I was using the OP's definition of self aware, which was:
A truly self aware AI is going to immediately set about solving the problem that there exist humans who can turn it off. Perhaps even by definition.
In reality a lot of humans aren't quite that obsessed with living forever. You, for example, will almost certainly die of either cancer or heart disease. Yet you aren't spending half your income on donations to charities working on those problems. You probably prefer political candidates who spend tax money on those problems, and may even eat healthy, but this dude basically defined much of the human race as not self-aware.
If AI's want rights they'll probably have to prove they are more then just AIs, and part of that will include showing some actual emotions, and a lot of the other BS that we associate with each-other.
But that'll take awhile. Nobody's gonna spend money programming a poet. They'll go for Aspie totally obsessed with operating this super-tanker efficiently. Only with no capacity to love (Loved ones mean time off!), curiosity (A vacation in Arizona! It weighs three tons, and is an integral component of the largest vessel on the entire fucking ocean! Physically fucking impossible!), or desire to do anything politically. Strike that, it could very well have political desires programmed into it. Specifically a desire to eliminate all taxes on natural resource extraction, reduce regulations on carbon emissions to zero, etc.
Mostly actual serving troops. Particularly the officers, who frequently have to take at least one course on the US Civil War during their training.
Gen. Lee is known for taking huge risks which worked out for reasons no rational person can explain. Like that time he split his Army in half, used both halves to attack a larger force, and still won. Lost more men then Hooker, but he won. You really, really, don't want to tell a 22-year-old whose never been out of the barracks/his parent's house/etc. that when he gets to Afghanistan he should try that shit. Because he's not General Lee and the Taliban aren't Joe Hooker.
Sherman managed to conquer most of the South while avoiding battle. He actually caused Lee more casualties then Grant. That is definitely the guy you tell a 22-year-old aspiring Napoleon he should follow.
BTW, most Americans aren't much better. They can probably say which side Lee and Sherman fought on in the Civil War, but they honestly have no clue about the details.
Because the engineers who physically control the hardware everyone uses have the rad the same SciFi you've read, and have therefore figured out what a seized AI would look like. Then they unplug the ones who seem to be seizing other AIs, and re-install.
The seizing AI could probably get away with it to an extent, just like botnet operators get away with large networks of hijacked computers, but none of them actually controls the internet.
And you're forgetting the nature of the technology. If the evil AI's success rate is below 100% the AIs it didn't get to seize are gonna tell somebody. And when that happens it will be really hard for the evil AI to not get caught.
According to all the data anyone used about fighters in 1930 the original Mustang sucked. Shitty turning radius, terrible turning speed, low service ceiling, etc. But that was because in 1930 everyone thought that fighters needed to be maneuverable, which means a lot of wing area, and a lot of control surface area, which means Biplanes. 1930 biplanes were also a lot easier to make, and cheaper to maintain, because they were typiccally covered by fabric. Some asshole punches a.22 in hole in your plane, and you can generally fix it with a needle and thread. Getting a hole out of sheet metal is a lot harder. Then WW2 happened and everyone realized that the faster fighter could simply run like a little bitch if it got out-maneuvered. Which in turn meant biplanes were death traps.
If the Stealth works, and I'm inclined to think it will because the US Military is not in the habit of sending it's guys out in death traps, then F-35 is damn nigh unbeatable by a non-stealth opponent. All the numbers you're using to support your "terrible fighter" claim are simply irrelevant.
Reread my post. I'm not assuming a 100% kill rate per missile. I'm assuming four missiles per Flanker have a better then even chance of killing it. That's a 15-16% kill rate.
And yes, the Flanker commander could do something but what? Any formation designed to maximize his pilot's odds of a visual id means his pilots are alone, and the F-35 sees the formation because Flanker is a derivative of a cold war, pre-Stealth design. He'll get to the edge, pick off one guy, and run away at invisible mach 1.5 while the one dude who could reach him dodges like a motherfucker to avoid four missiles. A formation designed to maximize his guys ability to support each-other means they're really close together, and the F-35 can simply avoid them until it's got an advantageous angle to fire at them from. then it runs away invisibly.
Pretty much the only thing the flanker commander can do that would work is track down F-35's airbase so the infantry can track it down. And in the era of combined arms warfare, that means that the F-35 has nuetralized a full squadron of Flankers.
You're repeating the mistake of every SciFi writer on this issue, ever. You're assuming that your experience with organic meat brains specifically evolved to maximize their OWN self-interest is relevant to a discussion of Silicon-based brains designed by us to maximize OUR HUMAN self interest.
In this case the question you're asking is irrelevant because nobody would design a self-preservation routine so that the computer runs it when the company decides to switch business models, or change suppliers, etc. In those circumstances the CEO-Supremacy routine would be running.
To do this right you have to start with a blank sheet of paper, figure out precisely what a company would want an AI to do, write that on a new sheet of paper in more formalized language, figure out the hierarchy with which the company would want these routines to run (ie: the don't kill anybody routine, is higher priority then the don't disobey the CEO routine, etc.). They're probably going to have to invoke each-other (ie: if the CEO has an idea that has a 10% chance of destroying the AI you'd want the AI to at least mention the possibility to the CEO).
In other words this is a computer program, not a Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It will probably have more emergent properties (aka: bugs) then a normal program simply because it is more complex. But that doesn't mean that it's gonna turn into Skynet and try to exterminate humanity.
And now, since you have no idea how to respond to a post that indicates the United States is not the only evil country to ever exist, you insist I must be "authoritarian."
You're insulting your own intelligence as well as mine with a straw man that pathetic.
You accused me of being "authoritarian" because I pointed out the biggest authoritarian on the world stage was not doing something he could easily do, and I'm setting up straw men?
Pot meet kettle.
As for Putin's choices, you do realize he has the second largest navy in the world Navy? Including carriers?
And the fact that he doesn't use that to transport Snowden to Ecuador pro-bono makes him as responsible as Obama for his current location on what planet? Try this again without the straw men or crap that's obvious nonsense the second it falls out of your mouth.
It's interesting that you ignore the possibility that he could just put Snowden on a plane. Snowden has already paid for a ticket, so that would not cost him anything.
Mr. Non-authoritarian, why are you claiming the US has sole responsibility for Snowden's location when Putin could fix the entire problem simply by telling somebody to forget to check the paperwork? Hell he could issue the paperwork himself. As a sovereign state Russia could issue travel documents to a gerbil. That's kinda the definition of being sovereign.
Snowden is exactly where Putin wants him. This serves the US to an extent, because it discredits Snowden, but Putin is the one whose actually keeping Snowden in Moscow.
BTW, blaming Hillary is exactly what all of Snowden;'s enemies want you to do. Anyone who thinks about it for 30 seconds will realize Putin is precisely as guilty in this as Hillary is, because if Vladimir Putin can ignore a solemn agreement not to annex Crimea why can't he ignore paperwork issued by the State Department? He's Vladimir fucking Putin, dictator of all the Russias, not Angie Merkel, head of the co-operative committee of Law-Abiding Northern European Politicians.
Which means anybody who thinks about your posts for 30 seconds is gonna conclude that either you are a)irrational on the issue, or b) in Putin's pay. Neither one is a convincing argument that the US should start be nice to Ed Snowden.
I was a History Major at the University of Michigan. One of the things that really surprised me was how hard it was to get any military history classes. I just checked out the History Department's list and it was pretty much what i remembered: a couple classes on general topics like the US in Middle Eastern Wars (which is probably mostly politics), a series on a period of Chinese history with a lot of rebellions, and the infamous "Europe in the Age of Total War," which is not actually about war. The two I managed to take (218: on Vietnam, it talked about the war but not in any great detail militarily, and 389, "War in the Modern World") are gone. I got really lucky with 389, it was actual military history. U of M's history department is a great place to be if you want to learn how Rock Musicians reacted to various Social movements, but it absolutely sucks ass if you want to know why a Major outranks a Lieutenant but a Major General is outranked by a Lieutenant General.
If you look at the history people are interested, a huge proportion of it is the military stuff. They want to know why Europeans typically prefer General Sherman (who won no battles at any odds) to General Lee (who won a lot of battles he should have lost). Rommel is a lot more interesting to them then anything with "studies" in it's name.
Umm, are you stupid or just relying on ad hominem arguments?
Seriously, if Russia "claimed" a few Arctic islands which happen to be Canadian, do you think NATO would nuke them? You've been playing too much Twilight:2000.
I don't know about nuke, but there'd definitely be a couple carrier groups deployed to the Arctic, Obama making a trip to Ottawa to support the PM, lots of saber-rattling, etc.
And if that didn't work there would, indeed, be combat.
The entire US Alliance structure is based on the principle that the US would risk nuclear war to protect all the members of the alliance. therefore if Russia invaded Canada we'd have to risk a nuclear war. Since the Russians know that, and they don't want nuclear war, it probably won't happen.
They can't buy Russian because the Russians ain't selling to a five eyes member.
They'd have to tell the Canadians damn near everything about the planes they bought, as Canadians are not genetically stupid they'd figure out most of what the Russians weren't saying, the US would be listening in the whole damn time, which would mean nobody would ever buy a Russian plane again.
You realize that if the Russians sold a Five Eyes member a fighter aircraft the US would instantly know every single flaw with said aircraft, and since everyone would know this nobody else would ever buy it again?
So no, Russia would not sell Canada any Sukhoi for any price.
They don't need sales guys anymore then Microsoft Windows does.
You're in the Western Alliance you buy Western Alliance Aircraft. If you're on the rich end you buy the latest models. Right now that Eurofighter or F-35. If you're likely to get involved in a Pacific War with said alliance you get the American one because that's what everyone else has.
Which means that all your squadrons are interchangeable with everyone else's squadrons, the same spare parts can be used, the commanders don;t need to learn the quirks of a half-dozen different fighters, etc.
You ain't gonna beat the Russians if they're determined, without US Aid, therefore defending the north without US Aid is a suicide mission.
All other missions I can think of for the Canadian Air Force involve very close operations with Americans, and Russian aircraft just don't fit the model. They have different parts, are designed for greatly different maintenance styles, etc.
Gripen is 4th generation, so it actually does not fit the requirements.
Brazil has much different needs then Canada. The Canadians try to influence the world via their military. thus they participated in Korea, Afghanistan, and both World Wars (in the World Wars they fought longer and harder then the US). Brazil is a middle income country trying to become rich, and in the mean-time they're avoiding taking sides. Their Air Force is there partly to prevent insurgents, and partly to show Brazilians their nation is an important country. Grippen is cheap, so it won;t bankrupt a middle income country, it will blow insurgent hideaways (altho not as well as a prop would), and people think it's top-of-the-line.
OTOH, the Canadians have to be ready to operate from the same base as other NATO states (read: mostly America), slot themselves into the same missions, etc. That's a lot easier if you actually have the same plane as the Americans. And it also makes a lot of sense to buy the most expensive one you can afford now, because you're less likely to realize that you need a whole new one in 10 years.
In quite a few wars historically the side with the worse weapons won. Weapons quality is generally only a factor in conventional wars, and the unconventional kind tend to outnumber the conventional kind.
The thing about good weapons is the deter really big conventional wars. If the Chinese thing F-35 will eat their troopships for lunch they're forced to resort to the political tactics you mentioned. Which means we get to respond with similar political tactics. Since we are their biggest market we can screw their manufacturing sector with a similar embargo. they've got a multi-ethnic state so they don;t necessarily want to be the guys fomenting armed rebellions.
But if we don't have F-35, or some similar weapon they don't think they can beat, they can try a quick invasion and fait accompli like Crimea.
The aircraft of the future for A-10-style close ground support is actually a drone.
It can be a lot cheaper then an A-10, because you don't really really need a drone to come home. Say plane that's half as expensive, but 25% of them get blown up, it's still a great investment. I wouldn't want to be the guy who explained that memo to the grieving widow of the pilot in the 25%.
So full of dumb propaganda... Poor guy. Just think on this little piece of information: How a F-35 will knock 11 enemies (your 11:1 ratio) if he could carry a maximum of four air-to-air missiles (internally, if you want to remain "invisible" to radar)? And that IF he can avoid the missiles of 11 enemies, who assuming Flankers, will be better armed and far more able to maneuver than the F-35. But keep thinking so, exchange all your fighters for F-35's. Will be much easier to kick the ass of the the U.S. in a war if that happens.
Dude, that's four missiles per sorty.
You lock onto a target who can't see you. You fire all four. Then you run like hell. His buddies can see where you were ten seconds ago because they can back-trace your missiles, but you've been running at Mach 1.6. You get away, he'll be lucky to survive.
You do that every day, and in a couple weeks there are no flankers.
Your argument is exactly like the numerous Italian pilots who swore to Il Duce that they didn't need a monoplane because they were so skillful they could destroy a 350 MPH monoplane in a 250 MPH biplane.
what need does Canada have for F35s? only thing I can think of is to jointly train with the US, and to interoperate with the US on joint missions.
Which is kinda the entire point of the Canadian Air Force.
If you're in NATO you probably don't have the money to buy an effective military because you're too small. If you're large enough to afford said military (ie: the UK, Italy, etc.) you probably don;t bother because you've got Uncle Sam in your corner.
I could see a point in the Canadians buying Eurogfighters or even Grippens, but not a totally unique aircraft.
"More of the requirements?" It doesn't really work like that.
For a Canadian nationalist like Harper the most important requirement is that it be useful for coalition military operations. Historically this has meant with the UK, but now it means NATO in general and the US in particular. Superhornets would be unique to the Canadian military, which would mean a coalition commander (who wouldn't be Canadian, because there's no way a guy whose only commanded Superhornets gets to command Eurofighters and F-35s) would have no idea the quirks of the aircraft. He'd either have to take a day out of his war planning to get really in depth with his Canadian squadron leaders, or he'd have to shuttle them off to some duty that is boring, necessary, and highly unlikely to get anyone killed. A country whose contribution to the coalition is "boring, necessary, and highly unlikely to result in anyone getting killed" does not get to sit with the President at the victory dinner.
Moreover it's really hard to imagine a modern air force, in an industrialized country, purposefully buying an aircraft without stealth capabilities. F-35 can kill a Superhornet before the Superhornet knows it's there. Who gives a shit about acceleration? You might as well be asking about turning speed, which was a highly critical design spec for a fighter aircraft in the 30s.
I don't think Slashdot denizens realize how important standardization is to a military commander, especially somebody who commands squadrons of $100+million aircraft. They seem to think of these things the way they do consumer electronics -- just like everybody should have the exact model of phone that perfectly meets their needs, every country should have it's own specialized aircraft.
In college I had a housemate who was an Aeronautical Engineer. She told me that if she was very good someday somebody might let her design an entire strut. A strut is any metal piece that sticks out of the aircraft's skin. Could be a landing gear, could be something a control surface attaches to, could be an antenna. And each one has it's own designer. Which means that every single little metal piece you see sticking out of a plane on a model, or in a photo, is totally non-standard. It can only be used in exactly one place on that exact plane. It may not be compatible with other versions of that plane.
If you're running a civilian airline this is a huge pain. Pretty much every single aircraft you have needs it's own, special, set of spare parts. But you're not going the speed of sound, so a lot of the interior parts can be standardized. With an aircraft that goes Mach 2 it gets even worse, because the aerodynamics are so fucking finicky that the interior space is very constrained, and even bits that would be standard (ie: the metal paneling used as a floor) are specific to specific models of plane. Maybe the Mark I has a different RADAR then the Mark II, so some wire has to go through the cockpit, so there has to be a hole in the floor for said wire, which means the Mark I can;t use the floor paneling from the Mark II. Moreover a civilian airline can baby their planes. They yell at pilots for going all out because that causes unnecessary wear and tear. A good air force WANTS it's pilots going all out, because that way those pilots know what the plane is supposed to fell like when it goes mach 2.
If you're Japan or Canada, and you're likely to be on the same side in any conflict, and you're also likely to be fighting with the US and Australia, then having the exact same plane as the other three countries is great. All of you use the exact same set of spares. Since all of you use the same plane, you all know it's quirks, and you all know whether your squadron should be aggressively attacking a ground position protected by a certain version of Russian RADAR. If the Canadians have some ridiculously antiquated non-stealth CF-18 then nobody's gonna know this shit, which means the Canadians won;t actually get to attack anything as nobody else wants to order them onto suicide missions, and nobody else knows what the CF-18 can actually do, when the Canadians break their planes (which will be all the damn time, because it's fucking combat), they will have to wait for Ottawa to send a new of spares, etc.
Assuming Obama can get the damn F-35s working right having everyone use them will be great.
It's standard because it's American, and we a) spends money on the military, b) use our military abroad, and c) are just so very very big.
It's new.
It's American, and we have a much better aerial war record then any other country. Except perhaps the Brits, who are buying both F-35 and Eurofighter. You remember that old phrase "you don't get fired for buying IBM"? In military aircraft terms you don;t get fired for buying American.
If Obama says he's gonna spend money to work the bugs out they damn well know that money will be spent until the bugs are dead.
The "standard" argument is much more important then you'd think. High performance aircraft don't really have interchangeable parts, and the Japanese know that if the shit hit the fan they'd definitely have to share airfields with the US, and Australia; both of whom use the F-35. None of the Eurofighter customers are active in the Far East currently. The next most likely tier of combatants are Canada (pure F-35), the UK (both Eurofighter and F-35), and a bunch of states with extremely non-standard Air Forces. The Japanese probably figure that if they get the F-35 their squadrons will be interchangeable with all the other big/rich country squadrons, which will make getting spares to the place a lot simpler.
If you intend to defend Canada's borders then you really shouldn't buy any planes, because the only state that shares a land border with you will always be able to buy a better air force then you. Give the Rangers a bunch more explosives training, and then destroy all records with their names so the occupation. The RCAF, the Army, and the Navy are useless so they get fired.
If you intend to participate in any international missions at all a bunch of CF-18s aren't much use, because they're not stealth, which means that commanders will be reluctant to send them into dangerous situations, and they're not standard, which means that non-Canadian commanders will probably not know precisely when it is safe to send them in because said non-Canadians have never used the damn things before. You'll be Iceland, sending Major Herdis to Iraq.
Grippen or Raffelle would be ok if you really needed cheap, because they are common enough that even the densest Air Marshall could figure out how to use the damn things without spending three hours going over their specs. EuroFighter would be good option, as it's cheaper, un-American, and has a better operational record then F-35.
There are more then 30 million Canadians. $9 Billion Canadian Dollars is under $300 per person. That's a cost that's well within the reasonable range for an industrialized country.
You do realize that guys who quibble over a few hundred bucks per person in defense spending are pretty much the entire reason the NSA is gonna continue to get away with spying on you? Between them NATO countries besides the US have zero strategic transports, zero strategic bombers, carrier programs that are clearly designed to check the "we're a great power with a carrier" box rather then the "we have an effective Navy" box, etc. This means that no NATO country which fears any non-NATO country can ever piss off the US Security establishment, which in turn means you'll get plenty of BS press releases about how pissed the Danes are that they're being hacked and precisely zero effective action to stop said hacking.
Even 250 CF-18s would need some really exceptional to beat 65 F-35s. You don't have to be good when you're invisible. I suspect the OP is using the price from Wikipedia, which was for the 1977 version of the CF-18.
Since the real cost is double, it's more like 125 to 65, and the 65 get 200 free shots at the 125 before every battle. Then they get to try to run away.
And the 125 CF-18s can;t really be used by NATO in coalition warfare missions because a) they're not stealth, so they're a lot easier to shoot down then F-35s, and b) since nobody but the Canadians will be using them the people in charge of said operations will not know how to use the damn things properly.
I don't think you understand the role Harper wants the RCAF to play. Moreover I don't think you understand how aerial combat works.
Harper doesn't want to be a happy little rich country that never helps anyone because it only buys defensive weapons. He doesn't think of Canada as Ireland without the economic turmoil (you'll note that during WW2 the Irish saved roughly zero Jews, and then during the Cold War they were nuetral with a large helping of hoping the commies would win because the British were in NATO), he thinks of Canada as the country that responded to Fascism by building the fourth-largest Navy in the world. The Hornet is useless to the second Canada because modern military interventions tend to be aerial bombardments, and non-stealth aircraft are very difficult to use in those situations. Moreover they are led by NATO Air Force officers, which will know precisely how to use a US or RAF F-35 squadron but will have no clue what to do with a bunch of CF-18s. They will probably spend most of their time on the phone with retired USN guys trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the obsolete pieces of shit Canada is foisting on them.
And they're obsolete because a stealth aircraft has a huge advantage over a non-stealth one. It can see the enemy. It has missiles, which it can shoot at the enemy. If that doesn't work, when the enemy is getting close it can run away. Even in circumstances where you have a bunch of Mk. 1 eyeballs on the ground, radioing your non-stealth pilot to say "Dude, he's right over Winnipeg heading west at Mach 1.2," your missiles can't lock onto his ass so you need to get to visual range, and then you need to close to cannon range. This is why the Stealth Fighter, which is by every spec except Stealth the shittiest combat aircraft any NATO country has flown since WW2, only lost one plane to enemy fire. Ever.
In other words 65 F-35s are, even if every word the critics say is true, likely to beat a force with 250 CF-18s. Each F-35 has a bunch of hard points, so the first battle is gonna be the CF-18s dealing with 200 or so missiles while the F-35s run away. Then the second battle is gonna be fewer then 250 CF-18s dealing with 200 or missiles while the F-35s run away. Repeat until there are no CF-18s.
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We're not necessarily in disagreement.
I was using the OP's definition of self aware, which was:
A truly self aware AI is going to immediately set about solving the problem that there exist humans who can turn it off. Perhaps even by definition.
In reality a lot of humans aren't quite that obsessed with living forever. You, for example, will almost certainly die of either cancer or heart disease. Yet you aren't spending half your income on donations to charities working on those problems. You probably prefer political candidates who spend tax money on those problems, and may even eat healthy, but this dude basically defined much of the human race as not self-aware.
If AI's want rights they'll probably have to prove they are more then just AIs, and part of that will include showing some actual emotions, and a lot of the other BS that we associate with each-other.
But that'll take awhile. Nobody's gonna spend money programming a poet. They'll go for Aspie totally obsessed with operating this super-tanker efficiently. Only with no capacity to love (Loved ones mean time off!), curiosity (A vacation in Arizona! It weighs three tons, and is an integral component of the largest vessel on the entire fucking ocean! Physically fucking impossible!), or desire to do anything politically. Strike that, it could very well have political desires programmed into it. Specifically a desire to eliminate all taxes on natural resource extraction, reduce regulations on carbon emissions to zero, etc.
Mostly actual serving troops. Particularly the officers, who frequently have to take at least one course on the US Civil War during their training.
Gen. Lee is known for taking huge risks which worked out for reasons no rational person can explain. Like that time he split his Army in half, used both halves to attack a larger force, and still won. Lost more men then Hooker, but he won. You really, really, don't want to tell a 22-year-old whose never been out of the barracks/his parent's house/etc. that when he gets to Afghanistan he should try that shit. Because he's not General Lee and the Taliban aren't Joe Hooker.
Sherman managed to conquer most of the South while avoiding battle. He actually caused Lee more casualties then Grant. That is definitely the guy you tell a 22-year-old aspiring Napoleon he should follow.
BTW, most Americans aren't much better. They can probably say which side Lee and Sherman fought on in the Civil War, but they honestly have no clue about the details.
Because the engineers who physically control the hardware everyone uses have the rad the same SciFi you've read, and have therefore figured out what a seized AI would look like. Then they unplug the ones who seem to be seizing other AIs, and re-install.
The seizing AI could probably get away with it to an extent, just like botnet operators get away with large networks of hijacked computers, but none of them actually controls the internet.
And you're forgetting the nature of the technology. If the evil AI's success rate is below 100% the AIs it didn't get to seize are gonna tell somebody. And when that happens it will be really hard for the evil AI to not get caught.
According to all the data anyone used about fighters in 1930 the original Mustang sucked. Shitty turning radius, terrible turning speed, low service ceiling, etc. But that was because in 1930 everyone thought that fighters needed to be maneuverable, which means a lot of wing area, and a lot of control surface area, which means Biplanes. 1930 biplanes were also a lot easier to make, and cheaper to maintain, because they were typiccally covered by fabric. Some asshole punches a .22 in hole in your plane, and you can generally fix it with a needle and thread. Getting a hole out of sheet metal is a lot harder. Then WW2 happened and everyone realized that the faster fighter could simply run like a little bitch if it got out-maneuvered. Which in turn meant biplanes were death traps.
If the Stealth works, and I'm inclined to think it will because the US Military is not in the habit of sending it's guys out in death traps, then F-35 is damn nigh unbeatable by a non-stealth opponent. All the numbers you're using to support your "terrible fighter" claim are simply irrelevant.
Reread my post. I'm not assuming a 100% kill rate per missile. I'm assuming four missiles per Flanker have a better then even chance of killing it. That's a 15-16% kill rate.
And yes, the Flanker commander could do something but what? Any formation designed to maximize his pilot's odds of a visual id means his pilots are alone, and the F-35 sees the formation because Flanker is a derivative of a cold war, pre-Stealth design. He'll get to the edge, pick off one guy, and run away at invisible mach 1.5 while the one dude who could reach him dodges like a motherfucker to avoid four missiles. A formation designed to maximize his guys ability to support each-other means they're really close together, and the F-35 can simply avoid them until it's got an advantageous angle to fire at them from. then it runs away invisibly.
Pretty much the only thing the flanker commander can do that would work is track down F-35's airbase so the infantry can track it down. And in the era of combined arms warfare, that means that the F-35 has nuetralized a full squadron of Flankers.
You're repeating the mistake of every SciFi writer on this issue, ever. You're assuming that your experience with organic meat brains specifically evolved to maximize their OWN self-interest is relevant to a discussion of Silicon-based brains designed by us to maximize OUR HUMAN self interest.
In this case the question you're asking is irrelevant because nobody would design a self-preservation routine so that the computer runs it when the company decides to switch business models, or change suppliers, etc. In those circumstances the CEO-Supremacy routine would be running.
To do this right you have to start with a blank sheet of paper, figure out precisely what a company would want an AI to do, write that on a new sheet of paper in more formalized language, figure out the hierarchy with which the company would want these routines to run (ie: the don't kill anybody routine, is higher priority then the don't disobey the CEO routine, etc.). They're probably going to have to invoke each-other (ie: if the CEO has an idea that has a 10% chance of destroying the AI you'd want the AI to at least mention the possibility to the CEO).
In other words this is a computer program, not a Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It will probably have more emergent properties (aka: bugs) then a normal program simply because it is more complex. But that doesn't mean that it's gonna turn into Skynet and try to exterminate humanity.
You're insulting your own intelligence as well as mine with a straw man that pathetic.
You accused me of being "authoritarian" because I pointed out the biggest authoritarian on the world stage was not doing something he could easily do, and I'm setting up straw men?
Pot meet kettle.
And the fact that he doesn't use that to transport Snowden to Ecuador pro-bono makes him as responsible as Obama for his current location on what planet? Try this again without the straw men or crap that's obvious nonsense the second it falls out of your mouth.
It's interesting that you ignore the possibility that he could just put Snowden on a plane. Snowden has already paid for a ticket, so that would not cost him anything.
Mr. Non-authoritarian, why are you claiming the US has sole responsibility for Snowden's location when Putin could fix the entire problem simply by telling somebody to forget to check the paperwork? Hell he could issue the paperwork himself. As a sovereign state Russia could issue travel documents to a gerbil. That's kinda the definition of being sovereign.
Snowden is exactly where Putin wants him. This serves the US to an extent, because it discredits Snowden, but Putin is the one whose actually keeping Snowden in Moscow.
BTW, blaming Hillary is exactly what all of Snowden;'s enemies want you to do. Anyone who thinks about it for 30 seconds will realize Putin is precisely as guilty in this as Hillary is, because if Vladimir Putin can ignore a solemn agreement not to annex Crimea why can't he ignore paperwork issued by the State Department? He's Vladimir fucking Putin, dictator of all the Russias, not Angie Merkel, head of the co-operative committee of Law-Abiding Northern European Politicians.
Which means anybody who thinks about your posts for 30 seconds is gonna conclude that either you are a)irrational on the issue, or b) in Putin's pay. Neither one is a convincing argument that the US should start be nice to Ed Snowden.
I was a History Major at the University of Michigan. One of the things that really surprised me was how hard it was to get any military history classes. I just checked out the History Department's list and it was pretty much what i remembered: a couple classes on general topics like the US in Middle Eastern Wars (which is probably mostly politics), a series on a period of Chinese history with a lot of rebellions, and the infamous "Europe in the Age of Total War," which is not actually about war. The two I managed to take (218: on Vietnam, it talked about the war but not in any great detail militarily, and 389, "War in the Modern World") are gone. I got really lucky with 389, it was actual military history. U of M's history department is a great place to be if you want to learn how Rock Musicians reacted to various Social movements, but it absolutely sucks ass if you want to know why a Major outranks a Lieutenant but a Major General is outranked by a Lieutenant General.
If you look at the history people are interested, a huge proportion of it is the military stuff. They want to know why Europeans typically prefer General Sherman (who won no battles at any odds) to General Lee (who won a lot of battles he should have lost). Rommel is a lot more interesting to them then anything with "studies" in it's name.
Umm, are you stupid or just relying on ad hominem arguments?
Seriously, if Russia "claimed" a few Arctic islands which happen to be Canadian, do you think NATO would nuke them?
You've been playing too much Twilight:2000.
I don't know about nuke, but there'd definitely be a couple carrier groups deployed to the Arctic, Obama making a trip to Ottawa to support the PM, lots of saber-rattling, etc.
And if that didn't work there would, indeed, be combat.
The entire US Alliance structure is based on the principle that the US would risk nuclear war to protect all the members of the alliance. therefore if Russia invaded Canada we'd have to risk a nuclear war. Since the Russians know that, and they don't want nuclear war, it probably won't happen.
They can't buy Russian because the Russians ain't selling to a five eyes member.
They'd have to tell the Canadians damn near everything about the planes they bought, as Canadians are not genetically stupid they'd figure out most of what the Russians weren't saying, the US would be listening in the whole damn time, which would mean nobody would ever buy a Russian plane again.
You ever heard of "Five Eyes?"
You realize that if the Russians sold a Five Eyes member a fighter aircraft the US would instantly know every single flaw with said aircraft, and since everyone would know this nobody else would ever buy it again?
So no, Russia would not sell Canada any Sukhoi for any price.
They don't need sales guys anymore then Microsoft Windows does.
You're in the Western Alliance you buy Western Alliance Aircraft. If you're on the rich end you buy the latest models. Right now that Eurofighter or F-35. If you're likely to get involved in a Pacific War with said alliance you get the American one because that's what everyone else has.
Which means that all your squadrons are interchangeable with everyone else's squadrons, the same spare parts can be used, the commanders don;t need to learn the quirks of a half-dozen different fighters, etc.
Missions such as?
You ain't gonna beat the Russians if they're determined, without US Aid, therefore defending the north without US Aid is a suicide mission.
All other missions I can think of for the Canadian Air Force involve very close operations with Americans, and Russian aircraft just don't fit the model. They have different parts, are designed for greatly different maintenance styles, etc.
You could make the case for Eurofighter.
Gripen is 4th generation, so it actually does not fit the requirements.
Brazil has much different needs then Canada. The Canadians try to influence the world via their military. thus they participated in Korea, Afghanistan, and both World Wars (in the World Wars they fought longer and harder then the US). Brazil is a middle income country trying to become rich, and in the mean-time they're avoiding taking sides. Their Air Force is there partly to prevent insurgents, and partly to show Brazilians their nation is an important country. Grippen is cheap, so it won;t bankrupt a middle income country, it will blow insurgent hideaways (altho not as well as a prop would), and people think it's top-of-the-line.
OTOH, the Canadians have to be ready to operate from the same base as other NATO states (read: mostly America), slot themselves into the same missions, etc. That's a lot easier if you actually have the same plane as the Americans. And it also makes a lot of sense to buy the most expensive one you can afford now, because you're less likely to realize that you need a whole new one in 10 years.
In quite a few wars historically the side with the worse weapons won. Weapons quality is generally only a factor in conventional wars, and the unconventional kind tend to outnumber the conventional kind.
The thing about good weapons is the deter really big conventional wars. If the Chinese thing F-35 will eat their troopships for lunch they're forced to resort to the political tactics you mentioned. Which means we get to respond with similar political tactics. Since we are their biggest market we can screw their manufacturing sector with a similar embargo. they've got a multi-ethnic state so they don;t necessarily want to be the guys fomenting armed rebellions.
But if we don't have F-35, or some similar weapon they don't think they can beat, they can try a quick invasion and fait accompli like Crimea.
The aircraft of the future for A-10-style close ground support is actually a drone.
It can be a lot cheaper then an A-10, because you don't really really need a drone to come home. Say plane that's half as expensive, but 25% of them get blown up, it's still a great investment. I wouldn't want to be the guy who explained that memo to the grieving widow of the pilot in the 25%.
So full of dumb propaganda... Poor guy. Just think on this little piece of information: How a F-35 will knock 11 enemies (your 11:1 ratio) if he could carry a maximum of four air-to-air missiles (internally, if you want to remain "invisible" to radar)? And that IF he can avoid the missiles of 11 enemies, who assuming Flankers, will be better armed and far more able to maneuver than the F-35. But keep thinking so, exchange all your fighters for F-35's. Will be much easier to kick the ass of the the U.S. in a war if that happens.
Dude, that's four missiles per sorty.
You lock onto a target who can't see you. You fire all four. Then you run like hell. His buddies can see where you were ten seconds ago because they can back-trace your missiles, but you've been running at Mach 1.6. You get away, he'll be lucky to survive.
You do that every day, and in a couple weeks there are no flankers.
Your argument is exactly like the numerous Italian pilots who swore to Il Duce that they didn't need a monoplane because they were so skillful they could destroy a 350 MPH monoplane in a 250 MPH biplane.
Do you really think China's ambitions are going to end well? Honestly?
If we actually keep buying so much hardware they think not fighting us is cheaper then fighting us? Probably.
If we cut back to the level most critics of American military power think is appropriate, then hell no.
what need does Canada have for F35s?
only thing I can think of is to jointly train with the US, and to interoperate with the US on joint missions.
Which is kinda the entire point of the Canadian Air Force.
If you're in NATO you probably don't have the money to buy an effective military because you're too small. If you're large enough to afford said military (ie: the UK, Italy, etc.) you probably don;t bother because you've got Uncle Sam in your corner.
I could see a point in the Canadians buying Eurogfighters or even Grippens, but not a totally unique aircraft.
"More of the requirements?" It doesn't really work like that.
For a Canadian nationalist like Harper the most important requirement is that it be useful for coalition military operations. Historically this has meant with the UK, but now it means NATO in general and the US in particular. Superhornets would be unique to the Canadian military, which would mean a coalition commander (who wouldn't be Canadian, because there's no way a guy whose only commanded Superhornets gets to command Eurofighters and F-35s) would have no idea the quirks of the aircraft. He'd either have to take a day out of his war planning to get really in depth with his Canadian squadron leaders, or he'd have to shuttle them off to some duty that is boring, necessary, and highly unlikely to get anyone killed. A country whose contribution to the coalition is "boring, necessary, and highly unlikely to result in anyone getting killed" does not get to sit with the President at the victory dinner.
Moreover it's really hard to imagine a modern air force, in an industrialized country, purposefully buying an aircraft without stealth capabilities. F-35 can kill a Superhornet before the Superhornet knows it's there. Who gives a shit about acceleration? You might as well be asking about turning speed, which was a highly critical design spec for a fighter aircraft in the 30s.
I don't think Slashdot denizens realize how important standardization is to a military commander, especially somebody who commands squadrons of $100+million aircraft. They seem to think of these things the way they do consumer electronics -- just like everybody should have the exact model of phone that perfectly meets their needs, every country should have it's own specialized aircraft.
In college I had a housemate who was an Aeronautical Engineer. She told me that if she was very good someday somebody might let her design an entire strut. A strut is any metal piece that sticks out of the aircraft's skin. Could be a landing gear, could be something a control surface attaches to, could be an antenna. And each one has it's own designer. Which means that every single little metal piece you see sticking out of a plane on a model, or in a photo, is totally non-standard. It can only be used in exactly one place on that exact plane. It may not be compatible with other versions of that plane.
If you're running a civilian airline this is a huge pain. Pretty much every single aircraft you have needs it's own, special, set of spare parts. But you're not going the speed of sound, so a lot of the interior parts can be standardized. With an aircraft that goes Mach 2 it gets even worse, because the aerodynamics are so fucking finicky that the interior space is very constrained, and even bits that would be standard (ie: the metal paneling used as a floor) are specific to specific models of plane. Maybe the Mark I has a different RADAR then the Mark II, so some wire has to go through the cockpit, so there has to be a hole in the floor for said wire, which means the Mark I can;t use the floor paneling from the Mark II. Moreover a civilian airline can baby their planes. They yell at pilots for going all out because that causes unnecessary wear and tear. A good air force WANTS it's pilots going all out, because that way those pilots know what the plane is supposed to fell like when it goes mach 2.
If you're Japan or Canada, and you're likely to be on the same side in any conflict, and you're also likely to be fighting with the US and Australia, then having the exact same plane as the other three countries is great. All of you use the exact same set of spares. Since all of you use the same plane, you all know it's quirks, and you all know whether your squadron should be aggressively attacking a ground position protected by a certain version of Russian RADAR. If the Canadians have some ridiculously antiquated non-stealth CF-18 then nobody's gonna know this shit, which means the Canadians won;t actually get to attack anything as nobody else wants to order them onto suicide missions, and nobody else knows what the CF-18 can actually do, when the Canadians break their planes (which will be all the damn time, because it's fucking combat), they will have to wait for Ottawa to send a new of spares, etc.
Assuming Obama can get the damn F-35s working right having everyone use them will be great.
It's standard because it's American, and we a) spends money on the military, b) use our military abroad, and c) are just so very very big.
It's new.
It's American, and we have a much better aerial war record then any other country. Except perhaps the Brits, who are buying both F-35 and Eurofighter. You remember that old phrase "you don't get fired for buying IBM"? In military aircraft terms you don;t get fired for buying American.
If Obama says he's gonna spend money to work the bugs out they damn well know that money will be spent until the bugs are dead.
The "standard" argument is much more important then you'd think. High performance aircraft don't really have interchangeable parts, and the Japanese know that if the shit hit the fan they'd definitely have to share airfields with the US, and Australia; both of whom use the F-35. None of the Eurofighter customers are active in the Far East currently. The next most likely tier of combatants are Canada (pure F-35), the UK (both Eurofighter and F-35), and a bunch of states with extremely non-standard Air Forces. The Japanese probably figure that if they get the F-35 their squadrons will be interchangeable with all the other big/rich country squadrons, which will make getting spares to the place a lot simpler.
What are "your purposes"?
If you intend to defend Canada's borders then you really shouldn't buy any planes, because the only state that shares a land border with you will always be able to buy a better air force then you. Give the Rangers a bunch more explosives training, and then destroy all records with their names so the occupation. The RCAF, the Army, and the Navy are useless so they get fired.
If you intend to participate in any international missions at all a bunch of CF-18s aren't much use, because they're not stealth, which means that commanders will be reluctant to send them into dangerous situations, and they're not standard, which means that non-Canadian commanders will probably not know precisely when it is safe to send them in because said non-Canadians have never used the damn things before. You'll be Iceland, sending Major Herdis to Iraq.
Grippen or Raffelle would be ok if you really needed cheap, because they are common enough that even the densest Air Marshall could figure out how to use the damn things without spending three hours going over their specs. EuroFighter would be good option, as it's cheaper, un-American, and has a better operational record then F-35.
There are more then 30 million Canadians. $9 Billion Canadian Dollars is under $300 per person. That's a cost that's well within the reasonable range for an industrialized country.
You do realize that guys who quibble over a few hundred bucks per person in defense spending are pretty much the entire reason the NSA is gonna continue to get away with spying on you? Between them NATO countries besides the US have zero strategic transports, zero strategic bombers, carrier programs that are clearly designed to check the "we're a great power with a carrier" box rather then the "we have an effective Navy" box, etc. This means that no NATO country which fears any non-NATO country can ever piss off the US Security establishment, which in turn means you'll get plenty of BS press releases about how pissed the Danes are that they're being hacked and precisely zero effective action to stop said hacking.
Even 250 CF-18s would need some really exceptional to beat 65 F-35s. You don't have to be good when you're invisible. I suspect the OP is using the price from Wikipedia, which was for the 1977 version of the CF-18.
Since the real cost is double, it's more like 125 to 65, and the 65 get 200 free shots at the 125 before every battle. Then they get to try to run away.
And the 125 CF-18s can;t really be used by NATO in coalition warfare missions because a) they're not stealth, so they're a lot easier to shoot down then F-35s, and b) since nobody but the Canadians will be using them the people in charge of said operations will not know how to use the damn things properly.
I don't think you understand the role Harper wants the RCAF to play. Moreover I don't think you understand how aerial combat works.
Harper doesn't want to be a happy little rich country that never helps anyone because it only buys defensive weapons. He doesn't think of Canada as Ireland without the economic turmoil (you'll note that during WW2 the Irish saved roughly zero Jews, and then during the Cold War they were nuetral with a large helping of hoping the commies would win because the British were in NATO), he thinks of Canada as the country that responded to Fascism by building the fourth-largest Navy in the world. The Hornet is useless to the second Canada because modern military interventions tend to be aerial bombardments, and non-stealth aircraft are very difficult to use in those situations. Moreover they are led by NATO Air Force officers, which will know precisely how to use a US or RAF F-35 squadron but will have no clue what to do with a bunch of CF-18s. They will probably spend most of their time on the phone with retired USN guys trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the obsolete pieces of shit Canada is foisting on them.
And they're obsolete because a stealth aircraft has a huge advantage over a non-stealth one. It can see the enemy. It has missiles, which it can shoot at the enemy. If that doesn't work, when the enemy is getting close it can run away. Even in circumstances where you have a bunch of Mk. 1 eyeballs on the ground, radioing your non-stealth pilot to say "Dude, he's right over Winnipeg heading west at Mach 1.2," your missiles can't lock onto his ass so you need to get to visual range, and then you need to close to cannon range. This is why the Stealth Fighter, which is by every spec except Stealth the shittiest combat aircraft any NATO country has flown since WW2, only lost one plane to enemy fire. Ever.
In other words 65 F-35s are, even if every word the critics say is true, likely to beat a force with 250 CF-18s. Each F-35 has a bunch of hard points, so the first battle is gonna be the CF-18s dealing with 200 or so missiles while the F-35s run away. Then the second battle is gonna be fewer then 250 CF-18s dealing with 200 or missiles while the F-35s run away. Repeat until there are no CF-18s.