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The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

forbes.com

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Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#141

Post by injidup »

inglor_cz wrote: post #97
misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

SpaceX is an interesting exception. They innovate really fast, their pace resembles that of the positive examples you mention.

But SpaceX can can develop a tin can fast because it is not expected to have martians shooting at it. Imagine planning to go to Mars but your tin can had to be stealthy, manoeuvrable and armed to the teeth. You'd get Ripley's drop ship!

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#142

Post by nemothekid »

medium_burrito wrote: post #100
misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

You misunderstand the purpose the F35- it is a jobs and pork program first and foremost, like SLS. It has the side benefit of keeping people trained to build this sort of thing, so SpaceX can hire them. We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that.

Yes, a while back I was interested "where does billions we spend on national defense actually go" and I came to the conclusion that the DoD is really just a giant jobs program.

Ultimately I think the reason we don't have things like flying cars is that the private sector gets stuck in local maxima (such as getting people to click ads) and in the public sector it's very hard to have focused time-blocked short term goals.

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#143

Post by protastus »

> The F-35 is a Ferrari, Brown told reporters last Wednesday

It became a Ferrari due to feature creep and an enormously complex and expensive technology stack. The F-16 is not a Ferrari and NATO needs a multirole single-seat fighter that is affordable to purchase and fly.

My most charitable view is the F-35 became a jobs program for Lockheed Martin and subcontractors. People were trained and (allegedly) useful technology was developed. But the price tag appears unreasonable by an order of magnitude, and this puts no accountability on the program management or people signing the checks.

As for arguments about technology trickling down from the F-35:

* The argument needs evidence. I've seen no attempt to identify the value of the technologies developed against the time and money spent.

* Too much time was surely spent on integration and one-off details specific to the F-35 platform, and this is sunk cost unlikely to be recovered in future platforms designed by new teams.

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#144

Post by hef19898 »

digi59404 wrote: post #7

“The F-35 has failed” is a strong statement that depends on what your definition of success is. Did it fail because it couldn’t replace the F-16? Did it fail because it’s expensive and bloated? Do those things even matter? I’m not defending the F-35 but anyone deeply and intimately familiar with the platform knows and understands that it is a Ferrari. You don’t bring your Acura TSX to a Formula 1 race track to win a…

Well, it failed to replace the F-16, for starters. And the A-10. It failed in becoming the NATO / Western end-all jet. It is expensive, there aren't that many. The stealth capabilities are lacking by modern standards. Maintenaince if expensive and the combat aircraft equivalent of an iPhone.

Compare that to the cold war fighters. High numbers, used by the majority of US allies and even comparable cheap. Desiged to be usable under cold war circumstances. And modernized to this very day.

The biggest issue I see, also with stuff like the FCAS (French and German Eurofghter / Rafale replacement) is cost. Just imagine you loose, say, 50 of them in a war against Russia or China. How many you can reasonably replace? At that price tag? All other enemies, you hardly loose legacy fighters against those. And that is not even taking training into account.

Well, the B-52 is still flying. Maybe it will reach 100 years of service.

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#145

Post by federona »

misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

Thiel and his ilk are the reason we can't build cool shit anymore. Look at PayPal, horrible outdated interface that is still a kluge with old functionality glued to new functionality because it's just too big to be too concerned, and horrible customer service too. There is so much corruption and profiteering due to monopolization of various industries that this sort of behavior happens, Thiel is the guy who walks away with all his money before shit from his philosophy hits the fan; society being the bag man. Look at Trump who Thiel supported or his general idea of a monopoly. Monopolies are bad, competition and distribution is good. Thiel does not know what he's talking about. The rich can capture all the value, but what happens after that, they continue to capture all the value and don't have to improve or innovate to continue to exist, you can't hold them up to anything because what are you going to do you are locked in.

Do things 10x better he says, and then you will have so much network effect that you can do things 10x worse and people still have a hard time getting rid of you.

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#146

Post by ldbooth »

StLCylone wrote: post #90
supernova87a wrote: post #63

I guess along the way, the activity of designing and building the plane became more important than the outcome / functionality of the plane itself. You see it all the time in projects. People look busy and seem like they're building things, so some progress must be happening. Or is it? Blink an eye, and in a couple years you unwittingly accumulated a platform that served to fulfill every random team's desire to load…

"the activity of designing and building the plane became more important than the outcome / functionality of the plane itself." Yes. After a while was it about building the plane or keeping the aerospace industry employed and engaged? The design tried to do everything for everyone and fulfill every Colonel's dream feature and mission. Its the ultimate story of feature creep.

Like the smartphone phenomenon. They need to sell you something, so they sell you on useless features. And it works!

My flip phone is in the mail. They got me regressing too.

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#148

Post by mohaine »

rayhendricks wrote: post #72

It did not fail at providing money to the military-industrial-congressional complex. But of course we need more fighter jets instead of Medicare for all and UBI. China is not going to send fighters over to Bomb the us mainland, this thing is totally unnecessary.

How are you sure someone isn't `going to send fighters over to Bomb the us mainland`?

I'm pretty sure no one is going to do that and yes we way overspend on the MIC but really sending militaries over to other countries was the status quo for almost as long as countries have existed.

There is no real reason to expect that will not happen again just because we are going on 80 years since anyone made a serious effort to do it. You could also argue that it has been 80 years because it was made so expensive to wage war that money/resources is no longer a reason to do it. There just isn't an ROI.

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#149

Post by TylerE »

supernova87a wrote: post #130
misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

Maybe someone with more industry knowledge or interesting sources can corroborate -- But I believe that one of the things that happened to the military aviation industrial complex was that in the WW2, early Cold War era, planes and military development programs were very much driven by individuals or very small teams responsible for designing the requirements, overseeing the planning, and the outcome of new aircraft.…

The F-35 broke the most important of Kelly Johnson's rules.

15. Never do business with the (damned) Navy!

Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed

#150

Post by markus_zhang »

cwhiz wrote: post #89
rayhendricks wrote: post #72

It did not fail at providing money to the military-industrial-congressional complex. But of course we need more fighter jets instead of Medicare for all and UBI. China is not going to send fighters over to Bomb the us mainland, this thing is totally unnecessary.

You could take the entire defense budget, and the defense budget from every other country in the world, and you would be less than 50% of the funding you would need for a single year of Medicare for all. The US spends about $3.6 trillion per year on health care. I have no idea what UBI might cost, but I know we don’t have the tax revenues to get even close. Maybe the money printer can go brrrr a little bit faster.

That 3.6 trillion dollar, I don't think it's well spent and I wonder how much went to the Insurance companies, big Pharmas. SOmehow as the most powerful country in the world, US has shitty medicare comparing to Canada, Germany, etc.
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