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I've been hearing fables of the mythological plaopsint who seems to be a prophet. Being serious now, could we compile a list of all his claims? I want to see how accurate he really was.

The Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) has reportedly been fairly ineffective in Ukraine, mostly due to Russian jamming. Despite this, it seems like the concept could have a lot of development potential.

For background, the GLSDB takes the obsolete M26 MLRS rocket and pairs it with the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb. One of the big benefits of this pairing is cost vs range, with SBDs each costing ~$40k and huge quantities of M26 rockets in storage that are essentially free. GLSDB has a range of 150 km, while the M26 has a reported range of 32-45 km depending on variant, so the GLSDB can stretch the range offered by that rocket nearly 3-4x (disclaimer is that I've seen reports that they are not using old M26 rockets after all? So difficult to definitively make the comparison).

However, the current M30/M31 GMLRS rockets have a reported range of ~90 km, and ER-GMLRS is reported at ~150 km using a larger rocket motor. Additionally, one of the main issues with the GLSDB and other guided munitions (including GMLRS and JDAM) has been its reliance on INS/GPS guidance, which is increasingly being jammed by Russia and is clearly a major point of vulnerability for western munitions. Home-on-jamming seekers have been proposed for GPS munitions, but this seems like somewhat of a bandaid, as the munition will still be unable to hit the intended target until the first waves have taken out the jamming. The SDB II, known as the GBU-53/B Stormbreaker, offers a tri-mode seeker with mmWave radar, infrared, and laser guidance that can hit moving targets and should be very difficult to jam in a similar size package to the GBU-39. Both the SBD and stormbreaker are glide bombs, so they also have very low IR signatures and are difficult to target with MANPADS and can be programmed to fly around known radar air defenses.

This begs the question, why haven't we done what was done with the GLSDB, but with our more advanced rockets and glide bombs?

It seems like a 250+ km range could be achieved with a jam-resistant munition capable of hitting moving targets. GMLRS (M30/31, unknown for ER-GMLRS, and the full rocket, not just the motor) each cost the US ~$160k, and Stormbreaker is ~$200k, so one could guess that each round could come in at ~$300k with the M31 motor (lets call it GLSDB II) or 500k with the ER-GMLRS motor (call it ER-GLSDB II). This is vs ATACMS at ~$1-1.5M each and PrSM estimated to be ~$3M. Plus ATACMS cannot hit moving targets, and although future PrSM increments will have that capability, they will have an even higher cost. So to me, it seems like a capability that slots nicely between GMLRS and PrSM in both cost, range, and capability that would have a relatively low development cost/timeline as well.

So, could/should the GLSBD concept be applied to the M30/31 or ER-GMLRS rocket motor and GBU-53/B stormbreaker to make a GLSDB II and/or ER-GLSDB II?

Let's say two roughly equal factions both deploy drones with the full range of autonomy. What will war look like then?

There is a sacred tradition of F-35 criticism. Pierre Sprey is no longer with us but his spirit is.

Elon Musk tweeted:

The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people.

This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes.

And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.

And:

Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35 [...] It’s a shit design.

A slightly more nuanced argument from a tech guy:

This is a reasonable argument today but maybe was less obvious back when F-35 was created; we probably could have stretched existing platforms another 5-10 years longer than with F-35 and made it work. OTOH, what IS clear is there should not be a manned frontline F-35 successor.

Is it true that in 5-10 years we will likely see the F-35 as obsolete due to more capable unmanned UCAV swarms? And if F-35s are increasingly used as "anchors" for CCA wingmen, is its design "overkill" in some sense?

Also, this argument confusingly combines two question marks: (1) whether AI will get to human level soon, (2) even if it does, will very expensive aircraft like the F-35 still be useful or will a much larger number of UCAVs in a swarm be more effective in most situations?

TLDR: if smaller air defense systems get an opportunity to take a shot at something incoming that bigger systems happen to be missing, I don't see why they would proceed to try their luck

I got a lot of down votes when I made some comments about this, but it is something I am curious about.

When Russia shot the Oreshnik IRBM/ technical ICBM, And it came in at a super steep trajectory with unusually close groupings if it was a, true MIRV, as opposed to a MRV (https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-and-national-security-analysis/post/ukraine-conflict-russia-fires-experimental-missile-for-first-time)

Wouldn't systems like Patriot attempt to take a shot even if they knew it wasn't their typical Target?

I was downvoted for asking this and told that Patriot is not like THAAD/HMD//SM-3/Arrow 3, which is obvious.

( though funny enough afterwards the ukrainians requested better defenses including potentially upgraded Patriots, to deal with future instances of this type of strike. So PAC3's aren't that useless or out of line - )

I've heard the sentiment that if a ballistic missile was incoming, a US Destroyer might just even have their 5-in gun take a shot at it if their standard missiles were not up to the job, because at that point there's nothing left to lose. And that is always stayed on my mind in the years since, that it would indeed make sense that if you can try to make a difference you still would with something even if suboptimal.

Yes there's a preferred order of Engagement with our own systems, like using aSM 6 then sm2 then CIWS, but this sort of thing doesn't apply to everyone or all theaters of War when things get hot

Edit: a good example is the case of a Ukrainian stinger-equivalent, being used to shoot down cruise missiles, which just happened. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/42390