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

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

#501

Post by thewarrior »

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…

The requirement specs for this plane seem crazy. It has to be as agile and fast as an F-22. It needs to do ground support like an A-10. It has to be able to do carrier missions and on top of that it has to take off and land vertically.

And yeah do all this while being cheap and maintainable. It’s basically a unicorn.

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

#502

Post by heelix »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #250
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…

I keep seeing people say this. Maybe flying cars just don’t make sense? Wheels work really well when your engine dies. Have you seen people drive in 2d space? You want to add a z axis? What’s the efficiency of a small plane? Surely not better than a Prius. Edit: I looked it up and a Cessna gets ~15 mpg.

The maths are about right for MPG. Time is what you (might) save. I'll get around that at cruise - 135kts or 155mph @ ~ 10gal/hour. Better fuel usage if you slow down a bit. Tempted to say if you slowed down to max Prius speeds on the autoban, the C182 might be more fuel efficient. I'm sure it gets 50mpg at 75mph, but doubt it gets that at 109mph.

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

#503

Post by johnzim »

sandworm101 wrote: post #454
johnzim wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument would be more persuasive if more countries actually met their recommended NATO spend. In reality it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Take for instance Germany. The federal republic increased their spend to $63.8b last year but that's still a shortfall of ~$27b relative to what a 2% spend would be. Aggressive estimates (above official estimates) of the UK's (a similar sized ally) spending on Afghanistan in 2…

Note that I did not mention germany, rather the US and canada, while the OP said "all of our allies". No two countries are ever the same. And NATO /= USA. There are lots of other organizations which would quality a country as an "ally" of the US other than NATO. Canada and the UK are linked to the US through numerous other organizations (eg NORAD).

Canada's defence spend last year was $22.2b

As they only met 1.31% of their 2% spend (which would be $37.5b) the shortfall is ~$15.3b annually.

Still sounds like a bargain.

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

#504

Post by 29athrowaway »

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…

Because Boeing is now ran by MBAs who want to maximize profit. A low cost F-35 means less money for Boeing in the short term.

What about the long term? Fuck the long term. It is all about quarters, and short term bonuses.

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

#505

Post by hansthehorse »

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…

The time from project start to first flight of the SR 71 was 47 months - with slide rules and manual drafting.

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

#506

Post by greedo »

dalbasal wrote: post #373
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…

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…

I'm no fan of FB, but to dismiss the value of a platform where you can reach 5B users is a mistake.

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

#507

Post by Groxx »

chmod600 wrote: post #361
notional wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just to expand on this a bit: "pork" as in "pork barrel": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel

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

#508

Post by paganel »

drewvolpe wrote: post #301
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…

NASA just successfully sent a helicopter to Mars. We developed two very effective vaccines using mRNA technology in a few months and had it through FDA trials in under a year. CAR T cell therapies (3 FDA approved and more coming) are changing how we treat cancer. There's amazing technology all around you.

We as a species were sending stuff to Mars and to Venus (which imho is a lot more interesting than Mars) back in the '70s and '80s, not that much novelty in recent events (even though I must admit the helicopter gimmick was interesting, until the novelty very quickly worn off, that is).

> had it through FDA trials in under a year.

That was by political decision, at least that is my understanding.

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

#509

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

centimeter wrote: post #421
tlogan wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want just to add that Peter Thiel is one of the reason why we cannot have / invent ‘cool stuff’. But he is also not wrong about what he saying: I’m just saying that it is not so simple.

How do you blame Thiel for bureaucratic bloat in the US government? NASA, the canonical example of a formerly productive organization becoming hopelessly turgid, was dysfunctional by the time he was a teenager.

Thiel believes that rent seeking monopolies are desirable and necessary to enable innovation. He's plainly wrong about that as a mater of economic science. Lockhead's use of regulatory capture to extract as much money as possible is directly in line with how Thiel thinks business should be done.

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

#510

Post by chrisco255 »

throwanem wrote: post #467
Analemma_ wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did: pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 (the F-35 dates from way before that). But as it turns out, the cure was almost as bad as the disease. Getting rid of pork has accelerated hyper-partisanship and dysfunctional gridlock, because without it there's no incentive to ever try to reach a deal with the other side instead of digging in on no-compromise radicalism to please your base.

> pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 Is there a longer discussion of this that you can link somewhere? I remember the phrase as a derogatory commonplace in adults' political discussion when I was a child, but the concept seems to have drifted out of the discourse since, and having now had my attention drawn to its absence I'd be interested to find out more about why.

There's definitely still pork. I mean, look at how many pet projects were included in Covid relief funding. Pork is the idea of stuffing an unrelated project to benefit your local district or state (and thus, the politician's reelection chances) into a bigger bill that is unrelated to that expense. Like the most famous one was the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost $400 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
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