What is the point of expensive stealth when the future of warfare

What's the point of your mom drinking diet coke when she needs an overhead crane to move around the house?

The future of warfare looks asymmetric thanks to deterrents such as stealth aircraft, they're also useful for crushing smaller state militaries without incurring losses, helps keep shitty countries in check.

>>34539552
If you don't maintain capability parity, the next thing you know you'll be speaking mandarin or russian.

The fact that it's useful against pleb tier states is a bonus, not a driving reason.

because eventually things are going to pop off and all our high tech toys will be put to use

If you aren't the modern army with cool toys you will be the one BTFO having to resort to insurgency

>>34539576
>The future of warfare looks asymmetric thanks to deterrents such as stealth aircraft,
Then why did asymmetric warfare start becoming a thing long before stealth aircraft came along?
>they're also useful for crushing smaller state militaries without incurring losses, helps keep shitty countries in check.
Yeah, North Korea wouldn't dare launch a test missile or detonate a nuke as long as we-

Oh.

>manchildren view the world as static, where what's true today will be true tomorrow

>>34540213
>Then why did asymmetric warfare start becoming a thing long before stealth aircraft came along?
Stealth is is an anti-RADAR tool. In the previous generation, anti-RADAR including HARMs, screening jammer aircraft and chaff shields. In the past, these tools were sufficient for avoiding enemy anti-air networks. Today, they are much less so, therefore the upgrade to stealth is necessary to maintain the same edge as previously.
>Yeah, North Korea wouldn't dare launch a test missile or detonate a nuke as long as we-
North Korea has had artillery that could turn Seoul into dust forever, them possessing terror bombing capable weapons is nothing new. Using them would be, and they have not.

>>34539696
This
You have to maintain insane levels of superiority to keep other countries in check.
I can only imagine how other countries feel about the threat of 2,000 F35s

>>34540005
Nukes render conventional arms moot since no one wants to provoke an established nuclear power. The Norks figured this out and that's why they're forging ahead with developing ICBMs and skipping all the "cool toys."

>>34540652
Norks might also have the niche as the only power able to use nukes in a conventional scenario without immediately invoking MAD. They could turn any African or ME country that disagreed with them sans Pakistan and Israel into a crater and nobody would do much more than berate them because it's in their character.

>>34540731
Pakistan isn't in the Middle East...

Also, Pakistan's the ones who taught them half their nuke tech, they're great buds.

>>34539552

Because at that point the traditional military itself will be largely useless against the domestic police forces, who will gradually assume more and more military-like duties. We've already seen this with PDs requiring SWAT training in the 80s, the adoption of full size rifles as trunk guns in the 90s, the expansion of electronic surveillance in the 00s and the adoption of UAVs (especially trunk quadcopters) right now.

So, what's left for the military themselves to do? Artillery. Or more specifically, devices that are designed to drop lots of explosives very quickly. Stealth is useful here in case the enemy has a radar.

But this even assumes what you're saying is true, which it probably isn't. If militaries could get along with each other, most individual citizens probably could too negating the need for a police force in this first place.

>>34539552
The expensive stealth may or may not fool today/tomorrow's radar, however, it does work against yesterday's radar that those rebels bought for a discount.

>>34539552
>I only plan for the last war!

>>34541031
It's still objectively better against new radars than a non-stealth design.

>>34539696
/thread
It's like mutually assured destruction, but smaller scale.

>>34540614
>I can only imagine how other countries feel about the threat of 35,000 MBTs
>Ivan Ivanov, 1985
About this way.

>>34542216
Ah, but there was at best (for Ivan) parity between Soviet and NATO forces in 1985, at worst a distinct disadvantage, especially at sea where the USN and RN would absolutely wreck them.

There was no Soviet general after 1975 who seriously thought a Western European breakout could possibly turn out well for them. Really, very few before that either.