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

641–650 of 1001 posts

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

#641

Post by atleta »

drewvolpe wrote: post #301
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…

NASA just successfully sent a helicopter to Mars. We developed two very effective vaccines using mRNA technology in a few months and had it through FDA trials in under a year. CAR T cell therapies (3 FDA approved and more coming) are changing how we treat cancer. There's amazing technology all around you.

Fun fact: the mRNA vaccines were developed in about 2 weeks after the publication of the SARS2 DNA sequence. (At least the Pfizer/BioNTech one was.)

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

#642

Post by Rebelgecko »

brianwawok wrote: post #620
bpodgursky wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Human pilot optional. I would argue that physical humans are not the limiting factor in bomber performance, and the thought of a Kubernetes cluster autonomously flying around with nukes scares the fuck out of me. In addition to the philosophical implications there's also political reasons to go with a hybrid approach.

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

#643

Post by RHSeeger »

tablespoon wrote: post #291
zdragnar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than that, thr SR-71 was purpose-built. That means fewer hands on thr steering wheel, and fewer compromises to achieve multiple missions. The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and missions. That means more voices demanding priority of features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many fi…

> The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and missions. That means more voices demanding priority of features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many first-of-its-kind features for a variety of ancillary tasks. > No real surprise that it didn't work out. For a humorous presentation of this, w…

That movie was wonderful. Highly recommend watching it if you haven't.

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

#644

Post by Rebelgecko »

hef19898 wrote: post #313
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/

Back the day an engineer cold be there at the start of program, see the maiden flight and even go on to see a second program. Today, the same engineer probalby enters years after the concept phase and retires before the first prototype takes of.

A friend of mine working on a space telescope had to fix a mistake that someone had made on a diagram. When she tried to figure out who made the oopsie, turns out he had worked on the project more than a decade ago and retired while she was in middle school

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

#645

Post by greens »

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 can't believe that you're talking about the mass-murder of civilians like it's some sort of triumph, especially since you could have made the exact same point citing the trinity test. And it's so weird that you use the term "toxic environment" right after that.

IMO AI progress in the last 10 years has drastically exceeded reasonable expectations.

You can buy a helicopter any time you want.

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

#646

Post by bumby »

garmaine wrote: post #630
bumby wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

“Best value” can be very hard to get approved when lower bids exist. Circling back to the incentive theme, I have a feeling contracting officers are graded, in part, by how much they “save”. (In quotes because you can often pay much more in the long run by selecting the lowest bidder).

I’ve found people are very risk adverse in this regard and would prefer to select the lowest bid instead of potentially defending their decision during a protest.

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

#647

Post by zie »

garmaine wrote: post #630
bumby wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And those of us that spend govt money generally do this, it's totally fine to not pick the cheapest, you just have to have a sound reason to do so.

I.e. if you aren't willing to stand up in court and talk about why Tootie is better than Tito, despite Tito being 10% cheaper, you better be selecting Tito or looking for another job.

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

#648

Post by KDJohnBrown »

marshmallow_12 wrote: post #634
KDJohnBrown wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The justification for foreign aid to Israel is always pretty much “but it’s OK because most of it comes back to us via arms sales”. Essentially billions of dollars of American taxpayer wealth transferred to defense contractors laundered through the IDF.

Israel stops Iran from blowing up or conquering the entire Middle East. Also, military intelligence. Also, the military industry is probably more beneficial to the US by being based there rather than being outsourced to China. I think the tax money given to weapons manufactures is paid back in double by tax. Also, you wouldn't want to fight wars with allies in Chinese planes. Hope this answers your concerns.

> Israel stops Iran from blowing up or conquering the entire Middle East.

The propaganda poster you paint here is dubious.

Have you ever looked at a map? Sunni majority nations KSA, Syria, Kuwait, and Turkiye probably have a lot more to do with it than Israel.

Having been to every middle eastern / near eastern / Balkan / North African nation except Libya, I’m not too afraid of Iran.

Iranians have always treated me better than Israelis or myy my fellow Americans have, even after finding out I’m a queer atheist.

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

#649

Post by tootie »

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…

It also sounds like they made a lot of thoroughly unreasonable requests for a completely modular platform that could outperform everything in all branches of military at once.

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

#650

Post by redis_mlc »

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 really did want a flying car

They exist and aren't even hard to build but ...

In the US you would need an FAA rating to fly it (about $10k), so most people actually don't want one.

Post reply on HN