781–790 of 1001 posts
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Wikipedia said it was started in 2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
Lockheed and Boeing were building protoypes in the 1990s and the contract was awarded to Lockheed in October 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
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> 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.
https://blog.theodorewatson.com/understanding-the-federal-go...
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Communism had a great many failings, but they did allocate a lot of money to infrastructure and science. But what real communism did isn't even relevant here, I'm pretty sure GP is talking about imaginary communism in the sense that anything that is good for the general population is somehow called communism in US politics.
If communism allocated resources effectively, communist economies would be powerhouses instead of third-world.
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…
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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…
Lots of us would love to believe this, and yet what does the unrestrained private sector churn out? Ad networks, app addiction, gig economy, throwaway culture, urban sprawl, climate apathy... hardly a winner. SpaceX is everyone's favourite private sector success story, but they're basically just a younger, leaner version of Lockheed— surviving off of NASA and doing what they're contracted to do. I don't think the pri…
Another Musk inspired project is the hyperloop and of course the Boring tunnels for electric cars. These are novel transportation solutions that solve for the problem in a more creative way than simply "build more light rails". That's the type of stuff a government will never come up with. There needs to be a creative maestro with massive capital. Musks are rare in the world but they certainly can move in a more agile way when they do appear.
I would also argue, telecommuting has solved for some of the transportation problems alone. Think of how many less cars are on the road as a result of work from home.
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> There’s a shocking amount of people also happy to drive around ignoring warning lights flashing. ...or can't afford the basic maintenance
In other words, can't afford to own/operate a car. Note, that's not a put down on said people. I think it's a shame such situations exist. But, if you can't afford to pay for insurance/gas/maintenance, then you can't afford the vehicle. But, regarding flying cars: I absolutely do not want more people operating airborne spinny death machines capable of destroying considering we've already established many people don't…
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…
Pretty clearly unsustainable, isn't it?
“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…
~1.7 Trillion dollars so we can have a bleeding-edge Ferrari while our "enemies" in the PRC and Russia are still driving around in Yugo 45s So many people seem to still buy into the Cold War mindset that we just need the latest bleeding edge platforms or the Soviets are going to invade and we'll all be reading Trotsky. The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians and China it's comical to claim another…