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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

#751

Post by greedo »

hef19898 wrote: post #451
thu2111 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the F-35 is to be so technologically superior that you do not get into a war of attrition where you are bleeding planes at the same rate as your enemy. If that was the case it would mean none of the technology upgrades actually gave an advantage, which would be strange given their fundamental nature. What really matters is how many F-16s or cold war era aircraft an F-35 could take out before being shot d…

And that fact has, more or less, been answered. And even the to-be-delveloped aircraft are expected to fight in enviroments in which they more often loose against air defence and have equal odds against same gen fighters with slight adavtages against fighters one gen behind. The latter largely depends on Command-and Control. And on radar. Basically, stand-off attacks only work against between stealth and non-stealth…

Radar can tag any aircraft currently in public flight. Whether that radar can provide accurate and adequate targeting information to weapon systems is not proven at all.

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

#752

Post by cgearhart »

wespiser_2018 wrote: post #741
cgearhart wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least three things happened: - congressional oversight increased, with the result that the purchasing authority is no longer generally the end user. We aren’t just buying a ship (plane, gun, etc.), we’re maintaining a logistics and manufacturing industrial base to produce that type of item (and maintain jobs in congressional districts). So maybe we should buy a few more tanks/ships/bombs than we need so that we do…

On risk tolerance, in WW2, the accident rate for a single seat fighter, the P-51, was 274 per 100,000 flight hours[1], for the last 10 years, that rate for f-16's is below 10, and for fatal accidents it's 0.76[2]. Although I'm not sure it's fair to make a 1-1 comparison as the modern accident rating system includes a few scenarios, the orders of magnitude difference is a great illustration of your point! [1] http://p…

Exactly. Those accident rates drove the creation of the modern flight clearance system that creates such an onerous risk management process today. It was very successful in reducing casualties, but the consequence is slowing down to an absolute crawl.

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

#753

Post by toomanybeersies »

sebmellen wrote: post #737
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #725

Putting aside the good-plane/bad-plane discussion, this program is the poster child for one of my pet wishes: that the costs of government programs would be expressed in $/tax-payer. There are about 100M tax payers in the US; this program is expected to cost about $1,500,000M; so the F35 program is expected to cost about $15,000 per tax payer. True: that's over 50 years; still, un-discounted, that's $300/year/tax-pay…

I've always wished for (and wanted to develop) a calculator which would take in your taxes paid, and calculate exactly how many dollars and cents of your tax bill went to which programs. I'm sure the results would shock most Americans.

Here in Australia, after my tax return is lodged, I receive an income tax receipt with a breakdown of where my tax dollars went.

It's only broken down by category though (e.g. Health, Defence, Education), except for Welfare, which has subcategories (e.g. Aged, Disability, etc).

There's an example and further explanation here on the ATO website: https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Lodging-your-tax-return/I...

There's a certain sense of satisfaction in being able to see in slightly more real terms what my tax is being spent on.

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

#754

Post by greedo »

angry_octet wrote: post #198
kcb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do you translate that into hitting something going Mach 1 at 40k feet? A UAV capable of attacking a jet can exist. My point is that it would need to be a fully capable aircraft not something that can be produced cheaply and deployed in swarms. There's a lot of space in the sky.

The drone swarm concept is irrelevant to the high and fast fight, but very relevant to infantry and armour. Of course HN is getting it confused. '3D printed jets!' they cry. However smart jets will be a thing, as evidenced by the Boeing Loyal Wingman program (awful name). The uninhabited jet will push further into the engagement envelope, pull higher Gs, risk SAM lock-on to take out the SAM, fly in the dust like Torn…

The failure of Pantsir in Libya has been fascinating. One has to wonder if it's a failure in design/tech or in training and operations? Same with the drones that were used with impunity in Nagorno-Karabakh. I also wonder if the Russian's have been hyping their SAM systems too much. Not that they're not formidable, but they often seem to make their A2AD systems sound impenetrable.

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

#755

Post by TylerE »

cgearhart wrote: post #744
TylerE wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So maybe we should buy a few more tanks/ships/bombs than we need so that we don’t forget Ironically most modern weapons programs do the exact opposite. Costs increase. So they cut orders. Which just makes the per unit costs increase even more. So they cut orders again. Repeat until program fails.

Right, the death spiral. But I’m actually talking about the infuriatingly counter-intuitive headlines about buying tanks that the army says we don’t need, or ships that we know will never work as planned. There are only so many places that can build such things, and if we let them go to mothballs then we lose all the manufacturing experience to do it at all—which is a risk for national defense. So the Navy says “I ne…

If you just want make-work, why not build schools, parks, and public hospitals instead?

Or useful infrastructure, at least.

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

#756

Post by greedo »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #135
kcb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how do you translate that into hitting something going Mach 1 at 40k feet? A UAV capable of attacking a jet can exist. My point is that it would need to be a fully capable aircraft not something that can be produced cheaply and deployed in swarms. There's a lot of space in the sky.

They can be produced cheaply because all of the life support, human facing controls, and armoring aren't included. This reduces weight which shrinks the airframe and reduces operational costs significantly.

The largest cost for a fighter is its engine, followed by radar and weaponry. The cost for including a human is a nit. And there isn't any armor in modern fighters. The A-10 has titanium , but fighter jets don't pack anything like that.

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

#757

Post by rvba »

sebmellen wrote: post #737
CoffeeDregs wrote: post #725

Putting aside the good-plane/bad-plane discussion, this program is the poster child for one of my pet wishes: that the costs of government programs would be expressed in $/tax-payer. There are about 100M tax payers in the US; this program is expected to cost about $1,500,000M; so the F35 program is expected to cost about $15,000 per tax payer. True: that's over 50 years; still, un-discounted, that's $300/year/tax-pay…

I've always wished for (and wanted to develop) a calculator which would take in your taxes paid, and calculate exactly how many dollars and cents of your tax bill went to which programs. I'm sure the results would shock most Americans.

> Federal Reserve Actions

Printing dollars what means high inflation what is basically a hidden tax that screws lower and medium class the most?

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

#758

Post by toomuchtodo »

wsc981 wrote: post #707
SCAQTony wrote: post #674

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.

I believe one of the objectives of the F-35 was for the plane to be able to fulfill all kinds of different roles. That idea in itself seems pretty much impossible for me. Especially on a budget.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

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

#759

Post by toomanybeersies »

CoffeeDregs wrote: post #725

Putting aside the good-plane/bad-plane discussion, this program is the poster child for one of my pet wishes: that the costs of government programs would be expressed in $/tax-payer. There are about 100M tax payers in the US; this program is expected to cost about $1,500,000M; so the F35 program is expected to cost about $15,000 per tax payer. True: that's over 50 years; still, un-discounted, that's $300/year/tax-pay…

Income tax is only half of federal government income though, the other half is mostly taxes levied on corporations.

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

#760

Post by uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh »

wongarsu wrote: post #539
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…

The elephant in the room is that military budget has to keep going up ("support the troops", create jobs and satisfy lobbyists) but there is no good goal to work towards. Great things happened in the 1940s to 70s because there were clear enemies and clear steps to take to gain and keep superiority. Today the US has a military budget three times bigger than that of the next largest spender, and everything necessary to…

First one with a manned orbital fighter wins!
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