In 1906, HMS Dreadnought entered service with the Royal Navy. With her all-big-gun armament, she was a revolutionary vessel, and changed the balance of naval power at a stroke. Suddenly, all other battleships – which quickly became known as ‘pre-Dreadnoughts’ – were rendered obsolete, and the size of a fleet mattered little: all that counted was how many Dreadnought-type ships a nation had.
An interesting aspect of the on-going Israel – Iran conflict is that it appears the F-35 has had a similar impact as HMS Dreadnought. Despite boasting an air force of around 150 fast jets (mainly older types, such as F-14s, F-4s, F-5s and MiG-29s), there is no evidence that the Iranians are even attempting to contest air supremacy over their own nation. Though the Israeli air force is a little bigger, the vast majority of their fighters are relatively elderly F-16s… so the logical conclusion is that the Iranians know their planes would simply be shot-down en masse by the 45 F-35s operated by Israel: so have decided not to even bother trying to defend their own air space.
So is the F-35 now the Dreadnought of the modern-age? Have all these sizable, second-tier air forces suddenly become little more than expensive junk? Does it now make no difference how many planes a country has – only how many F-35s?
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