Avoiding F-35 “Acquisition Malpractice” Aim of Next Gen Air Dominance Fighter

thedrive.com

14 points·clouddrover··5 comments

Making the fighter jet a platform where various components from various companies can work is a fairly topical issue.

There were some early rumblings that NGAD might not be a jet per se, but more like a system for building jets. This is a bit of a twist but still the same mold of problems.

Trying to figure out a way for the US military to actually own the outcome is such an interesting difficult & complex change in procurement. The right to use & modify the thing you buy has gotten worse & worse in this world, and the pentagon is feeling the jackbooted heavy foot of this new High IP regime on their neck too.

It makes me wonder how the approval process for the legal arrangement occurred in the first place at the beginning of the F-35 program.

What kind of Air Force chiefs/generals would sign off on a plan where their successors can't even upgrade their own jets without approval from Lockheed Martin?

To get the answer to your question, you may enjoy reading "War Is A Racket" by Smedley Butler. Having won the medal of honor twice, he was one of the most decorated Marine Corps generals of all time. Truly a fascinating story!

Today's thread on this is doing wildly well, very rapidly upvoted. Well done reference. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36074845

Fairly topical *to the world at large.

Whether humanity is consigned to only be a user of the world about us, or whether have agency & can build... That is a major issue everyone is facing, especially tech-interested folk such as HN readers.

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