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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

#491

Post by smileysteve »

bumby wrote: post #445
nerdponx wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine if we put people to work building useful stuff instead of useless stuff. Power grid infrastructure, new bridges, new rail lines, etc.

Why do you think the current prioritization exists? The cynic in me thinks it has to do with power projection and the economy. The less cynical part of me wonders if it’s related to a cognitive bias that over-weights threats from rival “tribes” and the need to ensure stability

Fear of terrorists sells better than fear of ice storms.

Especially for the states (and representatives) that the ice storm is 100 year. Dams fail, and when they fail, they don't affect the people that didn't want to live near a dam.

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

#493

Post by wwww4all »

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…

Look at current society. Who wants to spend decades studying STEM and working for average salary these days?

Tik Tok stars and Twitch bros and ethots are making multi million dollars playing games.

This country can’t build a functioning high speed rail system, that other countries built 30 years ago. How can we build an airplane now?

Public school teachers and teachers unions are opposed to opening schools. They never cared about kids and education.

US is at bread and circuses stage of decline. Time to accept reality and deal with it appropriately.

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

#494

Post by antattack »

thu2111 wrote: post #420
antattack wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fi…

I think it boils down to this: F-35, compared to unmanned aircraft, does not cost less than 6 million dollars a piece and it exposes American life to enemy fire.

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

#495

Post by LegitShady »

LegitShady wrote: post #443
grecy wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many countries have far worse standards of care than the US. I'll need a citation for that. When a country has 29 million people without health insurance [1], and medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy, I think it's safe to say the average standard of care is way, way lower than Canada, Australia, Germany, etc. where literally every person gets care. [1] https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-f…

I think you have to actively ignore the last three sentences that I wrote to think this is a reasonable reply.

your reply to this comment is too many deep - I can't reply.

My reply is a sample size of one because I actively don't speak for other people, on purpose. That isn't a flaw in my argument, that's intentional. If there was one delay in a health procedure it wouldn't be of note. But there are lots of delays, and my doctor needs 2-3 months notice for an appointment, and only wants to discuss one thing per appointment so he can maintain the # of appointments he needs to do throughout a day by not making any one to long, and get paid again for another consult, and he's a good doctor (for real).

But again, you have to actively ignore the last 3 sentences of the post you replied to, for this to be a reasonable and in good faith response to what I wrote. I have no interest in engaging with people who don't read what I write, while telling me what I have to think.

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

#496

Post by sam_goody »

On the other hand (also posted today): https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/02/24/israeli...

So, Israel flies lots of pilot hours and seems to think that the plane is a good deal.

The F-35 failed in its original goal of being lightweight, but is perhaps fine in the new goal of being a modern fancy fighter that dominate the sky. In which case, it has pivoted to become a success.

To extend their analogy, if you live near the Autobahn you would use your Ferrari daily?

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

#497

Post by chrisco255 »

mgreenleaf wrote: post #453
nerdponx wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine if we put people to work building useful stuff instead of useless stuff. Power grid infrastructure, new bridges, new rail lines, etc.

I think this is really insightful. Misallocation of resources is what eventually brings down economies. There are lots of bright people around, but corruption can drain a lot of talent.

Perhaps the problem is that the government has too much of a role in allocating resources in our economy as it stands. Maybe the military-industrial complex had some cool things for the first couple decades of its existence, but as the decades went on, it became a rusty, slower version of its old self as bureaucratic creep and complacency set in. Now it seems hard to disrupt that, like what tends to happen in the non-monopolized private sector.

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

#498

Post by throwanem »

015a wrote: post #457
dalbasal wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broad statements like Thiel's shouldn't be taken too literally. I don't think the main point is the broad statement about the trends themselves. The main point is the classification: Flying Cars vs 140 Characters or Bits vs Atoms. FB is worth almost $1trn. No real technical achievements or advancement. If fb didn't exist, something else would be the friendster. Tesla, Apple, MSFT, Google, etc. are closer to the flyin…

> Ancient civilizations managed to build incredible aqueduct systems, public buildings, etc. We've regressed. This feels like an extreme take. (Most) Every city in America has a functional clean water delivery network. Every city has electricity. Most cities have sewage. Most cities have very nice paved roads. This is billions of miles of pipes, wires, roads, bridges, dams... Billions. And you're comparing what the U…

Nitpick because I used to live there: the Memphis Pyramid, aside from being a miserable goddamned eyesore, is actually an arena. I think if anything that would make it more legible to a lot of ancient cultures, which also took sport seriously and invested heavily in their own venues for it. Bass Pro Shops just pays upkeep to put their logo on it, just like with every other stadium in the country - Camden Yards here in Baltimore has gone through probably five or six such sponsors in the two decades I've lived here.

(It's not even a miserable goddamned eyesore on account of being monumental! If they'd faced it in basalt or nitrided steel, it could be an amazing excrescence of the Blade Runner aesthetic into reality, and I'd love it. But, in a literally blinding display of architectural tastelessness, they had to go and make it reflective...)

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

#499

Post by greedo »

hef19898 wrote: post #277
grecy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really suggesting that throwing away a booster worth many tens of millions of dollars is more economically feasible than reusing it? Elon makes it pretty clear in this tweet it's very financially sound to bring back a booster "Payload reduction due to reusability of booster & fairing is https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?lang...

There were mutiple reason, citing from top of my head as I don't find he old paper anymore. Reasons were: - Reliability and insurance costs - limited number of launches - refurbishment costs of boosters ompared to new ones - heavier and more expensive boosters to make them reusable This paper was way before SpaceX tried that. And whther or not reusable boosters are really a financial success is impossible to tell wit…

If you're seriously arguing that F9 reuse is not a financial success, then you're not paying attention. Flight insurers "like" the F9 since it has proven itself reliable. Otherwise you're arguing that SpaceX is either a welfare queen, or a ponzi scheme.

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

#500

Post by IggleSniggle »

Judgmentality wrote: post #138
IggleSniggle wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that this is justification of failure. If anything, it’s the opposite. We failed in our goal. We also learned and developed things of real value while pursuing that goal. This is salvaging what can be salvaged to make headway in an adjacent goal. That said... > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking. Sometimes the goal is, itself, a failur…

> We failed in our goal. Simply by admitting this, you've already contradicted the person I was responding to. His entire scribe is "what is failure? have we really failed? no" instead of "yeah we failed, but we can learn from it" Failure is fine. Failure is expected. Failure is the best way to learn an iterate. But then don't say "well we always got what we wanted out of it anyway, which was to learn" when your goal…

I didn't get the same thing out of the comment you were responding to...but I otherwise agree with you entirely:

> Failure is fine. Failure is expected. Failure is the best way to learn an iterate.

and

> don't say "well we always got what we wanted out of it anyway, which was to learn" when your goal was "to build the ultimate fighter jet at this budget in this timeline"

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