Do Countries Really Keep Secret Weapons? A WarFronts Analysis.

Explore the truth behind secret weapons in modern warfare. Are they real, or just a myth? Dive into history, deterrence, and the debate over hidden military technology. Watch now!

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[herbwitch]

I remember a very frustrated congressman in the mid 1980s who showed up to a meeting with a DOD about the Stealth bomber program. He was carrying a toy model of the bomber that his 15-yo son had supplied to him and wanted to know how Mattel had gotten the basic details of the bomber’s construction when he couldn’t get them from the DOD for budgeting purposes. 😂

[Dragewarrior]

"You don't think they really spend $20, 000 on a hammer, $40, 000 on a toilet seat do you?"

[owlcaps]

The key takeaway is that sometimes you keep a secret to not let your adversaries know it can be done, this is pretty common in business actually, being a pioneer costs much more than just developing something. Being a pioneer means you spend massive r&d to make as many mistakes as you can to do one right and get out the gate first, if you announce everything you are doing, your competition can just sit back and eat popcorn until you hit the right nail and then pounce on you. Just the information that something can be done, like a nuclear bomb, is massively valuable, as was the fact that you can actually make a working pair of vr goggles that don't suck.

[Thestuffonmainstreet]

The biggest secrets aren’t the weapons they don’t show but what current weapons can actually do.

[EdrickBluebeard]

"The fox has many tricks- the hedgehog has one good one."
-Archilocus

[Ruffhouse]

It's a hell of a lot easier to keep the true specs and capabilities of a weapon system under wraps than the existence of the weapon system itself. Obviously that's not gonna work with something like the SR-71 or the B-2 where anyone turning a wrench on them would know they were dealing with something new and different, but for example: Many missile systems everyone knows about still have some classified specs. The best the general public has are educated guesses, and when they're your missiles, it's pretty easy to publish "rough numbers" that hide true capabilities..

[cjwild]

The “Secret” weapons are honestly what you’d expect them to be in regard to being focused on intelligence which is the silent war that has always been waged in parallel to the fighting.

[rich]

It took 10 years for the US GOV to admit the existence of the F-117 Nighthawk in 1990. F-22 Raptor is 30 years old. Imagine what they have been developing in Dugway, Utah.

[moonasha]

biggest example of this period was the F-117, a plane which defeated every single air defense of the time. It was kept secret until the cold war ended. The US could have flown planes over Moscow, and they wouldn't have known until things hit the ground. An immensely powerful thing, kept secret. The way I see it, weapons to make war painful are made public. Weapons to make war swift are kept secret

[michaela]

IM A simple man, i see Simons bald head in my feed, i open the video.

[againstalltyrants]

Deterennce doesn't happen in a vacuum, you show of the stuff you want them to know you have, and you keep your fancy stuff hidden until it's time for it to be used in secret, or until you need a show of force and to show the world what you've got.

[danielwolfe]

"Appear strong when you are weak; appear weak when you are strong"

[NathanMoothVFX]

It makes me laugh whenever I see Corridor Digital's robot skit show up as footage of "Militarized Robots".

[TastySlowCooker]

An interesting thesis I hadn’t really considered. My only addition is that, for the most part, a secret weapon can only be used once. Then it’s just a weapon.

[doogho]

Lord have mercy, last time I was this early, I had my first child 9 months later.

[kaltaron]

"Doctor Strangelove or how I learned to love the bomb" makes a good point.
What's a Doomsday Device good for if the other side doesn't know you have one?

[Nathan-vtjz]

I think you’re spot on for deterrence being the main goal for weapon. I’d say the opposite incentive structure is true for defensive weapons, spy craft and specific capabilities of known weapons (such as the F-22ms flight ceiling).

So I’d expect there to be plenty of secret R&D projects, intelligence assets, and the true capabilities of defensive weapons.

[BaddHabytzz]

anyone under the impression that governments are forthcoming and transparent knows what color of crayon tastes the best.

[SayNoToDemocide]

One overlooked thing is that you'd have to keep easily thousands or tens of thousands of factory workers silent. The more people are involving in manufacturing secret weapons, the more likely someone is going to leak the existence of the weapon, especially for the final assembly, where you have the least ability to conduct compartmentalization.

[baitmaster]

I was not ready for Simon to be on this channel too. Is this man the mainframe of youtube?