For years, Americans without healthcare have been assured that although they may be denied life-saving cancer treatment, at least their country had fighter jets and aircraft carriers that could reduce cities to rubble. While America has always been rubbish at saving lives, it was easily the best at taking them. This was a real source of American pride. Well, now that pride has taken a serious dent.
The Iran war, sorry, “Operation Epstein Fury” has seen at least one aircraft carrier limping away from the theatre of war. The USS Gerald R. Ford was officially taken out by a “laundry fire”, and to make matters worse, Iran is claiming to have struck the USS Abraham Lincoln, forcing that carrier to also withdraw. The second claim is denied, but given the rate at which the US is racking up humiliations, I’m not sure what to believe. All I know is two of America’s crown jewels are suddenly “unavailable for comment” and the bad news keeps coming.
The US has lost a whole bunch of aircraft in this war—around 16 at last count, including MQ-9 Reaper drones, KC-135 refueling tankers, and F-15E fighter jets, but the real headline-grabber is the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II.
The F-35 is unstoppable, or so we’ve been told for the past two decades. It’s packed with the best technology the US and its vassals could cobble together, plus whatever black-budget wizardry is causing the Pentagon to fail every audit. (Just don’t mention reverse-engineered UFOs. I don’t want to be put on a list!)
The F-35’s stealth capabilities and sensor fusion were supposed to make it an invisible predator, patrolling enemy skies and killing Muslims with impunity. Radars weren’t supposed to see it. Even if they caught a glimpse, they definitely weren’t supposed to lock on.
Unfortunately for the Americans that assumption rested entirely on their own testing ranges. How were they supposed to know the Iranians had developed air-defences that surpassed their own? And how were the Iranians supposed to know their radars weren’t allowed to see those F-35s?
The Iranians weren’t even supposed to have air defences because Trump said they were all gone after last year’s 12-day war. They somehow rolled out homegrown tech that wasn’t supposed to exist and it bested the empire’s finest paper tiger. The US and Israel must now abandon their dreams of air supremacy and fall back on more expensive, long-range missiles that are already running low. No wonder the AI clone of Netanyahu is muttering about a ground invasion.
The Americans are trying to play things down, insisting their F-35 “sustained minor damage” and made a safe emergency landing at a military base. However, Iran released footage suggesting they seriously damaged (or possibly even downed) the jet which did not fire flares or take evasive manoeuvres. It did not appear to detect a threat until it was too late!
I’ve seen reports suggesting the F-35 crash-landed in the desert and search and rescue teams had to locate it. There are even unconfirmed reports of a second F-35 being taken down by Iran. Whatever the truth, we know that the F-35 is no longer invisible and all of that stealth technology is redundant. That’s $2 trillion worth of R & D down the drain, but still, it could be worse: Americans could have universal healthcare.
The highly efficient US military-industrial complex has been churning out F-35s at roughly $100 million a piece (with the entire program costing $2 trillion over its lifetime). Now their export market might be screwed. Not only can these overpriced liabilities be hit by low-cost Iranian systems, but China’s technology might outclass them. You can forget about a war over Taiwan.
We know that Chinese J-10Cs and J-16s bested US F-15s and French Rafales in the India-Pakistan clashes last year. Pakistan’s J-10CEs armed with PL-15 missiles reportedly scored six long-range kills. Even though these jets lack stealth, the Indians could not detect them on radar, due to a combination of electronic warfare systems, data-links, and mountainous terrain.
If China’s fourth-generation tech is this effective, it opens the possibility that its fifth-generation stealth jets, such as the J-20 and J-35, might be superior to their US equivalents—or at the very least, competitive, far cheaper, and easier to manufacture. China is currently producing jets at nearly twice the rate of the US and ships at 200 times the rate (that’s not a typo).
On top of that, Beijing seems to be pulling ahead in the race to sixth-generation fighters, with prototypes like the J-36 and the tailless J-50 spotted in Chinese skies over the past year. The US technological edge might be gone, and even if it isn’t fully eroded, other nations are showing they can compete with much cheaper alternatives, making long-term wars unsustainable.
The US arms market has just been exposed, and the reputation of invincibility has been left as battered as that F-35. The days of unchallenged US hegemony are coming to an end.
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These lyrics popped into my head..."Bye, bye, Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singing this will be the day that I die
This will be the day that I die"
The damage/downing of the invincible F35 is astounding news.