The F-35 may be unsalvageable

While it might be a failure from the taxpayer&#x27;s and military&#x27;s point of view, it&#x27;s a raving success for Congress and the contractors. The metrics for the latter are jobs, grandstanding, campaign donations, kickbacks, crony benefits, and mountains of cash, plus guaranteed more mountains ongoing until it&#x27;s killed.<p>I wish this was the cynical view but it&#x27;s more like reality of government procurement.

While there are certainly issues, the issues are more with the procurement process than the actual aircraft.<p>Virtually every single aircraft program has been flogged by the press for being too expensive and less capable than the aircraft it replaced. This included the F-111, the C-5, the F-14, the F-15, the B-1, the F-16, the A-10, the F-18, the C-17, the B-2, the V-22, the F-22, and now the F-35. Overall the track record for these aircraft turned out to be outstanding, far exceeding the capabilities of their predecessors.<p>The actual track record for the F35 has been very positive. Most the reports I&#x27;ve seen from pilots are generally very positive [1].<p>Other countries continue to buy it over other platforms [2].<p>Most the major complaints are around costs compared to the aircraft that are being replaced, but this isn&#x27;t a fair comparison.<p><i>As for the cost to fly the F-35, a unit measure the Air Force terms “cost per flying hour,” today the F-35 costs around $35,000 per flying hour. Comparative aircraft in this class are generally in the mid $20,000s, a target the F-35 is slated to hit by 2025. However, it must also be remembered, as the F-35 pilot’s above comment highlights, far fewer F-35s can accomplish far more with fewer aircraft than legacy aircraft types. It does not require a math major to understand this yields far lower real-world total costs to achieve a particular mission result.</i> [3]<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;italian-pilots-raved-about-first-red-flag-exercise-with-us-made-f-35-2019-4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;italian-pilots-raved-about-f...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationaldefensemagazine.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2019&#x2F;5&#x2F;24&#x2F;international-market-for-f-35-heats-up" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nationaldefensemagazine.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2019&#x2F;5&#x2F;24&#x2F;i...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;davedeptula&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;f-35-problem-child-or-on-track-for-success&#x2F;?sh=524a454315d1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;davedeptula&#x2F;2020&#x2F;07&#x2F;20&#x2F;f-35-pro...</a>

&quot;In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day&quot; - Augustine&#x27;s Law #16

Just tangentially related, but I find it very weird that people push one-system-that-replaces-all (or, in this case, planes) as cost cutting measure, compared to few specialized systems. Which do not have to take tons of compatibility stuff. In this case, probably some problems of Air Force&#x27;s F-35&#x27;s are related to the constrant that the requirement of being able to land on carriers pushes.<p>At the end, results are at best mediocre, costs exceeded, and everyone is unhappy.

Seems a lot of the problems are due to how the government develops and acquires military hardware, with incentives for the various players massively misaligned with the interests of the country as a whole. I wonder what would a sane acquisition program look like?<p>A company developing a product and then offering the more or less completed product to the military worked during WWII, but a cutting-edge fighter (or many other pieces of cutting-edge military hardware) development project is such an expensive and risky project that a company can&#x27;t do it alone and hope that the government then comes and buys the finished product. So going back to how things were done back in the day isn&#x27;t an option.<p>Likewise the government taking the main design responsibility and using the companies only for building the products the government has designed probably won&#x27;t work either, as the government doesn&#x27;t have the expertise.<p>So what would a sane strategy look like?

Col. Boyd must be spinning in his grave!<p>One of my favorite books: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0316796883" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed&#x2F;dp&#x2F;031...</a><p>There&#x27;s a lot about what&#x27;s wrong with aircraft procurement in this book and how he fought against it. Idealism and pragmatism still lose to politics and money fifty years later!

Imagine if we held a war, and nobody could afford to come?

The F-35 makes me wonder if US military superiority is as great as it appears on paper.<p>For example our military budget is 10 times that of russia. However does 1$ russia spends vs 1$ the US spends on equipment equate?<p>Think it may be very likely that Russia (and China) are getting more bang for their buck and the gap between forces isn’t quite as extreme.<p>No question the US has the most powerful military in the world and it’s Navy presence is unmatched. However moving forward is this sustainable ? Russia and China catching up?

Yet another anti F-35 article that really doesn&#x27;t bring anything new to the table.

The F-35 isn&#x27;t an airplane, it&#x27;s a defense industry jobs program to spread subcontracts widely around a sufficient number of congressional districts and states that it can&#x27;t be killed.

Military expert Pierre Sprey, the founder and designer of the F-16 &amp; A-10 Warthog airplanes, Explains why the f-35 will not cut it on the modern battlefield.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;UQB4W8C0rZI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;UQB4W8C0rZI</a>

Does anyone have first hand information on how big of an impact the decision to use C++ instead of Ada had on the &quot;staggering array of persistent issues&quot;?

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. The Pentagon Wars is available for viewing on YouTube.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ir0FAa8P2MU</a>

<i>Although it has an extraordinarily poor track record, killing off the JSF entirely will prove difficult. According to a map showing the economic impact across the country...</i><p>I&#x27;m not a fan of maintaining bad&#x2F;harmful industries to prevent job loss. If we&#x27;re that concerned, redirect those <i>trillions</i> into beneficial jobs - like oh, say, badly needed infrastructure repair.

On a related note, an F-35 shot itself a couple weeks ago on a training run in Arizona causing over $2.5m in damage: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;article&#x2F;qjp7nq&#x2F;one-of-americas-dollar1358-million-fighter-jets-shot-itself" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vice.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;article&#x2F;qjp7nq&#x2F;one-of-americas-dolla...</a>

With advances in drones and remote imaging, is there still a role for manned jets like this? I similarly wonder about manned spaceflight.

Any chance the UK can get a refund then?<p>&quot;Before the end of this decade, the F-35 Lightning will provide the ultimate punch of the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. The F-35 is an Anglo-American joint effort, designed by the best and brightest in the two nations’ aircraft industries.&quot;

&gt;There has also been significant investment in the program by North Atlantic Treaty Organization members and other allies.<p>A lot of the time with these investments it seems like it is mostly a signal of investment in the alliance with the US and that getting the planes is a sort of side effect.

I remember when F-35 was just coming out, it was cast as a significantly cheaper alternative to F-22s. I think it was in the documentary “Battle of X-Planes” (not sure of exact title)? I am amazed how this turned out. Should we have kept producing F-22s?

One reform I would support would be mandating that all defense projects are made in ten states or less. That way you could spread the project around if you needed to, but it wouldn’t have enough support to continue only as a jobs program.

The F35 is a strange aircraft. It has a very powerful single engine but the airframe is still too heavy. So the plane performs poorly and lacks the potential energy to exploit any particular edge case. So they are pushing it as a &quot;networked&quot; platform that supposedly allows commanders to control the battlefield, because everything is connected in real time. It sounds fanciful and kind of made up.

It is one thing to build a complex piece of technology, it is quite another to deploy it and expect it to work 24-7. $1.7 Billion was spent on this program.

A lot of recent f35 is trash reporting is mixed up in lockmart competitors trying to to make clean sheet f16 proposal a thing. f16 also lockheed, so conceivably lockheed gains even if f35 failures need to be plugged by f16s.

If this is a headline, it means that everything behind the scenes is happening as expected. US Gov doesn’t leak. This is a distraction from current MILOPs capability.

&quot;Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes Not need, just feed the war, cannibal animal&quot;<p>-Rage Against the Machine, Bulls on Parade

I think there is room in the market for an Elon Musk style entrepreneur to completely re-define the industry as was done by Space-X. I think defense filters out a lot of potential founders due to it&#x27;s inherently bloody nature -- at the end of the day these are machines are designed to kill people efficiently, whatever the reason may be.

How many times have you heard the cliche phrase: the US spends more money in its armed forces than the top K other countries combined?<p>Well, spending and results not always go hand in hand. And in the case of aerospace contractors, they can be rewarded for being inefficient at the expense of the taxpayer.

Here in Canada a major issue of the 2015 elections was whether to buy in on the F-35 project.<p>The liberals wanted open procurement and specifically said they wanted the to avoid the F-35.<p>The conservatives wanted to continue with the process that was basically designed to justify procuring F-35s.<p>In the meantime, Canada&#x27;s F-18s are absurdly old, and we have a tradition of screwing up open procurement by sandbagging it for decades.<p>So the Conservatives looked quite reasonable in wanting to buy in on this internationally supported plane made by our closest allies.<p>I think the liberals are vindicated at this point.

The J-20 copied the F-35. Now the international marxists are trying to junk it with their bought and paid for media.<p>Bold move.<p>A few dirty secrets about war. Really powerful people do start them over petty arguments at home. They loose power, and then make life as worst as possible for everyone until they are back in power. Some have a heart and things just gets out of hand. Some view other people&#x27;s lives like poachers view deer in the wild or oil from a well. Mine it till it runs dry, move on. They are convinced of their immortality. Part of me sometimes question my doubt, like if they have some state secret medicine.<p>A cockpit is not a pretty place to be. It kills you just the same as anything. Fumes, oil, vomit, sunlight, stressful long hours. Replace it with drones all you want. People will find out what really kills drone operators too, and it will probably be generational. Increasing the knowledge requirements so you only study, don&#x27;t have a family, and your city is filled with junkies. Sap them across decades and centuries.<p>War is killing first. How you do it comes next. Cold calculated killing, weaponizing everything we know.<p>It&#x27;s best to avoid it. And if you think about what provokes, and what soothes violent people. Materialism and moral license, with their drunkenness, boredom, search for meaning tend to provoke. It&#x27;s then you have the street fights. Lofty moral standards, such as I just built a gravity application with the new black hole imagining data, something that will kill everything EVER, tends to calm things down, mystify and give them something to achieve.

I’ve heard it said that stealth is a lie.<p>That radar technology from World War 2 era is able to detect stealth aircraft. The Russians just built up more of that kind of radar band to detect current stealth planes.<p>This is how the F-117 got shot down in Yugoslavia. It was supposed to have the radar cross section of a small bird.<p>Can anyone provide insight to this?

The amount of money spent on this weapon of war could have been used to build a $700k house for every one of the 550,000 homeless people in the USA.<p>If you taxed Jeff Bezos at 100% of his wealth and simply confiscated all of his US$183 billion of assets and liquidated them, you would have to find another 1.3 of him to do the same to to cover the cost of this program, which is 2.3x his net worth. Even if you tacked on Elon Musk&#x27;s US$164B, you wouldn&#x27;t have enough to pay for this.

Another service update, nuclear weapons exist. Any situation that involves high tech piloted planes fighting each other in the sky is almost impossible to happen.<p>Dropping insane amounts of resources into piloted figher plane is bordering on insanity.<p>The same money could have literally created a Mars, doing far more for US politically and done wonders for its global credibility. Or you know, become global leader in electric mobility or many other things that would have been useful to both the US government and its people.<p>Bombing the shit out of pure Arab, Africans and peoples from central Asia without a government can be done with planes from the 90s just fine.

I&#x27;m surprised they don&#x27;t go for updated F-16s now, but instead for a new design. Which again will have the chance of running over budget, having teething issues, etc etc. With the F-16 these things are already long figured out. They were even built here in Europe for a while. I know it doesn&#x27;t have stealth but it has proven itself in asymmetric warfare.<p>I wonder what the EU partners will do now. The Netherlands wanted the F-35 as the successor to the F-16 which it never became. They had to scale down orders as the price went up. I bet they will need a new plane too to fulfill the F-16 role. They can&#x27;t cancel the F-35 purchases though as it was an intricate patchwork of local supply deals in return for orders.

The BS that I don&#x27;t buy from the pacifists... &quot;we spend 10x Russia!!&quot;<p>But yeah, Russia has a nuke deterrent and could use that to force a land war in Europe at the same time that China launches an attack on Taiwan and North Korea launches an attack on South Korea and Iran attacks Saudi Arabia.<p>How could the US military respond effectively to all of those at once? Each of those countries wants to carve out their sphere of influence. Once a short term victory is in the pocket for each of them, there is diplomatic negotiations to end fighting and then the new facts on the ground materialize and now 1&#x2F;2+ the world is under autocrats again.