Hacker News Reader

Comment by okket | Hacker News Reader

Original source: "F-35 Continues to Stumble"

http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues...

> When Lockheed Martin first won the contract 17 years ago, the F-35 was expected to begin operational testing in 2008. Once they failed to meet that, 2017 was supposed to be the big year for the start of the combat testing process. We now know that this process will almost certainly be delayed until 2019…and possibly 2020.

Wow. I did not realize it had been in development for so long.

> The scale of the challenge yet remaining with the F-35 is easily quantified in this year’s DOT&E analysis. According to the report, the F-35 still has 276 “Critical to Correct” deficiencies—these must be fixed before the development process ends because they could “lead to operational mission failures during IOT&E or combat.” Of the 276, 72 were listed as “priority 1,” which are service-critical flaws that would prevent the services from fielding the jets until they are fixed.

I'm not an expert on designing fighter jets, but that sounds bad.

> The problem is bad enough that Lt. Gen. Bogdan has admitted the F-35C will need an entirely redesigned outer wing.

Will someone more knowledgeable tell me just how bad this is? I do know a bit about defense contractors and missiles (I worked at a defense contractor for a hot minute as an engineer), but this just sounds like a clusterfuck of epic proportions. The cynic in me believes the congressional-military-industrial complex has run wild in order to maintain cash flow.

There was a 2 hour NOVA about the Boeing vs Lockheed competition back in 2002/2003, looks like it's on YouTube

https://youtu.be/B7-LQDueYlk

Official video instead of a repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014954

I haven't kept up on the F-35 lately. But this is a jet made of compromises. The Pentagon knew they couldn't get funding for multiple new jets. The F-35 is trying to do to much by being a jet for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. So they combined all the requirements for the specification. Combining the requirements of the Air Force and Navy probably isn't so bad. The Marines requirement of the F-35 being VTOL capable is holding the design back. I accept that VTOL is a key requirement for the Marines, but the F-35 has made a lot of trade offs for that feature. While I don't know how successful the F-35 would be without VTOL, it has to be better then what is being delivered.

Most of what you wrote is wrong. There are three versions, the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C for the AF, Marines and Navy respectively. The three split a long time ago, so no version is holding any other back.

Where things aren't so good is that the three versions were originally supposed to have over 80% parts commonality. That is now down to something like 20%. That is bad in terms of economies of scale.

All that said, in principle there is absolutely nothing preventing a single, mostly common, design from filling those three roles. Whether the F-35 team has done an exemplary job of doing that is certainly a question.

In terms of sheer engineering, it can be argued that the F-35B is the most impressive of the three versions. It's the first supersonic VTOL fighter ever.

From a Bloomberg article* yesterday: "The lift fan made the common fuselage bulkier than it otherwise would have been. That, in turn, increased drag and decreased fuel efficiency and range."

This quote from the article reinforces my view that the VTOL requirement does effect the other version of the F-35.

* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-04/is-the-f-...

I remember reading about the F-35's catastrophic problems and cost over runs on slashdot when I was in highschool. I'm nearly 30 years old now. It seemed like an unsalvageable boondoggle back then. Glad the government appears to have pulled it out and made it a success!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com