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Comment by huuu | Hacker News Reader

This is also why the JSF will fail. A good plane is desinged for a goal. You can't design a plain that meets all goals.

I think that post Cold War US military has very hard time developing anything.

Probably comes from the vague mission, unlimited resources (yes they are a curse sometimes), single super power winner mentality, lack of imminent treats for the us mainland, and lack of political will to do anything.

Sums up proper design. Figure out the job requirements first, the design comes naturally from that. Trying to come up with a fancy design first and then fit that to some task just ends up with a glorified CAD rendering.

In all fairness, the JSF program at least started out as a legitimate response to the plethora of different airframes and programs coming out of the different branches of the US military (as well as the UK). For years, there was a lot of complaining about the costs of each service demanding to have its own designs because it was special and the Marines couldn't possibly make do with a plane designed for the Air Force, etc. etc.

Unfortunately, the history of trying to make merged designs isn't great. Differences in missions (and, frankly, the fact that those missions have been changing in many cases) seem to lead to designs that cost too much, don't do most tasks especially well, and take too long to design and build.

The last time an all service airframe was designed, McNamara was Secretary of Defense, and the F-111 was born. The Navy decided to pass on it.

And the Air Force for air superiority (F-15) and CAS (e.g. F-16 and of course A-10). Pretty much only deep interdiction for Air Force, out of a total of 5 planned roles including 2 for the Navy, survived. F-111s were also used by the SAC in a likely one way trip to deliver nukes from Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and perhaps elsewhere (I lived near it right as the Cold War was ending).

While it developed some useful things, and pioneered variable geometry (swing) wings, it was almost entirely a debacle. Forced the Air Force to use designed for the Navy F-4s for a long time, which I'm sure they hated (and of course it was obsolescent, required two crewmen, the engines smoked (makes it much easier to spot in ACM), etc. etc.).

I wouldn't be surprised if the Air Force will be forced to use F-18 Super Hornets to replace falling apart F-15s. A nasty failure in the process of going from the design drawing to what was built in the factory resulted in all of our air superiority variants having a nasty weakness in the attachment of the cockpit to the air frame: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#S... (living back in Missouri at that time it was pretty big news that one simply fell apart around its pilot while doing pretty much normal stuff).

Maybe better stated as developing an aircraft, or anything, has to define not only what it will do well, but what it won't do. It seems that for effective CAS, you have to be willing to say that this airplane will suck at air superiority, speed, and radar-stealthiness. You will never be able to nuke Moscow with it, and it seems that the USAF is not willing to build a plane like that.

As a rule in the military/government contractor world anything with 'J' for 'joint' in it is a mess.

JSF -- a mess

JTRS -- (Joint Tactical Radio_Systems)

etc.

What do you think of the F-16?

The F-16 was designed for a goal: the LWF. It was designed as a lightweight air superiority fighter and nothing else.

But that isn't what was eventually designed and built, it was made into a fighter-bomber which required a much heavier airframe, sacrificing supercruise among many other things.

Given that the original concept was strictly a daytime fighter I'm not at all sure the decision was incorrect.

A plane designed by a renegade Colonel for a single goal, which just happens to be something other than Close Air Support.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-16_Fighting_...

You can, but you most likely get some modular drone...

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