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

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

#411

Post by thereddaikon » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

mikece wrote: post #347

To quote Pierre Spray, one of the "Fighter Mafia" who had a hand in the design of the F-15 and drove the design of the F-16, the F-35 has been a massive success. What's not asked is "What is the mission of the F-35?" and in Spray's opinion the mission of the F-35 has been to drive funding to Lockheed.

Pierre Spray is also a luddite who vehemently rejects the concept of a multirole fighter. The F-16 he advocated for is not anywhere close to the actual F-16. If it were up to him the USAF fighter force would consist of low tech pure dogfighters that didn't have radars or long range missiles. To him the F-5 is the pinnacle of fighter technology.

His and the rest of the fighter mafia's extreme views are not popular within the defense community.

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

#412

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

hadlock wrote: post #335

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...

Buying weapons from your global security partners is part of a larger geopolitical picture/strategy. The cost is almost secondary. Look at who the US sells weapons to, what countries are banned by us weapons export ban laws. Look at who Russia sells weapons to. There is not a whole lot of overlap between the two countries. Posting countries and dollar figures is part of the picture, but does not tell the whole story.

And when there is an overlap, people freak out. Just take Turkey as an example. They almost got kcked out of the F-35 program after buying Russion air defence systems. The US feared the Russians could learn too much about the F-35.

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

#413

Post by protastus » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

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...

Brazil's purchase from Saab includes technology transfer.

The United States bid on this contract with the F/A-18E. I can't imagine the U.S. approving the sale of F-35 technology to Brazil at any reasonable price.

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

#414

Post by onepointsixC » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

woeirua wrote: post #340

onepointsixC wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are numerous problems with such logic: Just because you can replace those 10 fighters faster doesn't mean you can replace the pilots with equivalently good ones as quickly. Great power wars in the modern era will have some of the most decisive action happen far sooner than you can get into production capacity battles. At which point one side will lob several hypersonic missiles into the shipyards, factories, an…

You don't need to replace 10 excellent pilots with 10 good pilots to win a war of attrition. You just need 10 pilots that can fly, lock a missile and fire. Because if you're losing 10 planes to every 1 that you're killing the life expectancy of any pilot is going to be really low period. Counterpoints: 1 - Most critical infrastructure is located far inland away from areas that are vulnerable to cruise missiles and th…

>You don't need to replace 10 excellent pilots with 10 good pilots to win a war of attrition. You just need 10 pilots that can fly, lock a missile and fire.

That's not how it works. The F35 will detect those pilots far sooner than they will detect it and shoot them down before they even see them. Combine a battle space with dozens of MALD decoys flying around drawing shots, those poor pilots would have never had a chance because the F-35 pilots would never give their enemy the chance to shoot at them in the first place.

> Most critical infrastructure is located far inland away from areas that are vulnerable to cruise missiles and the like

I can't find the map now, but just about all of China is within reach of US cruise missiles launched from bombers if the need would arise.

> Critical infrastructure can be built faster today than it ever could be in the past

You're not going to build a Fab overnight. If you knock out a radar factory, that's going to be offline for months. Same thing with a turbine factory.

What I don't think you also appreciate is that of all planes to try to claim that someone could win a production race against, the F35 is a very poor target. There are already produced at rates of ~130 per year and expected to rise to 180. There is no existing line that is manufacturing aircraft that comes close. Not only is US Air power technologically superior but they have the numbers.

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

#415

Post by nickff » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #404

Are fighter jets a necessity when we have drones? Other commenters bemoan the lack of technological progress in fighter jets, but a drone is capable of maneuvers that humans cannot survive, and the use of drones also limits the loss of pilot lives. Investing money in drones over fighter jets seems like the cost effective move here. Flying the jet yourself is definitely cooler than doing it by remote control, but I do…

Drones aren't as cheap as you might think when you actually tally the total system cost, including ground systems; and the UAVs still have significant issues operating in various mixed airspaces. Take a look at the costing for General Atomics Predator and Northrop Grumman Global Hawk systems, as well as the issues the Germans have had with the latter.

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

#416

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

I work in defense and the approach to software development is hell. Imagine package managers and Git being newfangled scary technologies and not unit testing anything. Now slap tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on there and you've got a defense program.

I'm actually quite tired of it and I'm looking elsewhere.

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

#417

Post by tdubhro1 » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

medium_burrito wrote: post #100

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…

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.

Exactly, the US defence industry is a politically acceptable version of a welfare state

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

#418

Post by hutzlibu » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

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…

https://xkcd.com/864/

Also, well

"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 believe some people consider WW2 and the nuclear wipeout of 2 cities of common people to be "toxic environment", too.

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

#419

Post by cgearhart » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

wycy wrote: post #246

cgearhart wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least three things happened: - congressional oversight increased, with the result that the purchasing authority is no longer generally the end user. We aren’t just buying a ship (plane, gun, etc.), we’re maintaining a logistics and manufacturing industrial base to produce that type of item (and maintain jobs in congressional districts). So maybe we should buy a few more tanks/ships/bombs than we need so that we do…

> - risk tolerance shrank. There's a lot of truth here and it plays out in even more ways than that. I look back through documentation of legacy systems and see so many things designed based on "engineering judgement". Sizing for that bearing? Engineering judgement. Thickness of other minor structure? Engineering judgement. Now, the load on every little thing requires a 50 page engineering calculation report with fig…

A month for review? Where is this glorious Valhalla?! Navy flight certification checklist is a 2-3 column full page of densely packed names for the approval authority on all the different systems. It may take a month to circulate your proposal to those folks just to get a final list of the subset who will need to ultimately sign off. We had cases where item X was used on USAF aircraft Y, but it could not be used on Navy aircraft Z (which was the same airframe) without literally tens of millions of dollars in testing. Not because the loads on the platforms were substantially different, but because the test standards between USAF and USN were different and the approval authorities wouldn’t sign off otherwise. (See also: zero risk tolerance.)

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

#420

Post by thu2111 » Wed, Feb 24, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

antattack wrote: post #311

evgen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The F-35 program did not fail to foresee the rise of unmanned vehicles, they built and adapted the aircraft and avionics around this concept. The F-35 cockpit, avionics, and helmet are designed to allow an F-35 pilot to command a fleet of drones performing roles ranging from scouting and EW to SEAD and direct attack.

Human flying and directing drones to do some tasks is such a 20th century thinking. For one, human pilot in F-35 directing drones would be the weakest link. Why would you want to send a human pilot to face drone(s) that does not care for it's survival, can pull more Gs, calculate trajectory and make decisions faster?

This comes up in every HN thread about fighter jets.

Modern fighter aircraft are mobile missile launchers. They are judged primarily by whether they can get close enough to where they need to go without being detected, detect what they need to, and then launch good enough missiles. The missile is effectively the drone. Modern missiles are basically self-piloting autonomous drone rockets. In that regard the F-35 is fine, and automating the pilot is not necessarily a win because the AI isn't going to be doing ultra-high G dogfight turns anyway. The humans job is to react to unexpected situations and figure out something smart in situations where remote control isn't reliable or desirable (e.g. due to risk of detection).