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The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

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Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#31

Post by remarkEon »

gnoway wrote: post #8
douche wrote: post #5

With the concept of strategic bombing being a moot point, replaced by unmanned guided missiles and our moral unwillingness to strike at population centers, the only real purpose of the Air Force is close-air-support. Even air superiority is, really, an adjunct to that role, in that it protects the troops on the ground against enemy ground-attack aircraft and provides cover for our ground attack aircraft. Seeing, argu…

What I don't understand is why the various services care so much about what the other services do or don't do. Why does the AF insist on managing the A-10 when they clearly do not and never have wanted it? The Army wants it, let them have it. We're obviously not that concerned with duplication or waste given how much money we've spent on this and the F-22 for, apparently, no gain.

The Army wants it, let them have it.

Part of the problem is that, maybe because the acquisition process is so absurdly long, the concepts and ideology guiding policy for this thing is from the 1990s. This plane is designed for what we thought war would be like in 2025 back in 1996 or something. Even beyond the terrible $1.4T cost of this thing, I worried it's designed for the entirely wrong concept of warfare going forward. So yeah, maybe bringing the entire CAS mission into the realm of the Army would be a good idea - but even then, how much of that future demand for CAS can be satisfied by Drones for much lower cost and risk? That's the real issue, I think, because it would precipitate sort of an existential crisis for the Air Force.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#32

Post by saraid216 »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #25

What's the biggest practical limitation to switching to unmanned drone fighters?

I don't know, but my guess is hackability. I think pilots still have a ton of direct information that wouldn't be significantly vulnerable to hacking, and a lot of direct control that wouldn't be available to drone operators.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#33

Post by pdq »

For anyone wanting to see the background of these "design by committee" government projects, watch The Pentagon Wars [1]. It's a comedic insight as to how groups design a product that's too late, too large, too expensive, too hard to build, and possibly doesn't work. The story is based on the Bradley Fighting Vehicle [2].

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#34

Post by nabla9 »

tokenrove wrote: post #4

It's duplicitous of me to bring this up given all the other problems with this plane, but since it's a favorite topic of argument here, let's not forget the F-35's software is mostly developed in C++, and had been, in the past, touted as a triumph of C++ over Ada.

JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER AIR VEHICLE C++ CODING STANDARDS

http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf

Those who don't want to use Ada are doomed to reimplement it with coding standards.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#36

Post by Spooky23 »

Shalomm wrote: post #18
gnoway wrote: post #6

It is just inconceivable that we have a multi-decade program to develop a new fighter to fill all these roles, and what we've produced is either equivalent to or worse than the incumbent in all cases, is not safe to fly in combat situations, and is more expensive to boot. I mean we've seen this sort of thing happen on a smaller scale before, but versions of this plane are supposed to replace, like, everything in mult…

Just a friendly reminder why governments and large corporations can't develop shit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

Nearly everything you do with computer tech was seeded by government/large corps.

For a military contracting specific account: http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/d...

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#37

Post by heyalexchoi »

For anyone interested in learning more, the book 'Boyd' provides a lot of useful background information on

- why the F-35 is a total disaster - the Pentagon's intrinsic inability to make reasonable decisions

In a nutshell, this guy Boyd pioneered modern fighter jet design (and important general strategic theorems as well), but spent his career fighting crony-bureaucrats to get any of it adopted by the U.S. military

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#38

Post by protomyth »

nabla9 wrote: post #34
tokenrove wrote: post #4

It's duplicitous of me to bring this up given all the other problems with this plane, but since it's a favorite topic of argument here, let's not forget the F-35's software is mostly developed in C++, and had been, in the past, touted as a triumph of C++ over Ada.

JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER AIR VEHICLE C++ CODING STANDARDS http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf Those who don't want to use Ada are doomed to reimplement it with coding standards.

It makes me think slapping a C-style skin on Ada (ala VB.Net C#) would make for a killer language.

Re: The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35

#39

Post by rm445 »

joncp wrote: post #23

I've never understood how any engineer would think that a plane could be built to fulfill all of the demands from all military branches. My guess is that they don't, but they get to play with cool tech. And hey, the money is flowing so why not try?

Well there's no doubt on the side of the aerospace companies. Anyone can confidently offer to engineer you anything given sufficient time and resources, and a 'plane' that is actually a family of somewhat-related airframes in different configurations seems like a plausible way to be all things to all people given virtually unlimited budget. A certain amount of cynicism is required to bid in such circumstances, but money does tend to distort things.

The commissioning side is much less clear. Who on earth would think one size fits all is the best approach? One possible guess is that it's an attempt to CONTROL complexity and cost, compared to having a succession of over-budget programmes and small orders for aircraft that cost fortunes to develop. A big bet on technology sharing, and an acknowledgment that the development of each new line of military aircraft has already become staggeringly expensive.

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