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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

#391

Post by fl0wenol »

ericd wrote: post #263
lumost wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a statement that the U.S militaries post-ww2 doctrine of air superiority is no longer viable. Large Battleships once had to face a similar reality that it was impossible to make them survivable if the enemy had air superiority. Drones are cheap, good missiles are 1/100th the price of an F-35. It's possible that aircraft will no longer be able to enter contested space without significant risks just as it w…

What replaces it? Loitering missile drones + a big expansion of satellite imagery?

Absolutely.

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

#392

Post by greedo »

Aunche wrote: post #287

Is there any benefit for a multi-role fighter to have stealth? It seems like any applications where stealth is important, you might as well have a specialized air-superiority fighter.

Every aircraft can benefit from stealth. Stealth helps to protect you not just from other fighters, but from SAMs etc.

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

#393

Post by raphaelj »

grecy wrote: post #241
hef19898 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you really suggesting that throwing away a booster worth many tens of millions of dollars is more economically feasible than reusing it? Elon makes it pretty clear in this tweet it's very financially sound to bring back a booster "Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?lang...

A payload reduction of 30-40% is huge. And even if refurb and recovery is less than 10%, you still loose the 2nd stage at every lunch (18% of the rocket by weight). You then have to include the extra development costs and additional risk of failure.

I highly doubt they hit break-even with only two launches, the math just doesn't add up.

If reusing rocket was so profitable, there is a high chance someone else would have done it before. Landing a rocket isn't totally new tech. NASA did it on the moon 50y ago.

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

#394

Post by hadlock »

ericd wrote: post #263
lumost wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a statement that the U.S militaries post-ww2 doctrine of air superiority is no longer viable. Large Battleships once had to face a similar reality that it was impossible to make them survivable if the enemy had air superiority. Drones are cheap, good missiles are 1/100th the price of an F-35. It's possible that aircraft will no longer be able to enter contested space without significant risks just as it w…

What replaces it? Loitering missile drones + a big expansion of satellite imagery?

A tomahawk cruise missile isn't too far off from a one-shot fighter jet when it comes to attacking fixed, or very slow-moving targets. They also don't need a human pilot, which cost an extraordinary amount of money to train, way more than their salary.

China has already developed what is effectively an ICBM designed to sink/punch through warships from above.

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

#395

Post by jhpankow »

misiti3780 wrote: post #358
jnwatson wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been at this for more than 14 years. I was accidentally part of both the Boeing and Lockheed F-35 teams, and that was 23 years ago. For a humorous take on the U.S. military platform problem, look for a movie called The Pentagon Wars [1] starring Kelsey Grammar and Cary Elwes. It came out in 1998, and very little has changed since then. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/

Wikipedia said it was started in 2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

Lockheed and Boeing were building protoypes in the 1990s and the contract was awarded to Lockheed in October 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program

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

#396

Post by coldcode »

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

The F16 was designed and built originally by General Dynamics, Lockheed bought it much later. I worked on it early in my career at GD.

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

#397

Post by greedo »

inglor_cz wrote: post #207
jazzyjackson wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Starlink has nothing to do with C3I. And it can easily be jammed, as any frequency can.

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

#398

Post by nerdponx »

notional wrote: post #316
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.

It's more than just a jobs program too. It's a reelection plan for senators/house members. Look at what states and districts get these big DoD contracts and then look at what committees the congressmen/women are sitting on. They approve plans that benefit them then direct the funds right into their districts so they can campaign on it. I mean it's not the worst form of corruption but it's pretty shitty when you reali…

But imagine if we put people to work building useful stuff instead of useless stuff. Power grid infrastructure, new bridges, new rail lines, etc.

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

#399

Post by Supermancho »

jvanderbot wrote: post #349
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.

This is a fun talking point, but the reality is more complex. The fact that jobs and multi-state payouts are leveraged to ensure programs have political staying power does not mean that the whole shebang is just a corporate / political handout. It just seems to be what people say when these programs fail , but I don't hear this said about programs that have succeeded.

> This is a fun talking point, but the reality is more complex

Not for this project.

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

#400

Post by Guthur »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #345
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing people say this. Maybe flying cars just don’t make sense? Wheels work really well when your engine dies. Have you seen people drive in 2d space? You want to add a z axis? What’s the efficiency of a small plane? Surely not better than a Prius. Edit: I looked it up and a Cessna gets ~15 mpg.

The reason you don't get flying cars, is the very same, you cant make a lot of other technology. People will want to invent the flying car parking house. And they kind of did - on the 11 of September 2001. You can not hand technology over a certain level to a infantile (nicer sound then retarded) species. Its that simple. Its already madness to allow wealthy citizens into space. Tesla and Amazon are one freight fligh…

Ok, you head on out to the desert, we'll be right behind you... promise.
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