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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

#611

Post by Melting_Harps »

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…

> we just cant build cool shit anymore

JPL just landed Perseverance, and we have had weekly SpaceX launches with successful stage recoveries (thought to be impossible), Falcon Heavy sent a 1st Gen Tesla Roadster which is orbiting Mars as we speak... Thiel's windmill powered Bitcoin operation in Texas, which likely froze last week, is another example of how absurd his statement is. I think Thiel is not liked because he uses hyperbole to make blanket statements that are clearly not true. And his business acumen much like his actual tech skills, are dubious at best despite being immensely wealthy.

The US will always be a leader in innovation in the World, I'd argue this is the larges concentration of talent the World has ever seen, including Florence during the enlightenment.

What we have a problem with is an absurd amount of useless bureaucrats, politicians, lobbyists, Industries that get in the way and all want their slice of the pie for nothing more than being a middleman and ultimately pay no taxes to re-invest in the education of said future talent, all while the entrepreneurs and talented labour take all the risk and get little to no reward for their efforts due to a depreciating fiat currency and ever increasing taxes and more and more diminishing social mobility due the aforementioned concentration of wealth.

CRISPR is not going to solve much if any of your problems, maybe your kid's but not yours. If you think the US cannot build amazing things, and is somehow not a leader in this the problem is with you and, I guess Thiel.

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

#612

Post by skissane »

mikepurvis wrote: post #561
chrisco255 wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the problem is that the government has too much of a role in allocating resources in our economy as it stands. Maybe the military-industrial complex had some cool things for the first couple decades of its existence, but as the decades went on, it became a rusty, slower version of its old self as bureaucratic creep and complacency set in. Now it seems hard to disrupt that, like what tends to happen in the non…

Lots of us would love to believe this, and yet what does the unrestrained private sector churn out? Ad networks, app addiction, gig economy, throwaway culture, urban sprawl, climate apathy... hardly a winner. SpaceX is everyone's favourite private sector success story, but they're basically just a younger, leaner version of Lockheed— surviving off of NASA and doing what they're contracted to do. I don't think the pri…

> SpaceX is everyone's favourite private sector success story, but they're basically just a younger, leaner version of Lockheed— surviving off of NASA

In 2020, SpaceX did 26 launches. Only six of those had NASA as a customer. The rest were a mix of US military, commercial customers, foreign governments (Argentina and South Korea), and Starlink. Even if you add up NASA and US military, that's still only nine out of 26 with the US government as the customer.

So while no doubt SpaceX does benefit from NASA's business, it is now only a minority.

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

#613

Post by Daho0n »

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…

>Did it fail because it didn’t replace the F16? What if it makes the F16 viable again? Did it still fail?

Yes, because lots and lots of F-16s have been replaced with something that isn't what it was bought as. So unless you count it as a win that allies now have worse capabilities than they should have had and paid for because it might make them also buy F-16 parts, I would say it is a huge fail.

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

#614

Post by HelloMcFly »

bumby wrote: post #512
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US does have a problem with building civil engineering projects today, that dynamic isn't really what happened with the F-35. The root of the F-35 program's problems is a cost plus style contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun on cost and time table. Ash Carter fixed that by telling Lockheed if they didn't agree to his new contract he'd kill the entire thing. And oh hey what a surprise sudden…

> The root of the F-35 program's problems is a cost plus style contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun I’m fond of the saying “once you understand people’s incentives, you understand everything” as it applies to contracting. I will add, however, that fixed price contracts have their own problems as it relates to cutting corners. E.g., it can put downward pressure on retaining talent and performing best…

This is quite similar to one of my favorite saying that comes from my background in psychology: "When the mouse presses the lever, don't blame the mouse."

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

#615

Post by robocat »

wcarron wrote: post #521
weaksauce wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s a shocking amount of people also happy to drive around ignoring warning lights flashing. ...or can't afford the basic maintenance

In other words, can't afford to own/operate a car. Note, that's not a put down on said people. I think it's a shame such situations exist. But, if you can't afford to pay for insurance/gas/maintenance, then you can't afford the vehicle. But, regarding flying cars: I absolutely do not want more people operating airborne spinny death machines capable of destroying considering we've already established many people don't…

> In other words, can't afford to own/operate a car.

Or they know it isn’t worth fixing.

I had an engine light on for about 20000km, and sold the vehicle like that, because it wasn’t worth fixing. One competent mechanic talked me into trying to fix it before I tried to sell it, and that wasted $1000.

Another friend had an engine light on, and the workshop said that happened with that model sometimes and it wasn’t worth fixing.

Both of us could afford to fix the vehicles. That said, if an oil light comes on I stop the vehicle immediately.

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

#616

Post by adolph »

wongarsu wrote: post #548
WalterBright wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communism does an even worse job of allocating resources.

Communism had a great many failings, but they did allocate a lot of money to infrastructure and science. But what real communism did isn't even relevant here, I'm pretty sure GP is talking about imaginary communism in the sense that anything that is good for the general population is somehow called communism in US politics.

In any economic system political aspects have a tendency to reduce the information available to consumers and producers. This is often done with laudable intent leading to terrible outcomes. In Soviet Communism the information feedback loop was so disconnected it resembled the theory of an AI "paperclip apocalypse"[1].

From 0:

The Soviet whalers, Berzin wrote, had been sent forth to kill whales for little reason other than to say they had killed them. They were motivated by an obligation to satisfy obscure line items in the five-year plans that drove the Soviet economy, which had been set with little regard for the Soviet Union’s actual demand for whale products.

Whaling, like every other industry in the Soviet Union, was governed by the dictates of the State Planning Committee of the Council of Ministers, a government organ tasked with meting out production targets. In the grand calculus of the country’s planned economy, whaling was considered a satellite of the fishing industry. This meant that the progress of the whaling fleets was measured by the same metric as the fishing fleets: gross product, principally the sheer mass of whales killed.

0. https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-senseless-environment-c...

1. https://voxeu.org/article/ai-and-paperclip-problem

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

#617

Post by Shingbogle »

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?

I mean, it's kinda well known that war is the mother of all innovation right?

That explains it right there if you take the theory as true. WW2, Cold War. I mean even the moon landing was part of that cold war era technology advancement.

So now instead of governments/military pushing for needs, it's now companies trying to innovate for money. Which can work, but you need CEOs to take risks like Musk or even Jobs.

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

#618

Post by nerdponx »

kqvamxurcagg wrote: post #525
nerdponx wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Defence equipment isn’t useless. In the event of war it becomes essential. Spending has to continue on these programmes in peacetime to retain capability.

Failed stealth fighter programs are quite useless.

You actually make a great point, even if the money has to go to defense and not other purposes, it should still be useful for the purpose of defense.

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

#619

Post by adolph »

Analemma_ wrote: post #460
asimjalis wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can we create new incentives to discourage this behavior and to encourage infrastructure projects that provide jobs as well as create superlinear value?

We did: pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 (the F-35 dates from way before that). But as it turns out, the cure was almost as bad as the disease. Getting rid of pork has accelerated hyper-partisanship and dysfunctional gridlock, because without it there's no incentive to ever try to reach a deal with the other side instead of digging in on no-compromise radicalism to please your base.

I believe you refer to a specific method of appropriations called "earmarks" which are often synonymous with pork barrel spending.

https://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/senate-dems-give-in-o...

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

#620

Post by brianwawok »

bpodgursky wrote: post #530
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US does have a problem with building civil engineering projects today, that dynamic isn't really what happened with the F-35. The root of the F-35 program's problems is a cost plus style contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun on cost and time table. Ash Carter fixed that by telling Lockheed if they didn't agree to his new contract he'd kill the entire thing. And oh hey what a surprise sudden…

The next-gen bomber program (B-21) as far as I'm aware is also going well. Fast purchase of an a platform intentionally only incrementally more advanced than the current model.

Does it have a human pilot? Any combat aircraft project with a human on board should be stopped. It has no hope of long term parity of a drone controlled airplane without having to cart around meat bags with limited speed and turning power.
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