The F-35 may be unsalvageable | Hacker News Reader

The F-35 may be unsalvageable

thehill.com

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While it might be a failure from the taxpayer's and military's point of view, it's a raving success for Congress and the contractors. The metrics for the latter are jobs, grandstanding, campaign donations, kickbacks, crony benefits, and mountains of cash, plus guaranteed more mountains ongoing until it's killed.

I wish this was the cynical view but it's more like reality of government procurement.

How much harm did those fellows do, and how much all communist spies/saboteurs/subversives/seditionists combined did?

Not exactly a new problem.

> It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. - Twain

This is a waste of jobs though. The only reason why you want to wastefully spend money on jobs creation is that you somehow discover new things in the process, you are building up a workforce that will work on productive things after they completed the boondoggle or you just want to hit inflation goals.

I'd say the F-35 fails at all three. It's just a slightly cheaper F-22 that can be exported, the work was handed to existing companies for the sake of politics instead of creating new ones, the project is decades old and failed to hit inflation goals.

Your presumption that F-35 is a delivery vehicle is flawed. It may be an unconventional capability codename.

If creating jobs is so important, why not simply create those jobs in other areas? There's plenty of infrastructure in dire need of maintainance.

getting a bridge fixed isn't shiny.

A good portion of the voters are okay with government spending on military versus “bad” guys, with almost no limit, but the same voters balk at other government spending, decrying it for waste or corruption or inefficiency, etc.

The tribe opens up their wallet anytime they feel threatened, but not to help each other, to make sure no other sub-tribe is getting a disproportionate portion of the help (and/or to maintain their own sub-tribe continuing to get a disproportionate portion of the help).

> "but the same voters balk at other government spending, decrying it for waste or corruption or inefficiency, etc."

Oh, the irony.

Sadly, the candidates I trust to spend federal money wisely get trounced in every election.

Government is always inefficient, even in the rare cases where it's not utterly corrupt. As Bill Buckley famously put it, "What would happen if the Communists occupied the Sahara? Answer: Nothing—for 50 years. Then there would be a shortage of sand."

Are you aware that Dubai imports sand? It's not communism they've got there, though. More a sort of feudalism, I think.

Anyway, government is only inefficient if you want it to be. If you keep voting for corrupt grifters that waste money, that's what you get. There are plenty of examples of government being fairly efficient.

In the US, the Republican Party has been preaching the evils of government for decades, and when in power, they've made sure that they were correct about it. They made it a self-fulfilling prophesy.

I don't know, what you say about the voters may be true, but I'm not convinced. We see a lot of politicians and media personalities making these kind of statements but how often do we hear an average voter expressing such opinions ?

It can be pretty harmful (politically) to express such opinions on the record, but I infer based on actions. I most easily see it in the efforts which people will go through to make sure their kids get "ahead".

I would characterize it as a general trait of people being happy with growth for everyone, as long as their piece of the growth remains consistent and stays ahead of the growth of those at or below them in society. Once the ordering starts getting disturbed, then people get tribal very quickly.

I'm assuming this is a general trait present in many species that live in groups.

Politicians want steady employment within their own district. Having a contractor or supplier for the F-35 serves this purpose well, while infrastructure work is much more temporary and spread out.

Military spending is a jobs/makework program that's politically acceptable to conservatives. They wouldn't support spending that same amount of many on other things, even far more useful things.

The acceptable socialism

Unfortunately the military is the most trusted institution in the US. Why I don't understand? People will scream about reducing military spending but scream about increase in other things.

Its funny however since most people in the US are against the wars now also.

The numbers on this are pretty paradoxical. The majority of people want the wars to end but also keep up military spending.

I'd argue that three distinct aircraft could have accomplished that goal better too (as they could be assembled in different places by different companies, with different US-based suppliers).

The F-35's initial "share parts" goal was good. But feature creep and overall complexity in the project weren't controlled, and now with hindsight we would have been better off with multiple task-specific aircraft even if that meant little parts sharing.

I think in particular the Marines design was too much of a stretch from the start. VTOL just makes for a totally different aircraft. The differences between the land and carrier versions are much smaller.

Yeah. The F-4 was fine for the Navy and Air Force, but the VTOL was a step too far.

No, the f4 could do the job, but it wasn’t fine.

Making more than 5,000 was probably good indicator of its value.

Read what Boyd had to say about it. It was of value to MD and GE, but a good fighter it wasn't. Nor was it a good bomb truck. It kinda did both, but not well.

The DoD of course, followed it on with the F-111 (thanks McNamara!) that tried to do everything, but the only effective thing it really did was to cause the Soviets to build the MIG-23 and waste a bunch of cash on that.

A lot of politics go into deciding what gets adopted, which leads to some very questionable aircraft getting adopted in large numbers. The F-104 was effectively forced onto a lot of European countries (particularly Germany) and mostly succeeded in killing lots of pilots.

Indeed, they called it the lawn dart :D It was used in the netherlands too.

I don't know why they even wanted an interceptor. I suppose the soviets were still a thing. But a handful of F-104s wouldn't have stopped them.

In the Netherlands there was also a huge corruption scandal involving the queen's husband who was paid to lobby on Lockheed's behalf.

The underlying concept of the program(1) was bad from the start, but to top it off, the thing can't fight:

(TL;DR: the plane is in a catch-22 of not having enough range when it carries enough weapons and not having enough weapons when it has enough range - you can't load dirty and fly high in contested airspace, you'll get shot right down, and if you load clean you won't have enough range to engage safely or the numbers to do so effectively)

* 1000 NM radius is not enough for SE Asia, at all, certainly not for defended airspace. Flying dirty (unstealthed), it flies LOLO for terrain masking, and now you're lucky to get 500 NM. * persnickety: pre-chilled fuel; exotic conditioned electricals; 30,000 dollar CPFH + regionally specific MDF for the active LO systems * Can't stealth mount BRU-61 * Can't mount AARGM-ER/AGM-88G, AIM-260 JATM, JAGM-F, SPEAR 3, JSM, APKWS, AGM-183 ARRW, AGM-158C/D LRASM/JASSM-XR, SACM/CUDA/PEREGRINE, Hammer/Hatchet at all * Can't supersonic launch missiles because no supercruise * So now subtract 30% from your missile range - a lot of power to make a shock cone that fast. * 8 seconds (A), 16 seconds (B) and 43 seconds (C) over KPP requirement for missile sprint, during the run up to IOT&E and OPEVAL. This is super duper bad. * 4 AMRAAMS internal, and you need 3 to guarantee a kill in ECM environment. Take more than 4 and you fly low, halving the combat radius if you're lucky. * APG-81, MADL, stealth coatings were pirated in the late aughts, compromised * Offtopic, but they're not helping with the "Show The Flag" forward presence parades up and down the "Black Ditch". Free handout to PRC tech exploit teams hanging out on the trawlers sniffing all the ELINT. * Etc etc etc etc this could go on for some time, like the logistics system that's already forcing ground crews to cannibalize the few jets they have.

(1) VTOL? VTOL!? Have you not noticed that the most practical form of VTOL is a hundred knot airframe WITH A GIANT FRICKIN FAN ON TOP? Also, since when is your fighter aircraft the most expensive one? They're supposed to be disposable for gods sakes.

Yeah, even in the cynical view that it's a spending program, you can still end up with more or less capability and might as well shoot for more.

The F-35 was trying to share more than just parts, but an entire airframe. Sharing parts is "normal", LRUs are designed to standard forms (both in connectors as well as physical box size, shape, and weight) on purpose. This allows them to use the same box in a variety of aircraft to cover the common subsystems.

A greater emphasis on these modular components being flexible enough to meet each mission need while permitting each service to get its own tailored airframe would have been the best option. Instead the F-35 program office has the population of a small town on its own who all have to coordinate in harmony (hah!) with each other and the customers who have very different actual wants and needs. Divide that into 3+ airframe program offices (of reasonable sizes) with proper focus on their customer, and one larger program office that oversees the various LRU and other components and this alternate F-35 family of aircraft could have been successful (at least some of them, even if, say, you end up trying to build 5 planes and only 3 really meet their goals, that's better than the F-35 which doesn't work for any of its users).

Even in the software design biz, factoring often looks easier on paper. Small-scale modules and components usually have a better reuse record in my observation because you can mix, match, change, and drop them as needed per project: you can date components without being forced to marry them. F-35 is a marriage made in Hell.

>> While it might be a failure from the taxpayer's and military's point of view, it's a raving success for Congress and the contractors. The metrics for the latter are jobs, grandstanding, campaign donations, kickbacks, crony benefits, and mountains of cash, plus guaranteed more mountains ongoing until it's killed.

> I wish this was the cynical view but it's more like reality of government procurement.

> I'd argue that three distinct aircraft could have accomplished that goal better too (as they could be assembled in different places by different companies, with different US-based suppliers).

Which I think is proof that the GP is wrong. If all Congress wanted to do was spend cash to create jobs, they could have done better than the F-35.

I think Congress and the military were honestly trying to save money by building the F-35, by getting more bang for their buck by filling more roles with it. It's just that they failed at that. Some people can't help but assuming malice when incompetence is a far better explanation.

Lockheed spread the work around to make it more politically difficult to kill, but that was for their own profit-seeking reasons.

Reminds me of the Space Shuttle, which was meant to be a combination people mover, freighter, and a construction machine. All while being reusable. The US space program is only just recovering.

Multiple roles is hard when your biggest enemy is weight.

Don't forget that after the cancellation of the earlier Space Station (the ISS came much later) the "Shuttle" had no place to shuttle things to. Even after decades, the Shuttle never came even remotely close to its cost, reuse, and turnaround time targets. On top of that, two of them blew up, accounting for 14 deaths, a figure that is 100% of all actual in-flight spaceflight deaths. By any rational measure, the Shuttle cannot be considered anything other than a failure.

> 100% of all actual in-flight spaceflight deaths.

How do you measure this?

The USSR had deaths, including hitting the ground because parachutes didn’t open with Soyuz 1 and from faulty equipment causing asphyxiation during flight on Soyuz 11.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_1

I assume GP is talking about US space programs only.

That the Space Shuttle was the only US space program with in-flight fatalities is significant.

That the USSR had fatalities in its own programs as well seems less relevant. It makes sense to compare US programs to US programs. Comparing US to USSR programs makes less sense.

> That the Space Shuttle was the only US space program with in-flight fatalities is significant.

It seems less significant and more of an artificial and meaningless distinction to avoid avoid space programs with launchpad fatalities in space vehicles and make the Shuttle falsely unique.

The Shuttle also accounts for the vast majority of US manned space flights (only a few less total missions than Russia Soyuz.)

Technically Soyuz 1's fatality wasn't "in-flight"; the cosmonaut survived all the way to Earth.

Shuttle is responsible for 100% of American launched in-flight space flight deaths. Ha!

Shuttle is also responsible for 100% of American launched flights after a certain point.

That’s like saying ICE cars are responsible for 100% of car deaths after the model T and before modern electric cars.

Also, you appear to have forgotten Russian casualties and ground rocket deaths.

I'm not sure it's recovering at all, given the fact that SLS is just rummaging around in the Shuttle parts bin try and build a 'new' rocket.

He's talking about SpaceX.

>> and now with hindsight

Just to point out, back then with foresight there were plenty of people saying "this is a bad idea". The GAO found numerous issues as early as 2005 with the F35 (even earlier, as the article mentions, if you go back to the JSF), and I feel like I haven't gone more than a year without seeing yet another report of problems.

I kind of wonder if parts of the program would be useful, i.e. make a "platform" like the fighter plane version of React.js or Swift UI and manufacturers and plug and play a new airplane out of the tech developed for it?

As a US military veteran that now does software at a large defense contractor the whole culture offends me to my core.

The US Govt, taxpayers, and military service members are getting hosed- especially on the software side of things.

Care to elaborate?

It's difficult to separate the issues with the programs that I have worked on and the industry as a whole but I will try. I get a sense that the govt pays $10 for $1 of work. The other $9 is lost to bloated outdated process.

You often see these companies avoid investing in themselves unless they can charge it to the government.

This culture extends to contracts as well. If the government doesn't pay for unit tests then they aren't getting unit tested software. Known bugs don't get fixed unless the government pays for it. The government can require static analysis but then not require the findings to be fixed. It's as if these companies treat the government as an adversary.

There is little to no incentive to deliver a good product- just enough to pass the requirements, check a box, and dump it on the customer.

We have known about this approach to software for decades- the Defense Innovation Board has been sounding the alarm about losing ground due to outdated software processes in the defense industry:

https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/01/2002126691/-1/-1/0/SWA...

I really like their suggestion to make software source code a deliverable. That way the government can own the code, build from source, apply security fixes, audit, etc.

With all respect, do you feel odd about benefiting personally from a system you despise?

No.

As pointed out in the article, ”According to a map showing the economic impact across the country on Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II website, the only states that do not have at least one supplier for the aircraft are Hawaii and North Dakota. This gives all but two representatives and four senators more than enough incentive to not only keep greasing the wheels,[...]”

https://www.f35.com/f35/about/economic-impact.html

This is a US government jobs program, first and foremost. Just like SLS.

Exactly. And this specifically contributed to its failure because it assured a "boil the ocean" project couldn't be "nipped in the bud" easily. It was intentional to distribute the design and manufacturing among as many Congressional districts and states as possible, but this ALSO is exactly the recipe for failure in any large project (especially an engineering project like JSF) both technically, politically and in terms of systems engineering and project management.

While there are certainly issues, the issues are more with the procurement process than the actual aircraft.

Virtually every single aircraft program has been flogged by the press for being too expensive and less capable than the aircraft it replaced. This included the F-111, the C-5, the F-14, the F-15, the B-1, the F-16, the A-10, the F-18, the C-17, the B-2, the V-22, the F-22, and now the F-35. Overall the track record for these aircraft turned out to be outstanding, far exceeding the capabilities of their predecessors.

The actual track record for the F35 has been very positive. Most the reports I've seen from pilots are generally very positive [1].

Other countries continue to buy it over other platforms [2].

Most the major complaints are around costs compared to the aircraft that are being replaced, but this isn't a fair comparison.

As for the cost to fly the F-35, a unit measure the Air Force terms “cost per flying hour,” today the F-35 costs around $35,000 per flying hour. Comparative aircraft in this class are generally in the mid $20,000s, a target the F-35 is slated to hit by 2025. However, it must also be remembered, as the F-35 pilot’s above comment highlights, far fewer F-35s can accomplish far more with fewer aircraft than legacy aircraft types. It does not require a math major to understand this yields far lower real-world total costs to achieve a particular mission result. [3]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/italian-pilots-raved-about-f...

[2] https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/5/24/i...

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davedeptula/2020/07/20/f-35-pro...

Wow, the F-14, F-15, F-16, and F-18 were all first flown in the 70's. The F-35 was 2006. It's easy to see some of the motivation for the F-35: there were a silly number of fighter models built in that decade.

My recollection is that the only aspect of the F-22 people screamed about was the price.

Which now looks like damn near a bargain compared to the financial black hole that the F-35 has turned into.

Um, what? F22 program cost about $334 million per aircraft and is roughly $60k per hour of flight.

F-35 is a comparative bargain at $95 million and $35k/hour.

> Um, what? F22 program cost about $334 million per aircraft and is roughly $60k per hour of flight.

> F-35 is a comparative bargain at $95 million and $35k/hour.

But that might not be a fair comparison. IIRC, the F-22 project was ended far earlier than originally planned, so development costs were amortized over far fewer planes.

According to Wikipedia, there were only 187 non-test F-22s built in total (out of an originally planned 750) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor), but there are already "620+" F-35s and production continues (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...).

The big complaint now about the F-35 (and the goalposts keep shifting) is the cost per flight hour. This should get better as the Air Force trains more maintainers, and LockMart actually starts to provide the level of parts/supplies they are contractually obligated.

And one day the maintenance software might even work instead of being constant worry

Apples to oranges. The last block of F22s had a flyaway cost of $137 million.[1] At the F35A volume of 1000+ the costs would not be majorly different.

[1] https://archive.is/aPCca

Wasn't the F-22 actually good at something, though?

From what I get the F-22 is still the best air superiority fighter.

Well the B-2 definitely was and still is too expensive with its ultra-sensitive coatings :)

But a lot of the others you mention did complete on budget. The extreme cost overruns are a relatively recent thing.

"Many of the F-16's past problems are mirror images of the issues we see in the F-35. According to the article, the Air Force expected the F-16's research and development costs rose by some $7 billion to reach $13.8 billion by 1986.... The fly-by-wire mechanism of the F-16, in which an aerodynamically unstable but highly maneuverable aircraft was tamed by computers to keep it flying, was an expensive problem that was eventually solved. Like the F-35, the F-16 had problems with its engine and also had to be modified to placate U.S. allies who wanted a fighter capable of air-to-ground missions, a real multi-role fighter. " [1]

Almost all of them have similar stories from what I've seen. To be fair, most of these were developed before I was born so I certainly could be missing some context from that time period.

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197...

If you read the source article, that's not what it actually says. What it says:

>Program costs—originally estimated at $4 billion for the United States — increased by $7.7 billion last year with $6.3 billion of this resulting from the addition of 73 F‐16B two‐seater aircraft to the program. The Air Force believes it can justify the addition of the other $1.4 billion.

So... it increased $7.7B with $6.3B of that being additional planes ordered.

That's a FAR cry from the F-35 costs which increased... because increase. Not because more orders were placed.

The F-35 program is at $1.8 TRILLION dollars, the F-16 would have needed to be $360 BILLION to be equivalent waste. They're not even in the same universe.

>The F-35 program is at $1.8 TRILLION dollars

That is the projected costs for it's lifetime, i.e., through 2070, an astounding 50 years from now. It is not at 1.8T in spending at the moment.

You're not comparing the same things.

The total cost of the F-16 program which was started in 1973 (an astounding 48 years ago) isn't anything approaching $360 billion.

I am comparing the same thing.

No, you're not. You're not accounting for inflation. You're not accounting for capability. You're not accounting for length of service times number of planes. You're not accounting for sales. You're not accounting for a host of relevant factors.

You're simply taking two numbers, looing at the nominal values, and doing a simply multiply, then concluding these are equivalent waste. You ignored so many relevant factors that it makes this simplistic "comparison" irrelevant.

I can't tell if you're just accusing me of what you've done or not actually reading any of the posts.

>No, you're not. You're not accounting for inflation.

Where exactly do you think the $1.8 Trillion >> $360 Billion number came from? Hint: it's accounting for inflation.

> You're not accounting for capability.

Capability is irrelevant to the discussion of gross cost overruns.

>You're not accounting for length of service times number of planes.

I literally am. The F-16 has been in service for almost as long as the projected F-35 which I stated in the post you were replying to. Except nobody actually believes there's any planet that the F-35 will ever be in service 50 years.

>You're not accounting for sales.

Again, I am. The F-35 will never EVER reach the sales numbers the F-16 has. Period.

>You're not accounting for a host of relevant factors.

I welcome a list of those factors. Everything you've mentioned so far has been accounted for by me, but apparently not you.

>You're simply taking two numbers, looing at the nominal values, and doing a simply multiply, then concluding these are equivalent waste. You ignored so many relevant factors that it makes this simplistic "comparison" irrelevant.

I didn't do that at all, and if I had it'd still be more than you appear to have done.

>>You're not accounting for inflation.

> Hint: it's accounting for inflation.

You started with a quote from what you called the source article, then concluded "So... it increased $7.7B with $6.3B of that being additional planes ordered."

Here's the source article [1] for your quote. From May 1, 1977. So try again to your values are inflation adjusted. They're not. The numbers you started with are 1977 nominal dollars. They had no idea you'd be quoting them in 2021 so there's no way they would have written those 1977 values in 2021 dollars for you to quote today. The other numbers for future F-35 costs also are not inflation adjusted. Track down the source and check; I did. They're nominal figures, added from each years budget. You're just making these claims up as you go.

Since you claim things that are so demonstrably untrue, apparently assuming I'll just believe you, it's not worth continuing.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/05/01/archives/f-16-fighter-pro...

The NYtimes article quotes a GAO report, which is THE SOURCE. The $360B quotes was what $1.8Trillion would equate to in 1977 dollars, inflation.

You have yet to provide a single number or source to your claims despite continuing to insist I have no idea what I'm talking about, until you do actually show up with some numbers to back up your claims I'm done with the conversation and will assume at this point you're just arguing for the sake of being a troll.

You'd think they'd have learned from their mistakes and included the air to ground missiles from the get go this time

Stealth coatings have proven to not be able to survive the real world on at least three major recent aircraft: B-2, F-22, and F-117. Stealth is nice, but a plane you cannot fly in the rain without destroying it's outrageously expensive coating is not really very practical.

Yeah but sometimes you want to reach out and bomb someone without the knowing what's coming

When it comes to sensor fusion, there isn't a fighter jet out there that's better than the f-35! The issue is that the f-35 program failed to deliver a low-cost replacement for the f-16, and the program used a couple of practices (concurrent delivery/development, and shared components between airframes) that have a sketchy history in defense contracting. IMO, it's a great plane, but built in a time where near-peer pressure isn't as strong as it is now, and some very contractor favorable terms crept in.

Does sensor fusion even work? Last time I've read about it the story stated pilots turn off all but one relevant one to actually get targets because it messes everything up.

The F-111 was a capable strike aircraft once they worked out the intake issues, but failed as a Navy interceptor and was inadequate as a strategic bomber

The C-5 suffered expensive wing cracking issues early in its life and even after that was fixed it had the lowest reliability of any Air Mobility asset

The F-18 was short on range and bring-back payload compared to its predecessors and had to be redesigned mid-life into a basically new aircraft

The B-1 was cancelled once and brought back as a less capable but horrifically expensive-to-maintain aircraft that failed to replace its predecessor

The F-14 was cursed with inadequate engines that hampered its flexibility and it had crippling maintenance requirements

The C-17 is one of the most expensive methods of moving payloads ever invented, since it is compromised by tactical requirements that aren't relevant to its actual role

And those are just off the top of my head.

So much in invested into so few platforms these days that they simply have to be made to work to a tolerable level. The fact that they remain in service is more a reflection on need rather than merit.

And in case of F-14, it was politically motivated penny pinching that led to TF30 engines being used - when they were supposed to only be temporary option to make testing quicker and cheaper.

"In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day" - Augustine's Law #16

Original design goals:

* Faster than light outside atmosphere (s model used by space force) * Take off from underground * Returns a vastly increased radar signal to damage ground radar * Air superiority * Water superiority * Negative emissions * Generates new car scent * 600,000 lbs of ordinances * 3 pilots * Autonomous * Made in Mississippi * Troop carrier * "None of those dumb green screens"

Edit: single -> signal

That might be a worry. But the f35 is a good aircraft demo by Israel that it can strike without detection. Not sure it can beat the chinese as there area and drone might be an issue. But without replacement one can talk talk talk but the flight go on.

Just tangentially related, but I find it very weird that people push one-system-that-replaces-all (or, in this case, planes) as cost cutting measure, compared to few specialized systems. Which do not have to take tons of compatibility stuff. In this case, probably some problems of Air Force's F-35's are related to the constrant that the requirement of being able to land on carriers pushes.

At the end, results are at best mediocre, costs exceeded, and everyone is unhappy.

The VTOL capability of the F-35B is nice in theory but the vast majority of navy aircraft are going to be launched off of carriers anyway. VTOL needs its own ship+aircraft concept or it is dead on arrival.

VTOL is certainly nice, but it's ridiculous to use it as a requirement of a variant of a plane of which most versions will not be using VTOL at all. Like stealth, it has a massive impact on the shape of the plane. It's ridiculous to burden non-VTOL planes with a design meant for VTOL. Just make a specialised VTOL fighter if that's what you need.

This. You can see in the design of the f-35 the massive space in the middle of the body for the lift fan that partially obstructs the pilots view behind them.

The VTOL capability are for Marine squadrons operating off of LHD ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Essex_(LHD-2)), or for partner nations who don't have aircraft carriers CATOBAR launch systems.

The F35 CAN VTOL, it is not meant to be used that way since it extremely limits fuel and armaments.

The carrier variant is meant to be STOL, since its a JOINT Strike Fighter meant for multi-country use, and many countries do not have large carriers with catapults. Namely Great Britain, whose largest carriers are not equipped with catapults, since they are designed to use STOL planes.

Considering the total program cost, one wonders if a VTOL F-35 plus slightly smaller carriers really is cheaper than skipping that model entirely and using the R&D money to build slightly bigger carriers with catapult launchers and arrestor wire gear?

While this seems like a good idea in theory, in practice there are some serious hurdles.

- Adding catapult launchers and arrestor wires adds a lot to the requirements. It's not just a matter of making the ship bigger, you need to provide the power for those catapults. Here's a RAND study that looks at alternative carrier designs that has some information on the costs: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2006.html

- Even if you decide to build these bigger carriers and phase out the LHDs, that takes time. It would take decades, during which you have no fixed wing aircraft you can launch from your LHDs, unless you want to try and revive the Harrier jet program as a stopgap.

- Keep in mind the F-35B (the STOVL variant) is meant to replace the Harrier, so it makes sense to compare the F-35B to the Harrier instead of the F-18 or F-16. The Harrier also had poor availability rates and reliability issues. While the F-35B is worse, it is continuing to improve. And it has both stealth and is capable of supersonic flight, which the Harrier was not. In fact, the F-35B is the first production STOVL aircraft capable of supersonic flight.

- An STOVL aircraft can be used from more than just LHDs. They can be launched from short, improvised airfields on the ground. The marines could potentially operate them from parking lots or just open fields. That's actually a part of some new doctrine the marines are working on, where they maintain a series of rotating, distributed air fields closer to the enemy rather than concentrating their forces on a ship which is easier to detect and potentially more vulnerable. Here's some more information: https://www.mccdc.marines.mil/Portals/172/Docs/MCCDC/young/M...

> - Adding catapult launchers and arrestor wires adds a lot to the requirements. It's not just a matter of making the ship bigger, you need to provide the power for those catapults. Here's a RAND study that looks at alternative carrier designs that has some information on the costs: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2006.html

Thanks. So from that report we see the estimated savings from dropping one EMALS (the fancy new electric catapults) is $160M, presumably including the extra power to run it. So for a smaller carrier with, say, two catapults, the difference between a STOVL option and a catapult one would be, say, roughly $.5B (allowing some extra for the arrestor wires etc.). Now, based on a quick web search, the price difference between the F-35B and F-35C is around $10M. So if you have an air wing of 35 planes (wikipedia lists 36 F-35B for the new British carriers, and 30-40 Rafale's for the current French carrier, so 35 is probably a good ballpark figure for a smaller carrier), that's already a $350M difference, almost making up for the extra cost in the carrier itself. Now factor in the avoidance of the R&D cost for the STOVL variant, that the F-35C is a significantly more capable plane, and finally that over the life of the carrier you're likely to see several generations of planes used. This reinforces my preconceived notion that the F-35B development program made no sense.

> - Even if you decide to build these bigger carriers and phase out the LHDs, that takes time. It would take decades, during which you have no fixed wing aircraft you can launch from your LHDs, unless you want to try and revive the Harrier jet program as a stopgap.

The USMC apparently has some historical reasons why they really want to operate their own fighters, but it does seem horribly expensive compared to the alternative of relying on the navy for support in that area.

> - Keep in mind the F-35B (the STOVL variant) is meant to replace the Harrier, so it makes sense to compare the F-35B to the Harrier instead of the F-18 or F-16.

Why? The enemy isn't going to give you any handicap points for operating a STOVL aircraft instead of a more capable 'traditional' one.

> - An STOVL aircraft can be used from more than just LHDs. They can be launched from short, improvised airfields on the ground.

Sure, that's an advantage. Is it enough to offset the disadvantages of a STOVL aircraft? I'm not convinced. Many traditional aircraft can also operate from improvised airfields, for instance made from a straight stretch of road.

We have plenty of supercarriers, and are building plenty more. That misses the point. The Marine amphibious assault ships serve an entirely different mission. Their size is a feature, not a limitation.

The UK has done the costings and VTOL is cheaper.

You need a much more expensive training pipeline to get pilots who can do arrestor wire landings and they need to keep practicing it, doing this also results in more accidents which result in the loss of the aircraft.

The VTOL system also allows a country to more easily switch pilots from being based on land to using the carrier.

> The UK has done the costings and VTOL is cheaper.

Sure, but that decision was made before the full trainwreckage of the F-35 was clear. In hindsight, with what we now know of the cost of the program, perhaps the decision would have swung the other way.

I don't think the F-35B is seen as a trainwreck by the UK.

I see this argument being raised a lot, but there's not a ton of evidence suggesting the problems with the F-35 is that it has to have these three different variants. The lion's share of the issues with the F-35 have to do with the acquisition strategy and the avionics. The acquisition strategy of procuring the planes before they were fully operational, like CI/CD but with fighter jets instead of aircraft, has made everything much more expensive and has really hurt availability because you have a dozen slightly different builds of the same plane, and across three variants. Any time an issue is fixed they have to roll it out to all of the different builds, which adds to costs. The second major issue is the advanced avionics and the software for associated systems, like the MDL and ALIS. In short, it's a software problem. Neither or these are really related to having three different variants.

It's not really fair to compare this to the F-111 debacle, because there we genuinely saw incompatible intended uses for the same plane. The Air Force wanted a tactical bomber, while the Navy wanted an interceptor, these are very different designs. But for the F-35 everyone wants the same thing: a multirole fighter.

Seems a lot of the problems are due to how the government develops and acquires military hardware, with incentives for the various players massively misaligned with the interests of the country as a whole. I wonder what would a sane acquisition program look like?

A company developing a product and then offering the more or less completed product to the military worked during WWII, but a cutting-edge fighter (or many other pieces of cutting-edge military hardware) development project is such an expensive and risky project that a company can't do it alone and hope that the government then comes and buys the finished product. So going back to how things were done back in the day isn't an option.

Likewise the government taking the main design responsibility and using the companies only for building the products the government has designed probably won't work either, as the government doesn't have the expertise.

So what would a sane strategy look like?

I'm not sure what a sane system would look like, but the main problems you have to address are:

1. In the current system requirements come from the military to the contractors (I'm simplifying a bit here). The people on the military side generally don't have much knowledge of technological capabilities, so they are limited in what they can conceive of. It dissuades outside-the-box thinking.

2. The military generally looks to existing contractors. I'm not even sure how you would sell to the military unless you hired some executives away from an existing contractor.

3. The way security clearances work and the length of time it takes to get them makes it hard to rapidly develop products.

At this point I think the big companies are too big and slow, they need to find a way to get smaller companies involved.

I’m going to disagree with all three points.

1. To think that the military does not know what they need shows a very narrow understanding of the people fighting a war. If you ask a pilot “What do you need to accomplish your mission”, they will tell you. They may not know how to necessarily do sensor fusion or “cyber” things or the math/physics involved, but the way they will describe the problem and what their solution would be will show that they are thinking outside the box. Now, I will be fair and say that there is probably a disconnect between the end user and Air Force Materiel Command and it’s therefore up to the program management office to solicit feedback and requirements from the expert users.

2. The military follows the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement. There may be instances where contracting officers prefer and write requests for proposal that target specific contractors, but that should be an edge case and not the standard. I’d argue the real challenge is the scale of federal acquisitions and consolidation of industry players. In order to meet certain contractual obligations, you have to be large enough, which brings us to...

3. Security clearances take a long time to adjudicate, but it does not follow that that causes the inability to rapidly develop products. Going back to size, the problem is DOTMLPF - you cannot just design and purchase one thing, you need to build the entire logistics support chain for the next XX years. Maybe you squeeze a JUONS out that gets a capability “rapidly” developed but there’s still the expectation that you re-evaluate and create that long supply chain at a certain point.

I don't really disagree with your criticisms, but I don't see them as direct rebuttals. For what it's worth, I work in the defense industry.

Edit: I should also mention I was writing this with regards to the challenges a new entrant to the defense industry would face (i.e. a company that wants to start selling to the military with no prior experience doing so).

1. I agree the military knows what they want. The problem is the military does not know what is possible. And they do not know what could be possible. In the past contractors came up with products (e.g. the sidewinder missile) that no one in the military was asking for, simply because they could not conceive of it. The engineers could conceive of it however and were able to build it and then sell it to them. This does not happen today.

The military can only ask about things it can imagine. It can't ask for things it can't imagine, and those are the things that ultimately lead to breakthroughs in warfighting ability.

2. If you are not Raytheon or Lockheed or whoever you aren't going to get in the room with the people who make purchasing decisions. That's why I said you'd need to hire an executive from one of these companies. They have the relationships already and know who to talk to. I'm not saying it's literally impossible, just that it isn't going to happen in practice. If you wanted to sell something to say GM or Tesla you could get on LinkedIn or ask around for someone who could put you in touch with someone high-up there. And if your product was interesting they would probably meet with you. Who do you even contact if you want to sell to the military? There are people, but no one is going to tell you who they are if you're just some random person with a company.

3. With regard to clearances. Let's say I'm developing some new weapon system. We're now dealing with classified information. So now everyone working on that needs a clearance. It is absolutely a barrier to getting new ideas off the ground because you need to wait > 1 year for the clearances to finish processing before they can start doing real work. There are a lot of smart people who could bring new ideas into the industry, but they basically have a choice between making a bunch of money working at a high paying job or doing make-work while they wait for everything to process. No surprise that many talented people choose to go work elsewhere.

> To think that the military does not know what they need shows a very narrow understanding of the people fighting a war.

To think that they clearly and unequivocally do shows a very narrow understanding of the rather extreme diversity of opinion within the defense establishment.

And if you recognize the disagreement but are somehow deluded into thinking that the actual policy decisions always reflect the side with the objectively stronger case within the community...well, that's also wrong.

Part of the problem with the acquisition process is the number of people with their finger in the pie. It's very easy to propose and implement new procedures/regulations that add additional gatekeepers to any project. Creating new procedures and being a gatekeeper is viewed as important and it helps the careers of those who behave that way.

New procedures generally have risk-reduction as part of their justification. For gov employees, if you take a risk, and it pays off, it doesn't help your career. If you take a risk, and it doesn't pay off, you're in trouble for going outside procedure. If you don't take a risk, no one will punish you even if things fail, because you can place all the blame onto the procedure.

For this reason, there are almost no bureaucrats who will reduce the number of procedures or regulations. Doing so is a risk, and if something bad happens later it will be your fault. So, no cost is too high to pay for risk reduction, and no one will challenge any proposal whose goal is to reduce risk.

This incentive system is a structural and cultural sickness in government work. Changing it would be an order of magnitude more difficult than successfully implementing a genuine cultural change at a large organization.

EDIT: Just to be really, really clear: government employees are rewarded for completing work items defined in their procedure documents. They are also the same people responsible for writing those procedure documents.

The "developing a product and then offering the more or less completed product to the military" is how we got the Predator drone though.

I'm not that familiar with that drone, but it seems to be a very modest R&D cost to develop. And by all means, when such an acquisition process works I'm sure it generally works somewhat well.

My concern was more with larger more complex projects, where no individual company can afford to take the risk to develop it and then having the government say "nah, we're fine, we'll pass this time".

Col. Boyd must be spinning in his grave!

One of my favorite books: https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

There's a lot about what's wrong with aircraft procurement in this book and how he fought against it. Idealism and pragmatism still lose to politics and money fifty years later!

There's an argument, by Boyd causing the F-15 and F-16 to succeed, he delayed the inevitable rethinking of the procurement process. If not for Boyd, the Air Force would have had perhaps 1 qualified success (F-18 Super Hornet) in the last 50 years of air platform development.

The Air Force doesn't fly the F-18. Boyd was against the F-15, so I'm not sure where you are getting that from.

The F-18 and F-15 prototypes were competing for the same job. F-15 won and MD managed to salvage their investment and sell the YF-17 to the Navy as the F-18.

The F-16 was the card up Boyd's sleeve that nobody saw coming but couldn't argue against it once he put it on the table!

The F/A-18 was never in competition with the F-15 WRT the Air Force. It was mandated by congress for the navy to replace the high cost f-14 with something more reasonable costwise. It's true that the F/A-18 was competing with a navalized version of the F-15 but cost factors and the lack of organic multirole made the navalized version of the F-15 unfeasible.

The F-16 did not conform to what Boyd wanted out of a combat aircraft, execpt for the lightweight part. The F-16 has a RADAR, BVR, and while designed as an air superiority it has exceeded expectations as a multirole platform.

The Navy has a strong preference for two engines (and so would you, if you were flying at sea), so the F-16 was never an option for them, anyway...

No, the F-17 and the F-16 were both part of the LWF (Lightweight Fighter) project. When the F-16 beat out the F-17, the USN decided to pursue the F-17 which became the F-18.

Did the Air Force ever use the f18?

No.

Other Air Forces have used it, Canada and Australia. Germany is thinking of getting some.

> There's a lot about what's wrong with aircraft procurement in this book

So for those of us not interested enough to actually go read that book, what is the solution for such insanely expensive military programs?

First, are the programs insanely expensive is a question that needs to be asked. I have no doubt there is waste to cut, but overall, a modern fighter much be complex. A WWI fighter will lose against the more complex fighter every-time, which will lose to the 1950s fighter (The jet engine was just becoming workable at the end of WWII, if the war had gone longer what I'm calling a 1950s fighter would be late WWII). And so on. A modern fighter must have high R&D, and overall we hope to only need a relatively small number of them, which makes it really easy to do division on a per fighter basis and get a really big number.

The incremental cost of a F35 once you have designed it isn't too bad (and it could be made a lot better if it was worth a larger assembly line to make more).

Boyd and Pierre Sprey are hacks part of the luddite fighter mafia. If it was up to them the most successful fighter plane of all time (F-15) would have been replaced with cheap f-5 clones without BVR or RADAR capabilities.

I guess that's true to a point, but Boyd was singularly focused on ACM, maybe even obsessed with it. Which is understandable given his background.

I guess it's fortunate that technology continued to advance to the point where the F-16 finally does have improved RADAR and BVR (Block 20 and onward).

But, yeah, they had tunnel vision about the mission.

The "cheap F-5 clone" called the F-20 Tigershark would have been one of the most capable and cost-effective fighters ever, but it offered insufficient opportunity for graft and corruption, so it was killed by Congress. It was also no doubt the last time any manufacturer will ever attempt to develop a significant military aircraft at their own expense.

It was extremely interesting from a technological point of view (e.g. funny the mentions about "gold plating", if I remember correctly), but at the same time I thought that it was very depressing (his private life). I'm conflicted about that book... .

Imagine if we held a war, and nobody could afford to come?

It’s for this reason that people (Bohr for example) who made the atomic bomb saw a ray of hope - it made large scale war too expensive to even try given that your enemy would nuke you back.

That is unless we all sign paperwork saying we won't use these big huge wastes of GDP we've stockpiled like someone with a hoarding complex, and resume war as usual.

You don't even need the paper. Just the political will on both sides. That is what mutually assured destruction is about: I don't trust them to not use theirs, but I can assure they don't win if they do.

It has been hotly debated on if mutually assured destruction is actually why we haven't got into a nuclear war or not. You can take either side of the debate with no way to know for sure who is right.

People are always confused when I say I'm the F-35s biggest fan - because disarmament isn't a viable political option but aircraft programs like this effectively make it a practical one.

It reminds me of a funny little anecdote. In 1989, the USA instituted an arms embargo on China after Tiananmen (which was itself performed with tanks outfitted with American-made guns). However, President Bush allowed a certain existing deal ("Peace Pearl") that would help modernize the PLA's airforce to continue based on the requests of certain well-connected military contractors.

But in 1990, China cancelled the deal unilaterally, despite it being the only access they had to Western military tech. Ultimately it went with Israeli and Russian sources. Why? The US arms exporters were running into massive cost overruns and development delays. China thought it was some kind of intentional sabotage, but it was nothing of the sort: it was just the general fucked-upness of American military procurement running into the realities of a culture unused to that level of fucked-upness.

An international arms embargo couldn't accomplish the disarmament of China of American weaponry, but the brokenness of the American arms industry could.

That would make a lot more sense if the competing militaries had the same problems.

Shifting the power balance is unlikely to result in a safer world for most.

The F-35 doesnt have the legs to be relevant vs China and the Russians are poor.

If we held a war, all of these fancy planes would be gone in the first week. So would all the aircraft carriers, a good number of ships, and likely all of the stealth bombers too.

That's the funny thing about modern military tech, it only really works correctly in peacetime when the wars are fought against poorly equipped insurgents & rebel forces. "Stealth" only works on very old radar systems, any 1st world country has the capabilities to detect a B2 or an F35.

After the second month of conflict, the only equipment left would be mid century jets that can be quickly built in single factories, without the complicated supply chains that F35 was built around. That's what matters, mass production and numbers - not $2B jets that can be shot down by a $100K missile system strapped to the back of a truck.

While most radars can detect a stealth fighter, few systems are able to hold a lock on them. E.g. no system that Russia or China currently possess.

That's one reason why search and targeting radars are not the same thing. Missiles are fired (and aircraft are sent) in the general area of the detected aircraft, where they'll pick up the enemy aircraft on X-band more easily.

And don't forget the networking. It won't just be the one targeting radar; networked missile groups have existed for decades.

This idea that Russia and China can't "lock on" assumes that the Russians and Chinese are idiots. They've been busy trying to improve the odds of a stealth kill ever since the F-117A went public, and probably before. LO helps, but it's not magic.

Yes, there are no Russian and Chinese systems that can maintain weapons lock on a stealth fighter. Not airborne and not ground based. Russia scrambles to gain this capability with its latest s-300 upgrade (s-500), but so far it's not operational.

This is why everyone in the world is queued to order F-35s: it's the world's only operational multirole stealth fighter you can buy, and it has no peer adversaries yet. Goes against the popular Internet wisdom of how crap F-35 are, but they sell like hot cakes.

The S-500 is meant more for ICBMs and cruise missiles.

The S-400 variant is claimed to be effective against LO aircraft, but since only Russia, China and Turkey operate the things, we cannot say either way. We definitely cannot claim it's ineffective against LO aircraft.

ABM capability is touted since the original 1980s S-300, it's nothing new.

The struggles with S-500 are well documented, much discussed on Russian arms nerds forums and absolutely have all to do with the challenges posed by F-35.

No doubt, but that is tangential to what the S-400 is claimed to do, and if you don't mind me being blunt: neither us, nor any Russian forum goers, know if the S-400 is actually reasonably effective against LO aircraft. Maybe not even the Russians and American militaries do.

Where the original claim comes from -- that Russia and China cannot shoot down an F-35 -- is beyond me. It is as daft as claiming that S-400 makes stealth useless. I take issue with such confident grand claims.

Aircraft carriers at sea are harder to sink than you think, and the ocean is big enough that you probably couldn't find them either.

They are also very big, making them easier to find with satellites. Also don't forget that those subs are not just randomly wandering around, you can bet both Russia and China are keeping track of approx. location of every carrier group very carefully.

True, but they can't get a sub close enough without being detected.

But if you don’t have those fancy planes, guns, tanks, etc. but your enemy has, that first week will (somewhat) be of the “when the wars are fought against poorly equipped insurgents & rebel forces.” type for your enemy.

After a week, they will still have many of their fancy planes, and, likely, will have destroyed a lot of your infrastructure, killed your pilots, etc.

I think you need both fancy planes and the ability to rapidly ramp up production of less advanced weaponry.

Finally someone who understands this! All modern weapons are no doubt very effective, but they are also very complex ,take long time to build, need specialized factories and skilled workers and the result is that there aren't that many stockpiled. Because that's not only expensive, weapons also deteriorate and might malfunction if stored for extended period of time. Most of the fancy toys would run out after 1st month of actual war (assuming non-nuclear conflict, of course).

I don't expect a rerun of WW2. It's hard to tell exactly how things would turn out, but the concept of having factories beyond the reach of enemy bombers is obsolete with today's aircraft. It's more likely that whoever wins the first few battles will have an immense advantage over the other, which will be reduced to guerrilla tactics.

This is all assuming it's a total war without nukes though, which is fanciful.

A conventional war between nuclear powers over a third country (Taiwan?) could maybe possibly happen by attrition, but more probably by attrition of war morale, rather than war materiel.

> If we held a war, all of these fancy planes would be gone in the first week. So would all the aircraft carriers, a good number of ships, and likely all of the stealth bombers too.

Saying this does not make it true. Warfare is far more complex than you're making it out to be. Care to back up this statement with an explanation?

Governments have realized it's easier and more politically favorable to pay and train local militias to shoot each other. It's taking a page from the corporate playbook of creating a shell company to hide liability.

The problem is what if we have a war and the other guy decided to bankrupt his country to afford the war, while decided we couldn't afford it and so didn't build as much. The end result is we lose the war and have to pay off the debt of the other country.

There is no good answer once war is on the table. Keeping war off the table should be everyone's priority, but unfortunately it only takes one evil dictator to force you into war, so peace isn't always possible.

Yeah all those evil dictators who constantly want to attack super-powerful much bigger countries. Just incredible how often that happens.

I mean super-powers with nuclear weapons just constantly have to fight of these dictators.

What an odd as argument. This has literally never happened.

You seem to have forgotten about WWII. (the dictators didn't have nuclear weapons, but it otherwise describes what you say never happens)

The F-35 makes me wonder if US military superiority is as great as it appears on paper.

For example our military budget is 10 times that of russia. However does 1$ russia spends vs 1$ the US spends on equipment equate?

Think it may be very likely that Russia (and China) are getting more bang for their buck and the gap between forces isn’t quite as extreme.

No question the US has the most powerful military in the world and it’s Navy presence is unmatched. However moving forward is this sustainable ? Russia and China catching up?

Yeah that's the BS that I don't buy from the pacifists... "we spend 10x Russia!!"

But yeah, Russia has a nuke deterrent and could use that to force a land war in Europe at the same time that China launches an attack on Taiwan and North Korea launches an attack on South Korea and Iran attacks Saudi Arabia.

How could the US military respond effectively to all of those at once? Each of those countries wants to carve out their sphere of influence. Once a short term victory is in the pocket for each of them, there is diplomatic negotiations to end fighting and then the new facts on the ground materialize and now 1/2+ the world is under autocrats again.

Yet another anti F-35 article that really doesn't bring anything new to the table.

The F-35 isn't an airplane, it's a defense industry jobs program to spread subcontracts widely around a sufficient number of congressional districts and states that it can't be killed.

Military expert Pierre Sprey, the founder and designer of the F-16 & A-10 Warthog airplanes, Explains why the f-35 will not cut it on the modern battlefield.

https://youtu.be/UQB4W8C0rZI

Pierre Sprey is on the wrong side of history. If the fighter mafia had their way the F-15 would have never existed. RADAR and BVR would have never existed. the F-16 would never have had a multirole purpose.

And the A-10 was obsolete the minute it rolled off of the assembly line. Most estimates that the majority of A-10's would have been destoryed within 72 hours of the Warsaw Pact rolling across the German border. The gun is not particularly effective against modern armour, and the same mission can be carried out better by other aircraft like the F/A-18 or the F-16, as seen in the 1st Gulf War. It's found new life in Afghanistan and Iraq but even than drones would have been better suited for the role. In fact, the AF wants to get rid of the A-10, but congress wont let them.

The A-10 was designed to be a more modern Spad (A-1 Skyraider). The Spad was well appreciated in Vietnam in CAS roles, but the Viet-Cong didn't have SAMs. The introduction of SA-6, SA-8 etc made this design a failure in any European conflict.

> Most estimates that the majority of A-10's would have been destroyed within 72 hours of the Warsaw Pact rolling across the German border.

But that is in the design of the A-10. The A-10 was not made for anything other fighting in Europe for the first 72 hours of the Soviets invading Western Europe. If the Russian speartip was blunted and there was some A-10's left over, then the A-10 would have been considered a success.

Oh well, at least get the facts right.

A-10 was designed to kill T-55s, T62s and T-72s (most modern tank USSR had at that time), not today's tanks.

GAU-8 was extremely effective against armor from that era and still is very useful against armored vehicles, structures, etc.

F16's can't do what A10 does the best (CAS).

In 1st Gulf War A10s are credited with something like 1000 tanks destroyed (mostly with Mavericks though)

AF is trying to get rid of A-10 for decades, but it still survives ..

>A-10 was designed to kill T-55s, T62s and T-72s (most modern tank USSR had at that time), not today's tanks. >GAU-8 was extremely effective against armor from that era and still is very useful against armored vehicles, structures, etc.

The GAU-8 couldn't penetrate the frontal armour of the T-62, let alone the turrent on the sides. With ERA armour it becomes even more ineffective. Those tanks? AA, SAM, and enemy CAP are covering them so good luck getting slow and low enough to hit the tanks in the rear and 1. surviving, 2. actually hitting the damn things.

>F16's can't do what A10 does the best (CAS).

This

>In 1st Gulf War A10s are credited with something like 1000 tanks destroyed (mostly with Mavericks though)

contradicts this.

an F-16 can carry mavricks just as well as the A-10, can get their faster, and has higher survivabilty rate compared to the slow as molasses A-10.

Hell, you could replace the A-10 with a single engine turboprop with rough airfield landing capabilities and it would be way more cost-effective than the A-10.

GAU-8 might not be that great against modern armor, well, it's from 70s, but it's still capable of M-kills even on Abrams (happened during one of those unfortunate friendly-fire incidents during 1st Iraq war). And immobilised tank is a dead tank. Or at least useless for the mission.

A10 was designed for one specific task - to slow down Soviet tank armies rushing into Germany in case of European non-nuclear conflict. And while it was guranteed they would be accopmanied by mobile SAMs, it was tanks themselves that were major concern. The goal was to slow down the hordes by any means necessary and A-10 was the ideal solution for that.

According to all documents I was able to find, including several US military assessments, GAU-8 was more than capable of achieving K-kills on T72s using top-down attacks or low-angle side attacks.

CAS != tank killing, if your plane "gets there and out faster", you are not doing CAS but some sort of flyby. CAS usually requires visual confirmation of the targets, that means you have to fly low and slow, which F16 is not really made for (bad maneuverability at low speeds). You might also need to stay in the area for extended period of time, which, again, isn't F16s strong point (it's a great plane though).

IIRC pretty much all Mavericks in 1GW were from A10s, something like 95%.

I mentioned only 1k tank kills because I was lazy to type the other stuff, like trucks, armored vehicles, SCUD launchers, SAMs, all sorts of bunkers, command infrastructure, radars, etc.

Does anyone have first hand information on how big of an impact the decision to use C++ instead of Ada had on the "staggering array of persistent issues"?

The coupling between systems is insane, and it's all super rigid, with legal contracts specifying what, when and how often something can communicate. Many millions of dollars ride on these contracts.

Basically it's a big jumbled big of Lego that's covered in Kraggle.

With those constraints, lots of bugs are mis-design. IDK bug counts, or if that is even meaningful as it depends on thoroughness of testing, but a huge emphasises was placed on coding standards, static and dynamic analysis. They could well be the biggest single customer of Coverity.

Overall I'd say it hasn't been a critical issue, given the larger architectural problems. The use of something like Ada SPARK in particular components might have focused attention on proving rather then testing, i.e. a completely different philosophy.

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. The Pentagon Wars is available for viewing on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU

This is a great movie and I highly recommend it. It used to be on HBO Go, so I'm sure it's on Max.

What's wrong with watching it on YouTube?

Although it has an extraordinarily poor track record, killing off the JSF entirely will prove difficult. According to a map showing the economic impact across the country...

I'm not a fan of maintaining bad/harmful industries to prevent job loss. If we're that concerned, redirect those trillions into beneficial jobs - like oh, say, badly needed infrastructure repair.

> I'm not a fan of maintaining bad/harmful industries

US defense is not a bad or harmful industry - it protects the free world.

WW2 wouldn't have happened if the US wasn't isolationist. We've had 75 years of relative peace thanks to being a superpower.

On a related note, an F-35 shot itself a couple weeks ago on a training run in Arizona causing over $2.5m in damage: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjp7nq/one-of-americas-dolla...

I didn't know the F-35 was also designed to be poetic

With advances in drones and remote imaging, is there still a role for manned jets like this? I similarly wonder about manned spaceflight.

The USAF/USSF seems to have already made the switch to unmanned spaceflight (the x37b).

Yes, at least for now human at the controls is better than AI or remote control. This is quickly changing, but as things stand today you need a human for some operations. Soon though humans won't stand a chance.

And the major reason for it is that no program as expensive as the F-35 has been done to attempt to develop such a thing. Or rather multiple different drones depending on what thing you actually wanted to do.

Any chance the UK can get a refund then?

"Before the end of this decade, the F-35 Lightning will provide the ultimate punch of the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. The F-35 is an Anglo-American joint effort, designed by the best and brightest in the two nations’ aircraft industries."

For anyone wondering the UK's new carriers explicitly rejected the traditional CATOBAR approach to take-offs and landings in favour of a design that pretty much requires the F35B STOVL variant.

Such carriers could still be used for the UK's Harrier jump-jets, couldn't it?

The UK doesn't own any Harrier jump-jets. They sold them all to the US Marines.

>There has also been significant investment in the program by North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and other allies.

A lot of the time with these investments it seems like it is mostly a signal of investment in the alliance with the US and that getting the planes is a sort of side effect.

I remember when F-35 was just coming out, it was cast as a significantly cheaper alternative to F-22s. I think it was in the documentary “Battle of X-Planes” (not sure of exact title)? I am amazed how this turned out. Should we have kept producing F-22s?

Probably not, air superiority isn't a big focus anymore with the advent of drones, missiles and planes like the F-35

One reform I would support would be mandating that all defense projects are made in ten states or less. That way you could spread the project around if you needed to, but it wouldn’t have enough support to continue only as a jobs program.

They'll just stick the program in three metro areas that are highly over-represented in congress.

Jerrymandering runs both ways. If you carve <city> up into ten districts you've just created ten congressmen who give a crap about bringing muh jobs to the <city> metro area.

The F35 is a strange aircraft. It has a very powerful single engine but the airframe is still too heavy. So the plane performs poorly and lacks the potential energy to exploit any particular edge case. So they are pushing it as a "networked" platform that supposedly allows commanders to control the battlefield, because everything is connected in real time. It sounds fanciful and kind of made up.

It is one thing to build a complex piece of technology, it is quite another to deploy it and expect it to work 24-7. $1.7 Billion was spent on this program.

The major issue of the F-35 is trying to be too many things to too many people at once. It has to fly fast, yet be able to be slow enough to offer ground support. It has to be maneuverable to dogfight, but have short wings to land on carriers. It has to be light, but needs a complex nozzle and a fan to do STOL/VTOL.

That's very hard to do.

Sounds a classic example of design by committee

And that was the take home message from the article:

> The design by committee, Swiss-army knife approach has been a resounding failure.

Well to be fair it never aspired to do all of those things within the same model. They did split it in three different ones.

Also, maneuverability and short wings go together really well. Slow flying and short wings doesn't though.

Still, it was clearly a mistake, three totally different designs would have been cheaper and better.

Shared platforms seem to work well in the automotive industry, why does it seem to be such a failure in this application?

My assumption is high performance constraints requires deep customization and the shared platform hampers that.

Some platforms just can't be shared. You're not going to be able to turn a Lamborghini into a body-on-frame truck without changing basically everything.

Consumer automobile manufacturers can use shared platforms because the biggest difference between their vehicles is the body, which are metal boxes of different volumes. This is sometimes seen in aircraft: look at how many models of 777 Boeing produced.

Automobile manufacturers couldn't, for example, have a shared platform between a vehicle designed for racing, an armored limousine, and a golf cart, as these vehicles have different performance requirements. That's a better comparison to to what they're trying to achieve with the F35. The needs of the branches of service are very different.

I guess that in the automotive industry different models are often only done to achieve price differentiation or to serve local markets. The technical differences are superficial.

I think the VTOL in particular was too much of a stretch. If you see the complicated drive bar setup with that big fan, it really makes me wonder how this thing could possibly get airborne :)

My understanding is that in the aerospace industry, particularly at the cutting edge, margins are so low that common platforms don't really work out.

In the car industry, say, a 10% penalty in, say, weight might be worth it if it enables the manufacturer to share the platform among many different products. In aerospace, not so much.

The arguments for and against general purpose planes sound eerily familiar for someone in the telco space. You either have The Converged Fixed/Mobile Retail/Business platform that is complex, inflexible, and expensive or several smaller platforms where some parts have to be developed several times.

The usual argument for the converged platform is drastically reduced operating cost. The price is drastically reduced flexibility, as each new feature has to be checked against all existing requirements and dependencies.

“$1.7 Billion was spent on this program.”

If only. FTA: “Total acquisition costs now exceed $428 billion, nearly double the initial estimate of $233 billion, with projected lifetime operations and maintenance costs of $1.727 trillion.”

Also, https://www.airforcemag.com/massive-34-billion-f-35-contract... talks about a $34 billion contract for 478 aircraft. At that price, $1.7 billion buys you about 24 of these planes.

Holy. That's about 5x what's needed to eliminate world hunger (330B $, per https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/13/e...), which would probably have a lot more positive effect in achieving / maintaining peace and mass migration than that fleet of airplanes.

And this is the problem with the world. We easily have the resources to home, feed, educate, and provide medicine to everyone. But we don't due to greed

It gets worse. From the article: "Total acquisition costs now exceed $428 billion, nearly double the initial estimate of $233 billion, with projected lifetime operations and maintenance costs of $1.727 trillion."

Much like the SLS, it seems that it is more a jobs program to dump money into select congressional districts than a project actually focused on deliverables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System#Funding_hi...

I think it's helpful to focus on dollars per citizen. $428 billion means I spent a bit over $1000 on this failure. My family spend a few thousand dollars. Adjusted for income (I pay above-average taxes), it probably cost my family a minimalist car.

The 1.7 billion price tag is around $5k per citizen. That could mean a lot to a lot of families.

You could even get more than $5k per citizen out of it if you had put it into something that nets a return either directly or indirectly. Infrastructure projects like renewables, road upgrades, internet upgrades and so on. If you need busy work there is a lot of useful work to be done.

A lot of recent f35 is trash reporting is mixed up in lockmart competitors trying to to make clean sheet f16 proposal a thing. f16 also lockheed, so conceivably lockheed gains even if f35 failures need to be plugged by f16s.

If this is a headline, it means that everything behind the scenes is happening as expected. US Gov doesn’t leak. This is a distraction from current MILOPs capability.

Source? I’d be interested to hear about this.

"Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes Not need, just feed the war, cannibal animal"

-Rage Against the Machine, Bulls on Parade

I think there is room in the market for an Elon Musk style entrepreneur to completely re-define the industry as was done by Space-X. I think defense filters out a lot of potential founders due to it's inherently bloody nature -- at the end of the day these are machines are designed to kill people efficiently, whatever the reason may be.

Bert Rutan tried to do that. Selling aircraft to the US military is a tough sell unless you're one of the big boys.

This is a kind way of saying that the defense industry and their sole customer are vertically integrated and serve as a way of transferring HUGE amounts of tax money into private hands without any accountability or real market forces at work of any kind.

The whole thing is a criminal enterprise designed to rob public funds and enrich a small group. It's been widely known for decades and everyone who thinks this is a bad thing is powerless to stop it.

It teaches one a lot about the true nature of the USA.

Well, part of this integration is inevitable. Defense materiel is so complicated, leading to high expenses that the DoD is required to manage vendors. Much of the aerospace consolidation that has happened in the past 30 years has been "encouraged" by the Pentagon as they think a smaller vendor can't really compete. At the same time, they want to preserve the industrial capacity so that they have flexibility when the military equivalent of the 737MAX strikes. That's why ULA is still around despite SpaceX kicking its butt.

With Space anyone can try to get there and prove their technology. There's even an event held once a year out in Nevada where you can show up with whatever rocket you want and try for it.

War fighting isn't the same, you can't prove your plane is good in combat on your own. You need a war and a side willing and able to fly it in combat.

Not much war happening these days that meaningfully test the F35

How many times have you heard the cliche phrase: the US spends more money in its armed forces than the top K other countries combined?

Well, spending and results not always go hand in hand. And in the case of aerospace contractors, they can be rewarded for being inefficient at the expense of the taxpayer.

Here in Canada a major issue of the 2015 elections was whether to buy in on the F-35 project.

The liberals wanted open procurement and specifically said they wanted the to avoid the F-35.

The conservatives wanted to continue with the process that was basically designed to justify procuring F-35s.

In the meantime, Canada's F-18s are absurdly old, and we have a tradition of screwing up open procurement by sandbagging it for decades.

So the Conservatives looked quite reasonable in wanting to buy in on this internationally supported plane made by our closest allies.

I think the liberals are vindicated at this point.

I just did a search => this article (Dec 2020) sounds funny: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/f18-fighter-jets-canada-aus...

> Only three of seven F-18 fighter jets purchased from Australia by the Canadian government have been integrated into the air force so far, and the Department of National Defence says key upgrades to as much as one-third of Canada's fighter force will take up to five years, according to documents recently tabled in the House of Commons.

> The slow introduction of the used warplanes — meant to bolster Canada's existing CF-18s squadrons — and the long timeline for radar refurbishment have the opposition Conservatives questioning the value of the interim fleet.

> When it first announced the plan three years ago, the government said it expected to keep most of the existing CF-18 fleet flying until 2032.

Is the article correct? Anyway I'm not laughing because here in Switzerland we have as well to replace our relatively old F-18 which might generate a huge debate with the potential result of nothing happening (F-35 is as well one of the candidates, but I've personally always been against it for various reasons).

Yup. Canada's F-18Cs (aka CF-18s) are ancient and were so bashed up that we ended up buying used Australian leftovers for parts and repair as a stopgap until we can decide what we're doing for our next-gen fighters.

Basically we're procrastinating on the decision because the F-35 is at once the best and worst option - our closest allies are heavily standardized on it. But it's also a boondoggle.

For a while Canada looked to be moving up to the modernized version of the F-18 platform, the F/A-18 Super Hornet. But then Boeing started a fight with Bombardier, a company that the Canadian Liberal government is very protective of. So the plans to invest in F/A-18 planes was scrapped.

So Canada is basically endlessly procrastinating on what new jet to buy because of the F-35 boondoggle.

The Eurofighter is probably the best fit for Canada's needs but I gather that the US has blocked that.

What's interesting is how Trudeau changed his mind after he bowed down to Trump and submitted when the Bombardier CSeries was slapped with tariffs (later judged illegal and promptly removed) by Boeing. He immediately changed his tone and seemed happy to buy an American plane from Lockheed this time.

That, subsidizing another US plane maker, was in fact the only thing he did to try to protect his country's aerospace leader.

The J-20 copied the F-35. Now the international marxists are trying to junk it with their bought and paid for media.

Bold move.

A few dirty secrets about war. Really powerful people do start them over petty arguments at home. They loose power, and then make life as worst as possible for everyone until they are back in power. Some have a heart and things just gets out of hand. Some view other people's lives like poachers view deer in the wild or oil from a well. Mine it till it runs dry, move on. They are convinced of their immortality. Part of me sometimes question my doubt, like if they have some state secret medicine.

A cockpit is not a pretty place to be. It kills you just the same as anything. Fumes, oil, vomit, sunlight, stressful long hours. Replace it with drones all you want. People will find out what really kills drone operators too, and it will probably be generational. Increasing the knowledge requirements so you only study, don't have a family, and your city is filled with junkies. Sap them across decades and centuries.

War is killing first. How you do it comes next. Cold calculated killing, weaponizing everything we know.

It's best to avoid it. And if you think about what provokes, and what soothes violent people. Materialism and moral license, with their drunkenness, boredom, search for meaning tend to provoke. It's then you have the street fights. Lofty moral standards, such as I just built a gravity application with the new black hole imagining data, something that will kill everything EVER, tends to calm things down, mystify and give them something to achieve.

I’ve heard it said that stealth is a lie.

That radar technology from World War 2 era is able to detect stealth aircraft. The Russians just built up more of that kind of radar band to detect current stealth planes.

This is how the F-117 got shot down in Yugoslavia. It was supposed to have the radar cross section of a small bird.

Can anyone provide insight to this?

> I’ve heard it said that stealth is a lie.

The pop culture version of stealth providing perfect invisibility was always a lie.

But it does provide decreased detection range. If your radar detects a traditional plane at 300 nm but a stealth plane at 30 nm, you're effectively blind as a bat.

> That radar technology from World War 2 era is able to detect stealth aircraft. The Russians just built up more of that kind of radar band to detect current stealth planes.

> This is how the F-117 got shot down in Yugoslavia. It was supposed to have the radar cross section of a small bird.

Stealth technology apparently isn't that good for old school low frequency radars, so yes, there's a grain of truth there. But such radars provide poor resolution (which is why modern radars tend to use higher frequencies) so they are not that useful for targeting. That F-117 case was AFAIU a combination of poor operational planning (flying the same routes over and over again), as well as a 'lucky' shot.

There's of course a lot of research into 'stealth-defeating' technologies. IR guided missiles, multistatic radar etc.

The amount of money spent on this weapon of war could have been used to build a $700k house for every one of the 550,000 homeless people in the USA.

If you taxed Jeff Bezos at 100% of his wealth and simply confiscated all of his US$183 billion of assets and liquidated them, you would have to find another 1.3 of him to do the same to to cover the cost of this program, which is 2.3x his net worth. Even if you tacked on Elon Musk's US$164B, you wouldn't have enough to pay for this.

Another service update, nuclear weapons exist. Any situation that involves high tech piloted planes fighting each other in the sky is almost impossible to happen.

Dropping insane amounts of resources into piloted figher plane is bordering on insanity.

The same money could have literally created a Mars, doing far more for US politically and done wonders for its global credibility. Or you know, become global leader in electric mobility or many other things that would have been useful to both the US government and its people.

Bombing the shit out of pure Arab, Africans and peoples from central Asia without a government can be done with planes from the 90s just fine.

> Another service update, nuclear weapons exist. Any situation that involves high tech piloted planes fighting each other in the sky is almost impossible to happen.

This is falsified by the Vietnam war. We had apex US fighters fighting apex soviet fighters in a period where nuclear weapons existed.

And I'm sure you are aware of this common trope, but it is claimed (and I think supported) that countries will not use nuclear weapons against another nuclear power due to the risk of nuclear war. And further, I think apex air and land vehicles would be required whether nukes are used or not. After the nuke has been deployed, land forces would need to be deployed to take the area cleared by the nuke, and air forces would be required to support those land forces.

Sure, if you engage in strategically idiotic wars in places where there is tacit agreement with the other super power that it is ok, that might happen. But it was not actually relevant.

The reason the US never invaded the North was because of nuclear weapons. And the reason these wars were thought in strategically irrelevant places like Vietnam and Afghanistan is because of this tacit agreement between nuclear powers.

If you are designing an overall grand strategy where you are willing to send 10s of citizens to their death for marginal strategic value, then such a situation might happen.

There are however other strategies you can follow.

> After the nuke has been deployed, land forces would need to be deployed to take the area cleared by the nuke, and air forces would be required to support those land forces.

Great plan to have your infantry walk into the nuclear wasteland.

Your history is really off. Nuclear exchanges because of Viet Nam? Give me a break.

Please, go borrow a decent history of the conflict.

The US was certainty concerned about Soviet reaction and a potential nuclear reaction had the US attempted to invade Northern Vietnam.

I'm surprised they don't go for updated F-16s now, but instead for a new design. Which again will have the chance of running over budget, having teething issues, etc etc. With the F-16 these things are already long figured out. They were even built here in Europe for a while. I know it doesn't have stealth but it has proven itself in asymmetric warfare.

I wonder what the EU partners will do now. The Netherlands wanted the F-35 as the successor to the F-16 which it never became. They had to scale down orders as the price went up. I bet they will need a new plane too to fulfill the F-16 role. They can't cancel the F-35 purchases though as it was an intricate patchwork of local supply deals in return for orders.

I imagine they will just skip to drones mostly now.

I wonder... Right now the Netherlands has no armed drones at all. Just surveillance ones.

Switching to drones makes sense to me, it seems to give a lot of bang for the buck. However, the risks and operational requirements are very different than a traditional manned plane so it would require a lot of change everywhere.

The BS that I don't buy from the pacifists... "we spend 10x Russia!!"

Europe could be… Europe's responsibility.

South Korea is plenty rich and advanced enough to field a modern military, and outclass its neighbor.

Beyond TSMC, why is Taiwan's defense America's responsibility?

I'm fine with having a big military budget, but 'because how else is the US supposed to shovel its children on top multiple grenades simultanaeously for the good of every other developed nation' is a poor sales job.

I agree Europe and SK can field their own stuff.

But if the US abdicates its role, China and Russia are going to carve out their own spheres and soon you’ll feel the effects of having to do business (or none at all) with autocratic states controlled by them.

What a poor quality comment

> How could the US military respond effectively to all of those at once?

1st, why does it have to be able to "respond" anywhere in the world, this is not a capability any other nation has, all nations armies are inherently defensive

2nd, Russia has a Gdp lower than Italy with an ever decreasing military age population. They are not the Red Army and jingoistic toybox wanna be Internet Generals ought stop concern trolling they are

3rd, Spheres of influence are the natural state of Geopolitics, tell me, why is the unipolar hegemonic power policing bilateral relations between overseas sovereign nation states? What legitimacy does it invoke to do this? Other than "might makes right" which International Relations has thanks to rationalism been moving away of for the last 300 years

1. Demonstrably false. All of those nations I listed have huge offensive capabilities as well as plans.

2. Russia’s military is much better equipped than Italy’s, so pure GDP numbers probably don’t matter 100%.

3. US generally enforces international law, and the world has never risen to this level of stability in the past few hundred years. Almost all parties have benefitted. China hugely. You’re just assuming that this stability can exist in a world of autocratic ethnostates that have no hard rules imposed?

Your comment is clearly naive and unread.

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