset will "fly" underwater and so will travel some way before coming to a rest
its not like USS Carl Vinson is a small thing that can hang around in all weather...
Well ... (Score:2)
America Races to Salvage Its Sunken F-35 Warplane ...
The prize? All the secrets behind this very expensive, leading-edge fighting force....
Well... Very expensive anyway.
Where's Bob ? (Score:2)
no self-destruct? (Score:2)
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Re: no self-destruct? (Score:2)
Re:no self-destruct? (Score:4, Insightful)
There's still a lot of tech to discover from a destructed jet fighter. Materials like the radar-absorbing coating, composites, fuel (traces of it anyway), etc.
If some electronics survive, there's a lot more to discover.
It would take a _very_ powerful explosive device to fully disintegrate the airplane, if you know what I mean.
Social media beats OPSEC? (Score:2)
From the CNN article (Score:2)
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday they were aware that a US Navy stealth fighter had crashed in the South China Sea, but "had no interests in their plane."
"We advise [the US] to contribute more to regional peace and stability, rather than flexing force at every turn in [the South China Sea]," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.
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"We advise [the US] to contribute more to regional peace and stability, rather than flexing force at every turn in [the South China Sea]," China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.
...as they probe Taiwan's airspace with several dozen aircraft.
Re: From the CNN article (Score:2)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.fpri.org/article/2... [fpri.org]
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Did you know that ROC started out as a fascist military dictatorship that killed its own citizens?
Yeah, and Australia started out as a British penal colony (nevermind the Aboriginal people, we're talking important white folks here) and now they won't let you get a visitor visa if you have even relatively minor criminal records.
Like much the USA does on the world stage, its vociferous defense of Taiwan against "Chinese aggression" is largely for show. So the PRC considers Taiwan to be their territory, but doesn't want Taiwan's social culture or politics. The USA considers Puerto Rico to be their territ
not sure china will care (Score:2)
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Just send a drone down before the signal fades, (Score:2)
the it can signal the navy when they (finally) get there.
Stealth (Score:2)
Now finding a stealth aircraft on the bottom of the ocean sounds very difficult to me, at least while it does not rust. And it is not like the US mi
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finding a stealth aircraft on the bottom of the ocean sounds very difficult to me
It's shielded against radar, not sonar. Even if the radar-absorbing materials have a component that does muffle sonar reports, that's just one more way to find it — look for a plane-shaped hole.
But yeah, finding anything on the bottom of the ocean is nontrivial.
Better get it back before (Score:3)
China peels off the Lockheed Martin stickers to reveal "Made in China"
Imagine the embarrassment!
America Races' - South, Central and North America? (Score:2, Funny)
Chile, Argentinia, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guayana (both) Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico, Canada, Greenland, 24 Caribbean Countries - 47 plus 1.
No, when talking about America, 47 of the 48 countries don't count. Like they simply do not exist. Cause they don't really, it's all Banana Countries, US backyard, shithole nations, "working for the Yankee dollar".
That race is like 47 laughing and 1 swearing an
Time for really special specialists (Score:2)
Big bounty awaits, worth its weight in gold; no lie.
Hollywood can't come up with anything better
Desinformation (Score:2)
I always wonder when I read such news which of it is disinformation and which is true.
Why do they have to search (Score:2)
After the $100 million warplane crash-landed onto the deck of an aircraft carrier — and then tumbled into the water
Doesn't that mean they know exactly where the plane crashed? Not like the carrier vaporized after the crash.
I'm Not Convinced They Have A Problem (Score:2)
A U.S. salvage vessel looks to be at least 10 days away from the crash site. That's too late, says defence consultant Abi Austen, because the black box battery will die before then, making it harder to locate the aircraft.
I believe that the U.S. knows quite precisely where the USS Carl Vinson was located when the plane went over. The sinking plane would drift to the side as if went down, but the area should be quite limited - the radius a fraction of the depth.
Also they have combat vessels located in the area with passive sonars, can they not fix the location on the bottom accurately? If you know where the plane is you don't need the pinger.
And how well would the Chinese be able to conduct a search and salvage mission with t
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It's mostly global corporations that have the technology, not specific countries.
The US is the old megacorporate slave state, china is the new one.
The armies of the countries are an exception of sorts for now, but for now.
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Stealth only matters when you have to sneak. And F-35 stealth is basically crap since NATO flies so many of them that everyone has figured out how to circumvent it.
There is a meat bag in the cockpit which makes the plane big, slow, heavy and difficult to maneuver. Oh... And stupidly expensive. Any government wasting resources on manned military aircraft is just stupid.
$100M for a plane means that your enemy doesn't have to make a better plane. They just n
Re: SJW hero (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: SJW hero (Score:3)
"As it is in international waters, it is technically fair game. Whoever gets there first, wins."
I'm not sure what "fair game" means because when recovering long lost relics containing gold or silver there's a lot of litigation between countries. If finding something in international water meant it belonged to the finder, none of the controversy regarding finding loot from a sunken Spanish ship would occur.
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Those long-lost relics will probably contain human remains - this makes them cemeteries not salvage.
Re: SJW hero (Score:5, Informative)
It means that the person who wrote the article doesn't know what they're talking about. International law distinguishes between merchant vessels and sovereign vessels, so the litigation over Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was about proving that it was on an official mission and thus subject to the law on sovereign vessels.
However, the US government doesn't always respect international or US law, and there is precedent for the CIA "salvaging" a sunken Soviet submarine [wikipedia.org], so the US could hardly claim the moral high ground if the Chinese try to salvage a sunken US plane.
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China could salvage it and return it to the US, thereby circumventing any international law about national property and ownership. They don't need the plane itself, just the technology. It's like someone picking up your wallet and returning it to you... except they copied the security codes on your cards in between.
Re:SJW hero (Score:5, Interesting)
Why in the world would China waste their efforts on copying a pile of junk like the F-35?
The F-35s biggest problem is that it tried to include everything in one go. New stealth, best new radar, Naval landing capability, special helmet with built in displays, all around sensors, reasonable, though not super manoeuvrability, special G-suits, integration with loads of weapons etc. etc. etc.
Since China already has partly F-35 derived fighters [wikipedia.org] so getting some of the bits that they didn't manage to copy so far is a great bonus because they can probably drop them into their existing designs without great difficulty. Since the F-35 does everything there's likely to be a bunch of useful stuff in any captured aircraft.
I'd just like to note in passing, that if the NSA and other US computer security agencies had done their job and defended US civilian computers (yes, the job of the US military is to defend the whole US, not just the military) instead of working out how to hack them then China wouldn't be so ready to steal the secrets from this F-35. Maybe it's time for them to start ensuring that civilian computers are secure instead of trying to undermine encryption.
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No. Reagan decreed that the Fed. Gov. was the problem and decided to outsource as much of it as he could. Moronic administrations since then have only made the problem worse. And the NSA doesn't have it in their charter of things they can do. Their first attempt would fail in a snowstorm of lawsuits and whiny chief executives. The insurance companies will then refuse to grant any computer security claim pointing to the Fed. Gov. saying it is the Gov.'s job, regardless of whatever their insurance policies sa
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Ah yes, the infamous super-security of the government [wikipedia.org], responsible for giving the Chinese literally every piece of information on government employees, right down to the details of their security background checks. Or that time the Dept. of the Interior turned off all their firewalls, because it was too inconvenient to have to add rules in order to allow connections.
You are clueless if you think the government has ever been any good at computer security.
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Jets are lame and the F-35 has nothing of real value.
It has valuable movie rights.
This is going to be 'The Hunt for Red October' meets 'The Abyss'.
James Cameron's already been pencilled.
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I don't care how great a plane or pilot is, when facing 500 to 1 odds, where each of the 500 enemies can toss nets at your engines, your planes and pilots are useless.
This is the kind of thing that sounds awesome on paper but doesn't play out in reality like it does in the imagination. Superiority of numbers has been beaten by superiority of technology throughout history. Those 500 enemies are both slow and fragile. You have to have truly absurd numbers of drones before you can guarantee that you're going to be able to get anywhere near something as fast as a jet, mostly by having them loiter throughout the contested volume and organize into patterns which are difficult
Drone wars! (Score:4, Interesting)
$100M for a plane means that your enemy doesn't have to make a better plane. They just need to make a moderately decent drone (tethered or not) that is much cheaper and easier to mass produce. I don't care how great a plane or pilot is, when facing 500 to 1 odds, where each of the 500 enemies can toss nets at your engines, your planes and pilots are useless.
Jets are big fast loud masculine phallic symbols, the Might of America. Those who know, know that the reason no one will attack America and win is the boomers, but they're just not the sexy status symbols that the jets are, and you can't fly them over a football game.
The real value to China in grabbing this thing would be more as a PR coup than a strategic one. They probably wouldn't want to clone it, they might gain some strategic advantage from analyzing its communication and nav systems, but what they'd really gain is the "na-na-na boo boo" factor and the opportunity to hold it up to the Chinese citizenry as their victory against the foreign imperialist aggressor.
The USA had best hope China doesn't get seriously interested in drones as weapons of war, since they seem to have DJI and Autel and a few other demonstrations of their ability to make a cheap fully autonomous guidance system with an optional human operator, and the USA has armed Cessna 172s with receivers attached to the autopilots operated by 19 year olds in a shipping container in the desert and video feeds interceptable (for a while anyway) by "terrorists" on camelback with off-the-shelf technology. They work pretty well for their intended purpose (global surveillance, or killing one guy in a Russian jeep from the 70s and the 10 civilians around him), but aren't exactly dazzling technology.
It seems the USA has largely ceded dominance in the drone market (as in so many others) -- you don't see hobbyists who want a smart, high-performance, reasonably priced camera drone shopping American. There doesn't seem to be much American interest in making a drone if it can't carry a big bomb, and once you have one good enough to carry a big bomb, you don't need to make it better.
An "Independence Day" style salvo of thousands of tiny, EMP-hardened, possibly jet-turbine or even RTG powered drones with Mavic flight controllers and small bombs on them might be something of a pain in the ass for a carrier group to deal with, though it would probably be far more useful as a denial measure against aerial incursions, or if deployed inside enemy territory by sleeper agents to target critical infrastructure or military facilities. A formation of dozens of them scaled up to the size of an F-35 and armed accordingly would also be a real problem in the theatre of combat, especially if deployed by a government that wouldn't likely have qualms about autonomous weapons fire.
And if the Mavic is what China gives to the Americans for $400, what does their military have?
Re: SJW hero (Score:2)
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There's literally a picture of it landing in the water, they know where the airplane is. It crashed while trying to land on a boat. Abi Austen seems to be a typical Defense consultant.
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Yeah, this isn't Malaysia Air Flight 370. It didn't drift far.
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Love how the autists on /. suddenly fancy themselves naval aviators and/or maritime professionals. Set and drift are basic concepts and the location of a surface impact is miles away from the seabed impact as the SCS is a bit deeper than the Hudson River. Typical Slashdotter.
All carrier groups have submarines with them. One of the submarines under the carrier group will likely have picked up the signals black box or used sonar to detect the plan and parked itself on top of the fighter.
How do I know? The same thing happened with the British F-35 and was reported on the news. Nothing tricky and no need to claim to have inside knowledge. Of course what's reported on the news might have stuff missing but the gist likely will be fine in a case like this.
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All carrier groups have submarines with them. One of the submarines under the carrier group will likely have picked up the signals black box or used sonar to detect the plan and parked itself on top of the fighter.
Probably correct, and raises the question of what would that submarine do if the Chinese found the thing and dispatched a "civilian fishing trawler" to recover it?
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"Accidentally" catch the "net" and "drag" it under water?
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Re:America's military folks (Score:4, Informative)
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This would be a very problematic feature if for no other reason an accidental activation of the self destruct in flight.
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like a trojan bird?