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

forbes.com

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

#961

Post by chipsa »

goatinaboat wrote: post #899
tootie wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. The concept of modularity is a sound one. Imagine this: You buy an F35 and it comes with 2 sets of wings. It has a empty bay just behind the pilot, and it also comes with a lift engine and a spare fuel tank, and a tailhook that can be easily sl…

The idea of having one aircraft be able to become any of the other variants isn't actually that great. Air Force planes don't operate from carriers, and Navy planes don't need to operate from very small fields.

The common bits are actually really useful to have in common. The radar is expensive to develop. The optical sensors are too. Engines are expensive, and the F135 engine is like 1/6 of the aircraft's cost.

Development is a bit more expensive, because you have 3 airframes with slightly different characteristics, but much of it the same between the three as far as systems that go inside.

It's definitely not 3x the price to develop the 3 different variants.

And they're buying new F-35s for cheaper than a new F-16.

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

#962

Post by HelloMcFly »

JamesBarney wrote: post #940
HelloMcFly wrote: post #614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite similar to one of my favorite saying that comes from my background in psychology: "When the mouse presses the lever, don't blame the mouse."

For the other side "No, it’s not The Incentives—it’s you" https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-in...

I don't really see it as "the other side". Identifying root cause of behavior is critical to modifying it. The "don't blame the mouse" saying is simplified; scientists (as in this article) live in a more complex world. Just because we can understand what led to a set of behavior for scientists, or others, doesn't mean they have no accountability for their actions, but it usually does mean there is a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution, otherwise we'll only ever be treating the symptoms.

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

#963

Post by cameldrv »

Barracoon wrote: post #953
cameldrv wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really realistic though? I'm curious about your professional perspective. My impression of the present/near future of air combat is a stealthy fighter with AMRAAMs in front, radar off, and a quarterback aircraft in back out of missile range, with the radar on. The front fighter fires and turns around, and the missile gets mid-course updates from the quarterback aircraft. When the AMRAAMs are depleted, you lea…

So if you buy into the concept of maneuver warfare you want to hit the enemy's center of gravity and reduce their will to fight. If you're trying to do that to China, you need to hit them hard and fast deep in their country's borders (I mean, Russia too to an extent). If you play this tit for tat fighter threat game, that doesn't happen and you're essentially in a war of attrition. That means you don't hold B-2s unti…

Makes sense. It seems to me that the key question is whether or not the B-2 is trackable. I've never had a clearance, so I don't know, but I suspect that over China's own territory, it probably is. Maybe not "weapons quality", but good enough to get a fighter within IR missile/cannon range. It seems difficult to get the B-2 through reliably under those circumstances, and I'm not sure a fighter escort is of much help, because they will allocate a lot of fighters to a B-2.

The unknown then is how much can be done with decoys and EW, or even things like cyberattacks on radars and control nodes.

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

#964

Post by pas »

rbanffy wrote: post #890
paulmd wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that the F-35 was pitched as saving money by doing everything for everyone. It was going to be a lightweight fighter with carrier-landing durability (contradictory) that had options for both single-engine, multi-engine, and VTOL engine (all contradictory), with a big-wing and small-wing version, that could be a quasi-air-superiority, quasi-guided-missile, quasi-bomb-truck, or even wild-weasel/S…

> It does one thing well The importance of this engineering principle cannot be overstated. It applies to everything - from home appliances to spacecraft to software.

Interestingly it does a bunch of things well, fast and takes amazing pictures, goes very high, etc.

But most importantly those are synergistic, they form a coherent whole, we even say one thing, because it does so well at these things simultaneously that we now consider it almost inseparable.

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

#965

Post by pas »

ars wrote: post #746
jonny_eh wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the Singularity is near because innovation is accelerating. I'm perpetually confused.

It's not accelerating, IMO innovation has stalled quite a bit. If you compare the speed of innovation between now and 30 years ago, the change is quite dramatic. There will not ever be a Singularity.

Why? Even if we upload a mind, even via whole brain emulation, that then becomes modifiable, optimizable. If uploaded minds start enhancing the process it can become a lot faster.

Sure, probably for them that will just look like how it looks now to us.

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

#966

Post by brokenmachine »

crazygringo wrote: post #941
brokenmachine wrote: post #829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being able to access Wikipedia or Google through speech recognition Terrible. Absolutely hopeless. Every few years I have another go at speech recognition, and it still sucks.

The glass is always half-empty I guess, right?

Well it's worse than all the alternatives, so... yes?

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

#967

Post by rstuart4133 »

N1H1L wrote: post #955
darkteflon wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentives seem to have huge explanatory value wherever you look, don’t they. I’d like to add a classic Warren Buffet quote into the mix: “Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.” Does anyone have any views on what constitutes canonical reading on incentives? Some of the classic game theory works? Would love to hear opinions on this.

Incentives in my opinion leads to Goodhart's law [1]. In fact, I will go a step further - most incentives are chosen by well meaning people. There is neither malice nor incompetence going on. What happens is that every incentive can be perverted, and will be perverted over time. Over time, then that incentive, that was once chosen with good intentions, becomes perverse. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_…

I've never heard of Goodhart's law. To save others clicking on the link, it's:

> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

In my experience, it might actually be a useful approximation of reality.

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

#968

Post by rbanffy »

pas wrote: post #964
rbanffy wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does one thing well The importance of this engineering principle cannot be overstated. It applies to everything - from home appliances to spacecraft to software.

Interestingly it does a bunch of things well, fast and takes amazing pictures, goes very high, etc. But most importantly those are synergistic, they form a coherent whole, we even say one thing, because it does so well at these things simultaneously that we now consider it almost inseparable.

That's true. Doing one thing well does not mean a single characteristic - it means being fit to operate in a given role.

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

#969

Post by greedo »

chipsa wrote: post #960
greedo wrote: post #943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look at the F-22 as an aircraft that was born too soon. The ATF program started in 1981, but nobody anticipated the fall of the Soviet Union. So it really never had a real need. Now its technology is outdated (in terms of electronics), and the stealth technology is expensive to maintain and support. It's still an incredible fighter, arguably the best in the world. It's like some of the pocket battleships produced b…

Essentially no battleships that weren't complete by the start of the war for whichever country actually saw combat in WWII. The vast majority of battleships that saw combat were from the interwar period, if not WWI. Also pocket battleship mostly refers to the heavy cruisers that Germany built during their rearmament program.

I think you're first paragraph is incorrect. For example, the US entered WW2 in 11/7/41, and the BB-63 Missouri was commissioned in 6/44. Missouri saw combat at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. BB-62 (New Jersey) was commissioned in 6/43 and fought at Guam and Okinawa. BB-61 was commissioned 2/43 and fought in the Pacific after being transferred from the Atlantic.

For the UK, five King George class battleships were commissioned after the start of Britain's declaration of war in 9/39. They all saw combat.

France's Richelieu was commissioned in 4/40, and saw limited combat in Dakar.

Even Japan's Yamato class battleships were commissioned before Japan invaded China.

Perhaps you meant that no battleships that weren't laid down prior to the start of WW2 saw combat?

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

#970

Post by InitialLastName »

wycy wrote: post #354
morei wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of things changed since the era of 'engineering judgement'. In the 50s and 60s when 'engineering judgement' was common, it was a signal to a skilled machinist that "You have more experience with the material, so use your best guess because I don't know what the right answer is". Things have changed a lot! 1. Material quality is much higher. Which is to say that batch-to-batch variance is vastly reduced.…

I would've thought your first 2 items there would help increase the use of engineering judgement by reducing pitfalls previous generations encountered. Your third item is definitely a significant factor. It's not so much that I yearn for the era of engineering judgement so much as I yearn for refocusing on work that's important. Not every little decision needs to written up in professional report, circulated around t…

That would be nice, but you just wait until the root cause analysis of a catastrophic failure gets traced to a backside that was inadequately obscured by "engineering judgement".
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