We could have been landing on mars for what that cost to develop.<p>Meanwhile the enemy is low budget suicidal terrorists that this or the TSA can't stop.
Hope it doesn't cut off the oxygen to the pilot when it detects a leak, or possibly at random times, like the F-22<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent-oxygen-problems/story?id=15357696#.T2tN-GJSTDk" rel="nofollow">http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent-oxy...</a><p>"Though they acknowledged the oxygen failure, Air Force investigators said the crash was Haney's fault for being too distracted by not being able to breathe and failing to either reduce altitude and take off his oxygen mask or to activate the emergency backup oxygen system."
While the per-unit cost of an F-35 is quite high now (they've only built 60+) the comparative cost to the F-22 which was seen as expensive and too exotic will be lower in the long term.<p>While budget overruns are painful, the idea behind standardizing our fighter jets between the forces, thereby reducing costs is a wise move.<p>I always thought of the F-22 as a hand-built race car, while these F-35 are Porsche's that can be mass produced, are just as "fast" and will be more reliable due to the standardization.<p>Also deploying cheap drones are only possible when you dominate the skies with these expensive, complex, man-powered jets.
I'm really looking forward to the "Mythical Man-Month"-type book that comes out of this disaster. But since it's the government and likely "Top Secret", we'll learn absolutely nothing from this. $1T and no "lessons learned". Our (USA) tax dollars at work, folks.
Obviously lines of code is a poor metric, but wikipedia (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code</a>) would suggest it is not as complicated as:<p>Linux kernel 2.6.35 13.5 million lines of code<p>Windows Server 2003 50 MLOC<p>Mac OS X 10.4 86 MLOC<p>Debian 5.0 324 MLOC<p><EDIT><p>And alternatively:<p>"if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code":<p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-code" rel="nofollow">http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-r...</a>
Could the F35 choice of C++ be the problem or heavy use of OOP?<p>It appears they have struggling with the complexity of their software implementation. It might just be their requirements but I wonder if it is similar to Ericsson's massive failure with their AXE-N project. No one knows exactly why that software project became too complex but it has been speculated that:<p>"One particular problem area identified is the system's software , especially for using extreme attention to object orientation (which at the time was the golden hammer ) in both computer programs as databases , [8] which can be difficult to combine with parallel programming, and that they chose to develop and make use of largely new, completely untested methods."<p>Ericsson attempted to heavily use OOP for the AXE-N, might that be the cause of the failure? The failure spawned the Erlang (functional language, with strict evaluation, single assignment) project which went on to be a massive success in their next product.<p><a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsv.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAXE-N&act=url" rel="nofollow">http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js...</a>
The reference to one trillion dollars in the headline is accurate, but lacks context that makes it a bit sensationalist. The article elaborates the cost as "an estimated $1 trillion to develop, purchase and support through 2050". Or about $25 billion a year. Whether that's pricey or a bargain depends on how many aircraft are purchased and supported; TFA states that the "Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are counting on buying as many as 2,500 F-35s", which would be $10 million per craft per year for the next four decades.<p>This is not to say the thing isn't an overpriced, failing project. If the GAO's analysis and predictions cited in the article are correct, it sounds pretty bad. In particular, it's hard to imagine that four decades from now, the US armed forces would want to still be using early 21st-century aircraft.
What realistic scanario has the following characteristic:<p>We are fighting against an enemy for which fourth generation fight planes are inadequate and said enemy does not have nuclear armed ICBMs?<p>Meanwhile the Air Force is bent on taking out of service the one type of aircraft that is most useful to actual, likely war-fighting - the CAS planes. The AC-130 was originally designed in the 60s and troops still cheer when it arrives over the battlefield.<p>The boys that run the fighter jet mafia consider such "bus driving" planes beneath them, so we instead of upgrading the A, C and perhaps B lines we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars buying the kind of F line toys they prefer to play with.
I was following the (at the time) YF-22 and the proposed JSF when I was a kid. I'm now 28. These things take so long to build and there are so many hands in the pot that they can't help, but be ridiculously complex.<p>Talk about changing requirements during development. Imagine working on a software project that took 20 years to develop.<p>Add that to the fact that any large military project has to be spread out over as many congressional districts to keep as many congressman happy as possible.
Here is Canada our government is insisting they are going to buy some F-35 jets.<p>People have complained other than its complexity the single engine is bad if you are over the Arctic and the engine fails, most modern Canadian jets have dual engines.
FYI: The eurofighter has about 1.2 million LoC (but they use other languages too) and is written in the same programming language (Ada). They have about 500 coders working on it. Impressive..
I hate when companies under bid projects and then the public wonders why its so much over budget.<p>Government contractors do this all the time. They underbid, and then 1 year later, ask the government for more cash because they are soo far in and know the government will do it.<p>Government contract work is sooo lucrative too. Most of that initial investment into Lockhead probably just went to pay salaries of the higher ups and did no actual work.<p>Sorry for Ranting.
I have never quite understood why so many powers (the United States, Canada, Japan, etc) have lined up to try and buy F-35s. Every plausible enemy our countries could square off against have extremely old technology (or no technology to speak of). In fact, I would be prepared to argue that slightly updated F-15s are superior to anything that any plausible enemy could attack us with.<p>Am I wrong? If so, help me understand why!!
While certainly not cheap, the B2 was brought in under time and under budget. I also think we got our monies worth out of it in the several wars it has been used in. Source; the project manager. Disclaimer: he's my brother---we are both a little biased :)