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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

#121

Post by GekkePrutser »

madhadron wrote: post #40
fallingfrog wrote: post #34

Interestingly enough Wikipedia says that the request for proposals for the F16 happened in January 1972 and the first completed fighter was accepted in January 1979. That’s 7 years, without the use of computers.

The F-16 is as very interesting case and it's worth reading about it. It was intentionally built to be a single role aircraft and the people who wanted an effective airplane in that role effectively bypassed most of the politics that would have diluted it. So, yes, the F-16 is one of the great success stories of fighter plane development.

The funny thing though is that the F-16 evolved into a multi-role fighter and became quite good at it :)

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

#122

Post by jjoonathan »

cwhiz wrote: post #89
rayhendricks wrote: post #72

It did not fail at providing money to the military-industrial-congressional complex. But of course we need more fighter jets instead of Medicare for all and UBI. China is not going to send fighters over to Bomb the us mainland, this thing is totally unnecessary.

You could take the entire defense budget, and the defense budget from every other country in the world, and you would be less than 50% of the funding you would need for a single year of Medicare for all. The US spends about $3.6 trillion per year on health care. I have no idea what UBI might cost, but I know we don’t have the tax revenues to get even close. Maybe the money printer can go brrrr a little bit faster.

Sure, if you pretend we aren't already paying for health care and don't credit that against the price of MFA, MFA looks awfully expensive!

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

#123

Post by nvoid »

rjsw wrote: post #103
nvoid wrote: post #77

>With a sticker price of around $100 million per plane, including the engine, the F-35 is expensive Why say including the engine? Do they sell them without the engine?

That is how the US military accounts for them, yes. The engine is not included in the price paid to Lockheed Martin.

Oh interesting. Can they get them with a different engine? Like an add-on when buying your car. Maybe like a sport mode?

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

#124

Post by ldbooth »

misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

How much can we attribute to the financialization of capitalism? I think it's the driving force. Some historical societies have recognized paying interest on capital at every level of the value stack creates an anti-competitive costs of production. Maybe they just didn't like creditors.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

cwhiz wrote: post #89
rayhendricks wrote: post #72

It did not fail at providing money to the military-industrial-congressional complex. But of course we need more fighter jets instead of Medicare for all and UBI. China is not going to send fighters over to Bomb the us mainland, this thing is totally unnecessary.

You could take the entire defense budget, and the defense budget from every other country in the world, and you would be less than 50% of the funding you would need for a single year of Medicare for all. The US spends about $3.6 trillion per year on health care. I have no idea what UBI might cost, but I know we don’t have the tax revenues to get even close. Maybe the money printer can go brrrr a little bit faster.

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by markus_zhang »

misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

The point is that if every project is just for the votes and friends then essentially you are going to ignore the engineering and other parts. I'd argue further that it's the same for business projects as well, just that you do it for the stocks and friends.

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

#127

Post by janderson3 »

supernova87a wrote: post #63

I guess along the way, the activity of designing and building the plane became more important than the outcome / functionality of the plane itself. You see it all the time in projects. People look busy and seem like they're building things, so some progress must be happening. Or is it? Blink an eye, and in a couple years you unwittingly accumulated a platform that served to fulfill every random team's desire to load…

> How can you cut 10% of the workforce in Huntsville when the representative sits on the Armed Services committee? (I don't know that, but just for example...)

Close. Alabama Senator Shelby is the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations and the Chairman of its Defense Subcommittee.

Edit: My apologies. Was the chairman. See nobody's comment below.

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

#128

Post by antattack »

misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

Speaking of military expenses. One would think spending fraction of military budget towards vaccine research would protect our country better.

Alas, building machines of destruction seems to the prerogative.

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

#129

Post by [deleted] »

misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

[deleted]

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

#130

Post by supernova87a »

misiti3780 wrote: post #86

The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of the cost. This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays. Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chan…

Maybe someone with more industry knowledge or interesting sources can corroborate --

But I believe that one of the things that happened to the military aviation industrial complex was that in the WW2, early Cold War era, planes and military development programs were very much driven by individuals or very small teams responsible for designing the requirements, overseeing the planning, and the outcome of new aircraft. That was how you got such distinctive (and long lasting designs) that served well the needs of the military, even in use up to today. Let's call it (using today's fashionable term, "passion" about the aircraft, and unwillingness to put out a piece of crap.) You could name who was responsible for an aircraft design.

But in the 1970s, 1980s, something happened where the size of projects or the professionalization of military projects caused them to have distributed (read, lack of) ownership by very critical people, and instead by an anonymous/dispersed "committee style" management. Also, the experts within the military often left for better pastures at the contractors (NG, LM, etc).

Add to that the requirement (by Congress, regulation) that you couldn't just use your expert / private connections to other experts to "get things done" and bring in contractors who had expertise, and instead had to farm out RFPs to every company, get their bland input, and fill out a heat map of who did what best, and cobble together a solution "mutually acceptable to all stakeholders".

So no longer was an aircraft project owned by someone who had very certain opinions about what was needed, and not needed, and who something should be designed for. But instead, projects follow a certain recipe, hoping that form produces function, yet not actually produce useful output because of what happens when you lack ownership. You cannot today name who is responsible for an aircraft design (I would say). It is the metaphorical side project among many, of a large dispersed group of people.

It seems to me something was missed in the migration to this new method of working.

But as I said, I would love to hear corroborating observations about whether this was a major factor.

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