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US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

bbc.com

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Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#161

Post by sololipsist »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #160
sololipsist wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard. > the answer is that nobody cares to. This is an over-simplification of…

This is an incredibly unpersuasive response. You don't like the post? Fine. But correct it rather than just dissing it.

Some things don't deserve a response. In that cases it's perfectly acceptable to note this and move on with your life.

If you correct every brain-dead thing people tell you on the internet, either never say anything remotely controversial so you don't get ill-informed but confident replies, you spend all day correcting people, or you literally just started saying things on the internet to tell me how to live my life.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#162

Post by smnrchrds »

derefr wrote: post #141
Balgair wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with one of the BIG defense contractors for a while. There was this guy, Willy. Willy was a 'fellow' with the company, an engineer so advanced and critical to the company that they just let him do whatever he wanted. One of his PhDs was in chemistry, I think he was about 80 years old back then (~2010). He did not use email at all. I thought it was crazy at the time, but man, was WIlly right about that one. I…

> I came to find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never written anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, at any cost. You'd think that if there's information in someone's head that a defense contractor can construe as "crucial to the building of the country's war-fighting competency" (i.e. "we can't build the damn planes/missiles you're depending on without that guy"), they could, for exampl…

Do you believe any of those options would be cheaper (monetarily or politically) than just paying a couple of engineers more salary?

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#163

Post by AnimalMuppet »

sololipsist wrote: post #161
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly unpersuasive response. You don't like the post? Fine. But correct it rather than just dissing it.

Some things don't deserve a response. In that cases it's perfectly acceptable to note this and move on with your life. If you correct every brain-dead thing people tell you on the internet, either never say anything remotely controversial so you don't get ill-informed but confident replies, you spend all day correcting people, or you literally just started saying things on the internet to tell me how to live my life.

> Some things don't deserve a response.

But you responded anyway. You just didn't respond with anything useful. So what you did, essentially, was waste 10,000 people's time by having them look at your non-response "response".

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#164

Post by derefr »

smnrchrds wrote: post #162
derefr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I came to find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never written anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, at any cost. You'd think that if there's information in someone's head that a defense contractor can construe as "crucial to the building of the country's war-fighting competency" (i.e. "we can't build the damn planes/missiles you're depending on without that guy"), they could, for exampl…

Do you believe any of those options would be cheaper (monetarily or politically) than just paying a couple of engineers more salary?

In that approach, eventually the engineer dies of old age, at which point costs go to infinity.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#165

Post by pavelrub »

metabagel wrote: post #153
pavelrub wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizzare comparison. The shuttle isn't a fighter jet and and has nothing to do with this. The question is what military value does the F-35 provide, and will provide, during its operational years. Nothing about the history of the shuttle program can possibly give us an answer to this question, and the entire comparison is absurd.

I think the basis of comparison is that both projects would have been better off with a more focused mission scope. In the case of the shuttle, it should have focused on launch and return of human crews and left BDRs to launch payloads. In the case of the F-35, the branch-of-service requirements were sufficiently different that individual platforms should have been developed to address each specific need.

Even if that were the case (and I seriously doubt that splitting the F-35 into multiple platforms would have resulted in a smaller budget, reduced development time, or better overall value. At the very least it's not trivial that that would be the case), it tells us absolutely nothing about the value of the F-35 compared to the Shuttle. I have kitchen gadgets that attempt to do too many thing at once and would have fared better as separate devices. They are cheaper than the F-35, so I guess the F-35 must be a failure.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#166

Post by stcredzero »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #155
stcredzero wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ship launched cruise missiles for close air support? I'm skeptical. F-22's are better for air superiority, but the F-35 was designed as a bomb and missile truck. Potentially, it could do that job very, very well.

> > ship-launched cruise missiles for ground attacks. > Ship launched cruise missiles for close air support? I'm skeptical. Perhaps you should be skeptical, but that's not at all what adrr said...

A part of the F-35's ground attack mission includes close air support. Of course, the F-35 also has massive drawbacks there as well.

In terms of force projection, it's the ability to shut down the enemy's close air support while providing it to your side which is part of the whole point of air superiority.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#168

Post by jostmey »

Quote: "The US government's accountability office estimates all costs associated with the project will amount to one trillion dollars."

What a waste. The money could be better spent, and I'm not referring to spending money on something better than a weapons system. That money could buy a lot more gun-power that a buggy fleet of fighter planes that will soon be soon with the rise of drones.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#169

Post by tropo »

flylikeabanana wrote: post #45
bradfa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, some of the money has gone to a small number of rich people, but there's quite a large number of working class people designing and assembling these planes. To say that the money has been set on fire or that no value has been provided seems a bit harsh, much of the money is employing a large number of skilled people in the USA and in other countries. And it's not just the USA taxpayers who are paying for this,…

What if those skilled workers' productivity had been applied toward something that people actually wanted? Even if 900 billion of that went back into the economy, then those skilled laborers have been spending this time outputting far less than their value.

Well, I actually wanted the F-22, but for some reason I doubt that is what you meant. About 5000 should do, which is nothing compared to what we built under difficult wartime conditions in World War II.

I also wanted redundant protection from incoming enemy ICBMs.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#170

Post by muro »

ThetaOneOne wrote: post #65
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those skilled workers could have been building something useful I wouldn't say the F-35 is useless . It contains a breathtaking integration of advanced technologies. There are benefits to that R&D. It's also an incredibly capable platform–the principle complaint is it's too capable, that we could have gotten more bang for our bucks with more less-capable planes.

You’re not wrong but the entire point here is efficiency. I have no doubt that allocated with the right teams we could inovate more with 500 million dollars. Or .5% of this project’s cost.

If the cost is 1T, it's 0.05%.
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