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

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

#191

Post by adventured » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #183

philwelch wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time the US followed an isolationist foreign policy, the Europeans got themselves into two world wars in a row. It's true that Europe has a continent-wide mutual defense agreement now. What you didn't mention is that it's called NATO and the US is the backbone of it. That's part of how it works. Otherwise you don't get the combined forces of Europe, you get indifference at best and European war at worst. Loo…

Your information appears to be a generation out of date. The EU in particular have been working on collective defence agreements independent of NATO for quite some time. While it's true that if current US foreign policy went away overnight it would probably make certain other parts of the world less stable for a while, such rapid change couldn't actually happen as a practical matter of international diplomacy and eve…

During the 70 year US superpower reign, there have been zero major wars between history's powerful nations (Germany, China, Japan, Italy, Spain, Britain, France, India, Russia); there have been no major wars in Latin America (eg Brazil invading and destroying Colombia); and there have been no more world war equivalents. The worst we've seen have been very small scale, eg between India and China.

That's not a coincidence, it's a benefit provided by the US military's overwhelming superiority.

The US military has also taken an extreme share of the burden of keeping global trade / shipping lanes open and safe for operation - and it has done an extraordinary job at it.

The USSR wasn't going to just stop mid way through Germany, and Russia was obviously not going to just stop at Georgia. Who is going to act as a big enough deterrent to them? The same countries that prevented genocide in Europe's backyard in Kosovo? No, only the US is a powerful enough threat to Russia to keep them from going on a non-stop annexation spree.

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

#192

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:12 PM UTC

Retra wrote: post #59

venomsnake wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both cases it was do or die. Right now is do or ... meh.

I wouldn't be wholly surprised if the entire point of the F35 is to make money off of it. Either by selling it to foreign countries, or by exploiting the large influx of tax money. If that was your goal, it is win-win, no matter if the project fails. And that's where I'd peg the fundamental problem.

I agree. F-35 seems to be developed to make money and redistribute political power. The atomic bomb was developed to make an atomic bomb. See the subtle difference in these two sentences?

And it works with so many companies today as well. That's why I'm a big fan of Tesla and SpaceX - because they build electric cars so that there are electric cars. They build rockets so that humans can go to Mars. Many other companies in these sectors are the toilet-paper type: they develop electric cars to make money on people buying them. They develop rockets to make money on companies buying launch services. It's the difference of having money as an instrumental vs. terminal goal.

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

#193

Post by acdha » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:22 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #118

acdha wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? It's easy to look at rosy predictions but is there any reason to think that this project would have avoided the same systemic problems which have been endemic for the F-35? A quick glance at the Wikipedia page shows several questionable elements of the design, all of which seem to be due to the same problem of requiring one design to fill too many roles.

Actually there is. Boeing's design was forward thinking, e.g. using carbon fiber before anyone else --now common place. They also figured out a way to use the main engine to provide vertical take-off and landing, instead of having a separate engine, which would have made a big difference in cost. I watched an excellent documentary on the whole project long ago, and it was clear that Boeing design was superior, but th…

My main reason for posting was that your original comment would have been much stronger had it included any of the arguments you made here.

That said, I would reiterate that it's not clear that all of the possible advantages would have actually been delivered in the production aircraft. Wikipedia summarizes the problem engi_nerd mentioned as “eight months into construction of the prototypes, the JSF's maneuverability and payload requirements were refined at the request of the Navy and Boeing's delta wing design fell short of the new targets”. That's the kind of thing which makes software projects fail and software is a LOT easier to change than a high-performance aircraft design.

It's very easy to believe that this wouldn't have been the only such change and that the Boeing project would have ended in the same muddle because the project is simply badly managed. Accepting so many different missions as requirements for a single design seems like something which would doom anything constructed near our our current technology levels. It really sounds like it'd have been cheaper and more successful had the Marines’ VTOL requirement been a separate design since that's frequently mentioned as the reason for the many compromises for engine safety, performance, stealth, etc.

> but they got shafted b/c, as other have pointed out, it wasn't about the best product, it was about defense contractor dollars.

Definitely contractor dollars but also high-paying jobs in legislators’ districts. From the sounds of it, the “political engineering” process has been a lot more successful than anything else on the project:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/f-35s-...

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

#194

Post by adventured » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

weavejester wrote: post #175

sremani wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So will Germans fight for Greece ? I doubt so, so what if Poland is attacked are the Spainyards willing to fight and die for that. We all know, the answer, and its a resounding NO. Italians are not going to fight for estonians. When it hits the fan, and I am sure it will, Americanos will come to rescue and lead the charge. You have to not look beyond the late 90s and Kosovo, to look at the collective action, or shoul…

European countries have gone to war over Poland before. The idea that the EU would sit back and allow another country to invade its member states is just crazy. If nothing else, it would cause huge financial disruption to all the other countries in the union. Britain, France and Germany alone have a combined military budget greater than any other nation save the United States. The UK went to the other side of the pla…

China's military budget is likely beyond France + Britain + Germany. It's admitted to be $141 billion now, and most analysts think that's understated by upwards of 50%.

Europe is allowing Ukraine (of course not a EU member) to be destroyed right now. and Russia isn't done yet, they're going to take more territory. Europe at best has been half-limp in its response. Which makes sense given the energy ransom Russia holds over most of Europe's collective head.

Like Europe previously looked the other way while Georgia was sliced to pieces. What does that have to do with the EU? We're seeing that right now, Putin is being encouraged in Ukraine, he is seeing that there are no military consequences from the EU to taking non-EU European territory.

By the time Russia gets to Odessa, Moldova is going to look like a free acquisition. Belarus is another easy target for Russia, and Putin has already said 'unifying' with Belarus was desirable and possible. Is the EU going to war with Russia over Belarus? No chance, and that's as much in their backyard as you can get.

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

#195

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #165

TheCowboy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going into more detail on this would have been more useful, but it is part of the problem. I believe it has to do with the culture of promotion that favors pilots, not to mention the revolving door. The other major part of the problem is that drones are cheaper and present real competition to juicy manned contracts, so defense contractors don't like them. Drones might be an example of actual disruptive technology: a…

Drones are far more expensive than people realize. The reason the Air Force and CIA have held off on retiring the U-2 is that it's cheaper to operate than its unmanned competition. Sure, small drones with a video camera and LOS control are cheap, but once you start talking about drones with nontrivial amounts of ordinance and satellite quality sensors you're up into the tens of millions of dollars. For the most part…

I wonder how much of the cost of drones would drop if they went to mass production. For manned aircrafts, the limiting factor is trained pilots.

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

#196

Post by engi_nerd » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #193

transfire wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually there is. Boeing's design was forward thinking, e.g. using carbon fiber before anyone else --now common place. They also figured out a way to use the main engine to provide vertical take-off and landing, instead of having a separate engine, which would have made a big difference in cost. I watched an excellent documentary on the whole project long ago, and it was clear that Boeing design was superior, but th…

My main reason for posting was that your original comment would have been much stronger had it included any of the arguments you made here. That said, I would reiterate that it's not clear that all of the possible advantages would have actually been delivered in the production aircraft. Wikipedia summarizes the problem engi_nerd mentioned as “eight months into construction of the prototypes, the JSF's maneuverability…

Boeing would have spent much engineering effort on mitigation of the hot gas ingestion in mode 4 problems. It's impossible to know now how difficult or easy that issue would have been to resolve. The lesson that I take away from this is: STOVL is not easy. LM, Rolls Royce, and Pratt&Whitney have had their hands full with the LiftFan.

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

#197

Post by feedjoelpie » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #7

The F-35 is not a fighter, it's a diplomacy/pork program that happens to have the side effect of making something that (barely) flies.

The tragic comedy of the whole thing is that, while there's always some pork-slinging going on, at the outset of the program, the whole idea of a Joint Strike Fighter program was cost savings. On the surface, it was a competent economic thought: Build a bunch of variations on the same jet to achieve better overall economy across all military branches.

I really believe the people making that decision thought they would succeed. But since the premise proved incorrect, it looks like program continues to run entirely on a combination of addictions: Escalation of commitment and pork politics.

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

#198

Post by nate_meurer » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

krapht wrote: post #19

spiritplumber wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So get rid of the USAF / fold it back into the Army, this way the Navy has an air wing, and the Army has an air wing. Large sky battles are unlikely to happen ever again... the USAF was designed to deal with those, right around when they had become obsolete. Hooray for Parkinson's laws. The A-10 is a magnificent brute of a plane and does exactly the job it was designed to do, very well... so of course they want to mo…

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…

> "The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks"

This is the most ignorant comment in this entire thread. Please go read about the A10's gun -- the GAU-8/A. There is no mobile armor in the world that can withstand even short bursts of fire from it.

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

#199

Post by adventured » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

xnull2guest wrote: post #67

Tloewald wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic perversity is building a gigantic military in peacetime because the arms companies have enormous lobbying power. Everything else flows from and is secondary to that.

Isn't it more complicated than that? Today being behind on military technology by as little as 5 years can be decisive in confrontation. The last decade has brought huge changes in military technology including super and hypersonic missile delivery systems (these can defeat the US's current interception capabilities), THAAD technology, directed energy weapons, new reactive armors, satellite bombing systems, startling…

The US isn't suffering waning economic dominance. In fact it's gaining economic power right now.

The US Dollar is stronger than it has been in 20 years, the global reserve standard is firmly in place. The Euro and Yen present no threat to that; and the Yuan, a second tier currency, is currently being backed up by the greatest accumulation of debt in world history in China.

Since 2007 the US has added around $3.x trillion to its annual GDP, while Europe has added zero and has failed to climb above the peak before the great recession. The US will hit $18 trillion in GDP in 2015, or over nine times the size of Russia, which used to be its primary superpower competitor. While US GDP has continued to climb, most countries in Europe have been flat for ~7 years (eg Germany's or France's GDP hasn't moved since 2008).

The US share of global GDP hasn't gone down in 35 years, and is still where it was in 1995/96.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/US_share_of_wo...

(and that's during a time, since 1980, in which both Japan and China came on line as global economic powers - to maintain the US share of GDP, the US had to keep up with China, Brazil, Japan, India and countless other countries that saw economic booms since 1980)

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

#200

Post by adventured » Sun, Mar 22, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #181

philwelch wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military also effectively subsidizes the national defense of a large portion of the world, much of which we trade with. It's because of our treaty obligation to defend South Korea that, instead of investing in an arms race with North Korea, they can afford to manufacture cell phones and cars and televisions and trade them to us. Likewise for Japan and the NATO members.

> instead of investing in an arms race with North Korea, NK is so poor they can barely stay alive. I don't believe there could be any sort of meaningful arms race...

You mean other than the problem where they have nuclear weapons (and of course S.Korea does not), are actively developing more powerful nuclear weapons?

Besides that, who needs an arms race when you have enough artillery to kill millions of people in Seoul in the first inning of a war? North Korea doesn't need to be advanced to decimate South Korea, unfortunately.