Ask HN: Military project management; F35 Lightning II

Hey folks. When I started running a small team, I thought late deliveries and slipped deadlines were my personal fault; a moral failure.

I fairly quickly realized that there's not much I can do, by looking at case studies, learning how to estimate etc etc.

During this time, I discovered civil projects like Boston's Big Dig [0]. Which was to be completed between between 1991 and 1998 and instead was delivered in 2007.

Subsequently, I also found "Pentagon Wars" [1] about the delivery of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

Finally looking for more contemporary examples, I came up upon the Joint Strike Fighter program. The goal was to build a new generation fighter. Last I checked only 250 were flying 2018, a far cry from 2000 that were originally ordered.

I also found something that I thought was unique to software engineering. Reprioritizing/recategorizing bugs and issues to make the release look more palatable. Apparently in 2018 there was no way to confirm target data for smart bombs. Occasionally the tail hook on the carrier variant of F-35 would destroy the airframe [2]:

> F-35 officials are recategorizing—rather than fixing—major design flaws to be able to claim they have completed the program’s development phase without having to pay overruns for badly needed fixes. Several of these flaws, like the lack of any means for a pilot to confirm a weapon’s target data before firing, and damage to the plane caused by the tailhook on the Air Force’s variant, have potentially serious implications for safety and combat effectiveness.

I stopped keeping track of this a few years back so I'd like to catch up:

- does anyone have a good overview of the latest F-35 status. I enjoy the tech but the project management aspect is more interesting. - does anyone know of similar (not necessarily military) projects with massive overruns in cost and time?

[0]: Boston's Big Dig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig [1]: Pentagon Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars [2]: F-35 Program Cutting Corners to “Complete” Development https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2018/08/f-35-program-cutting-corners-to-complete-development/