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US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

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Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#141

Post by derefr »

Balgair wrote: post #137
derefr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one way to explain the last 100 years, sure. Another way: militaries around the world stumbled upon a new source of low-hanging fruit (air supremacy), one that could win wars with just the slightest investment, as long as the enemy had invested less/none. Technological progress sped up in the space as everyone exploited the low-hanging fruit. Then, having picked all the low-hanging fruit, further advances in a…

I worked with one of the BIG defense contractors for a while. There was this guy, Willy. Willy was a 'fellow' with the company, an engineer so advanced and critical to the company that they just let him do whatever he wanted. One of his PhDs was in chemistry, I think he was about 80 years old back then (~2010). He did not use email at all. I thought it was crazy at the time, but man, was WIlly right about that one. I…

> I came to find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never written anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, at any cost.

You'd think that if there's information in someone's head that a defense contractor can construe as "crucial to the building of the country's war-fighting competency" (i.e. "we can't build the damn planes/missiles you're depending on without that guy"), they could, for example:

• Get Congress to subpoena the person's "testimony" for a closed session of the Intelligence Subcommittee.

• Get the president to Commission the person as a military officer, and then immediately court-martial them for not doing their duty to the state by withholding the information.

• Just plain charge the person with treason, same as if they knowingly sabotaged the planes.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#142

Post by rthomas6 »

1024core wrote: post #99

> The crash in South Carolina involved an F-35B, which is able to land vertically and costs around $100m And earlier it mentions a total cost of the program of 1 trillion dollars. So we'd have to sell at least 10000 planes to have any hope of recouping the costs??

I don't think the United States created the F-35 program with the hopes to turn a profit by selling them.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#143

Post by openasocket »

3rdAccount wrote: post #21

Does anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area decently? I know in theory that there would be savings having one platform, but making one jet modular for 3 different roles is seeming to be more difficult than just designing 3 different jets. It can't beat the EuroFighter in a dog fight and can't match the stealth bomber…

There's nothing wrong with the idea of having multirole aircraft. Hell, the EuroFighter was originally designed as an air superiority fighter, but is used for a variety of ground attack missions as well. And the F-35 isn't intended to replace the B2 Spirit stealth bomber, nor the A-10 (though the USAF would really like to); it is meant to replace the F/A-18 and F-15, which are themselves multirole aircraft.

The issue with the F-35 isn't that it is intended to perform both air superiority and ground attack missions. The basic objection to the F-35 is designing a single airframe with several variants capable of conventional takeoff and landing (F35-A), short takeoff and vertical landing (F35-B), and catapult assisted takeoff and arrested recovery (F35-C). These are completely different ways of taking off and landing, with different design constraints, and it is difficult to create an airframe that can be modified to perform any of them. That's the primary philosophical objection to the F35, at least. There's another whole debate about whether we need aircraft dedicated for the close air support role (like the A-10), and the rest of the complaints are specific to F35 design choices.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#144

Post by raverbashing »

mrguyorama wrote: post #123
chris72205 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take some of it with a grain of salt. He brought up one point about peeling paint and requiring special hangars. But outside of the RT article he linked to, I can't find mention of that elsewhere. I didn't look into all of his points, but that one struck as me a little ridiculous even for this flying bucket of crap... which makes me question some of his other tweets in that stream.

>Every time they're flown, they have to be repainted. And because the F-35's fuel is heat sensitive, EVERY TRUCK THAT CARRIES IT ALSO has to be painted with a special heat-resistant paint. I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if the F-35 were to use a different fuel than standard.

Ah it seems this is misquoted. Not the best source, but it gives a more plausible explanation https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-warm-...

Tl;dr: if fuel stays in the sun it gets too hot and the plane won't run

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#145

Post by cryoshon »

sololipsist wrote: post #100
cryoshon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, that's the kissinger line of thought. "realism". except it doesn't hold up to reality, at least not in the modern or even the premodern era. iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful po…

> iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard. > the answer is that nobody cares to. This is an over-simplification of…

no more of an over-simplification than kissinger's concept of realism, to be blunt.

countries routinely do things that are contrary to the interest of maximizing their net power, and claiming "but it's anarchy out there!" isn't very accurate.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#146

Post by ChuckMcM »

kibwen wrote: post #106
ChuckMcM wrote: post #50

Most people reading will recognize that it is a standard procedure to ground everything until you understand the risk. In this case the risk is a faulty fuel line, and apparently there is a test that will let you know in the field if you have it or not so you can return the plane to service immediately if the test comes up negative. There is a remarkable amount of disinformation that is spread around about this plane…

> assumes it is because it is so far beyond what "opposing" forces can field they will do anything to delay its operation This doesn't hold water; nation-state propaganda doesn't have any effect on the funding this program receives. Nobody should have any trouble believing that an overly-ambitious pie-in-the-sky kitchen-sink project that has been in development for 30 years might be having a hard time meeting its lof…

> This doesn't hold water; nation-state propaganda doesn't have any effect on the funding this program receives.

Again, I wasn't offering up my father as an expert (other than having been in the Air Force, which is weak at best), just sharing his take on the observation of all the negative articles.

And you don't need to go to the Shuttle, look at the CVN-X program (21st century aircraft carrier, aka the Ford class) which has EMALS and a bunch of other next gen tech, lots and lots of press about boondoggle and how nothing worked, and this thing is a sitting duck in an ancient concept of what war will be like. The B-2 bomber, similarly maligned as over priced, under delivered, not worth the money when B-52s can be retrofitted. Or its earlier sibling the B-1 bomber cancelled then un-cancelled. Or the Seawolf class submarines, too expensive, not enough justification Etc etc.

So I think the press coverage, especially when it is effective at raising outrage over social programs, is effective at getting congressional action to limit the investment in new weapon systems.

Some citations for your perusal

[1] B2 Bomber program cancellation is urged (1989) -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/05/19/b...

[2] Seawolf cancelled [1992] -- https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/910802-cr.htm

[3] Penny Pinching Submarine Warfare to Death -- https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/01/opinion/l-penny-pinching-...

[4] B1 Bomber flew in 1974 but was cancelled in 1977 -- https://www.boeing.com/history/products/b-1b-lancer.page

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#147

Post by tynpeddler »

3rdAccount wrote: post #21

Does anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area decently? I know in theory that there would be savings having one platform, but making one jet modular for 3 different roles is seeming to be more difficult than just designing 3 different jets. It can't beat the EuroFighter in a dog fight and can't match the stealth bomber…

>It can't beat the EuroFighter in a dog fight

It's not clear that this is the case. While the Eurofighter is better in a turning fight, it may not matter against the f35. The f35's stealth helps it choose the engagement parameters but the f35 has another advantage in a dogfight. Apparently it has the bizarre ability to point its nose very quickly allowing it to casually snap off kill shots with a minimum of fuss.

All the earlier reports of f35 dog fighting abilities involved very early f35 models which were operating under pretty severe software restrictions. In addition, no one really understood the f35's flight characteristics so they were trying to fly them like f16's and f15's, which is a big problem. Every fighter aircraft must flown differently based on its flight characteristics.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#148

Post by gaius »

cryoshon wrote: post #74
sololipsist wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Air superiority is important for power projection. Edit: So I'm getting a comments here that are much lower-quality than I expect from this place. Geopolitics is not like interpersonal relationships. There is nobody governing governments. It's a free-for-all, literally the state of nature. In societies it seems like "Might makes right" is a dated concept, but you have to remember that's within the frame of a gov…

yeah, that's the kissinger line of thought. "realism". except it doesn't hold up to reality, at least not in the modern or even the premodern era. iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful po…

iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile

Iceland is a founding member of NATO and is located in the backyard of two of the world’s most powerful navies. The Royal Navy spent the entire Cold War thinking about GIUK. Arguably its a free-rider in NATO but the idea anyone could invade it is laughable

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#149

Post by stcredzero »

ceejayoz wrote: post #35
stcredzero wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan would fall. If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship. Nowadays pretty much, if one side can establish air superiority, the other side is relegated to guerilla tactics. In terms of geopolitics in 2018, it's pretty much about air and naval bases.

> If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship. This is a little bit silly. South Korea was ruled by various dictatorships for decades after the war. North Korea still is.

> > If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship.

> This is a little bit silly. South Korea was ruled by various dictatorships for decades after the war. North Korea still is. In South Korea today, you have one of the most vibrant economies in the world.

Sorry, but you're more than a bit silly. South Korea was ruled by dictatorships, post Korean War. However, this was a transitional period to today. In South Korea, you don't have camps where entire families are sent, basically to die, because someone said the wrong thing.

One half of my family is from present-day North Korea. My grandfather was a physician and entrepreneur. He had to move the family south because he could see what was coming. My mother remembers being smuggled in a pitch-black compartment of a freighter. She also remembers walking down the road with the family's belongings strapped to her back. A stack of bills, thick from wartime inflation, likely saved the life of my grandmother.

I and my sister wouldn't even exist, were it not for the Korean War and US intervention. All you have to do, to see the difference between the Koreas, is to look at nighttime pictures from orbit. All of the vibrancy of present-day South Korea was enabled by the intervention. The amount of human happiness that was allowed and the amount of human misery that was avoided by that is vast.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#150

Post by onetimemanytime »

kibwen wrote: post #26

Over a trillion dollars over 28 years. There are about 250 million U.S. taxpayers. That's $150 out of the pocket of every single taxpayer, every year, just to cover the cost of this one monumentally embarrassing failure. If you're a U.S. citizen born after 1974, you've been setting fire to this money annually for your entire adult life. No value has been provided other than as a government subsidy to military contrac…

Broadly speaking...didn't we lose just the after tax profit that companies made? Of course there's an opportunity cost but this is FedGov, not exactly known for using tax dollars as best they could /should.
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