Is the F-35 officially a failure?
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Imagine where SpaceX would be if the government got in there making sure everyone was happy and all 50 states got a piece of the action.
It never worked out particularly well for the Army, either. Every war in US history before the establishment of a permanent standing army with NATO is a story of a hasty, disorganized clusterfuck for upwards of a year until a semi-professional organization was painfully established, and it's rarely until year two or three that a really effective force could ever be forged out of the tiny cadre of professionals and the mass influx of untrained volunteers or conscripts.
Which is funny, because as the original comment points out that until after we'd been attacked during WWII, we didn't have a significant standing army. After we were attacked, we started a large buildup, and ended up on the winning side. Every war the US engaged in since then, we've both already had a standing army, and we've LOST. So statistically at least, having a large standing army is more likely to lose us a war.
To be fair, in all of those wars we've lost, there has been strategic ineptitude from the top down in each one. Vietnam was a bad idea, which is why the people of the US protested it so hard. Anything in the middle east has been a clusterf, and even the people choosing to go there knew it was stupid. I'll allow that Korea was somewhat sensible in terms of long-term defense, but even then it could've been handled better. But a standing army hasn't been winning us wars, that's for sure.
Stealth is overrated. It's been over-rated since the Serbs shot down an F117 twenty years ago.
AI can be good. But a man is better AI than AI itself. And generally it's a whole lot lighter in weight.
The F-35 is too heavy, and has too little range to be useful.
WW2 planes were simple and spartan. They were light in weight and more manoeuvrable because they were simple and spartan.
America relies too much on advanced weaponry. (Vietnam, Afghanistan... cough, cough) The Germans in WW2 had the most advanced weaponry. But the Allies and Soviets swamped those advanced weapons with sheer numbers of 'good enough' weapons.
It's no good having a weapon with a 100:1 kill-ratio if the enemy can throw 101 of his weapons at it.
The government landed men on the moon fifty years ago and SpaceX is still blowing up rockets regularly, I'm not sure your comparison is particularly flattering to SpaceX.
Moreover, I fee like our government today would have a hard time pulling off that feat. In the early 60s we still had somewhat nimble areas of government. I don't think it's true today. We allow too many interests to have too much pull and negative influence causing some kind of paralysis as well and franken-projects that are impossibly encompassing.
And cannot accomplish that task again today. And did it by investing massive quantities of money and resources in a project, which no business could possibly hope to match, unless they print their own cash flow, as the government does.
That concept also produced a rather terrible jack-of-all-trades experience that we've slowly been working our way back from, after an enormous amount of collateral damage and opportunity costs.
The doctrine of the US Air Force is that they will have the best airplanes at any cost to achieve air dominance. They literally don't care about price as long as they get the lethality and qty. they want.
Hence they will never look at low-cost fighters like the F-5, A-10 or A-29 for their own use, except as maybe trainers or Marine use.
The F-22 is no longer made. Around 189 were built and there's about 150 left. It's a great plane, but the low count is a great concern in case of war (with China.) You can lose 150 planes in a couple of days in a kinetic war.
The F-35 has numerous show-stopping problems, plus even more numerous irritating problems. The US needs about 1,000 operational ones, plus another 1,000 for our allies, to be an effective deterrent to China. (Since the US has 11 carriers, that's enough F-35s to populate them.)
The reason we need so many planes is that China has almost 18,000 ships, which can be used to blockade (defend) the S. China Sea (a tactic they accidently discovered in the last Taiwan Strait conflict.) So that leaves aerial/ICBM attacks.
The US MIC has prioritized pork instead of results, so we need to work on qty. The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again.
(WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940. Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.)
During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked.
The only reasons the CCP hasn't successfully invaded Taiwan yet are:
- the Taiwan Strait is about 80 miles wide at the narrrowest. Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent.
- Russia told the CCP to stop saber-rattling on previous attempts
- The US came to Taiwan's aid in the last two attempts, and has a policy of including Taiwan under its umbrella (like half the world's countries.)
So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own.
>Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to.
>So here we are, on the brink of war
There seem to be some wildly conflicting points here? Are you advocating for the use of nukes and also complaining about warmongers?
Surely protesting against racism is what is makes the US weak. Not income inequality or the almost complete lack of social security net or poor access to education.
</sarcasm>
We will see what happens in US as weather warms up.
Have we already forgotten Hong Kong?
I don't know what leads Americans to be consistently misinformed other than memetic doomsaying but the USA is 5th for education expenditure per capita, and 10th in per capita social welfare spending, both far ahead of OECD average and ahead of Japan, Switzerland, AUS, NL, UK, etc.
Can anyone go to University? Are down on luck individuals more likely to receive housing or being sent to prison? Can old folks live off of their pension or do they have to work as greeters?
I seem to have a distant memory of a grotesque orange trust fund baby that I think could be described as decadent and divisive, is it possible that he had something to do with this?
They're symptoms so obvious that even we can see them. I suspect that the CCP was well aware of the divisions without needing to have it pointed out to them by BLM and Antifa.
>..nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked.
I'm not sure this statement paints the CCP as the villain you imagine it does. No country with options is going to stand by while the largest hydropower dam in the world is attacked, and possibly millions of their citizens are killed due to flooding and famine.
> (WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism. Both Germany and Japan thought of the US as country bumpkins in 1940.
In 1940, Hitler's actual words, which presumably were not too different from the rest of the Nazi leadership, were "WHAT is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood?" That doesn't sound much like bumpkinism to me. (Not to mention the Henry Ford connection, or the IBM one)
> Considering Germany couldn't invade Britain, which is only 20 or so miles from France, you can see how 80 miles is a very strong deterrent.
How do you explain June 6th 1944? The Nazis didn't do Operation Sealion because it was too far, they didn't do it because they didn't have air and naval superiority.
Once there, Taiwan is fortified and ready to fight with a large army. China will be unable to establish air superiority due to Taiwanese 4th gen fighters plus air support from American and Japanese assets, along with the ANZACs if they have any gumption left in them.
The PRC's been pushing hard on anti-ship missile capabilities and I don't know if I'd say they're any worse off than we are.
I seem to remember a major conflict in the last century where we had a POTUS that similarly couldn't climb a flight of stairs on his own and we seemed to do just fine...
But great to have some diversity of thought from MAGA facebook here on HN, it does get a bit echo-chamber-ish
Are you trying to tell me that Leonid Brezhnev, in 1969, was going to let Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger dictate foreign policy to him?
> The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked.
At attack on Three Gorges would be a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions (Protocol I, 1977). The US has not ratified Protocol I, but the PRC has.
In the event of such an attack, what would you consider a reasonable level of retaliation?
For example:
> Today, the CCP thinks of us as decadent and divided, thanks to BLM and antifa.
You're right that internal division is a major geopolitical liability, but you're missing half the story. Yes, when rival powers see BLM-themed looting they lick their chops, but they also do that when they see a QAnon-themed "capitol insurrection". It takes two or more to tango. If you had talked about division more generally it would have been better-received.
But yeah: Can you imagine the US having a draft? Very few people would get shot at to defend "America as an idea" any more. Pretty sure that millions of Angry Youth have more conviction in their cause than Americans have in theirs.
> The Biden administration is perceived as weak gobally [...]. [...] So here we are, on the brink of war with a President who can't climb a flight of stairs on his own.
First of all, I'm not convinced that Biden's administration is perceived as weak, relative to Trump. Yes, he's more conciliatory on the surface with China, just like Obama was -- but it was Obama/Biden who started the Pacific pivot. And Trump, while more "hard on China" on the surface, could well have been perceived as inexpert and flatterable/manipulable.
(And Biden's physical state is mostly irrelevant. FDR was in a wheelchair and Timur was lame. Whatever. Dude doesn't go out and punch geopolitical adversaries with his fists.)
But when you say
> [The US] is perceived as weak gobally, which is unacceptable for a superpower - that gets millions of people killed until the US demonstrates dominance again.
... you're right. You were also right with your first six paragraphs. And your observations about strategy and tactics were interesting. These are areas where you could educate HN, if you toned down the Trump/Biden stuff.
> During a border dispute in 1969, Russia decided to nuke Beijing because they wouldn't take no for an answer, but the US foolishly told them not to. The CCP has already threatened in 2020 to use nukes against the US if the Three Gorges Dam is attacked.
This is the most interesting tidbit. A quote from [1]:
> William Hyland, the author of this paper, was a Soviet analyst at CIA's Directorate of Intelligence before he was recruited for Kissinger's NSC staff. In this memorandum, Hyland critiqued an interagency study on Sino-Soviet relations that Kissinger has requested in National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 63. In the course of the analysis, which Kissinger characterized as "1st rate," Hyland acknowledged that a limited Sino-Soviet war was "by no means a disaster for the US." For example, implying that a war would involve Soviet strikes to destroy Chinese nuclear facilities, Hyland observed that it might be a "solution" to the China nuclear problem.
The relevant Wikipedia article is also interesting [2].
[1] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB49/
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
> WW2 in Europe started due to US isolationism
... you may want to start reading non-US-centric books
Eisenhower was right, though, and the military-industrial complex (which now pales in significance to the Social/Tech-Government complex)rammed through a monster one-size-fits-all plan that was farcical on its face, but successfully stole well over a trillion dollars from the taxpayers, and delivered a plane so unreliable it's unflyable 75% of the time, and in trying to do everything, winds up being good at nothing.
Really? The F-35 a replacement for the A-10 in its low-altitude, tight-turning, monster-gun close air support role?! AND a world-beating air superiority fighter (to rival or surpass the F-22, Su-57, and J-20), AND a top carrier-based fighter, AND a stealth fighter/bomber to replace the F-117,AND a supersonic VSTOL Harrier replacement? The very idea is completely ludicrous. The real-world F-35 is even worse than the old SNL commercial for Shimmer - It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping! (but with HappyFunBall's unpredictability...)
Anyone with the sense God gave geese can clearly see that one airplane could never do all this (again, especially after the F-111 debacle), but the corrupt Pentagon, Congressmen (but I repeat myself), and military-industrial complex took all of us for a ride on their trillion-dollar turkey.
The worst thing is that we've wasted decades worth of R&D and procurement money on a plane that does not and cannot work and be useful in the real world. We had better pray we never need this airplane in a fighting war, because it CANNOT be relied upon, and we can't afford enough of them anyway!
The F-35 program hasn't cost over a trillion dollars. It's supposed to cost over a trillion by the time they retire it, sometime 50 years from now. That is to say, over the 70 years that the program is expected to last, it'll have cost over a trillion.
The F-35 is a replacement for the A-10 for CAS, but it's conception of how to do CAS is different, because we expect enemies that aren't just guys with a rifle to have the ability to hit stuff at low altitude. So we don't want to have our new stuff operate at low altitude. Literally every aircraft in the USAF/USN/USMC tactical fleet can do CAS in the way the F-35 is supposed to: drop munition from medium altitude. The F-35 is just supposed to be generally better at it (better sensor fusion, etc). Hell, we even have B-1 bombers doing CAS, by dropping bombs from medium altitude.
The F-35 isn't supposed to rival or surpass the F-22. It's supposed to complement it.
But yes. It's a failure. Throw some more money at A-10s and F-22s (or upgraded versions).
Can I get a piece of it? Perhaps a commemorial dial from the onboard watch?
Or they should put them out in a city center, next to the central well, next to the church, so the children can play inside on sunny Sundays.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-big-problem-a...
Doesn't matter. The A-10 is a fully functional aircraft, which puts it far, far ahead of the F-35.
> I don't see how a close air support plane would replace the F-35.
For some reason, they tried to design the F-35 to do everything. What the original comment is saying, I believe, is that the A-10 and F-22 were very successful and capable aircraft, and between them could handle most all of the situations the F-35 was supposed to be able to handle (but can't). If we spent even a fraction of the cost of the F-35 on updating their design, they could be even more capable.
Unless it’s getting downvoted because the two things aren’t at odds. It would cost orders if magnitude less to just upgrade the A10s and others.
Let's put it at medium altitude so that we don't have to try to armor it against manpads.
Then we can probably make it single engine, so we can get a bit cheaper mx.
Let's skip the fuck off huge gun, because it's raison d'etre was killing tanks, but even when it was designed, it was only good against the rear or side of a tank, not the front, and that was 50 years ago. If we use a smaller gun, we can save the weight for more useful things, like guided bombs.
It's going to need much better sensors, since we want it at medium altitude, so let's make sure to integrate them.
If we make it supersonic capable, we can increase the radius it can work over when on station.
I think I'm back at a F-35 now.
The challenge is you want something that can linger and pick at targets on the ground with ease. This necessitates a low stall speed, requiring the use of a straight wing. The aerodynamic characteristics of anything resembling supercruise demand a swept wing, which would destroy the "lingering" aspect. So you can't get a good CAS with an airframe that works well for a fighter role.
The gun on the A-10 is useful for strafing runs against infantry, not just concentrated fires against MBTs. To do that, you need a substantial round + LOTS of ammo. The F-35 just doesn't have enough internal storage capacity to service this need. So you've got to keep the gun. It also has barely any external mounting capability for bombs, rockets, and missiles.
So, I'd say it would be something that looks a whole lot like an A-10 but with CAD assisted fuselage shape changes to minimize RCS + new materials + new avionics.
I have no idea how to mitigate MANPADs as I'm unaware of what they use for targeting solutions. The distinct twin-tail on the A-10 was picked to provide a shroud for heat emissions from the engines (c.f. Raymer) to mitigate those types of attacks but I imagine that near peers have increased their capabilities.
The gun may be useful for strafing runs, but it's explicitly designed as an anti-armor weapon, and it fails at it for modern peer tanks. The JSF cannon is still a 25mm cannon, but it's much more optimized for explosive effect, which is more useful than the 30mm anti-armor cannon that the A-10 carries. There may be call for having more ammo (the A-10 carries ~6x more ammo than the F-35), but practically speaking, the A-10 has 9-18 bursts (1-2 second bursts), while the F-35 has 9-10 bursts (~20 round burst). But again, you're supposed to be doing CAS at medium altitude, which means your gun is more of an after thought.
Beyond that, the F-35 has more external mounting capability than an A-10. The F-35(A/C) has a listed external capacity of 15klbs on 6 external stations (5klbs on the inner stations, 2.5klbs on the middle stations, 300lbs on the outer), plus the 2 internal bomb stations (2.5klbs each), 18klbs total. The A-10 has 11 stations, but not all of them can be used at the same time. The outer stations are spec'd for the same as the F-35 (300lbs for AIM-9). But you can use either the side by side or the center station under the fuselage, and the wing stations aren't spec'd as high, for a total load of 16klbs, or 2000 lbs less than the F-35.
MANPADs are mostly IR, but newer ones are imaging IR sensors, and can attack from all aspects. The A-10's shrouding helps against older missiles, but not so much against new ones.
Some standardisation in fighter design doesn't sound like a bad idea at all, and you can certainly question why you'd need all three of the F-15, F-16 and F-18. But also the A-10 and the Harrier? Those are very different planes with very different roles. I think cramming those two requirements in there is what sunk the F-35. There's no way to make one fighter do all of that and do it well.