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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.
by 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 agoThe 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 agoThis 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 agoThe 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 agoThe 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 agoCompanies are run by businessmen and not people who want to build extraordinary aircraft.
- TenOhms 10y agoThat's awfully cynical, but maybe correct, though I have to believe that even the CEO of a giant defense contractor firm is proud of what they do.
- rwallace 10y agoMy best guess would be that the people in charge of the juggernaut realize if you equip it with a steering wheel, if you create a way to fix it with regard to quality of output, that same steering wheel could also be used to fix it with regard to cost. In other words, the dysfunctional planes are just collateral damage of the corporate welfare program.
- zaphirplane 10y agoHave you considered a disinformation side to the equation. How did the Cold War bankrupt ussr ? Was it the Star Wars disinformation;)
- ams6110 10y agoTo paraphrase Upton Sinclair, it's difficult to change a process when the salaries of the people who could change it depend upon the status quo.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dTal 10y agoPlanes? For 1.5 trillion dollars and counting I expect nothing less than a working fusion generator, or a moon base, or a proper rotating space station with AT&T videophones. For reference, 1.5 trillion is more than double the Apollo and Space Shuttle programs, combined.
- jorvi 10y agoI'm not terribly well-versed in defense contracts, but why don't these kind of massive things (that always go way over time) not have a clausul 'if you, as a developer, go X amount over time or X amount over budget, you foot the rest of the cost until delivery'. Would seem like a very prudent thing to do as a government, and there's still so much money in it I can't imagine defense contractors not going for it.
- ryanmarsh 10y agoI would guess that it's not the contractors fault as much as the clients. Maybe this is my bias from doing contract work and having horrible clients.
- nradov 10y agoSure some defense contacts are firm fixed price with the vendor eating any cost overruns. But no rational defense contractor would ever agree to take on that level of risk for a program as complex as the F-35. Look what happened to the Airbus A400M. They agreed to a fixed price, and then when the program ran away over budget they blackmailed the EU defense ministers into renegotiating by threatening to cancel the program, close factories, or even go bankrupt. It's just politically impossible to hold the line on these deals.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chrisseaton 10y agoWould you sign a contract that looked like that?
- jorvi 10y agoI would find it very reasonable if entity X asks me to develop a fighter jet, X knows from experience that these programs always overrun, X asks me to make a realistic roadmap with some leeway built in, and then X says 'well, if you overshoot milestone 3 by more than one year you'll have to foot the rest of the cost until the next milestone'.
- convolvatron 10y agowhether or not its an effective use of money, i've always believed that it was a strategic interest to have all of these people at the ready. frankly i'm sure that if it came to it, your average clip on tie beltway bandit employee would be more useless than 5 year old in time of war, but i think thats the thinking
- kahnjw 10y agoI'm sure some Russia hawks regret the DOD decision to cancel the F22, but the F35 was not intended to replace the F22, so this is a bit irrelevant. The two aircraft a developed for different uses. The F22 was designed for air to air superiority, while the F35 is a ground attack fighter. The F22 was cancelled because of bulging operating and production costs, and because air to air superiority is not something the military really needs given its current and foreseeable engagements.
- okket 10y ago14 years ago it sounded very much like the Joint Strike Fighter was going to replace the F22 (and the Harrier, etc.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7-LQDueYlk&t=11m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7-LQDueYlk&t=11m20s
- kahnjw 10y agoI'll just refer you to the first few sentences of the wiki pages for each fighter :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
- valuearb 10y agoThis is revisionist BS. It was meant to do everything, yet it does everything poorly. Lousy fighter, lousy bomber, lousy ground attack plane. It's only good at being a standoff weapon, and far too expensive for that when drones can do it all better and far cheaper.
- kahnjw 10y agoHard to say that the F35 was built for air to air dominance when it was designed to carry only two amraam air to air superiority missiles. The F22 can carry six.
- kahnjw 10y agoAlso, I'm not defending the plane. Obviously it has many problems, I'm merely pointing out that its use profile is different than the F22, and the notion that the F35 was ever intended to replace the F22 is an oversimplification of the DOD air dominance strategy. The F35 was meant to be a multirole fighter, but especially good at ground attack. The F22 RFP was sent out in 1986, when the country was still in the midst of the Cold War. The F22 was originally designed a response to the development new soviet fighters, which could out maneuver and out-hide F15s. The F35 was designed to replace aging fleets of multirole and ground attack fighters. This isn't "revisionist BS." If you actually go back you'll find that the two planes were designed for different uses. The DOD may have dug themselves a hole while trying to sell the plane to taxpayers by saying it will do everything better than any other jet. That was not the original intent.
- protomyth 10y agoConsidering now the Air Force is going to have to budget money to fix the F-15C/D if they want it to keep flying. http://m.aviationweek.com/defense/center-fuselage-rebuild-could-be-f-15cd-achilles-heel http://m.aviationweek.com/defense/center-fuselage-rebuild-co...