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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

#621

Post by spaetzleesser »

I don’t have much an opinion about the F-35 but one thing I have noticed:

A lot of people are mentioning Skunkworks planes like SR-71 and U-2. I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Skunkworks basically built highly specialized prototypes that performed well within their intended use but were super expensive to maintain and couldn’t be deployed on a larger scale. I would compare them more to an F1 team that can build great cars quickly but need 20 people just to get them ready for a lap.

Building impressive prototypes is way easier than building something on large scale in an efficient way.

Again, I don’t know much about the F-35 but Skunkworks is not the model.

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

#622

Post by marshmallow_12 »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #585
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want nuclear propulsion, not more boring jet engines. we can't have jets, so why should we care if the Army has better ones then 15 years ago.

Nuclear propulsion in an aircraft? Isn't that going to spray radioactive matter everywhere?

That's why it doesn't yet exist! Find a way to either contain or limit the radiation. Use hydrogen fission. I'm not fussy about the details. Tony Stark managed to fit a reactor in his chest! why can't we?

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

#623

Post by ASalazarMX »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #464
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…

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…

> apparently the first few attempts at this more agile approach are in fact actually working, like with the NGAD program.

For the clueless like me, NGAD doesn't stand for "Not Give A Damn", but for "Next-Generation Air Dominance"; or less pompously, a sixth-generation jet fighter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_generation_fighter

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

#624

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #578
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel believes that rent seeking monopolies are desirable and necessary to enable innovation. He's plainly wrong about that as a mater of economic science. Lockhead's use of regulatory capture to extract as much money as possible is directly in line with how Thiel thinks business should be done.

I don't think Thiel thinks this. I think Thiel's argument about monopolies is that good businesses act like monopolies because they have no competition, i.e. it's better to be Tesla[0] than to be starting a fast food franchise. I don't agree with Thiel on this, I think you're more likely to get rich in an area where there is already demand, but Thiel is more focused on people that pioneer new industries. [0]: Yeah, I…

He's been quite explicit about it in his talks for years. He sees monopolies as necessary to concentrate enough capital under one person's control to enable them to be an innovator.

To be rather blunt about it, much of his rhetoric is ultimately just about saying indirect forms of "let John Galt do whatever he wants and be grateful peasant."

This is why he's financially supported Yarvin, who quite literally wants to turn the world into a technocratic monarchy, with some very nasty "scientific racism" style stuff mixed in. It's a drop in the bucket compared to Thiel's wealth, but he clearly has no problem providing millions of dollars in support of this kind of thinking.

Also pay attention to how Palantir does business. They behave very similarly to Lockhead Martin when it comes to over promising their technology and under delivering in order to pull as much money off the table as possible, including from governments.

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

#625

Post by arp242 »

totetsu wrote: post #556
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…

If it stops us producing Civilization Ending technologies like the A-bomb then I'm all for the toxicity... Not all progress is linear, efficiency is no as vitrue unto itself!

Well, someone would have invented it sooner or later, because after the discovery of nuclear physics it doesn't take that much brainpower to figure out the basic concept of "if we smash a bunch of neutrons in these unstable isotopes, then we're going to get a big kaboom!" The actual technological legwork is a bit more effort (and the Germans famously failed at it, although they probably would have gotten there eventually), but not insurmountably hard either.

This is the curse with a lot of these technologies.

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

#626

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

tern wrote: post #595
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel believes that rent seeking monopolies are desirable and necessary to enable innovation. He's plainly wrong about that as a mater of economic science. Lockhead's use of regulatory capture to extract as much money as possible is directly in line with how Thiel thinks business should be done.

Rent seeking monopolies are the only organizational forms that have generated fundamental military-industrial innovation, historically speaking.

History is just what happened. Counterfactual questions are more tricky.

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

#627

Post by kart23 »

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…

Fraction of the cost? Might I ask how much each A-12 and SR-71 cost, and the total cost of development?

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

#628

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

sayhar wrote: post #485
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…

Thank you for bringing a structural, informed approach to this. I'm getting a little tired of the tendency to handwave blame "cultural decline" rather than actual looking into the policies and details.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm just someone sitting in their armchair with a lot of curiosity, but I do try to work hard to understand the world in cause and effect structure, for topics like this.

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

#629

Post by arwhatever »

bumby wrote: post #545
smileysteve wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear of terrorists sells better than fear of ice storms. Especially for the states (and representatives) that the ice storm is 100 year. Dams fail, and when they fail, they don't affect the people that didn't want to live near a dam.

So is it the “randomness” of terrorism that causes us to overweight the risk? It seems like we’re just really bad at thinking clearly about low probability / high severity risks

Bruce Schneider article claims people fear terrorism disproportionately to the risk because it is intentional and directed https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_comparati...

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

#630

Post by garmaine »

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…

That's not a problem with fixed price contracts so much as selecting the lowest bidder. An agency which is allowed to pick the more expensive contract that is justifiably better usually won't succumb to these problems.
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