Marine Corps orders safety stand-down of all aircraft after F-35 disappearance
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/f-35-fighter-jet-missin...
> Officials said Monday evening that a debris field had been located about two and a half hours northeast of the base
"Traffic was really bad; we were only going half-an-hour per hour..."
The kids will shorten it in slang to just the unitless dimension. "Rick's car is really fast; we got it up over 2.5 yesterday!"
I hadn’t noticed that before but I probably will now. That does seem to be a US thing. Often a person will respond in units of distance and time, one after the other. It does make sense given the effect that traffic conditions in a city can have on the travel time but “how far?” “it depends” is really funny.
> I imagine that they live close to an orbiting massive object which curves the space.
My thought was their home is some kind of moving fortress. A city on the back of a turtle wandering along the coast.
In London we would describe a journey based on time (or maybe stops, but only for very short train journeys) not distance.
Same for international travel- measured in flight time not distance travelled.
Because in most situations knowing how far away something is takes second place to knowing how long to get there. That’s what is relevant.
Now as to this crash location, I guess it means 2 hours by car but yeah it’s more ambiguous than a more widely understood journey.
> Officials said Monday evening that a debris field had been located about two and a half hours northeast of the base.
> Two defense officials said Monday that although the jet was on autopilot when the pilot ejected, it does not have the range or ability to fly for such a long period without refueling.
It definitely feels like the F-35 has been plagued by issues for a really long time.
Shhh. You're seeing the absurd janky house of cards that the trillion dollar online ad business really is. Their marketing CDP says you're a Pentagon official with purchasing power.
Ad tech was supposed to solve this. But the reality is they are selling people a rube goldberg machine that throws darts at a wall, and charging money for it like it's the Oracle of Delphi.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aerotime.aero/articles/are-...
I’ve never paid to do any advertising myself but that experience of bizarre misstargeting hasn’t been a good advertisement for the advertisement industry!
> “During the safety stand down, aviation commanders will lead discussions with their Marines focusing on the fundamentals of safe flight operations, ground safety, maintenance and flight procedures, and maintaining combat readiness,” the statement said.
It is pretty damning and disappointing that this action is warranted. Too much spending on tools and not enough on soldiers.
1. Make Tough Requirements
2. Get Prototype
3. Prototype attracts some interest
4. Now the brass additionally wants capabilities X, Y, Z
5. Prototype now costs twice as much and is more failure prone, and actually less mission-capable due to all the bolt-ons
6. Program costs goes up due to all the changes
7. We can't afford this!
8. Cut unit acquisitions by 50%
9. Wait? Our unit cost just nearly doubled because the real costs were all in design/R&D?
10. Now we REALLY can't afford this.
11. Cut orders by another 75%
12. So finally approximately 10% of the original order actually gets built, at a total program cost 2 or 3x what it was supposed to be, and a unit cost that's massively huge.
13. Program fails in the mid-to-long term due to maintenance costs and falling spares inventory.
HBO did a great made-for-TV movie on this called the "Pentagon Wars", which while fictionalized is only about 20% actually made up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU
Great in that it is entertaining, but I would not take it, or the book it was based on, completely at face value:
> The Pentagon Wars was made to be a comedy first and an adaptation of the Pentagon Wars book second. It was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of the Bradley program and it shows. You're getting Hollywood taking an an axe-grinding, half-true memoir as fact and then playing it for laughs.
* https://old.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/erpmjm/having_j...
See also perhaps:
> Although the Bradley destroyed many enemy tanks and experienced fairly low rates of casualty in the First Gulf War and the Iraq War, the vehicle’s recent battlefield performance was not acquired through efficient planning and project management. The origins of the modern Bradley span decades of troubled development; the involvement of many stakeholders; inflexible and questionable requirements; a failure of contractors to make design tradeoffs for fear of losing capability; billions of dollars in R&D costs; and numerous Congressional interventions, including House Armed Service Committee hearings investigating Bradley testing protocol.1 The Bradley has been described at different times, by military officers and historians, as a weapon that means “all things to all people,” a “quintessential hybrid,” and “a proverbial camel...that does nothing well”.2
* https://user.eng.umd.edu/~austin/enes489p/lecture-resources/...
> 8. Cut unit acquisitions by 50%
> 9. Wait? Our unit cost just nearly doubled because the real costs were all in design/R&D?
> 10. Now we REALLY can't afford this.
> 11. Cut orders by another 75%
> 12. So finally approximately 10% of the original order actually gets built, at a total program cost 2 or 3x what it was supposed to be, and a unit cost that's massively huge.
Oh they've learnt from that well enough. Why do you think we're ordering so many thousands of F-35s? They've kept the unit cost perfectly on-budget! Just don't ask about the total program cost.
The Bradley was designed as an IFV from the ground up, not a bastardized APC. The Bradley came in under budget. Those two facts invalidate essentially the entire film...
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-...
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2022/09/13...
It costs money to keep a supply chain going for rare items.
Maybe a smarter approach is to build broadly useful factories that can switch on a dime during times of war, but no one has figured that out.
The thing about expensive tech that gives you an advantage is that random consumers can’t afford it.
Our military budget is the size of the next 12 countries put together.
There is little functional or healthy about the current state of affairs.
That's because we practically subsidize the majority of our allies' militaries.
If you properly adjust for that fact - basically do some manner of reasonable PPP adjustment - China is already spending on par with or more than the US at this point.
The reason the US military budget is seemingly so massive, is because the US economy has such an extreme output per capita, at present ~$80,000 (Britain + Japan combined). Astronomical for a nation so large. ~3% of $27 trillion is not unreasonable for a superpower with global interests. Russia has given us a demonstration, again, that we in fact do need that military capability. China will probably provide another.
They may take yours wings for cross negligence any time.