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Comment by ljf | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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'.

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