Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The aircraft itself is apparently excellent at what it does I have heard the opposite from a test pilot who has flown it. He fucking hates it.
Users, amiright?
I actually laughed. Thank you.
The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
671–680 of 1001 posts
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#672Earlier 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.
> 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.
It’s a strategic bomber, not a fighter.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> the thought of a Kubernetes cluster autonomously flying around with nukes scares the fuck out of me
I get this, but I also wonder if the same kind of bugs or unintended behavior in a software system aren't just as likely in the protocols, procedures, and chains of command we build for humans to deploy that weaponry. You've got AI doomsday (a la "War Games") on one hand, and bureaucratic doomsday ("Doctor Strangelove") on the other.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#674Earlier 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…
I am not trying to be a smart ass but how about this for an human incentive: Build us plane that fulfills these outlined objectives, that meets are budget requirements, or we will shop somewhere else.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#675The 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…
They had a huge advantage then. No email.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#676Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Aren't policy and details a product of culture? If a group of people, be it a team or nation, dont have have a solid culture then surely they cant achieve solid results. And indeed it would appear that gradually there is a decline in achieving great results from countries that have historically achieved such results. Dont get me wrong, the US is still doing great, but maybe when the rest of the world keeps raising re…
This is where I failed to understand the idea of a "Developing Nation". Aren't they all?
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#677Earlier 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.
Fun fact, the DoD is the largest employer on the entire planet. 2.91 million total employees.
Holy shit.
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#678Earlier 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…
I am not trying to be a smart ass but how about this for an human incentive: Build us plane that fulfills these outlined objectives, that meets are budget requirements, or we will shop somewhere else.
I get what you’re saying but I wish it were that easy.
Take the requirements for example. If they aren’t airtight, you’ll get into a wordsmithing scenario where the contractor claims they met the requirement and it becomes a game where the team with the best lawyer wins. Write the requirements too explicitly and contractors will push back saying “tell us what you want, not how we’re supposed to do it.”
A somewhat silly example is if you specify you want unit testing on all safety critical code paths a contractor may claim they define running a compiler as “unit testing”. A contracting officer may not be technically savvy enough to push back and when the subject matter experts try to leave negative contract comments (that get reviewed when awarding future contracts) they get scrubbed because its not worth the fight in the eyes of the contracting officer.
Unfortunately, just saying “do good work” just doesn’t...work
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#679Earlier quoted context omitted.
> pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 Is there a longer discussion of this that you can link somewhere? I remember the phrase as a derogatory commonplace in adults' political discussion when I was a child, but the concept seems to have drifted out of the discourse since, and having now had my attention drawn to its absence I'd be interested to find out more about why.
There's definitely still pork. I mean, look at how many pet projects were included in Covid relief funding. Pork is the idea of stuffing an unrelated project to benefit your local district or state (and thus, the politician's reelection chances) into a bigger bill that is unrelated to that expense. Like the most famous one was the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost $400 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.o…
That dates to 2005, so you are not really contradicting grandparent's point that this was mostly outlawed in 2011 (and that this has accelerated hyperpartisanship by removing an incentive for compromise).
Re: The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has failed
#680Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firm, Fixed Price (ffp) contracts can be utilized with incentives after delivery based on metrics like tail availability, maintenance issues, flight hour cost, effectiveness, etc. Most big contracts are really a hybrid, though an existing contractor always tries for a cost plus. It's literally taught in PM classes. I was NOT directly involved in F-35, so I can't speak to the exact amount of sleaze that occurred with…
I think the issue is if you are going to order a million toilets, then moving all the risk to the contractor is fine. If you are asking for innovation and R&D, then the contractor already has a ton of risk. Add in requirements to make a fighter suitable for all branches of the military, and the risk is gigantic. In that environment, you need to remove risk from the contractor. This is why R&D projects can't be treate…
So don't do it fixed price but do cap allowable profits to 3-5% or so. That was how Apollo program was run.