Comments by "Be Kind To Birds" (@BeKindToBirds) on "Sidewinder - The Weapon That Changed Air Combat" video.

  1.  @aletheia6672  I have been telling people this for YEARS. Air combat has been defined by murder drones for decades already! So few people seem to understand that manned aircraft are drone launch platforms far more than dogfighters and that the addition of a human controller at the launch platform is an advantage that isn't going anywhere soon. Which is also why drones have only proliferated to loitering air to ground roles and are only now beginning to be used as sacrificial wingmen.
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  2.  @jaxastro3072  The "scary drones" aren't actually that scary. Even old air defense is actually quite competent against them. Modern tanks have very often been upgraded to include detection and hard kill systems. Lasers and already existing anti air platforms with rapid fire and radar are actually brutally effective against the "swarm". Many of these systems are literally just modern iterations of the exact same air defense weapons built in ww2 like the bofors. The problem with swarm drones is that their only advantage is slow movement and numbers, that makes them absolute lunch for so many existing anti aircraft weapons. Their small size means they need many to hit to kill or they have to be even bigger and more cumbersome. The solution is speed and payload and then you are back to missiles. For infantry the swarm drone is terrifying, much less so for aircraft and tanks as they just require only slightly better anti missile systems to compensate. The US hasn't developed them for that reason, it took very little to adapt things like the Oerlikons and CIWS to the challenge of downing slow moving small targets. Better radar and fire tracking. Same defense against hypersonics. Eventually I'm sure we'll see weapons systems designed to move lots of sub munitions quickly to a target that can then disperse and attack from angles but that threat is also just less significant than sci fi would lead you to believe. That kind of thing would have to be built to counter the one specific system it's attacking and you are back to square one. Which is how much do you have where and how well trained are the operators. The US mastery of these things has cost a lot but no one but chinese and Russians can deny that we have what it takes. And our future proofing with lasers and rail guns is far, far, advanced of our competitors. Our supercarrier fleet is disgusting in how much we outclass our rival nations. That's why things have been pretty boring while the whole world panics over drones, hypersonic missiles, swarms.. they aren't really that much of a game changer as much as an evolution of what already existed. One big fast missile vs many small slow ones. Not really that dramatic of a leap. Loitering air cover is the place it's most changed air combat and no one even cares about that anymore because it's already old news.
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  3.  @TrashwareArt  That is a present iteration of one aspect of political and economic war, the future of war is the same as it always was and has been. You act as though espionage has never existed. You don't seem to realize that physical conflict, physical dominance, has no substitute. No internet, no cyberwar. Physical infrastructure. No opposition, no opposing propaganda. Physical dominance is always the foundation of all warfare and however every aspect becomes mutated the basic principles of force do not change. The "big dogs" have less advantage in a non physical conflict. It is entirely the inverse of what you've said.
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  4.  @barrycooper9451  That is a completely separate discussion. "Protecting" is not what super carriers do regardless. They are offensive, not defensive, their purpose is to project power. But yes, it is a pity. Aircraft carriers are not why our country is failing it's people. Not even close to the reasons. They make far, far, more money for our country and create much more trade opportunities than they cost by several orders of magnitude. You are on youtube, maybe using an iphone. Maybe you even have a Facebook? Maybe you have a disney or netflix subscription. I am certain you must use google. THOSE are costing the US people a lot more liberty than our navy. And probably your country too.
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  5.  @CheapSushi  To PEOPLE. Not to divisions and battalions and squadrons. They are scary only to people in small enough numbers to not have anti air emplacement. A truck with a laser is even a company level asset. That's why no military in the world is really scared of them or fielding them in great numbers, because they effectively are less effective than land mines to larger military units
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  6. Anyone who loves the Sidewinder should also check out this long documentary about it! https://youtu.be/jWkMS7msV5Y Thank you Paul for your work, as always!
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  7. The world has not seen an environment remotely as target rich as ww2 was. If we were able to look at the data as a total percentage of effect on all combat sortie aircraft you could see how it's so dominant much more easily. More to the point, direct fire air to air dogfighting is rapidly becoming obsolescent.
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