721–730 of 1001 posts
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Where do you shop? The problem with massive development efforts like this is that there aren't a lot of competitors. In this particular field, there are two, and not really even quite two exactly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) [0]. You might have missed this news. It’s a modern remix to the Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich days of developing legendary aircraft at Lockheed’s Skunkworks that you lamented the loss of. People in the know confirm it’s legit and shocking, in a good way. Especially compared to the failures of the F-35 and even the F-22’s development. [0] https://www.airforcemag.com/article/ropers-ng…
Big if true but I'm super skeptical. First of all how many years have we been hearing about how we'll have fully autonomous vehicles just around the corner? At least a decade. How many years have we been hearing that human-like AI is just around the corner? At least since the 60's. I'm skeptical (although optimistic) about massive tech breakthroughs in general. Even more so when it comes to military tech since so man…
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…
>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? You think that's bad? In Canada my government funded the F-35 program but we're not buying any F-35 jets. Spending a bit less than $1 billion for nothing.
The Covid bailout last year was about $60,000 per tax payer (https://www.covidmoneytracker.org/). How much of your $60,000 did you see?
I'm not arguing for or against these programs; I'm arguing for expressing them in comprehensible terms. $6,000,000,000,000 societal total; or $60,000 for you. Do you expect to receive $15,000 of value from the F35 program? I'm not sure I won't: perhaps it'll keep oil/energy prices stable and I spent well more than $300/year on energy...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Full disclosure: I don't work in defense, but I've read Wikipedia. >>> I can't comment from the perspective of the F16 specifically, but from experience working on upgrade efforts of military and IC ground processing systems, the challenge is the legacy systems are very tightly coupled to the hardware. They make strong assumptions about register size and number, bus bandwidth, filesystem block size, all kinds of thin…
Thank you. I guess it is a good start. But, as a solution - develop new protocols and standards, and declare that military does not buy _anything_ that does not interoperate on these standards, no matter how advanced your shit is?
Here's an example where they went down the "standardise things" route: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/how-t...
How well did that work? Well: "The Marine Corps, tired of waiting for new equipment, built its own battlefield network system for the war in Iraq, called CONDOR—based on off-the-shelf satellite phone and encrypted WiFi technology."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet you're the one comparing the F-35 to 40+ year old aircraft that would get smoked in combat by the F-35.
No. Modern sensors, communications systems, missiles, etc are absolutely crucial on a modern battlefield. Further, the F16’s people are talking about very much needed a replacement. The newest was built in 2005 and while it’s a solid multi-role, all weather, air-to-air and air-to-ground fighter the design is showing it’s age. But, the F35 isn’t simply a modernized F16 now it does stealth, STOVL, etc. So you need to c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where do you shop? The problem with massive development efforts like this is that there aren't a lot of competitors. In this particular field, there are two, and not really even quite two exactly.
i don't understand why 200 billion dollars wouldn't be enough for the US to make their own plane company.
Not entirely but like 15% of the force
“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…
The F-35 failed because fighter jet airframes aren’t particularly relevant anymore. You can stick the same sensor systems and missiles on just about anything. Improved stealth etc is useful, but F-35’s are only slightly better than 40+ year old jets. Thus hardly worth the price vs cheaply manufacturing a minor update of an older design. Or as the saying goes “quantity has a quality all it’s own.”