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Comment by moftz | Hacker News Reader

Things like the Blackbird seem really amazing but whats out there now is even more amazing. It's crazy they were able to do all of that back then with just hand tools. But now you could design the same thing sooner, cheaper, and make the thing perform much better. Computers have really advanced what we can make. Just the software from 10 years ago seems crude to what you can do now. Not everything needs to be a big black stealth plane to appreciate technological progress.

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Why is the F-35 program such a disaster then? Honest question though I am sure the answer is feature creep and poor management

IMHO - because it wasn't built with a goal or a reason. The amazing tech builds of the 60s were each made to fill a need or meet a goal. The F-35, how many goals it that supposed to meet? Easily more than 10. And it isn't great at any of them, in its quest to be OK for all of them...

That's a major component and harbinger of a Dark Age, the loss of a functioning bureaucracy.

> functioning bureaucracy

Isn't that an oxymoron?

In case you aren't joking, it isn't at all. A highly functional bureaucracy allows a state to leverage scale in a way that less sophisticated governments just can't do. Infrastructure, military, R&D, and trade are all things that are hugely dependent upon a functioning bureaucratic state and crumble in the face of a non-functioning state.

And before that people complained about the various services having too many different projects dedicated to their own missions.

The F-35 seems to my non-expert eye to have been poorly conceived but creating a more versatile aircraft instead of a bunch of more specialized ones is not inherently a stupid idea.

When it comes to the military, top gun wins. A specialized gun will top a non-specialized one in a given combat situation, all else being equal. Of course, the F-35 will be a great general purpose weapon against far less advanced targets, but if they are pitted against their Russian and Chinese counterparts, I don't believe they will fare all that great.

F-35 don't have any Russian and Chinese counterparts. They're all in design stage.

China may get to the mass-produced stage, but that's stil debatable, since they have issues with their engines.

Yes, but is the F-35 a better interceptor than any of the contemporary fast jets that are in use by China or Russia?

It's not interceptor, it's a multi-role stealth fighter.

And still I'd say - yes, it's better.

Yes, but any multi use tool will never be as good as a separate specialised one, so the question is really 'how good do we want to be'.

And for a military aircraft I guess the answer will always be 'really good'.

I think this scene from the movie "Pentagon Wars" (1998) captures the idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

Unfortunately the movie is based on real events. If you haven't read it, I recommend "Boyd - The future pilot who changed the art of war". It's entertaining and valuable and full of stories like this we something simple and practical though feature creep was turned into a mess.

Of course the design of the APC in your clip is only the opening of the disaster. Once it got to testing before the actual acquisition things got even more ridiculous to the point that I think people should have clearly been prosecuted for reason. But as Boyd said: You can either do something or be someone.

It is a requirements clusterf*ck

Survivorship bias.

Did no technology programmes in the 60s fail or have limited success? All of them were complete triumphs?

it's actually a great success when you consider the true goal of the program, which is to spend taxpayer money

Watch the movie pentagon wars

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