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.
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.
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...
The 1.7 billion price tag is around $5k per citizen. That could mean a lot to a lot of families.
That's very hard to do.
> The design by committee, Swiss-army knife approach has been a resounding failure.
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.
My assumption is high performance constraints requires deep customization and the shared platform hampers that.
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.
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 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.