Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 1001 posts

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

#201

Post by JustSomeNobody »

rubicon33 wrote: post #182
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?

My pet theory is we rely too much on computers.

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

#202

Post by woeirua »

This is just another sign that the US defense establishment has opened its eyes to the reality that the US could lose a war of attrition against a major power. We have focused too much on high tech weaponry, and we're now vulnerable to being overwhelmed by large numbers of low tech enemies. It doesn't matter if your fighters have a kill ratio of 10:1 if your enemy can replace those 10 fighters faster than each one of yours that you lose.

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

#204

Post by adwww »

rubicon33 wrote: post #182
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?

1940s-1950s two big factors - necessity to win a war.

But also opportunity. Even widespread mains electricity is fairly new back then, there were a lot of fairly obvious opportunities to quickly exploit.

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

#205

Post by whalesalad »

jetrink wrote: post #168
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…

> 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. Not to mention the F-16 itself, which the F-35 was meant to replace: 1972: RFP for prototypes 1974: Maiden flight of the first prototype 1975: Production begins 1980: The aircraft officially enters service

Lockheed is synonymous with Skunk Works ... the F-35 was a Lockheed project. I can guarantee a lot of the engineers who worked on those legendary aircraft also participated in the JSF.

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

#206

Post by hef19898 »

jboog wrote: post #187
mohaine wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

There are multiple account of carriers being "sunk" during excersices by non-nuclear subs. Numbers still matter, and while the Russians and Chinese are't he best in force projection, the Chinese not yet, neither one is to be triffeled with in their backyards.

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

#207

Post by inglor_cz »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #199
inglor_cz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question would be: if you buy N drones for price of one F-35, do you get better military value for your money or not? At the very least, N drones can't be destroyed at once (unless stored really carelessly) and can be individually specialized in a way that provides wider spectrum of capabilities. A massive bonus: pilotless aircraft can perform manoeuvres unsurvivable for humans, and the ability to maneuver was alw…

When I go looking for a source I see a lot of "may be" and "soon will" but I've heard one capability of the F-35 is to command drones without connection to base stations, since radio relays can become (lets say) unreliable in open war. There are also offensive capabilities against enemy drones, remember when Iran landed a US drone by hacking it? Whose to say that any drones in the vicinity of an F-35 aren't captured…

The radio troubles that you mention is probably the main reason why the US military is so interested in Starlink. Few potential opponents have the capability to destroy Starlink, or even jam it thoroughly.

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

#208

Post by jwond »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #172

They must have A/B tested the title to see what gets the most smug confirmation bias clicks (title is clearly not intended to optimize for outrage clicks so what else could it be). The whole article is about the history of the program, why it costs so much and what the options are going forward. If you squint you can make it seem like failure but the article does not make that claim.

> If you squint really hard you can make it seem like failure but the article does not make that claim.

It does actually. Here are a couple of excerpts from the article that explicitly refer to it as a failure:

> Brown’s comments are a tacit admission that the F-35 has failed.

> ...

> But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35’s very concept.

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

#209

Post by sanderjd »

rubicon33 wrote: post #182
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?

Maybe check out Ross Douthat's recent book about "decadence" as a place to start. Not sure I buy the argument, but this is part of what he's talking about.

For me personally, I think it's just the point we're at in the current technological revolution (in the Carlota Perez sense). We're due for a new one (maybe biotech, eg. driven by crispr, mrna, etc.) so things feel stale.

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

#210

Post by generalizations »

nemothekid wrote: post #142
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.

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 goa…

I think that's the benefit gained from the very rich, whether 18th century lords or modern billionaires - they can get us out of those local maxima. I'm thinking of people like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir humphrey davies, and Elon musk.
Post reply on HN