Hacker News Reader

Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

This seems to me a bit like a kid begging their parents for a Neo Geo. The parents don't want to, of course, because it's horribly expensive, and not that useful, and their kid already has a Super Nintendo and a Turbografx 16, and doesn't actually need any more video game systems, and probably shouldn't even be playing so many video games in the first place. And the kid's mode of argument is to just keep reminding them, increasingly loudly, how awesome the Neo Geo is.

Obviously, it's not a perfect analogy. One difference is that, in this case, everyone involved is a grown-up.

View on HN

That's my criticism of the F-35 as well. I don't know anything about fighter planes, but as a taxpayer it just seems way to expensive.

Denmark is buying 27 F-35. That not nearly enough to do anything meaningful against an enemy like Russia. Buying a plane, like the SAAB JAS 39 Gripen, would have allowed the Danish Airforce to do basically the same operations, for much much less money. The Danish airforce isn't going to intercept Russian fighters. The missions are patrol and bombings for NATO.

For a country like the US, sure, maybe the F-35 is something they need for the type of missions they fly. I just can see any country do anything with 27 planes. 27 is less planes than an aircraft carrier has.

F-35 is far more capable than the Gripen and only costs around twice as much.

In a war with Russia, there is no amount of fighter planes that would keep Denmark safe. Russia has nuclear weapons. Denmark is just too small to do it without the rest of NATO. Buying the F-35 maybe helps coordination with other NATO countries?

The cost for an F18 is about 70 million in 2017[0]. The cost for a F35 is about 85 million in 2020[1], probably more than that because future estimates are always low. That's ignoring how much more useful an F35 is.

Once economies of scale kick in, it doesn't seem that much more expensive. There was supposed to be a more comprehensive review of the F35 vs older platforms, I'd love for someone more knowledgeable to chime in with an apples to apples comparison.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-updated-f18-comparabl...

[1]: https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/feb/07/do...

Idk, you could go with the gripen, But tbh even Sweden thinks it's a joke. Ask anyone about it and you'll hear a lot of jokes about how they are great at attacking the ground (crashing). The same types of "why the F35 and not gripen" points came up when Norway got them. The answer is a combination of NATO + the fact that, especially compared to the gripen, the F35 is the better choice. Multipurpose, easily deployed in multiple arms of military, can hold payloads for any mission type, etc. Sure it would be quite poetic to have Denmark pay Sweden for swedish planes but I don't see it happening soon.

> "why the F35 and not gripen"

Among other things, this question seems like a simple misunderstanding of prices.

The unit cost of the F-35A is $80M, while a top-end Gripen costs a fairly similar $60M. When Denmark did look at buying the Gripen, it requested upgrades to power and payload (already satisfied by the F-35) that could easily have made up the remaining price gap. Maintenance and flight costs are substantially higher for the F-35 also, but that's relatively manageable for a country that doesn't expect regular deployments and a large supply of spares for their fleet.

It's the development cost where the F-35 comes in at more than 10x the price of the Gripen, which is largely irrelevant to small buyers ordering a finished product. Denmark did end up contributing to the F-35 development costs, but only about the cost of another plane, $110M. And in return, they stand to compete for parts-development contracts which wouldn't have been available for the Gripen.

I do worry that there is opportunity for massive "disruption" for fighter jets in precisely the Clayton Christensen / Innovator's dilemma sense.

The innovation shouldn't be around stealth and maneuverability, but rather production cost/rate and AI automation. It is really hard to train a fighter pilot, this means you have very few of them, and the one with the best jet wins.

In the new world of AI the jets themselves are trivial, it's the AI that matters and the VOLUME you can produce them at. In this case someone like China is way better positioned -- just steal the IP for the physical airframe (or develop one that is just good enough) then innovate on the assembly line and AI aspects.

The AI fighter jet problem feels much easier than the self driving car problem.

This kind of overlooks that the cost of the aircraft isn't entirely in the original production and (possible) training of pilots. They also require a large ground team burning several man-hours for every hour that they are in the air. The problem with the mass AI fighter drone scenario is that the logistics chain and maintenance costs kill you.

Except that the drones themselves can be much simpler than the fighters they replace - there is no meatware inside, no life support or safety equipment that needs to be maintained and checked. With enough intelligence built in, the drone can land with a very detailed list of items that need maintenance because of performance anomalies.

Plus, the AI can be augmented by a human on the ground.

That life support stuff has to be replaced by automation, so "much simpler" is probably stretching it. Plus you're talking about adding in a bunch of sensors and software which is even more complexity (IE things that will break or go wrong). The exploding complexity problem is a pernicious one.

If the sensors and computers that manage the control surfaces of any modern fighter fail, the plane crashes anyway, so they still need to be there. Not having to route everything to the cockpit can simplify design and improve ruggedness.

A lot of the resistance against this comes from the fact robots don't get medals.

> so "much simpler" is probably stretching it.

What if you used AI to design the airframe itself, optimising for the simplest and least expensive way?

Totally. Just the HUD systems on the F-35 cost tens of millions of dollars.

My thought is that there is just ZERO innovation in this area at a big picture level. Sure the person designing the radar has a PhD from Caltech -- but it's mostly incremental optimization of individual components.

Someone is going to figure out how to be the Elon Musk of fighter jets and we better hope it's going to be someone from the USA.

But again -- it doesn't matter how good your tech is if the next person can do it 85% as good for 20% the price.

My last major point is this: Fighter jets are limited in their maneuverability when they have humans on-board -- they can't pull more G's than the body can withstand. AI fighters don't have this limitation.

> That's my criticism of the F-35 as well. I don't know anything about fighter planes, but as a taxpayer it just seems way to expensive.

Not just expensive, that money is going to the US. We (the Netherlands) will also buy a bunch of F35's, but we can't afford enough of them to be useful. We could have bought Eurofighters, the money would have remained in Europe's economy and we would have an actually finished plane.

From what I read in this thread, Denmark and Belgium also bought about 30-40 each. Those numbers start to add up.

I wouldn’t be so quick to declare that Danish fighters couldn’t intercept Russian planes. While I’m not well versed in the relative merits of the F-35 vs. their MiG equivalents, massively one sided engagements are quite common in air battles. If you told me that some F-35s decisively won a battle and some Gripens were completely destroyed I would not be surprised one bit.

I am no expert either but it could be about platform integration and partially because to be in good graces so that US still has an incentive underwriting security of Europe.

> I don't know anything about fighter planes

Then where does your opinion on this subject come from?

> I just can't see any country do anything with 27 planes.

All else aside, the Danish Air Force has 30 active fighters, all F-16s. Their fighter force doesn't ever seem to have exceeded 50 planes in service. So the role for 27 F-35s is "everything F-16s are doing now, but newer and better". That doesn't guarantee it's a useful role, but it means that the small order size isn't a new consideration.

I wouldn't assume everyone involved is a grown-up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com