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Comment by inamberclad | Hacker News Reader

> There soon turned out to be an essential flaw in the grand plan for a single plane that could do everything. Design specifications demanded by one branch of the military would adversely impact the F-35’s performance in another area. “It turns out when you combine the requirements of the three services, what you end up with is the F-35, which is an aircraft that is in many ways suboptimal for what each of the services really want,” said Todd Harrison, an aerospace expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It is much more expensive than originally envisioned, and the three versions of the plane actually don’t have that much in common.”

And nobody was surprised.

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I think the Navy and Air Force could have shared version with a lot in common. The Marines want VTOL and I understand that feature is important to the Marines. Unfortunately, the VTOL requirements have force compromises in the design. Without VTOL, I believe the Navy and Air Force would have ended up with a platform that was more acceptable then what they are getting.

In other words, nobody learned anything from the Space Shuttle program.

That and there was some other 1950's era fighter that they tried to make dual use and eventually the Navy convinced congress to put a stop to it. Which they could because during the cold war it wasn't just about funneling money to congressional districts.

Me I think the F35 is the 21st century equivalent of a battle ship.

I worked on the Comanche Helicopter program for a while, many years ago. The program was based on the same fundamental idea: create a helicopter that that could perform the roles of advanced armed reconnaissance and attack. The idea has a great deal of appeal. You could save on training pilots and maintenance crew. You could save on supply chain, and the cost of spare parts.

Unfortunately, coming up with a design that could effectively fill those roles was more than they could accomplish. Fortunately, the program was cancelled after spending ONLY $6.9 billion.

The question isn’t whether the compromises are bad but whether 2 or 3 different programs with the same budget as this single program would have done better. That’s possible but not at all as clear as “the F-35 is expensive and technically a compromise between too many different goals”.

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