Hacker News Reader

Comment by scottyah | Hacker News Reader

The F-35 is a massive success. It is a common design that brought together what would have been three to five different planes into one. Costs doubling is further proof of how amazing it is- inflation has basically outpaced that. Cost per flight hour has more to do with data analytics and the Socialism within the DoW (it's a jobs program) than actual need. A lot of delays were quasi-on purpose. It has crazy supply chain logistics, and has greatly strengthened ties with our allies, and helped boost their engineering and manufacturing capabilities.

View on HN

The alternative future, of just producing non-STOVL, is particularly relevant now. The USMC needs some organic aviation, but it doesn't need an F-35C. Organic drones would be an excellent fit for Wasp class ships and beach head forces.

Of course it was all tied up with needing allies to buy to increase order size, and the UK Bukit the STOVL bits, so naturally they had to buy all STOVL jets to increase British industry buy.

It's a rat's nest of everyone trying to please all their stakeholders. It is, eventually, a great jet, but it could have been a better, cheaper jet, delivered sooner, and already past Block 5.

Oh yeah, did anyone mention how long it takes to integrate a new system onto the F-35? Fracking years. All of which has to be done by LM, forever. Because the F-35 is not a jet, it's a Master Contract.

>Oh yeah, did anyone mention how long it takes to integrate a new system onto the F-35? Fracking years. All of which has to be done by LM, forever. Because the F-35 is not a jet, it's a Master Contract.

This is the new reality of military procurement and has been for years. Integrated Logistical Support contracts are preferred by senior leadership for lots of reasons that won't fit into an HN comment box, but the wave tops are that it's wastefully inefficient to have uniformed aerospace engineers, logisticians, project managers, etc. doing R&D work. Private industry does it faster, better, cheaper, and pays bigger salaries with better lifestyles which means they can attract better talent.

I've been an aerospace engineer both in-uniform and out, and I can assure you that uniformed service members (and their families!) sacrifice a lot that's hard to quantify and not always immediately apparent. It's not 1950 any more; the best and brightest mostly don't want to touch government with a 10 foot pole. There's more money and prestige elsewhere, in the private sector.

It's not just that uniformed (or DoD) engineers have no access, the subsystem vendor (e.g. Raytheon) also get no access. LM is incredibly obstructionist, even compared to the bastards at Boeing.

This cluster** has led directly to initiatives for open (Govt open) architectures and vendor agnostic interfaces for talking between vehicles and components, and between component, between jets and drones and C2 etc. That has a long way to go too, but at least we've broken with the idea that it can be a closed system.

I'm familiar with the problems of service careers. There is a lot that could be done to improve that, but that's a different discussion. I think it's extra important now that we have jet engineers who know about AI in the aviation context.

Oh, I know all about LM. I used to work on the Hercules when I was in the Air Force. Experimental flight permits, mods, block upgrades, the works. Greatest aircraft in history, if you ask me, but I digress.

Ultimately the F-35 remains Lockheed's intellectual property, which is what drives all this. They want to sell it to other countries, which they can't do if the USAF owns the IP.

But what would you rather have? 2000 Shahed/Lucas drones or a single F35? Same cost for both.

The saying "Quantity has a quality all of its own" is not obsolete in 2026.

2000 shaheds are just a regular week in Ukraine.

90% of that are destroyed far away from targets and the other 10% do cause some damage, but it is usually far from being devastating as the drone is far from being very precise.

A single F35 which could penetrate air defense and go into the country would be a real problem. If Russia has 10 of them, I think it would significantly alter the current equation of power as it may allow for air superiority.

I think that "air superiority" thinking is part of what's changed.

USA/Israel forces have air superiority over Iran. That doesn't stop Iran being able to fly drones or missiles.

It does stop Iran from being able to launch a huge number of drones and missiles.

That they were able to launch >0 after losing air superiority is a testament to how much work is in the last mile.

> A single F35 which could penetrate air defense and go into the country would be a real problem.

The difference here is an F-35 + precision weaponry + intelligence to locate high value targets.

It's always going to be cheaper / easier to use shorter-range munitions, which means the launch platform has to be higher / closer.

But without strategic intelligence (what high value targets exist, and what are they supporting?) and targeting intelligence (where are they right now, and where will they be?) neither of the other two capabilities are valuable.

Logistics and command inevitably trend towards centralization, because it's inefficient and expensive to decentralize everything (and at some point the tyranny of compounding logistics makes it impossible).

Where there is centralization, there's a high value target, and that's a job for the F-35 and exquisite standoff weapons.

Should forces be a mix of high-low? Of course! That's something the US realized in the 80s and is why we have the F-16! (still flying, being built, and exported!)

So where is the air superiority over Iran? This only proves Palmer Luckey right. Future of warfare has changed drastically and all countries are taking notes from this War.

So why doesn't Ukraine have any F-35s?

im not so sure. Ukraine is sending drones over very long distances now, ducking through air defense.

youd want some number of both. The ideal defense net against shahed type drones looks very different from the ideal defense net against f35s. Namely, shaheds require very cheap and numerous interceptors and radars, and f35s require very expensive radars and interceptors (and a dream). Anything that works against an f35 would be an egregious waste against a shahed and anything that works against a shahed wouldn't against an f35

Depends. If I need to destroy a bunker, the Shaheds are useless. If I need to shoot down another aircraft (or a Shahed), the Shaheds are useless. That also goes for SEAD, targets that are far away, targets with ECM...

Also, the physical and economic footprint for that many drones isn't small, and a few smart bombs from an F-35 could put paid to your entire inventory.

A single F-35, because Shaheds don't have the legs required in the Pacific.

You can fit three Ukraines between Guam and Taiwan.

F-35 can fly more than once...

> and has greatly strengthened ties with our allies

If you count as "allies" the smaller countries that feel like they need to buy US planes otherwise they will get bullied, knowing that the US routinely threatens to invade them... I guess.

Given budgets and slipped timeframes, there was a lot of criticism of the F-35 unifying platforms as opposed to just letting every service do their own one (or two) things as had been the norm. But, at the end of the day, not clear it was a bad strategy.

It is actually pretty clear. Getting there in the end doesn't mean it was a good choice.

The range of the F-35 is too low for the Navy, because it sits in the F-16 concept. But there is no fighter/interceptor split in the AF either, and the range is too low for AF as well.

So now we have the F-47, a very belated ack that the F-35 has short legs. But it also won't fix the problem because it is too focused on the F-22 role, absolute air dominance against e.g. J-20.

No one should call it success. It is what it is.

The F-35C has greater range than the F/A-18 Super Hornet, the F-16, and the F-22. It's only exceeded by the F-35A and the F-15EX. And "no fighter/interceptor split"? What does that even mean? The USAF hasn't had a true interceptor since the F-106 was retired.

The F-35 achieved exactly what was written on the tin. To be a stealthy replacement for the F-16, A-7, and AV-8B.

The fact that the USN doesn't have a long-legged air superiority fighter has nothing to do with the F-35, and the USAF never considered China as a concern when the ATF requirements were issued (that became the F-22).

So if you compare it to the previous generation turbine it's better? That isn't very interesting.

The F-35 achieved a goal that isn't needed, at the cost of extreme delay. An F-16 replacement with stealth would have been delivered faster and cheaper. The USMC could concentrate on drones, STOVL and vertical lift. A larger variant for F-15/F/A-18 replacement would have many advantages. The USN always wanted more range out of JSF, but wasn't allowed to buy it.

I’m winning a War, BY A LOT, things are going very well, our Military has been amazing and, if you read the Fake News, like The Failing New York Times, the absolutely horrendous and disgusting Wall Street Journal, or the now almost defunct, fortunately, Washington Post, you would actually think we are losing the War. The enemy is confused, because they get these same Media “reports,” and yet they realize their Navy has been completely wiped out, their Air Force has gone onto darker runways, they have no Anti Missile or Anti Airplane Equipment, their former leaders are mostly gone (This has been, in addition to everything else, Regime Change!), and perhaps, most important of all, THE BLOCKADE, which we will not take off until there is a “DEAL,” is absolutely destroying Iran. They are losing $500 Million Dollars a day, an unsustainable number, even in the short run. The Anti-America Fake News Media is rooting for Iran to win, but it’s not going to happen, because I’m in charge! Just like these unpatriotic people used every ounce of their limited strength to fight me in the Election, they continue to do so with Iran. The result will be the same — It already is! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Reply on news.ycombinator.com