19 ms·

The F-35 still has a long way to go

129 points by okket 10y ago

okket 10y ago
Original source: "F-35 Continues to Stumble" http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues-to-stumble.html http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues...
- MegaButts 10y ago
  > When Lockheed Martin first won the contract 17 years ago, the F-35 was expected to begin operational testing in 2008. Once they failed to meet that, 2017 was supposed to be the big year for the start of the combat testing process. We now know that this process will almost certainly be delayed until 2019…and possibly 2020. Wow. I did not realize it had been in development for so long. > The scale of the challenge yet remaining with the F-35 is easily quantified in this year’s DOT&E analysis. According to the report, the F-35 still has 276 “Critical to Correct” deficiencies—these must be fixed before the development process ends because they could “lead to operational mission failures during IOT&E or combat.” Of the 276, 72 were listed as “priority 1,” which are service-critical flaws that would prevent the services from fielding the jets until they are fixed. I'm not an expert on designing fighter jets, but that sounds bad. > The problem is bad enough that Lt. Gen. Bogdan has admitted the F-35C will need an entirely redesigned outer wing. Will someone more knowledgeable tell me just how bad this is? I do know a bit about defense contractors and missiles (I worked at a defense contractor for a hot minute as an engineer), but this just sounds like a clusterfuck of epic proportions. The cynic in me believes the congressional-military-industrial complex has run wild in order to maintain cash flow.
  - mrpippy 10y ago
    There was a 2 hour NOVA about the Boeing vs Lockheed competition back in 2002/2003, looks like it's on YouTube https://youtu.be/B7-LQDueYlk https://youtu.be/B7-LQDueYlk
    - richardboegli 10y ago
      Official video instead of a repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014954
  - devNoise 10y ago
    I haven't kept up on the F-35 lately. But this is a jet made of compromises. The Pentagon knew they couldn't get funding for multiple new jets. The F-35 is trying to do to much by being a jet for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. So they combined all the requirements for the specification. Combining the requirements of the Air Force and Navy probably isn't so bad. The Marines requirement of the F-35 being VTOL capable is holding the design back. I accept that VTOL is a key requirement for the Marines, but the F-35 has made a lot of trade offs for that feature. While I don't know how successful the F-35 would be without VTOL, it has to be better then what is being delivered.
    - ElectronCharge 10y ago
      Most of what you wrote is wrong. There are three versions, the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C for the AF, Marines and Navy respectively. The three split a long time ago, so no version is holding any other back. Where things aren't so good is that the three versions were originally supposed to have over 80% parts commonality. That is now down to something like 20%. That is bad in terms of economies of scale. All that said, in principle there is absolutely nothing preventing a single, mostly common, design from filling those three roles. Whether the F-35 team has done an exemplary job of doing that is certainly a question. In terms of sheer engineering, it can be argued that the F-35B is the most impressive of the three versions. It's the first supersonic VTOL fighter ever.
      - devNoise 10y ago
        From a Bloomberg article* yesterday: "The lift fan made the common fuselage bulkier than it otherwise would have been. That, in turn, increased drag and decreased fuel efficiency and range." This quote from the article reinforces my view that the VTOL requirement does effect the other version of the F-35. * https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-04/is-the-f-35-a-trillion-dollar-mistake https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-04/is-the-f-...
  - MrLeap 10y ago
    I remember reading about the F-35's catastrophic problems and cost over runs on slashdot when I was in highschool. I'm nearly 30 years old now. It seemed like an unsalvageable boondoggle back then. Glad the government appears to have pulled it out and made it a success!
obstinate 10y ago
It's almost unfathomable how much good such an amount could accomplish, if it weren't being spend on building underperforming and unnecessary weapons systems.
- Tostino 10y ago
  Very true. While the advancement in the specific technology related to aviation this brings is significant, research in this area does not get disseminated to other areas in the same way that money going to funding other types of research would.
  - dude01 10y ago
    Like cryptography research -- almost every public advance in that area is the second time, the first time while "classified" by the NSA.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  Indeed. I want the federal government to declare "war" on Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other poverty stricken areas. Maybe then these impoverished areas might get some infrastructure improvements which will generate jobs in the short term and help attract businesses in the medium-long term. Why did it take almost a whole year to get $170m (or just one F-35) to the people of Flint? Why is a military toy built to fight a fictional war against nobody more important than actual people who are suffering? The US will happily declare war on Iraq and spend $1.7 trillion, but just the thought of spending a dime within the country turns everyone's stomachs! We need to declare war on poverty, we need to declare war on collapsing infrastructure, we need to declare war on lack of public transport, and we need to declare war on shitty internet stifling the country's competitiveness. This is all GDP generating. Every dollar we spend on infrastructure provides almost twice that in GDP. What is the F-35's rate of return?
  - phd514 10y ago
    Flint's not a great example of alternate ways for how F-35 monies could be spent. Political and administrative ineptitude led to unsafe water conditions in Flint and now federal taxpayers are bailing them out to the tune of $170M. That's wasteful all around as the situation was entirely avoidable.
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curt15 10y ago
I wonder who doesn't regret cancelling the F-22. At least that airplane has the advantage of raw performance even if you take away its more high-tech features. An air force general once warned that "without the f-22 the f-35 will be irrelevant".
- kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
  The F35 is keeping far more people employed. That is its main purpose and it has been a resounding success. Its entire procurement process was designed to make it resistant to cancellation by farming everything out to a broad base of constituencies. It is now safely past that hurdle and can do its job as a money machine.
  - zachrose 10y ago
    This explanation comes up in every thread about the F-35. While it has good explanatory power, it doesn't explain why the US couldn't have a non-dysfunctional procurement process that actually delivered effective planes.
    - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
      The people controlling the purse strings like the dysfunctional system as it is. Nobody has the power to stop it. There was zero reason for Trump to end the sequester except to funnel more money into the MIC.
      - Roritharr 10y ago
        The truly interesting question would be: How will countries without a broken procurement process compete? Will China be able to spend 0.1% on their new planes and get 1000% ROI?
    - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Companies are run by businessmen and not people who want to build extraordinary aircraft.
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mrtri 10y ago
why the russians can build a superior Sukhoi PakFa for half of the price ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAnrvNpOsVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAnrvNpOsVc
Pica_soO 10y ago
There is no such thing as too long to fail?
CalChris 10y ago
The F-35 is right wing welfare.
- quakeguy 10y ago
  I'm in your boat, and i propose a more flat-rate thesis than your comment does. It goes like this: Without the spending of federal money into the M.I.C., USA would be bankrupt within a few months. Not only bankrupt, but broke on a general level. Broken, so to say. Feeding the warmachine on and on will blow back sometime, there is an end to all wastefullness.
  - samstave 10y ago
    We need a movement to compel the .gov to spend just ONE years worth of MIC spending on social endeavors. And see what would be possible.... We have the ability to defend ourself, we have the most powerful military and navy in the world many times over. Lets just see what the heck we could accomplish in one year alone with respect to social and economic services.
WalterBright 10y ago
My father was an aerospace historian, and predicted back in the 1970s that eventually the entire defense budget would be used to purchase one fighter. For a history of fighter costs: http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter11.html http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter11.html
- Banthum 10y ago
  Heck, if that one fighter can win a world war alone, it's worth it! E.g. One WW2 battleship could defeat every ship on Earth combined as of ~1830. (and it probably cost more than all of them too). But, this is an amusing observation.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    The trouble comes when the machine is too expensive to risk in combat, and cannot be replaced if it is lost. We saw this with battleships in WW2.
    - Redoubts 10y ago
      And almost all of Germany v England in WWI
    - nradov 10y ago
      The US Navy constantly risked their battleships (the ones that survived Pearl Harbor) in combat during WW2. They were right in the thick of every part of the Pacific campaign.
      - WalterBright 10y ago
        The Bismarck and the Yamato in particular come to mind.
        protomyth 10y ago
        If you are looking for a WWII battleship that was too expensive to risk the Tirpitz is probably the best example. I think they let it out once.
ocschwar 10y ago
Given the neglect the military is inflicting on the A-10 warthog, I fully expect the next war to involve the desperate recruitment of the only community of machinists nimble enough to pick up the A-10's blueprints and start rebuilding them. Which happens to be the Suame Magazine workshop district in Ghana. Ghana may wind up deciding the outcome of the next major war.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  For all the a10s greatness, building new ones would be a waste. Improvements can be made. New material and design mean the airframe is now less than ideal. Improvements in ffars (the ones made in canada now fly straiter then bullets and nearly as fast) make even the iconic gun, around which the airframe is wrapped, less than ideal. Google the texco scorpion for what a modern a10 might look like.
  - jhalstead 10y ago
    s/texco/textron/, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion
    - sandworm101 10y ago
      Ya, that's the one I meant. It looks very different but operationally is very similar to the a-10. Two turbofans rather than jets, relatively strait winged, significant loiter time, cheap to run, and plenty of extra capacities. Dump the second seat, add some steel protection here and there, and you've got a new warthog. A low-wing / high-engine version would be closer to the a-10, but that is almost style over function imho.
      - stouset 10y ago
        Low-wing / high-engine makes it somewhat harder for IR MANPADS to correctly seek on a A-10, especially on approach. The horizontal stabilizers help shield the IR signature as well. It also protects the engines from direct hits from AA guns. And last, it lets maintenance crews refuel and rearm an A-10 on the ground without waiting for the engines to spool down (and spool back up afterward), which can take some time. Faster rearm and refuel means faster mission turn-around. Low-mounted wings also give the A-10 a very low stall speed, improving its ability to loiter over a battlefield.
brandnewlow 10y ago
Someone should apply to YC with an air-to-ground fighter startup. They've funded a Concord startup, and an electric 737 startup. Why not an "F35 that works" startup?
- pooper 10y ago
  Sorry to be a party pooper but the problem I think is there might be restrictions on who we can sell such a thing to (given we can create something that is as good as the 35, which isn't a given either). I mean outside of NATO and Israel, I can't imagine who I'd be comfortable selling to... Maybe Japan and South Korea? I don't like the idea of being dependent on a few large customers. Not saying you should listen to me. I have a horrible track record in speculation. I was clearly overly skeptical of the Y Combinator darling, Dropbox. I bet Y Combinator is glad they didn't listen to people like me. It just makes me feel uneasy.
  - CalChris 10y ago
    No one is going to buy this piece of junk if they don't have a finger in the manufacturing pie. And at $100M per, nor should they. We sell the F16 ($18.8M) to a ton of countries who'd never buy an F35. http://www.f-16.net/f-16_users.html http://www.f-16.net/f-16_users.html
- thrill 10y ago
  Well, I could certainly do that - I've already blown $40MM trying it once several years ago :) - actually it was for an aircraft with a different focus, but still ... Making predictions is hard, especially about the future. Building a complex system is rife with complex risks. There's the initial sticker shock, and that's even if costs can be reasonably estimated years in advance for technology which is not only unproven, but undemonstrated. Then there's the quite significant nonrecurring engineering costs. Want to divide those costs over 200 aircraft instead of 300 - bam - 50% cost increase, thank you madam taxpayer. Still need those 200 aircraft by a given date - discover it costs more because manufacturing facilities come in "chunks" of price-to-capability - under-build and miss the target - over-build and per-unit is higher. Discover your estimates of deliverability, even if made with honest efforts, are off by a few years, and the price only goes in one direction. Try to keep certain components really (relatively) inexpensive to meet price requirements, and discover, like every aircraft manufacturer in history, that adding lightness is difficult after you had to add strengthening material in certain problematic areas, like, oh, the wings. And of course, politicians change their minds - keeping 10,000 engineers engaged during a lean period so that you can re-engage them when political winds change is a nontrivial task too. And with all that, to be a successful long term project, there's some future events that have to be estimated - tell me what the threat will be in 20 years? What will the political will to engage those threats be? What munitions will there be? What survivability is desired? What's the desired lifetime? Will AI be good enough to dump pilots entirely? As much as I'd love to build the next generation manned fighter-bomber, it's not a palatable risk for anyone not ready to lose their entire investment. Even Paul Allen has got to feel a little sensitive at the billion dollars he lost with his effort at Eclipse (during the time I was losing far less). I recently went through (most of) a technical incubator in the area I live in. There were several investors involved that were quite knowledgeable about aviation. I couldn't get any of them interested enough to engage in my autonomous air ambulance idea (the Marine's have said in advance they want such a thing - but it has to be good, fast, and cheap) - and the translation to a future civilian capability is pretty obvious. That's one reason I'm cheering for the effort by Boom to build a new civilian supersonic aircraft. Yeah, it's going to be hard to meet price targets, and it's refreshing to see someone willing to take a $30MM chance on a complex project, and that's just to get a demo built and flown. Building a future capable fighter is a whole other ballgame.
nerdy 10y ago
There's already a lot of suggestion that Adir (the Israeli F-35) has seen combat over Syria in January. At a minimum French intelligence [1] and Israeli media [2] claim the attack was carried out using F-35s. They reportedly went on to perform a flyby of Assad's palace. Adir has special kit which may replace some of the problem components in the stock American version, but the air frame itself isn't a "long way" from being combat-ready. [1] http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-f-35s-seen-combat/ http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-... [2] https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-footage-israeli-jets-attacking-damascus/ https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-footage-israeli-j...
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  Combat with who? Did it go up against anything which would challenge an F16?
  - weego 10y ago
    Planes don't toe-to-toe with other planes anymore.
    - burnallofit 10y ago
      As it says in the article... then why does it have a gun? One of its primary purposes is air-to-air. Don't take my word for it: https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities
      - cm2187 10y ago
        The gun is also for close air support, if I understand the article.
        kodfodrasz 10y ago
        For CAS these planes are simply not good for. For that role A-10 or Super Tucano like cheaper planes are needed, because those planes are more efficient for that role.
engi_nerd 10y ago
This is an article that has lots of little details wrong but the overall message isn't wrong at all.
cm2187 10y ago
This reminds me so much the excellent movie "The Pentagon Wars" which I highly recommend.
metricodus 10y ago
Norway dismissed buying Gripen from neighbouring Sweden to buy the non-working F35, claiming Gripen failed the technical evaluation of what a capable fighter needed to be able to. In hindsight it seems obvious that they were less concentrated with actually getting a capable fighter anytime soon and a lot more concerned with, well, paying money to the US. This has caused a rift between the two countries that is still lasting. (Side-note: as a new HN user I really, really hate this throttling. I think I actually managed to submit this on the 9th try, waiting about ten minutes between each attempt. I kept seeing "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." I really, really don't think is good for conversion stats.)
- kalleboo 10y ago
  The diplomatic cable leaks proved that the purchase was politically motivated under heavy pressure from the US https://www.thelocal.se/20101203/30584 https://www.thelocal.se/20101203/30584
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  If we had bought the Gripen we would also get access to the software that drives it and not be beholden forever to the manufacturer.
zaphirplane 10y ago
I have to say I am suspecting that the f35 problems are disinformation. It just doesn't make sense otherwise, so many countries so much money so much dependency and it's really a broken plane ! And the problems can't be fixed? Right. I suspect it disinformation to deter china and Russia from putting money into similar generation plane. Or even friendly countries from going their own way aka Typhoon / rafale replacements
- CalChris 10y ago
  Is it disinformation that Canada cancelled their F35 order and bought F18s instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_Canadian_procurement#2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
  - fatbird 10y ago
    Thank God we did.
  - zaphirplane 10y ago
    Have they cancelled or talking about it? Even if 1 country canceling proves nothing at all. If 80% or 70% cancel then it may mean something
solomatov 10y ago
It seems that Israel recently used it in combat, so it's ready. http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-f-35s-seen-combat/ http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-...
- valuearb 10y ago
  Nope, that's a rumour from a French journalist that's very unlikely to be true. And note it's not ready, cause the gun doesnt work, in 4 years when it's supposed to work it won't carry enough ammo, it can't carry its planned bomb types, the helmet doesn't work and might be dangerous, and it gets dusted in any dogfight by 40 year old fighters.
richardboegli 10y ago
If you haven't I'd highly recommend watching Battle of the X-Planes. A documentary by NOVA about the JSF competition between Lockheed Martin X-35 (which became F-35) and Boeing X-32. Official PBS link [0]. Here is the official site [1] with full transcript and behind the scenes about the making of the documentary (quite insightful). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kNszWU7hTw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kNszWU7hTw [1]: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  I know they're just designators, but it makes me wonder which would have won if Boeing had named their plane the X-37.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    Can someone explain this to me? I've been fascinated by fighter planes since I was a kid and never understood the designations. Why do the F104 and F117 come before the F35?
    - handedness 10y ago
      http://m.wikihow.com/Understand-US-Military-Aircraft-Designations http://m.wikihow.com/Understand-US-Military-Aircraft-Designa...
      - roryisok 10y ago
        Thanks! Most relevant quote, in case anyone else is interested: > The rule, although often violated, is that normal aircraft are to be designated in a strict numerical series according to their basic mission. The easiest examples are found in the Fighter class of US airplanes: F-14, then the F-15, F-16 and so on. But, there are exceptions. For example, the X-35, which was a research plane, was later redesignated the F-35 when it became fighter capable, even though the next number in the Fighter sequence was F-24.
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scottLobster 10y ago
Meh, it's popular to crap on the F-35 Program (and with good reason, it's been horribly mismanaged), but it's best to remember that at the end of the day this is one case where public opinion on its capabilities does not matter and is almost certainly inaccurate. Unless someone on the F-35 team pulls a Snowden, the decisions will be made by people with security clearances who have access to more data than we could ever hope to Google.
- AlexCoventry 10y ago
  You doubt the credibility of the report? I wouldn't exactly call it mere public opinion... The author seems well-positioned to know how the project is going, and goes into great detail about its flaws.
- remarkEon 10y ago
  This wouldn't be the first time a bunch of guys with clearances higher than yours got the entire philosophy of future war wrong because they were suffering from some form of sunk cost fallacy.
  - yeukhon 10y ago
    To me this is more of a pride thing. It's too much to lose. My theory is certain people want to hold on to that power (budget and control over the development program).
- valuearb 10y ago
  Nope, it's shortcomings are publicly documented. It can't dogfight, maneuver, has terrible visibility, bad systems, not enough ammo in a gun it won't be able to use for years, and can't carry the most useful bombs yet. It's not even going to be fully usable for 7 more years. It's a piece of junk being kept alive by lobbyists and fighter mafia when drones are 10x more cost effective.
  - ElectronCharge 10y ago
    "Nope, it's shortcomings are publicly documented. It can't dogfight, maneuver, has terrible visibility, bad systems," None of that is actually true, especially the "terrible visibility" part. In fact, it's the only aircraft flying with literally 2 pi steradian (the full sphere around it) visibility. The author of the linked article has a vendetta against the F-35. There are legitimate criticisms, and he outlines some of them - they don't mean it won't be an effective system within a few more years. Could the procurement have been done more effectively? Of course, and I hope future procurements learn a lot from the problems of the F-35 effort. In particular, there has to be a realistic plan to incorporate technology improvements during the development process! I'm also dismayed that computer modeling didn't predict issues like the weak wingtips of the F-35C. All that said, how about a little balance from people who've actually flown the plane in simulated combat...? This pilot flew the F-35B against F-16s and F-18s: "Mo: I was leading a four ship of F-35s on a strike against 4th Gen adversaries, F-16s and F/A-18s. We fought our way in, we mapped the target, found the target, dropped JDAMs on the target and turned around and fought our way out. All the targets got hit, nobody got detected, and all the adversaries died. I thought, yes, this works, very, very, very well. Never detected, nobody had any idea we were out there." You can read many more complimentary words at the link: http://www.sldinfo.com/the-moment-pilots-first-realized-the-f-35-was-something-extraordinary/ http://www.sldinfo.com/the-moment-pilots-first-realized-the-... "not enough ammo in a gun it won't be able to use for years, and can't carry the most useful bombs yet." The gun will almost never be a combat factor. As to the "most useful bombs", there is always something new isn't there...? The baseline SDB-1s are plenty useful in their own right, along with the various JDAMs and other munitions available.
rwallace 10y ago
One of the things about the F-35 is, the smart helmet with sensor fusion is conceptually very powerful but they're having a lot of difficulty getting it working properly. Why? Well, to get user facing software working properly, you need a tight, low friction OODA loop (ironically in context, a concept perhaps most notably studied in air combat). Develop a prototype, put it in front of domain experts, prospective users, get feedback, develop an improved prototype, rinse, repeat. But that's exactly what's very hard to do in a huge project with massively rigid bureaucracy. Conclusion: those capabilities should first have been developed in a skunkworks project, an X-plane, before committing to them for the do-everything plane that half the world is supposed to end up using for the next half century. General cross-domain conclusion (at least for domains where the ostensible product is the real goal of the project, which in this case it arguably isn't, as previously discussed): if the big expensive thing you want to build, wants a radical new capability, see if you can develop the radical new capability in a skunkworks project before committing to it in the big expensive project.
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- qume 10y ago
  Especially if John Carmack was working on the skunkworks team.
  - angry_octet 10y ago
    Not remotely required, the solution is known but the system specs are locked in and won't be changed.
- angry_octet 10y ago
  I agree, but the bigger problems with the DAS arise from it being built by several companies, who argue whose fault it is, rather than how to make it work. So no one is responsible and also capable of fixing it.
deepnotderp 10y ago
You have to wonder to what degree the design of the Boeing X-32 impacted its ultimate rejection. There's got to be some general that was thinking "I don't care how good that plane is, we're going to be the literal laughingstock of the entire world".
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- Too 10y ago
  Maybe the DOD should go watch the movie Moneyball.
ufmace 10y ago
The F35 is such a political football now that it's hard to even get solid information on whether it's good or bad. I never saw so much press on how great the F35 is as when Trump tweeted about maybe cancelling the program. If you don't like it, what exactly should be done with the program? Should it be cancelled? Do you still think it should be cancelled if that means maybe agreeing with Trump?
- MegaButts 10y ago
  > Do you still think it should be cancelled if that means maybe agreeing with Trump? This kind of argument is what's wrong with people voting the party line instead of voting with reason. Who the hell cares if Trump is right? Do what's right because you think it's right, not because of some petty political squabble. I do not pretend to understand how complicated such an expensive program is and what all the effects of cancelling it would be, but based on what little I know it seems like it would be a good idea to cancel the program and put the funds into something more productive.
  - ufmace 10y ago
    I agree that things have gotten much too politicized along party lines. I'm rather bemused at how many people and organizations seem to be willing to switch sides on issues depending on which party or candidate is pushing which position. I don't think we're going to solve the problems we face by being completely for or against any party or politician. Like I said in a cousin comment, I'd be concerned about what the future would be for aircraft if we did cancel this program. I'd hope to see a plan for what we're going to do for the aircraft we need to buy and replace over the next 30 years before they moved forward with cancelling it.
- EricBurnett 10y ago
  I liked https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/daniel-soar/the-most-expensive-weapon-ever-built https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/daniel-soar/the-most-expensive... for its explanation of the political situation the F-35 is being built in, and the multinational ties that make it extremely difficult to cancel. TL;DR: The scope of this project (intentionally) means there are customers in 10s of countries, with most of them also contributing portions of the plans and so invested in the sales of the others. Just in the US alone contractors account for more people than the Coal industry we're hearing so much about right now. I have not got nearly enough information to say if it's a good or bad plane. But I find it extremely interesting to think that to a large degree, it doesn't matter.
AlexCoventry 10y ago
At this rate human- controlled fighters will be uncompetitive before the F35 is combat-ready.
- JabavuAdams 10y ago
  If they can't get the software right for this crewed fighter, how will they get it right for the uncrewed ones?
wyager 10y ago
Based on the contents of this article, it sounds like many of the problems facing the F35 are rooted in sheer technical incompetence. There is no valid technical reason for many of the software limitations described in the article.
georgeecollins 10y ago
The fundamental problem for me is the cognitive dissonance of needing to put a pilot into a machine where everything is mediated by a computer that doesn't need a pilot. The digital helmet projects what the pilot often sees from cameras, so the pilot isn't really looking through a window, but seeing through a digital camera. Targets are discovered by network interface to other planes. Geographic features are pre-loaded into the plan as a data file. The control inputs from the pilot have no predictable linear feedback, Instead they constantly adjust for various factors like wing slip or aerodynamic drag from the cannon being open. So the pilot isn't using his senses to decide what to do or his reflexes to control the plane. Why is the pilot in the plane?
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Largely because of what we now call the Fighter Mafia. At the time they were the antidote to the "Bomber Mafia." However as time went on the ethos of the pilot and "airmanship" as the most important aspect of the Air Force continued to dominate. That said, there is an argument to be made for pink and squishy still in the cockpit - though too long to argue here and I'm not the right person to do it. However if anything, the amount that the AF has dedicated to UAV/RPA/UCAS operations over the last decade has really shown that if it works, the AF will do it regardless of where the flight control monkeys (derisive term for pilots) physically sit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia
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- idlewords 10y ago
  Note that this is also an excellent argument against human space flight.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Against human piloted space flight. There's no argument here against human passengers going off to explore.
remarkEon 10y ago
>The report says the problem is bad enough that F-35 pilots may need to fly in so close to acquire the target that they would have to maneuver away to gain the distance needed for a guided weapon shot. Thus, the system’s limitations can force an attacking F-35 to compromise surprise, allowing the enemy to maneuver to a first-shot opportunity. This sounds catastrophic.
wiz21c 10y ago
F-35 100 billions, ITER 20 billions... If I had to choose...
tracker1 10y ago
I remember learning my job (working on training system for Comanche) was cut on the 6 o-clock news... And that was a lot less in the whole than this thing.

129 points by okket 10y ago

okket 10y ago

Original source: "F-35 Continues to Stumble" http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues-to-stumble.html http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2017/f35-continues...

MegaButts 10y ago
> When Lockheed Martin first won the contract 17 years ago, the F-35 was expected to begin operational testing in 2008. Once they failed to meet that, 2017 was supposed to be the big year for the start of the combat testing process. We now know that this process will almost certainly be delayed until 2019…and possibly 2020. Wow. I did not realize it had been in development for so long. > The scale of the challenge yet remaining with the F-35 is easily quantified in this year’s DOT&E analysis. According to the report, the F-35 still has 276 “Critical to Correct” deficiencies—these must be fixed before the development process ends because they could “lead to operational mission failures during IOT&E or combat.” Of the 276, 72 were listed as “priority 1,” which are service-critical flaws that would prevent the services from fielding the jets until they are fixed. I'm not an expert on designing fighter jets, but that sounds bad. > The problem is bad enough that Lt. Gen. Bogdan has admitted the F-35C will need an entirely redesigned outer wing. Will someone more knowledgeable tell me just how bad this is? I do know a bit about defense contractors and missiles (I worked at a defense contractor for a hot minute as an engineer), but this just sounds like a clusterfuck of epic proportions. The cynic in me believes the congressional-military-industrial complex has run wild in order to maintain cash flow.
- mrpippy 10y ago
  There was a 2 hour NOVA about the Boeing vs Lockheed competition back in 2002/2003, looks like it's on YouTube https://youtu.be/B7-LQDueYlk https://youtu.be/B7-LQDueYlk
  - richardboegli 10y ago
    Official video instead of a repost: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014954
- devNoise 10y ago
  I haven't kept up on the F-35 lately. But this is a jet made of compromises. The Pentagon knew they couldn't get funding for multiple new jets. The F-35 is trying to do to much by being a jet for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. So they combined all the requirements for the specification. Combining the requirements of the Air Force and Navy probably isn't so bad. The Marines requirement of the F-35 being VTOL capable is holding the design back. I accept that VTOL is a key requirement for the Marines, but the F-35 has made a lot of trade offs for that feature. While I don't know how successful the F-35 would be without VTOL, it has to be better then what is being delivered.
  - ElectronCharge 10y ago
    Most of what you wrote is wrong. There are three versions, the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C for the AF, Marines and Navy respectively. The three split a long time ago, so no version is holding any other back. Where things aren't so good is that the three versions were originally supposed to have over 80% parts commonality. That is now down to something like 20%. That is bad in terms of economies of scale. All that said, in principle there is absolutely nothing preventing a single, mostly common, design from filling those three roles. Whether the F-35 team has done an exemplary job of doing that is certainly a question. In terms of sheer engineering, it can be argued that the F-35B is the most impressive of the three versions. It's the first supersonic VTOL fighter ever.
    - devNoise 10y ago
      From a Bloomberg article* yesterday: "The lift fan made the common fuselage bulkier than it otherwise would have been. That, in turn, increased drag and decreased fuel efficiency and range." This quote from the article reinforces my view that the VTOL requirement does effect the other version of the F-35. * https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-04/is-the-f-35-a-trillion-dollar-mistake https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-04/is-the-f-...
- MrLeap 10y ago
  I remember reading about the F-35's catastrophic problems and cost over runs on slashdot when I was in highschool. I'm nearly 30 years old now. It seemed like an unsalvageable boondoggle back then. Glad the government appears to have pulled it out and made it a success!

obstinate 10y ago

It's almost unfathomable how much good such an amount could accomplish, if it weren't being spend on building underperforming and unnecessary weapons systems.

Tostino 10y ago
Very true. While the advancement in the specific technology related to aviation this brings is significant, research in this area does not get disseminated to other areas in the same way that money going to funding other types of research would.
- dude01 10y ago
  Like cryptography research -- almost every public advance in that area is the second time, the first time while "classified" by the NSA.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
Indeed. I want the federal government to declare "war" on Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati and other poverty stricken areas. Maybe then these impoverished areas might get some infrastructure improvements which will generate jobs in the short term and help attract businesses in the medium-long term. Why did it take almost a whole year to get $170m (or just one F-35) to the people of Flint? Why is a military toy built to fight a fictional war against nobody more important than actual people who are suffering? The US will happily declare war on Iraq and spend $1.7 trillion, but just the thought of spending a dime within the country turns everyone's stomachs! We need to declare war on poverty, we need to declare war on collapsing infrastructure, we need to declare war on lack of public transport, and we need to declare war on shitty internet stifling the country's competitiveness. This is all GDP generating. Every dollar we spend on infrastructure provides almost twice that in GDP. What is the F-35's rate of return?
- phd514 10y ago
  Flint's not a great example of alternate ways for how F-35 monies could be spent. Political and administrative ineptitude led to unsafe water conditions in Flint and now federal taxpayers are bailing them out to the tune of $170M. That's wasteful all around as the situation was entirely avoidable.

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curt15 10y ago

I wonder who doesn't regret cancelling the F-22. At least that airplane has the advantage of raw performance even if you take away its more high-tech features. An air force general once warned that "without the f-22 the f-35 will be irrelevant".

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
The F35 is keeping far more people employed. That is its main purpose and it has been a resounding success. Its entire procurement process was designed to make it resistant to cancellation by farming everything out to a broad base of constituencies. It is now safely past that hurdle and can do its job as a money machine.
- zachrose 10y ago
  This explanation comes up in every thread about the F-35. While it has good explanatory power, it doesn't explain why the US couldn't have a non-dysfunctional procurement process that actually delivered effective planes.
  - kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
    The people controlling the purse strings like the dysfunctional system as it is. Nobody has the power to stop it. There was zero reason for Trump to end the sequester except to funnel more money into the MIC.
    - Roritharr 10y ago
      The truly interesting question would be: How will countries without a broken procurement process compete? Will China be able to spend 0.1% on their new planes and get 1000% ROI?
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Companies are run by businessmen and not people who want to build extraordinary aircraft.

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mrtri 10y ago

why the russians can build a superior Sukhoi PakFa for half of the price ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAnrvNpOsVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAnrvNpOsVc

Pica_soO 10y ago

There is no such thing as too long to fail?

CalChris 10y ago

The F-35 is right wing welfare.

quakeguy 10y ago
I'm in your boat, and i propose a more flat-rate thesis than your comment does. It goes like this: Without the spending of federal money into the M.I.C., USA would be bankrupt within a few months. Not only bankrupt, but broke on a general level. Broken, so to say. Feeding the warmachine on and on will blow back sometime, there is an end to all wastefullness.
- samstave 10y ago
  We need a movement to compel the .gov to spend just ONE years worth of MIC spending on social endeavors. And see what would be possible.... We have the ability to defend ourself, we have the most powerful military and navy in the world many times over. Lets just see what the heck we could accomplish in one year alone with respect to social and economic services.

WalterBright 10y ago

My father was an aerospace historian, and predicted back in the 1970s that eventually the entire defense budget would be used to purchase one fighter. For a history of fighter costs: http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter11.html http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter11.html

Banthum 10y ago
Heck, if that one fighter can win a world war alone, it's worth it! E.g. One WW2 battleship could defeat every ship on Earth combined as of ~1830. (and it probably cost more than all of them too). But, this is an amusing observation.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The trouble comes when the machine is too expensive to risk in combat, and cannot be replaced if it is lost. We saw this with battleships in WW2.
  - Redoubts 10y ago
    And almost all of Germany v England in WWI
  - nradov 10y ago
    The US Navy constantly risked their battleships (the ones that survived Pearl Harbor) in combat during WW2. They were right in the thick of every part of the Pacific campaign.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      The Bismarck and the Yamato in particular come to mind.
      - protomyth 10y ago
        If you are looking for a WWII battleship that was too expensive to risk the Tirpitz is probably the best example. I think they let it out once.

ocschwar 10y ago

Given the neglect the military is inflicting on the A-10 warthog, I fully expect the next war to involve the desperate recruitment of the only community of machinists nimble enough to pick up the A-10's blueprints and start rebuilding them. Which happens to be the Suame Magazine workshop district in Ghana. Ghana may wind up deciding the outcome of the next major war.

sandworm101 10y ago
For all the a10s greatness, building new ones would be a waste. Improvements can be made. New material and design mean the airframe is now less than ideal. Improvements in ffars (the ones made in canada now fly straiter then bullets and nearly as fast) make even the iconic gun, around which the airframe is wrapped, less than ideal. Google the texco scorpion for what a modern a10 might look like.
- jhalstead 10y ago
  s/texco/textron/, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    Ya, that's the one I meant. It looks very different but operationally is very similar to the a-10. Two turbofans rather than jets, relatively strait winged, significant loiter time, cheap to run, and plenty of extra capacities. Dump the second seat, add some steel protection here and there, and you've got a new warthog. A low-wing / high-engine version would be closer to the a-10, but that is almost style over function imho.
    - stouset 10y ago
      Low-wing / high-engine makes it somewhat harder for IR MANPADS to correctly seek on a A-10, especially on approach. The horizontal stabilizers help shield the IR signature as well. It also protects the engines from direct hits from AA guns. And last, it lets maintenance crews refuel and rearm an A-10 on the ground without waiting for the engines to spool down (and spool back up afterward), which can take some time. Faster rearm and refuel means faster mission turn-around. Low-mounted wings also give the A-10 a very low stall speed, improving its ability to loiter over a battlefield.

brandnewlow 10y ago

Someone should apply to YC with an air-to-ground fighter startup. They've funded a Concord startup, and an electric 737 startup. Why not an "F35 that works" startup?

pooper 10y ago
Sorry to be a party pooper but the problem I think is there might be restrictions on who we can sell such a thing to (given we can create something that is as good as the 35, which isn't a given either). I mean outside of NATO and Israel, I can't imagine who I'd be comfortable selling to... Maybe Japan and South Korea? I don't like the idea of being dependent on a few large customers. Not saying you should listen to me. I have a horrible track record in speculation. I was clearly overly skeptical of the Y Combinator darling, Dropbox. I bet Y Combinator is glad they didn't listen to people like me. It just makes me feel uneasy.
- CalChris 10y ago
  No one is going to buy this piece of junk if they don't have a finger in the manufacturing pie. And at $100M per, nor should they. We sell the F16 ($18.8M) to a ton of countries who'd never buy an F35. http://www.f-16.net/f-16_users.html http://www.f-16.net/f-16_users.html
thrill 10y ago
Well, I could certainly do that - I've already blown $40MM trying it once several years ago :) - actually it was for an aircraft with a different focus, but still ... Making predictions is hard, especially about the future. Building a complex system is rife with complex risks. There's the initial sticker shock, and that's even if costs can be reasonably estimated years in advance for technology which is not only unproven, but undemonstrated. Then there's the quite significant nonrecurring engineering costs. Want to divide those costs over 200 aircraft instead of 300 - bam - 50% cost increase, thank you madam taxpayer. Still need those 200 aircraft by a given date - discover it costs more because manufacturing facilities come in "chunks" of price-to-capability - under-build and miss the target - over-build and per-unit is higher. Discover your estimates of deliverability, even if made with honest efforts, are off by a few years, and the price only goes in one direction. Try to keep certain components really (relatively) inexpensive to meet price requirements, and discover, like every aircraft manufacturer in history, that adding lightness is difficult after you had to add strengthening material in certain problematic areas, like, oh, the wings. And of course, politicians change their minds - keeping 10,000 engineers engaged during a lean period so that you can re-engage them when political winds change is a nontrivial task too. And with all that, to be a successful long term project, there's some future events that have to be estimated - tell me what the threat will be in 20 years? What will the political will to engage those threats be? What munitions will there be? What survivability is desired? What's the desired lifetime? Will AI be good enough to dump pilots entirely? As much as I'd love to build the next generation manned fighter-bomber, it's not a palatable risk for anyone not ready to lose their entire investment. Even Paul Allen has got to feel a little sensitive at the billion dollars he lost with his effort at Eclipse (during the time I was losing far less). I recently went through (most of) a technical incubator in the area I live in. There were several investors involved that were quite knowledgeable about aviation. I couldn't get any of them interested enough to engage in my autonomous air ambulance idea (the Marine's have said in advance they want such a thing - but it has to be good, fast, and cheap) - and the translation to a future civilian capability is pretty obvious. That's one reason I'm cheering for the effort by Boom to build a new civilian supersonic aircraft. Yeah, it's going to be hard to meet price targets, and it's refreshing to see someone willing to take a $30MM chance on a complex project, and that's just to get a demo built and flown. Building a future capable fighter is a whole other ballgame.

nerdy 10y ago

There's already a lot of suggestion that Adir (the Israeli F-35) has seen combat over Syria in January. At a minimum French intelligence [1] and Israeli media [2] claim the attack was carried out using F-35s. They reportedly went on to perform a flyby of Assad's palace. Adir has special kit which may replace some of the problem components in the stock American version, but the air frame itself isn't a "long way" from being combat-ready. [1] http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-f-35s-seen-combat/ http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-... [2] https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-footage-israeli-jets-attacking-damascus/ https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/video-footage-israeli-j...

AlexCoventry 10y ago
Combat with who? Did it go up against anything which would challenge an F16?
- weego 10y ago
  Planes don't toe-to-toe with other planes anymore.
  - burnallofit 10y ago
    As it says in the article... then why does it have a gun? One of its primary purposes is air-to-air. Don't take my word for it: https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities https://www.f35.com/about/capabilities
    - cm2187 10y ago
      The gun is also for close air support, if I understand the article.
      - kodfodrasz 10y ago
        For CAS these planes are simply not good for. For that role A-10 or Super Tucano like cheaper planes are needed, because those planes are more efficient for that role.

engi_nerd 10y ago

This is an article that has lots of little details wrong but the overall message isn't wrong at all.

cm2187 10y ago

This reminds me so much the excellent movie "The Pentagon Wars" which I highly recommend.

metricodus 10y ago

Norway dismissed buying Gripen from neighbouring Sweden to buy the non-working F35, claiming Gripen failed the technical evaluation of what a capable fighter needed to be able to. In hindsight it seems obvious that they were less concentrated with actually getting a capable fighter anytime soon and a lot more concerned with, well, paying money to the US. This has caused a rift between the two countries that is still lasting. (Side-note: as a new HN user I really, really hate this throttling. I think I actually managed to submit this on the 9th try, waiting about ten minutes between each attempt. I kept seeing "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." I really, really don't think is good for conversion stats.)

kalleboo 10y ago
The diplomatic cable leaks proved that the purchase was politically motivated under heavy pressure from the US https://www.thelocal.se/20101203/30584 https://www.thelocal.se/20101203/30584
kwhitefoot 10y ago
If we had bought the Gripen we would also get access to the software that drives it and not be beholden forever to the manufacturer.

zaphirplane 10y ago

I have to say I am suspecting that the f35 problems are disinformation. It just doesn't make sense otherwise, so many countries so much money so much dependency and it's really a broken plane ! And the problems can't be fixed? Right. I suspect it disinformation to deter china and Russia from putting money into similar generation plane. Or even friendly countries from going their own way aka Typhoon / rafale replacements

CalChris 10y ago
Is it disinformation that Canada cancelled their F35 order and bought F18s instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_Canadian_procurement#2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
- fatbird 10y ago
  Thank God we did.
- zaphirplane 10y ago
  Have they cancelled or talking about it? Even if 1 country canceling proves nothing at all. If 80% or 70% cancel then it may mean something

solomatov 10y ago

It seems that Israel recently used it in combat, so it's ready. http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-f-35s-seen-combat/ http://www.airforcesmonthly.com/2017/03/07/have-israels-new-...

valuearb 10y ago
Nope, that's a rumour from a French journalist that's very unlikely to be true. And note it's not ready, cause the gun doesnt work, in 4 years when it's supposed to work it won't carry enough ammo, it can't carry its planned bomb types, the helmet doesn't work and might be dangerous, and it gets dusted in any dogfight by 40 year old fighters.

richardboegli 10y ago

If you haven't I'd highly recommend watching Battle of the X-Planes. A documentary by NOVA about the JSF competition between Lockheed Martin X-35 (which became F-35) and Boeing X-32. Official PBS link [0]. Here is the official site [1] with full transcript and behind the scenes about the making of the documentary (quite insightful). [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kNszWU7hTw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kNszWU7hTw [1]: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/xplanes/

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
I know they're just designators, but it makes me wonder which would have won if Boeing had named their plane the X-37.
- roryisok 10y ago
  Can someone explain this to me? I've been fascinated by fighter planes since I was a kid and never understood the designations. Why do the F104 and F117 come before the F35?
  - handedness 10y ago
    http://m.wikihow.com/Understand-US-Military-Aircraft-Designations http://m.wikihow.com/Understand-US-Military-Aircraft-Designa...
    - roryisok 10y ago
      Thanks! Most relevant quote, in case anyone else is interested: > The rule, although often violated, is that normal aircraft are to be designated in a strict numerical series according to their basic mission. The easiest examples are found in the Fighter class of US airplanes: F-14, then the F-15, F-16 and so on. But, there are exceptions. For example, the X-35, which was a research plane, was later redesignated the F-35 when it became fighter capable, even though the next number in the Fighter sequence was F-24.
10y ago

scottLobster 10y ago

Meh, it's popular to crap on the F-35 Program (and with good reason, it's been horribly mismanaged), but it's best to remember that at the end of the day this is one case where public opinion on its capabilities does not matter and is almost certainly inaccurate. Unless someone on the F-35 team pulls a Snowden, the decisions will be made by people with security clearances who have access to more data than we could ever hope to Google.

AlexCoventry 10y ago
You doubt the credibility of the report? I wouldn't exactly call it mere public opinion... The author seems well-positioned to know how the project is going, and goes into great detail about its flaws.
remarkEon 10y ago
This wouldn't be the first time a bunch of guys with clearances higher than yours got the entire philosophy of future war wrong because they were suffering from some form of sunk cost fallacy.
- yeukhon 10y ago
  To me this is more of a pride thing. It's too much to lose. My theory is certain people want to hold on to that power (budget and control over the development program).
valuearb 10y ago
Nope, it's shortcomings are publicly documented. It can't dogfight, maneuver, has terrible visibility, bad systems, not enough ammo in a gun it won't be able to use for years, and can't carry the most useful bombs yet. It's not even going to be fully usable for 7 more years. It's a piece of junk being kept alive by lobbyists and fighter mafia when drones are 10x more cost effective.
- ElectronCharge 10y ago
  "Nope, it's shortcomings are publicly documented. It can't dogfight, maneuver, has terrible visibility, bad systems," None of that is actually true, especially the "terrible visibility" part. In fact, it's the only aircraft flying with literally 2 pi steradian (the full sphere around it) visibility. The author of the linked article has a vendetta against the F-35. There are legitimate criticisms, and he outlines some of them - they don't mean it won't be an effective system within a few more years. Could the procurement have been done more effectively? Of course, and I hope future procurements learn a lot from the problems of the F-35 effort. In particular, there has to be a realistic plan to incorporate technology improvements during the development process! I'm also dismayed that computer modeling didn't predict issues like the weak wingtips of the F-35C. All that said, how about a little balance from people who've actually flown the plane in simulated combat...? This pilot flew the F-35B against F-16s and F-18s: "Mo: I was leading a four ship of F-35s on a strike against 4th Gen adversaries, F-16s and F/A-18s. We fought our way in, we mapped the target, found the target, dropped JDAMs on the target and turned around and fought our way out. All the targets got hit, nobody got detected, and all the adversaries died. I thought, yes, this works, very, very, very well. Never detected, nobody had any idea we were out there." You can read many more complimentary words at the link: http://www.sldinfo.com/the-moment-pilots-first-realized-the-f-35-was-something-extraordinary/ http://www.sldinfo.com/the-moment-pilots-first-realized-the-... "not enough ammo in a gun it won't be able to use for years, and can't carry the most useful bombs yet." The gun will almost never be a combat factor. As to the "most useful bombs", there is always something new isn't there...? The baseline SDB-1s are plenty useful in their own right, along with the various JDAMs and other munitions available.

rwallace 10y ago

One of the things about the F-35 is, the smart helmet with sensor fusion is conceptually very powerful but they're having a lot of difficulty getting it working properly. Why? Well, to get user facing software working properly, you need a tight, low friction OODA loop (ironically in context, a concept perhaps most notably studied in air combat). Develop a prototype, put it in front of domain experts, prospective users, get feedback, develop an improved prototype, rinse, repeat. But that's exactly what's very hard to do in a huge project with massively rigid bureaucracy. Conclusion: those capabilities should first have been developed in a skunkworks project, an X-plane, before committing to them for the do-everything plane that half the world is supposed to end up using for the next half century. General cross-domain conclusion (at least for domains where the ostensible product is the real goal of the project, which in this case it arguably isn't, as previously discussed): if the big expensive thing you want to build, wants a radical new capability, see if you can develop the radical new capability in a skunkworks project before committing to it in the big expensive project.

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qume 10y ago
Especially if John Carmack was working on the skunkworks team.
- angry_octet 10y ago
  Not remotely required, the solution is known but the system specs are locked in and won't be changed.
angry_octet 10y ago
I agree, but the bigger problems with the DAS arise from it being built by several companies, who argue whose fault it is, rather than how to make it work. So no one is responsible and also capable of fixing it.

deepnotderp 10y ago

You have to wonder to what degree the design of the Boeing X-32 impacted its ultimate rejection. There's got to be some general that was thinking "I don't care how good that plane is, we're going to be the literal laughingstock of the entire world".

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Too 10y ago
Maybe the DOD should go watch the movie Moneyball.

ufmace 10y ago

The F35 is such a political football now that it's hard to even get solid information on whether it's good or bad. I never saw so much press on how great the F35 is as when Trump tweeted about maybe cancelling the program. If you don't like it, what exactly should be done with the program? Should it be cancelled? Do you still think it should be cancelled if that means maybe agreeing with Trump?

MegaButts 10y ago
> Do you still think it should be cancelled if that means maybe agreeing with Trump? This kind of argument is what's wrong with people voting the party line instead of voting with reason. Who the hell cares if Trump is right? Do what's right because you think it's right, not because of some petty political squabble. I do not pretend to understand how complicated such an expensive program is and what all the effects of cancelling it would be, but based on what little I know it seems like it would be a good idea to cancel the program and put the funds into something more productive.
- ufmace 10y ago
  I agree that things have gotten much too politicized along party lines. I'm rather bemused at how many people and organizations seem to be willing to switch sides on issues depending on which party or candidate is pushing which position. I don't think we're going to solve the problems we face by being completely for or against any party or politician. Like I said in a cousin comment, I'd be concerned about what the future would be for aircraft if we did cancel this program. I'd hope to see a plan for what we're going to do for the aircraft we need to buy and replace over the next 30 years before they moved forward with cancelling it.
EricBurnett 10y ago
I liked https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/daniel-soar/the-most-expensive-weapon-ever-built https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n07/daniel-soar/the-most-expensive... for its explanation of the political situation the F-35 is being built in, and the multinational ties that make it extremely difficult to cancel. TL;DR: The scope of this project (intentionally) means there are customers in 10s of countries, with most of them also contributing portions of the plans and so invested in the sales of the others. Just in the US alone contractors account for more people than the Coal industry we're hearing so much about right now. I have not got nearly enough information to say if it's a good or bad plane. But I find it extremely interesting to think that to a large degree, it doesn't matter.

AlexCoventry 10y ago

At this rate human- controlled fighters will be uncompetitive before the F35 is combat-ready.

JabavuAdams 10y ago
If they can't get the software right for this crewed fighter, how will they get it right for the uncrewed ones?

wyager 10y ago

Based on the contents of this article, it sounds like many of the problems facing the F35 are rooted in sheer technical incompetence. There is no valid technical reason for many of the software limitations described in the article.

georgeecollins 10y ago

The fundamental problem for me is the cognitive dissonance of needing to put a pilot into a machine where everything is mediated by a computer that doesn't need a pilot. The digital helmet projects what the pilot often sees from cameras, so the pilot isn't really looking through a window, but seeing through a digital camera. Targets are discovered by network interface to other planes. Geographic features are pre-loaded into the plan as a data file. The control inputs from the pilot have no predictable linear feedback, Instead they constantly adjust for various factors like wing slip or aerodynamic drag from the cannon being open. So the pilot isn't using his senses to decide what to do or his reflexes to control the plane. Why is the pilot in the plane?

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
Largely because of what we now call the Fighter Mafia. At the time they were the antidote to the "Bomber Mafia." However as time went on the ethos of the pilot and "airmanship" as the most important aspect of the Air Force continued to dominate. That said, there is an argument to be made for pink and squishy still in the cockpit - though too long to argue here and I'm not the right person to do it. However if anything, the amount that the AF has dedicated to UAV/RPA/UCAS operations over the last decade has really shown that if it works, the AF will do it regardless of where the flight control monkeys (derisive term for pilots) physically sit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia
- deleted 10y ago
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idlewords 10y ago
Note that this is also an excellent argument against human space flight.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Against human piloted space flight. There's no argument here against human passengers going off to explore.

remarkEon 10y ago

>The report says the problem is bad enough that F-35 pilots may need to fly in so close to acquire the target that they would have to maneuver away to gain the distance needed for a guided weapon shot. Thus, the system’s limitations can force an attacking F-35 to compromise surprise, allowing the enemy to maneuver to a first-shot opportunity. This sounds catastrophic.

wiz21c 10y ago

F-35 100 billions, ITER 20 billions... If I had to choose...

tracker1 10y ago

I remember learning my job (working on training system for Comanche) was cut on the 6 o-clock news... And that was a lot less in the whole than this thing.