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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

#331

Post by tibbydudeza »

janderson3 wrote: post #127
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…

> How can you cut 10% of the workforce in Huntsville when the representative sits on the Armed Services committee? (I don't know that, but just for example...) Close. Alabama Senator Shelby is the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the Chairman of its Defense Subcommittee. Edit: My apologies. Was the chairman. See nobody's comment below.

He is not running for re-election again.

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

#332

Post by hef19898 »

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.

Youhave to maintian the industrial base, so. To maintain the stuff for the next decades and replace any losses. Hard during peace time. In preparation of a war of attritition against an equal oponent close to impossible. How do you maintain the necessary base to produce hundreds of jets, F-35s or whatever Gen 5, once all have been delivered? That aspect alone is critical for the success of such a weapon system. It doesn't help to have a couple of hundred Gen 6 fighters if you cannot replace them in a war against someone who can replace his gen 4/4+ jets.

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

#335

Post by hadlock »

ktln2 wrote: post #185

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...

Buying weapons from your global security partners is part of a larger geopolitical picture/strategy. The cost is almost secondary. Look at who the US sells weapons to, what countries are banned by us weapons export ban laws. Look at who Russia sells weapons to. There is not a whole lot of overlap between the two countries.

Posting countries and dollar figures is part of the picture, but does not tell the whole story.

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

#336

Post by colechristensen »

jboog wrote: post #169
heymijo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) [0]. You might have missed this news. It’s a modern remix to the Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich days of developing legendary aircraft at Lockheed’s Skunkworks that you lamented the loss of. People in the know confirm it’s legit and shocking, in a good way. Especially compared to the failures of the F-35 and even the F-22’s development. [0] https://www.airforcemag.com/article/ropers-ng…

Big if true but I'm super skeptical. First of all how many years have we been hearing about how we'll have fully autonomous vehicles just around the corner? At least a decade. How many years have we been hearing that human-like AI is just around the corner? At least since the 60's. I'm skeptical (although optimistic) about massive tech breakthroughs in general. Even more so when it comes to military tech since so man…

We won't have general human-comparable AI or autonomous driving (or we will briefly until a few tragic things happen and people come to their senses). Enthusiasts think we will, but people underestimate what real intelligence requires and confuse it with training complex statistical models.

They call it AI, but the "intelligence" there is just a name.

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

#337

Post by openasocket »

ktln2 wrote: post #185

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...

Keep in mind that it's very difficult to compare prices like this, because you're buying a lot more than just the aircraft. There's spare parts, maintenance equipment, and simulators. The prices are also going to vary based on the procurement schedule: ordering 12 planes to arrive in the next 6 months is going to be more expensive than requesting one plane arrive each month for the next year. Countries also try to include some sort of technology sharing or shared production deals, where the company agrees to build some of the parts or components in the host country. This is often done to benefit the country's domestic arms industry (NB: this isn't necessarily nefarious, there are plenty of benefits to having a good domestic arms industry. It means your weapons and components are made locally, so they can't be intercepted in a time of war and your enemy can't use diplomacy to cut you off from your supplier. And other countries tend to have export restrictions, so that the top-of-the-line equipment their companies make won't be available to others.)

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

#338

Post by nobody9999 »

janderson3 wrote: post #127
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…

> How can you cut 10% of the workforce in Huntsville when the representative sits on the Armed Services committee? (I don't know that, but just for example...) Close. Alabama Senator Shelby is the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the Chairman of its Defense Subcommittee. Edit: My apologies. Was the chairman. See nobody's comment below.

>Close. Alabama Senator Shelby is the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the Chairman of its Defense Subcommittee

Nitpick here. Senator Shelby was the chairman of those committees, now he's the ranking member[0][1].

That said, he was the chairman for many years.

[0] https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/

[1] https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/subcommittees/defense

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

#339

Post by solarhoma »

choxi wrote: post #282
solarhoma wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s going on with all the Reddit level comments below your post? I think you bring up great points. This could be a case of low hanging fruit being picked. We are at the point where everything being added is just bells and whistles since the foundation has already been built.

That's what I was thinking, I wonder to what extent this is a symptom of stagnation in physics.

Maybe it’s just the calm before the storm.

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

#340

Post by woeirua »

onepointsixC wrote: post #280
woeirua wrote: post #202

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…

There are numerous problems with such logic: Just because you can replace those 10 fighters faster doesn't mean you can replace the pilots with equivalently good ones as quickly. Great power wars in the modern era will have some of the most decisive action happen far sooner than you can get into production capacity battles. At which point one side will lob several hypersonic missiles into the shipyards, factories, an…

You don't need to replace 10 excellent pilots with 10 good pilots to win a war of attrition. You just need 10 pilots that can fly, lock a missile and fire. Because if you're losing 10 planes to every 1 that you're killing the life expectancy of any pilot is going to be really low period.

Counterpoints: 1 - Most critical infrastructure is located far inland away from areas that are vulnerable to cruise missiles and the like. 2 - Hypersonic missiles are mostly vaporware still today. Uncertain if people would even use them, as there's a significant risk of escalation to a full nuclear exchange. 3 - Critical infrastructure can be built faster today than it ever could be in the past. Most countries have stockpiles of critical strategic goods with the understanding that they would be able to stand up their own factories before those stockpiles were depleted.

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