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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

V/STOL capability was the one thing the marine corps absolutely insisted on, requiring the massive fan that makes the F-35's body so wide and high-drag. The decision to use a one-body-fits-all-applications approach means that even the non-V/STOL versions of the F-35 are fat pigs as far as military jets go. That's why these planes are so bloody slow by modern fighter standards and one reason why countries, such as Canada, that have no need for V/STOL variants of the plane are dropping out of the program.

In short, the marines screwed this plane up for everybody but themselves. If even they are not happy with the result then the F-35 project is an utter flop.

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It was also a hard requirement for the British involvement in the JSF programme — with the UK meant to be contributing 10% of the original budgeted cost of development.

looking back into history i'm wondering why F-35 VTOL didn't follow XV-5A, i.e. placing fans in the wings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XkJXSoTTb4

50 years ago plane looks more capable as VTOL than F-35. Modern powerful engines allow to drive the fans from the compressor shaft - as F-35 shows - and that would fix the main geometry issue with jet engine placement in XV-5A where fans were driven from jet exhaust.

We have created sufficient variety of failed VTOL plane concepts that there are certainly a number of types you've never seen. It is a recurrent trend - every engineering team thinks they have an answer which puts a novel spin on things and will fix them once and for all - and then it turns to shit.

View the 'wheel of shame', as it's known in aeronautical engineering circles:

http://vstol.org/

several years ago spent a bunch of time going through the wheel, and in my view XV-5A and Bell X-22 were pretty good planes - there was nothing really wrong with them, and definitely not a "shame". Given the half-century improvements in hardware/electronics/aeronautical science i think if built today they would be much better than F-35 and V-22.

The USMC's requirements also kinda effed up the V-22 Osprey. Because of the space constraints for operating from amphibious carriers the rotors were undersized for the flight profile they wanted in the V-22, so they compensated by putting in more powerful engines. This caused heat problems that may have contributed to some of the fatal crashes the Osprey has had.

Isn't the whole point of the V-22 to do the sort of missions you'd run from an amphib assault carrier?

Yep, and the Osprey actually has a better safety record than the helicopter it is replacing (scary).

To a certain extent yes, but it was designed to be operated by the Air Force and Marines. Had they maybe split the variants up they could have avoided some of the design compromises that created some of the problems they had.

Still, the V-22 was a vastly more successful program than the JSF will be. At the very least the military got an aircraft that can perform missions no other aircraft can, thereby giving the services capabilities they've never had before. I don't think that will be the case for the JSF when it is all said and done.

edit: Made a mistake, Navy doesn't have V-22's yet

And honestly, the A-10 is still the plane they want...

Not really. It's not carrier capable, which means it can't really get where the Marines need it a lot of the time.

To be honest, the A-10 is probably the plane most of the services want, if they could make it carrier capable. It's a ridiculously impressive aircraft with probably one of the biggest kill lists in history. Along with the Spectres, designing an aircraft around a gun has almost never resulted in a disappointment.

> V/STOL capability was the one thing the marine corps absolutely insisted on

A while ago I read a long and fascinating article tracing this back to Guadalcanal in WWII, when the Marines couldn't get the air support they needed. Apparently this history is firmly cemented in the corps collective memory and is a large part of why they insist on this.

It was probably this one: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/5c95d45f86a5

A truly excellent article for everyone interested in fighter jets, military procurement, government contracts, national security, whether the US could win a war with China, or just really good yarns about really stupid decisions.

Yes, I think that is the one! Thanks for finding it. I was being annoyed at Facebook's lack of search, since a friend's wall was the only place I had ever seen it.

Ironic that you can't use Facebook to recall your history on Facebook, yet Facebook keeps all your data (I assume) forever for analysis.

(I closed my Facebook account a few years ago, so all I know about this is what you said.)

You see lots of things like this decrying the F-35, but the real problems don't lie in features or designs, but in a very broken defense procurement process.

Edited to fix a word.

Ahhh the Flying Piano...

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