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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

#91

Post by CountSessine »

zanethomas wrote: post #28
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.

Ok, that's scary, I would accept C for such a job but C++ provides too many opportunities for things to go wrong in strange and difficult to find ways.

Are you kidding? Accept C but reject C++? That's completely ridiculous.

"Well, the scout leader's fire control computer should have returned fire at the MIG. It should have, but the C-programmed fire control software cast the void* target object to a ... well, a seagull_t object. I guess you could say that the scout leader was shot down when a seagull fired a radar-guided missile at him. That's pretty funny, right? Right?"

Of course maybe I'm just wrong to want type safety of any kind.

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

#92

Post by javajosh »

philwelch wrote: post #77
javajosh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utterly false. Prior to involvement in World War 2, the US had hardly any standing army and rather weak tooling industries (being wiped out by the Great Depression) and yet still managed to field like 2 million troops and vast amounts of weapons for allies in a very short period of time.

The US began the WWII draft over a year before Pearl Harbor, and was manufacturing arms for the Allies months ahead of Pearl Harbor as well. Even a weakened American industrial base was significantly larger than that of any other country in the world at the time ( http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm ). World War II was an unusual case, though. Every war since then has been a relatively limited one in the sense…

>There was hardly a single American who lived through that war who didn't make sacrifices and materially contribute to victory.

Contrast this with how Americans were told to support Iraq 2 and Afghanistan: "Go shopping."

The best possible policy for peace-loving American's to adopt would be a "no war without conscription" law. This seems counterintuitive, but it is my believe that when Senators' and Presidents' and CEOs' sons lives are on the line, they'll think twice before using force. As it stands, to them it's like risking the lives of a few hundred thousand Wal-Mart employees.

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

#93

Post by philwelch »

javajosh wrote: post #92
philwelch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US began the WWII draft over a year before Pearl Harbor, and was manufacturing arms for the Allies months ahead of Pearl Harbor as well. Even a weakened American industrial base was significantly larger than that of any other country in the world at the time ( http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm ). World War II was an unusual case, though. Every war since then has been a relatively limited one in the sense…

>There was hardly a single American who lived through that war who didn't make sacrifices and materially contribute to victory. Contrast this with how Americans were told to support Iraq 2 and Afghanistan: "Go shopping." The best possible policy for peace-loving American's to adopt would be a "no war without conscription" law. This seems counterintuitive, but it is my believe that when Senators' and Presidents' and C…

The rich and powerful have always found ways to avoid conscription.

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

#94

Post by philwelch »

hackuser wrote: post #90
philwelch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then they learned from that lesson and today they operate the F/A-18, which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most successful naval aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-role mission.

> the F/A-18, which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most successful naval aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-role mission. How is it "successful"? Has one ever been in a real fight? Almost all of our airplanes are untested (which is a good thing).

Yes, several.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F/A-18E/F_Super_Hornet#O...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler#Operation...

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

#95

Post by hackuser »

philwelch wrote: post #43
ghaff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F35 program has been pretty much a disaster. But, that said, the concept of departing from a model in which every service branch and every allied country to which we sell military hardware has largely unique equipment for every mission isn't inherently a bad one. But we've apparently discovered that, among other problems with the program, it's harder to come up with a viable common design than many apparently tho…

The bulk of the requirements for the F-35 are perfectly reasonable; a stealthier replacement for the F-16 and F/A-18, which essentially perform the same role but the Air Force chose one and the Navy chose the other. If you could get a next generation light fighter-bomber to replace both, and make it stealthy enough to replace the F-117 at the same time, that would be the perfectly reasonable aircraft. As it stands, t…

> it's not like the enemy isn't going to notice the slowly hovering jet plane that's strafing them and shooting missiles at them

I thought the STOVL was designed to enable take off and landing without airfields and aircraft carriers. Are you sure the intent is that it will hover over the battlefield while attacking? Current planes seem to hit targets fine while flying at a much safer hundreds of miles/hour.

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

#96

Post by tomjen3 »

ghostberry wrote: post #76
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the mission becomes opposing ISIS style forces, I doubt guns will be obsolete.

For attacking an enemy that doesn't have and real air defences they shouldn't be using a multirole jet fighter like the F-35 or a jet ground attack aircraft like the A-10. They're both way too expensive to run. They should be using a counter-insurgency aircraft, like the A-26s the Afghan Air Force is about to receive.

Googling them it looks like those A26 could be shoot down by a Supermarine Spitfire.

Also they are apparently WWII and early sixties planes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-26_Invader) are you sure you have the right designation?

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

#97

Post by tomjen3 »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #25

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

Lag and poor visibility.

Drones work on slow ground attack convoys and buildings where they can fly around for a time but they are controlled via satelites so there is a couple of seconds of lag between when the image is recorded and the orders are received by the drone.

In a dog fight, which is really what you have to build a fighter plane for, that kind of lag means you lose every time. Add to that that drones are too slow, have no agility and little to no armour and they are going to be completely useless even against obsolete planes - SAA (Assad) show down one a few days ago.

The US has stealth drones, but that is only useful till you are discovered. If you are going faster than the speed of sound that is one thing, but these drones are not.

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

#98

Post by EdwardDiego »

javajosh wrote: post #92
philwelch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US began the WWII draft over a year before Pearl Harbor, and was manufacturing arms for the Allies months ahead of Pearl Harbor as well. Even a weakened American industrial base was significantly larger than that of any other country in the world at the time ( http://www.combinedfleet.com/economic.htm ). World War II was an unusual case, though. Every war since then has been a relatively limited one in the sense…

>There was hardly a single American who lived through that war who didn't make sacrifices and materially contribute to victory. Contrast this with how Americans were told to support Iraq 2 and Afghanistan: "Go shopping." The best possible policy for peace-loving American's to adopt would be a "no war without conscription" law. This seems counterintuitive, but it is my believe that when Senators' and Presidents' and C…

> but it is my believe that when Senators' and Presidents' and CEOs' sons lives are on the line, they'll think twice before using force.

May I recommend a listen to Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvwQmxLaknc

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

#99

Post by tomjen3 »

philwelch wrote: post #75
krapht wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of man-portable anti-air missiles. What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them don…

> What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups and infantry So can helicopters, drones, and Harriers.

No actually they can't. Well maybe Harriers but helicoptors are vulnerable because they enemy has manpads and drones have too much lag for close air support.

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

#100

Post by panic »

bilbo0s wrote: post #53
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 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..." My first week at PLC in Quantico another candidate, prior enlisted recon guy, told me... "War is a racket". Later I found out that the quote was a…

You can find the text of "War Is A Racket" here: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1
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