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

921–930 of 1001 posts

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

#921

Post by greedo »

tored wrote: post #852
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US does have a problem with building civil engineering projects today, that dynamic isn't really what happened with the F-35. The root of the F-35 program's problems is a cost plus style contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun on cost and time table. Ash Carter fixed that by telling Lockheed if they didn't agree to his new contract he'd kill the entire thing. And oh hey what a surprise sudden…

F-35 is far from excellent and it had many engineering problems like massive software problems, fire hazards, structural weakness, engine problems, heating, high noise, low range, etc. It failed to replace existing fleet of fighters, like the F-16, and on ground support, like the A10. That is not excellence. All of the engineering problems of the F-35 have been well known from the early days of the project, I know be…

The only thing embarrassing about the F-22 was the decision to terminate production at 187 aircraft. The F-22 was and is an excellent aircraft, perhaps a bit ahead of its time in terms of need, but to call it an embarrassment doesn't have much accuracy.

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

#922

Post by wycy »

cgearhart wrote: post #419
wycy wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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…

A month for review is an achievable-but-best-case scenario for projects that need to get out the door ASAP, but its not unusual for these reports to be in review for many months. I know of one project report that's been "in review" since 2015.

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

#923

Post by imtringued »

sokoloff wrote: post #566
crazygringo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your points are certainly common ones, but unfortunately they rely on three major misunderstandings. The first is that all the "cool shit" we built in the first half of the century was the low-hanging fruit of new scientific understandings and materials. It's not that we were smarter, it's nothing to do with toxicity, it's just that we exhausted most of what you can easily do with nuclear, steel, engines, etc…

Flying cars marry terrible airplanes with terrible cars. I’m not sure what would cause that general rule to be broken, but the demands of crash safety for cars add a lot of weight and weight is the killer negative metric for aircraft.

If you're going to fly do you really need the car to be highway worthy? A flying car that goes up to 30 mph could be acceptable.

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

#925

Post by neycoda »

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 think dropping nukes on people is cool shit? I think doing that is literally toxic.

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

#926

Post by ElectronCharge »

tored wrote: post #852
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the US does have a problem with building civil engineering projects today, that dynamic isn't really what happened with the F-35. The root of the F-35 program's problems is a cost plus style contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun on cost and time table. Ash Carter fixed that by telling Lockheed if they didn't agree to his new contract he'd kill the entire thing. And oh hey what a surprise sudden…

F-35 is far from excellent and it had many engineering problems like massive software problems, fire hazards, structural weakness, engine problems, heating, high noise, low range, etc. It failed to replace existing fleet of fighters, like the F-16, and on ground support, like the A10. That is not excellence. All of the engineering problems of the F-35 have been well known from the early days of the project, I know be…

The F-35 is a combined development and low rate production program. Whether that was wise is a discussion, but it’s unsurprising that the current plane isn’t perfect. It is a LOT more perfect than the first versions though! That accounts for most of your complaints, except for noise which is unavoidable with the most powerful single engine to date.

You also might want to consider its extremely good flight record. Until recently there hadn’t been a single crash.

The software issue isn’t great (I blame C++ to an extent) but it’s also improving. The plane is now certified for many different weapons systems.

With stealth as great of a game-changer as it is, the incremental cost of the F-35 isn’t much. Developing a new fighter that pretty well duplicates the F-35 except for stealthy materials probably isn’t worth the cost. The F-35A cost keeps dropping...

As to not replacing “existing fleet of fighters”, that sure isn’t what the pilots are saying. So far it’s been well over 10-1 kill ratios against Gen 4 airframes at all Red Flag type competitions.

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

#927

Post by misiti3780 »

greens wrote: post #905
misiti3780 wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think the "mass-murder of civilians like it's some sort of triumph", although I can see the way I wrote it sounds like that is what I mean (and I cannot edit it because of HN). Quit assuming bad faith in my comment. Why on earth would I think that ? I meant that we discovered fission and then we built a bomb in under 6 years. Even if you disagree with the outcome of what happen in Japan, the Manhattan Project…

Ok, sorry for assuming bad faith and ranting. Still, I think it's pretty hard to compare engineering achievements like this. Is it harder to make a fission bomb in 6 years with 1940s technology, or a COVID vaccine in 1 year with 2020s technology? Also, I seems like we could be having this conversation in 1940 about an american battleship program.

No problem!

The COVID vaccine was an achievement, without a doubt, but i still think we need time to see how effective it will be as the virus mutates and make sure there are no long term side affects. If the vaccines achieve herd immunity ends the pandemic then history will be very kind to it and the scientists that created it.

One thought is the actual creating of the vaccine must have been considerable less complicated than the atom bombs if it was really created in one day.

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

#928

Post by acdha »

misiti3780 wrote: post #927
greens wrote: post #905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, sorry for assuming bad faith and ranting. Still, I think it's pretty hard to compare engineering achievements like this. Is it harder to make a fission bomb in 6 years with 1940s technology, or a COVID vaccine in 1 year with 2020s technology? Also, I seems like we could be having this conversation in 1940 about an american battleship program.

No problem! The COVID vaccine was an achievement, without a doubt, but i still think we need time to see how effective it will be as the virus mutates and make sure there are no long term side affects. If the vaccines achieve herd immunity ends the pandemic then history will be very kind to it and the scientists that created it. One thought is the actual creating of the vaccine must have been considerable less compli…

It’s only less complicated if you exclude the years of research into the techniques and we’re seeing delays manufacturing because those are not easy to scale. This work started in the 2000s so I think it’d be closer to thinking of how long it took to build a bomb after you had developed the physics, built the mines and processing systems, etc. To me it really highlights how easy it is for us to forget how much science depends on less publicized work - there must have been hundreds of people whose careers went into the manufacturing techniques alone.

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

#929

Post by imtringued »

konjin wrote: post #474
cool_dude85 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to rip the government off to stave off inflation? How's inflation been looking, oh, these past 40 years or so?

I'm sure that the 50th time in the last 20 years I've heard we will have hyper inflation will be the time it happens. Any day now the house of cards build will fall and gold will be the only currency worth anything.

What makes you think that there will be a food shortage? The USA produces enough food to feed itself. It would take a war to destroy the food supply.

Hyperinflation isn't something a central bank is causing. It's a response to an underlying event. It happens precisely when the government has no choice but to print money.

Right now the US government has zero obligations that force it to produce more dollars. The stimulus packages are entirely voluntary and designed to help the economy and therefore reduce the need for future stimulus.

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

#930

Post by blaser-waffle »

goatinaboat wrote: post #868
myself248 wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oooo, that's profound. I ran across an interesting one earlier, understanding Maslow's Needs by negative example: We usually say that, when someone has food and shelter and safety, when they have friends and feel a sense of belonging, they can pursue higher stuff. And we know at some level that if someone is starving, they will do anything to find food -- civilized behavior goes out the window in that mode. But we fo…

understanding Maslow's Needs by negative example Those are usually called “hygiene factors” in the literature.

Aye, the most common I've seen being 2-factor hygiene approach to HR & Retention.

"Hygiene" for the record has nothing to do with deodorant, at least not per se, but instead the willingness to remove negative traits. However, just because you remove negative traits doesn't mean you have any positives. Just cuz you took a shower this morning, wear clean clothes, and trim your fingernails doesn't mean you're not an asshole, and that we should friends with you.

Same deal with jobs, cultures, etc. The work may be risky and dangerous, but if there are enough positives to outweigh those negatives, people might stick around. But even if you strip out the negatives, people will eventually float away from jobs that aren't fulfilling or that don't offer any positives.

Post reply on HN