Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

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

#361

Post by chmod600 »

notional wrote: post #316
medium_burrito wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand the purpose the F35- it is a jobs and pork program first and foremost, like SLS. It has the side benefit of keeping people trained to build this sort of thing, so SpaceX can hire them. We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that.

It's more than just a jobs program too. It's a reelection plan for senators/house members. Look at what states and districts get these big DoD contracts and then look at what committees the congressmen/women are sitting on. They approve plans that benefit them then direct the funds right into their districts so they can campaign on it. I mean it's not the worst form of corruption but it's pretty shitty when you reali…

That's what "pork" means.

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

#363

Post by ktln2 »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #219
ktln2 wrote: post #185

F-35 is not expensive if you consider the alternatives: Brazil bought 36 JAS-39E for $5.8 billion. [1] Taiwan ordered 66 F-16V for $8.1 billion. [2] Korea is going to get 20 F-35A for $3.3 billion. [3] [1] https://www.flightglobal.com/saab-brazil-finalise-gripen-ng-... [2] https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-f-16v-fighter-j... [3] https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2019/10/10/s...

Militarism is a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

For many countries they have no choice - you either spend the money on Military or you get invaded by Russia/China/North Korea.

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

#364

Post by sandworm101 »

bun_at_work wrote: post #177
nemothekid wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a while back I was interested "where does billions we spend on national defense actually go" and I came to the conclusion that the DoD is really just a giant jobs program. Ultimately I think the reason we don't have things like flying cars is that the private sector gets stuck in local maxima (such as getting people to click ads) and in the public sector it's very hard to have focused time-blocked short term goa…

This isn't entirely true. The US subsidizes military costs for all of our allies. It costs a lot, and a huge amount of funds go to that. There are parts that are like jobs programs, and the contractors intentionally drive up costs as part of their business model, but there are also real expenses to maintaining stability across the parts of the world where our military operates.

>>> The US subsidizes military costs for all of our allies.

Speaking as one of those allies... not really. Often times US allies spend money they really don't want to in order to keep the US happy. Canada and the UK probably wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan if not for their obligations as US allies. That certainly wasn't cheap. Canada is soon to replace its fighter fleet. Will it buy to cheaper Saab Grippen? Or will it feel obligated to buy the 35, a US program that Canada has paid into (aka subsidized) for many years without actually receiving any aircraft?

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

#365

Post by openasocket »

exar0815 wrote: post #110

It's quite simple. The successfull military programs are the ones building one thing to do one thing well. A-10, F-16, B-52. The Programs wanting to do everything in one System fail. F-35, Zumwalt, Eurofighter.

I'm not sure how the F-16 is an example of "building one thing to do one thing well," it's a great example of a multi-role fighter. Almost all combat aircraft developed in the last 30 years are multi-role aircraft too. And by what metric the Eurofighter is a failure?

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

#366

Post by misiti3780 »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #353
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…

> Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chance we could do something like that in this toxic environment of today. I think that I am misunderstanding this paragraph. You mean the speed at which a new inventions was put into production, right? It could be my English failing me but putting it through a translator did not help.

Of course, I don't mean killing hundreds of thousands of people was good, but it did end WWII, and presumably saved lives that would have been lost via a land invasion (US + USSR)

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

#367

Post by hef19898 »

onepointsixC wrote: post #319
hef19898 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Survivability is not a given. They successfully tagged F-35s at various occossions with ground based radar. There are also account sof F-22s loosing dog fights against Rafales and Eurofghters. And the F-22 is the better dog fighter compared to the F-35. And there are still thousands of F-16s to be retired for F-35s, seemingly not going to happen if the Air Force is axing F-35 procurement.

Air Force isn't axing procurement. Just because it has been tagged under ideal conditions on various occasions doesn't mean that it's survivability isn't vastly better than it's non stealthy alternatives. Yes F-22's have lost dog fights, that's why their K:D's ratios aren't infinite. I really don't understand what your point is though, because the F-22 has lost a dog fight it's overwhelming win rate no longer is rele…

My pint is that all air forces agree, to a certain extent, that stealth alone is not enough to over come modern air defence. It is even not sufficient to beat other somewhat stealthy fighters. And the F-35 isn't even that stealthy to begin with. The examples are to show that the F-35 is alread now, at the very beginning of its service life, hte real risk of being not as surviveable as thought.

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

#368

Post by dustingetz »

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…

What's the source for the Thiel quote about "we just can't build cool shit anymore"?

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

#370

Post by nickik »

filoleg wrote: post #285
Synaesthesia wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Militarism is a colossal waste of taxpayer money.

Not when you have a few adversarial nation-states around the corner that do not consider it a waste of taxpayer money.

Nukes and rockets exist.
Post reply on HN