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

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

#181

Post by grecy »

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.

> 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.

How in the world to other countries pay for Healthcare?

The USA has tax revenue per capita very similar to New Zealand, the UK, Italy and Canada - all of which have good Healthcare for all. [1]

The USA has more than double the tax revenue per capita than South Korea, which also has good healthcare.

It's not about the cost, it's about how the USA is choosing to spend it's tax dollars.

[1] https://countryeconomy.com/taxes/tax-revenue

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

#182

Post by rubicon33 »

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…

I wonder if anyone has any theories as to why? Assuming it's true that technological innovation peaked in the mid 40s/50s, it begs the question why it has ground to such a halt now.

Recognizing that is a big assumption of truth, would anyone here be willing to posit an explanation?

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

#183

Post by woeirua »

chickenpotpie wrote: post #139
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…

Covid-19 has a vaccine less than a year into the first death in The US, that’s pretty nuts

Not just a vaccine. A 95% effective vaccine. That's never happened before in such a short time frame. The high efficacy vaccines that most of us have been injected with took decades to develop.

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

#184

Post by guardiangod »

lucideer wrote: post #25
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…

> Not the success criteria some folks have perpetuated or thrust upon the project. This isn't an art project where interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. This is a taxpayer-funded set of contracts; the success criteria are defined as part of said contracts, they're not "thrust upon" the project by "some folks". Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative project, whether it were a success or a fa…

>Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative project, whether it were a success or a failure.

Take the $3e11, convert them to physical banknotes, burn all $3e11 bills in Texas last week for warmth, and according to the grandparent the program would still be a success because the money ultimately provided utility to people!

>Grandparent: What matters is the objective outcome that comes from this project.

No one froze to death! We gained _something_ from the program! Operation successful! /s

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

#185

Post by ktln2 »

F-35 is not expensive if you consider the alternatives:

Brazil bought 36 JAS-39E for $5.8 billion. [1]

Taiwan ordered 66 F-16V for $8.1 billion. [2]

Korea is going to get 20 F-35A for $3.3 billion. [3]

[1] https://www.flightglobal.com/saab-brazil-finalise-gripen-ng-...

[2] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-f-16v-fighter-j...

[3] https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2019/10/10/s...

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

#186

Post by VectorLock »

zdragnar wrote: post #133
medium_burrito wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

More than that, thr SR-71 was purpose-built. That means fewer hands on thr steering wheel, and fewer compromises to achieve multiple missions. The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and missions. That means more voices demanding priority of features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many fi…

Exactly this. Hyper specialized boundary pushing things are easy compared to general purpose good for everything projects.

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

#187

Post by jboog »

mohaine wrote: post #148
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…

The US and NATO is so far ahead of China and Russia in the conventional fight it's comical.

No one outside of the US or its allies even has a blue-water Navy. China has ONE carrier and it's a pile of shit compared to what we have. We have 11 super carriers, add in the smaller ones and we have another 40 or so. That's not even counting the rest of NATO.

Let's not even get into to the backwater that is the PRC's air force.

Yeah they have 1.3 billion people. Big deal. How exactly do they get them over here?

Nuclear war, now that's a different story but having another cool bleeding-edge fighter jet isn't going to stop a full scale nuclear conflict. China and Russia have enough nukes they all might not make it to the continental US but it's enough to destroy us. We can certainly do the same. The basic game theory of MAD hasn't changed much in the past few decades.

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

#188

Post by evgen »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #80
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So did the F35 fail because we spent too much? Depends on how much it saves us later. It might not be a lot. The concept of flying Corvettes is strong, culturally and industrially, but it might be on the verge of becoming like cavalry with the advent of drone swarms.

Indeed.. There was another article today about how onboard systems saved 2 fighter pilots that passed out. I was wondering even then, why do we still put pilots in these things? They'll fare better on their own and will have less performance constraints. I think part of it is the military adolation of the fighter pilot. Probably not the only reason though, a hacked swarm of armed drones is a frightening prospect.

You put a pilot in there because we are nowhere near giving an autonomous drone command authority on a kill. The pilot is also smarter than any UAV and has situational awareness that even a drone ground control station lacks. Oh yeah, and that F-35 can be commanding portions of that swarm of armed drones.

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

#189

Post by jonny_eh »

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…

I thought the Singularity is near because innovation is accelerating. I'm perpetually confused.

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

#190

Post by hef19898 »

grecy wrote: post #157
inglor_cz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agree 100% Literally all the "experts" said it was impossible to land the booster, and now it's almost routine. Nobody else in the industry can achieve what SpaceX have done successfully 40 times.

Experts from EASA didn't say it was impossible, but rather not economicaly feasible. And with SpaceX not publishing any financials we have no way to tell which side is right.
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