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Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

Has this become a politicized, viral, ideology thing? I keep seeing this story pop up in several places, but it doesn't seem like its impact merits the attention.

I'm not trolling and please don't bring the politics and ideology here. I am asking factually. (I'm here because I prefer to avoid those things and as a result can be ignorant of them.)

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Something I think about in stories is "how strong is the emotional hook."

This one is great! A guy fighting his controls, weighing the risk to his life, a Top Gun-style commander of a squadron, ejecting (well, an hour) before the plane explodes.

It scores low on the "relevance" scorecard, but it's off the charts in terms of human interest, and I think it's climbing due to the latter.

Not to mention that the military lost the location of the jet after he ejected and they asked the public to give tips on its location. It was missing for like a day before they found it.

Lots of tweets to the effect of "how tf do you lose a $100m fighter jet??"

It’s possible. But note that there has been a lot of criticism of the F–35 since the inception of the program because it’s a multi–role fighter–bomber jack–of–all–trades that tries to satisfy everybody. Partly this is a political problem. Combat airplanes are expensive to design and need political approval. So you have to get every branch of the military to sign on to the project simultaneously, otherwise you’ll never even start. Therefore the thing has to be a ground–attack bomber for the Army, because they want to replace the Warthog. And it needs to be a VTOL for the Navy, so that they don’t have to build a supercarrier for it. And the Marines need X, the Coast Guard wants Y, the Girl Scouts really rely on Z, and on and on and on. And of course it goes without saying that you had better be able to mount any and every weapon system ever designed to the thing.

And it has to be Stealth.

>it needs to be a VTOL for the Navy,

The US Navy does not operate the VTOL variant: they don't need to. The US Marines and the British and Japanese navies operate the VTOL variant (because they don't have supercarriers).

Fair enough :)

A lot of that criticism ended up being quite muted after the plane ended up being wildly successful after being put into service. It also ended up being much cheaper than the competition for many of allies that bought it as well.

Not to say that there weren't many issues with the program, but it seems like a lot of those requirements panned out.

Hating the F-35 in general has been a thing for the Anti-American crowd, mainly driven by western peaceniks who don't see a point in military might (largely depleted now) and the pro-Russia/China/etc crowd who need it to be shit so their fighters can seem competent. As is usual the latter "inform" the former.

Criticism of the F-35 is not politically polarized -- critics exist on a broad political spectrum. "Western peaceniks" and "pro-Russia/China/etc" are a small subset.

There’s also the pro-Boeing crowd.

Or that F-35 failed its goals. Double the price. 50% more expensive than estimated operational cost. Its 3x the price to operate than a F16. Planes are obsolete technologies, should have invested in drones/loitering munitions. In 10 years, its all going to be drones.

> Planes are obsolete technologies, should have invested in drones/loitering munitions. In 10 years, its all going to be drones.

This is speculation on what the future will be, not our current reality. In the War in Ukraine, reliance on cheap drones has more to do neither sides ability to achieve air superiority due to AA systems. Introduce stealth and/or effective SEAD tactics (suppression of enemy air defense) into that mix, and the situation changes very quickly. For a recent example, see the Israeli strikes on Iranian air defense systems.

The future is more likely to be hybrid, where drones, and "loyal wingman" data-linked with manned systems are used to get the best of both worlds. The F35's sensor suite and data-link capability are designed for that.

What is the use case for a manned missile taxi anyway?

Does it have the agency to fire at will or does it need to confirm all attacks?

Edit: i guess in high EW environments where you need fast delivery

Hey taxpayer! You don't like the estimated $1.5 trillion going to Lockheed Martin for their hunk of junk F35? Then you're just like Forbes, Bloomberg, the Washington Post and the other anti-American ChiComs who are saying all this because "they need it to be shit".

Your rant is almost as inspiring as the Palantir CEO's flag waving speeches where he rants against the anti-America crowd who question why their tax dollars are flowing to his company.

Your post is his point

How does the GP represent anti-Americans or peaceniks?

Do you think that any criticism of the F-35 project is acceptable?

Yeah absolutely, when it's based in actual fact. The F-35 project is a fantastic example of how out of control defense projects can become, it's parts sourcing in partner nations is questionable when those partner nations are liable to go procure S-400, parts commonality between A, B, and C is pretty terrible for three jets that are supposed to be variants, the list goes on.

It being dysfunctional is a convenient stick for this crowd to beat it with, but I wouldn't discount the issues. The U.S.'s allies aren't exactly thrilled with it.

Is it dysfunctional though? There have been issues with it (landing gear and helmets come to mind), but they don't seem to be out of the ordinary for fighter jet development. As for allies, they keep ordering F-35s (or at least trying to) so it seems like they're at least fine with it.

> The U.S.'s allies aren't exactly thrilled with it.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine and the European countries prioritized defense, the F-35 seems to win every competitive bid.

Not any other realistic stealth options. China has the J-20 and Russia sort of has the SU-57 but that has seen limited production.

So it's far better than anything anyone else has built.

That doesn't mean anyone is thrilled with it.

> Hating the F-35 in general has been a thing for the Anti-American crowd mainly driven by western peaceniks

I hadn't noticed that at all. Could you give some examples?

What I've seen is budget hawks on all sides, meme-following mobs, competing defense contractors, and anyone politician looking for an easy target of 'corruption', etc.

There are legitimate criticisms, including of the one-design-for-all concept, which we can see is not being repeated; sustainment issues, including maintenance; readiness; relevance in the era of missiles with longer range than F-35 fuel tanks, pushing bases and carriers out of range.

I personally don't like the F35 because I think it looks ugly. And I don't trust ugly planes.

On the other hand, it they would have made it look as sleek and beautiful as the F22...

To be clear, it is hated by many pro-Americans and some of its other customers as well, primarily for its cost (over runs).

One could imagine an unpiloted F-35 flying 65 miles in a random direction before crashing itself is probably more of a safety issue than an issue of idiology

The plane could have crashed into a populated center, taken out a neighborhood, etc. I imagine the pilot's priority is to stay with the aircraft and not bail at the first sign of trouble or until they can no longer control it and are sure it will crash in an unpopulated area.

It has a political component because of the cost. The military must be accountable to the taxpayers when they incur losses. We don't have tolerance for unlimited crashes and the reasons or blame must be assigned.

That's a separate argument on specifically who should be blamed here or whether blame was properly assigned. But we can't just crash our most expensive jet and throw our hands up saying "whelp, that sucks".

This was a major story that people have been wondering what the explanation was. The most advanced fighter jet going “missing” over America, pilot landing in someone’s backyard, taking hours to find crash site, learning it was flying on autopilot before crashing etc.

Any story with an explanation would draw attention

Anything that makes the US look bad is sticky around here.

Until this thread, I've never heard that and didn't notice it. People criticize government all the time, everywhere (unless censored), if that what you mean.

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