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The F-35 Is a $1.4T National Disaster (2017)
- berg01 8y agoLet me just say that as non-american it's kinda fun to watch you burn money. It's less fun when you threaten NATO member states that they better buy this horrible aircraft or... something. (Sweden/SAAB put a lot of effort into making a good offering for the Gripen fighter for Norway). That was a giant waste. https://www.thelocal.se/20101203/30584 https://www.thelocal.se/20101203/30584 "Citing US diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks, the Aftonbladet newspaper reports that Norway’s supposed interest in the Gripen was just a show." This small issue has put a serious dent in Norwegian-Swedish relations, as it should. Good luck with your F-35s, Norway! Oh wait: http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/spy-f35s-send-sensitive-norwegian-military-data-back-to-lockheed-martin-in-the-united-states/news-story/12b4fafce6b579448cc8416518063d1f http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/security/spy-f35s-s... "‘Spy’ F-35s send sensitive Norwegian military data back to Lockheed Martin in the United States"
- cultus 8y agoOne of the big reasons the F-35 program is such a disaster is that it was intended to be a fighter that could be modified for basically all Western Bloc countrie's needs. This brought an incredible amount of complexity that not only costs more money in and of itself, but became ripe for milking by the military-industrial complex.
- berg01 8y agoI guess it boils down to that - it was built primarily as a vehicle for transferring money in various directions. Not to cost-effectively project military power. The Schadenfreude part of me is having lots of fun reading reports of the Norwegians' F-35 misadventures though!
- Scramblejams 8y agoSingle page link: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-f-35-14-trillion-dollar-national-disaster-19985?page=show http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-f-35-14-trilli...
- linkmotif 8y agoWhenever I'm feeling bad being behind on something, I think of the F-35. Doesn't exactly make me feel better, but at least reminds me it could be worse. Israel took delivery of five of these 2016-2017. I wonder how they're faring.
- patcheudor 8y agoThe F-35 program is an amazing thing in 2018 when every war in the last two decades has been mostly about ground insurgents. This, taken with the fact that we've had massive technological advances when it comes to drone warfare and the F-35 very much looks like a plane from the past, not the future. It would seem to be much wiser to scrap the program and re-focus on drone based solutions but that's going to hurt someone's ego so it's likely the F-35 will continue.
- bigdubs 8y agoI thought control latencies still weren't low enough for drones to compete with human piloted aircraft? Unless the solution is AI.
- colek42 8y agoI think the solution may be SpaceX's StarLink
- lajhsdfkl 8y agoYou can't rely on satellites in a war against a nuclear power. Satellites will be the first thing to go.
- Maybestring 8y agoIf the supposed situation is direct conflict with China or Russia, they both have anti-satellite capabilities.
- trothamel 8y agoNot of this scale, at least at the moment. Starlink will have over 4,400 satellites, in its initially approved form.
- adventured 8y agoAre they going to shoot down thousands of Starlink satellites? That's a massive disaster in space that would destroy their own satellites.
- lajhsdfkl 8y agoThis is from April 1 2017 and much of what was written in this article does not apply any longer. The reason the US does not go 100% into drones is because drone jamming technology is not something that can easily be countered (the Russians are jamming US drones today in Syria). The most interesting use of the F35 is not as a weapons platform but a sensor platform for sneaking behind enemy lines and picking targets for ship based weapons platforms to attack at distance. The F-35 is definitely not a perfect program but as far as the military and US national security is concerned, not having the first 5th generation fighter would have been a much more significant failure than cost overruns. Beyond actual use in war the purpose of this fighter is to tell other nations that if you want to go war you need to to spend $1.4 trillion dollars and countless years of research to even reach parity.
- titzer 8y ago> much of what was written in this article does not apply any longer Care to elaborate? E.g. did the US govt find $1.7 trillion in the couch cushions, suddenly making the cost a moot point?
- lajhsdfkl 8y ago>The F-35 still has a long way to go before it will be ready for combat. That was the parting message of Dr. Michael Gilmore, the now-retired Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, in his last annual report. Some F-35s have already seen combat for one. Yes it's expensive but the per unit cost will be cheaper than already existing jet platforms and we plan to use this one for 50 years.
- adventured 8y agoThe infamous cost estimate is spread over 60 years, start to finish. That's conveniently, intentionally left out of most articles that highlight the cost. So first of all, the US will never buy 3,000 of the planes. You can easily cut that in half or more. I'd wager on 1,000 or less. They'll end the program and move on to the next thing/s, like they always do. Second, they'll of course never fly for 50 or 60 years. 35-40 from today would be more plausible as an end. Now you're down to more like $800 billion total including the next 40 years. The cost will move higher per plane, the US will buy less planes than projected, and the total outlay will drop substantially as they shift funding to new weapons programs. $20 billion per year for its life, out of what will probably be a $900b to $1t averaged military budget over the F35's life, or ~2%.
- 3pt14159 8y agoA friend of mine mentioned how the F-35 runs so hot that it has to cool its fuel to stop it from boiling. If that is true, how does it retain stealth in the face of thermal radiation? Like, I get radar absorbing paint, but how does one stop heat loss? Any design I can think of amounts to carrying some really cold stuff with you and dumping the excess heat there when you need thermal stealth, but surely that can't be it.
- ansible 8y agoIt is still releasing the same amount of heat, but diffused a bit more. The designers were trying to avoid really "bright" hot spots, to make it harder for IR-guided missiles to lock-on.
- greedo 8y agoIt doesn't cool its fuel; it uses its fuel as to provided a cooling dump for electronics etc.
- Ensorceled 8y agoInternational, Canada is trying to come along for the ride.
- partycoder 8y agoRussian jets can take off from an airstrip full of debris. American jets need a shiny aircraft carrier and a coin can mess them up.
- crispyporkbites 8y agoWhat
- dloose 8y agoThis doesn't sound right. The USAF is the largest air force in the world and, as far as I know, it has exactly 0 air craft carriers. I'm sure a well-placed coin could mess up a lot of machines. Can you back up anything you said with evidence?
- partycoder 8y agoI mentioned the jets, not air force. Many branches of the American armed forces operate jets. Allied countries also operate American jets, even the F-35. The F-35 has many variants, and can fulfill many roles.
- dloose 8y agoHmm... here's what you said: > American jets need a shiny aircraft carrier and a coin can mess them up Now it sounds like you're trying to claim that you weren't including American Air Force jets in the term "American jets". I'm not sure how anyone was supposed to know that. Without additional qualifications, "American jets" clearly includes Air Force jets. And, again, Air Force jets generally do not take off from air craft carriers, shiny or otherwise. > Many branches of the American armed forces operate jets > Allied countries also operate American jets, even the F-35. > The F-35 has many variants, and can fulfill many roles Yes. Those are all facts. Facts than have no bearing on your original post. It's ok to admit you were wrong, you know. It doesn't reflect poorly on you.
- partycoder 8y ago
- jpobst 8y agoIt depends on what you consider the goal of the F-35 to be. If you believe it's to build a next generation fighter plane then yes it's a disaster. If you believe it's a way to funnel trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to private defense companies then it's a rousing success.
- testfoobar 8y ago1500 domestic suppliers in 46 states. https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact https://www.f35.com/about/economic-impact
- MindTooth 8y agoBecause I can see nothing on that sites that resembles marketing, at all.. (Specific the front page and its news.) I guess the war machine needs to function so that we only focus on the left hand, and ignores what the right hand does.
- bonesss 8y agoI recall a post-mortem for the Superconducting Super Collider that pointed out a painful dichotomy: to build political support the contracts and suppliers had to be spread across many districts and states, but because it was a high tech project it was much, much, much more sensitive to component delays and quality issues. The big takeaway: with non-challenging, small fry, projects you can play all the politics you want and still land them; challenging projects have a much stronger need to be guided by actual practical project concerns & engineering or you substantially increase the risk of failure. The Manhattan project, and the incredible post-WW2 military engineering, worked because the brains got money and control so they build to the challenge at hand. When Porky Pig has first dibs the merely 'insanely hard' becomes impossible... Alan Kay said something to the same effect about the golden age of innovation at Xerox Parc: (brains + money) - BS = profitableSurprises.
- slededit 8y agoThe Manhattan project was distributed all around the country. From the pile under bleachers in Chicago, to the Hanford site in WA, the testing in the New Mexico desert, and Oak Ridge in Tennessee.
- Nokinside 8y agoIt seems that F-35 still has problems but they are slightly different than described in the article. There is also neat solution, cut F-35 orders by third to pay for increased maintenance and operating costs. http://fortune.com/2018/03/28/air-force-f-35-cost-cuts/ http://fortune.com/2018/03/28/air-force-f-35-cost-cuts/ The beauty of all this is that this works out fine as long as there is no large high intensity war against near peer opponent in next 20-30 years.
- stareatgoats 8y agoA lot of things would conceivably not work out fine in the scenario "high intensity warfare against near peer opponent", in any conceivable future. Just for the record.
- diabeetusman 8y agoIsn't the F-35 designed to be used in exactly such an instance?
- greedo 8y agoCutting orders just results in all the development costs being amortized across fewer aircraft, driving up unit costs. That's how we ended up with the B-2 costing almost $1B per plane. The cost per flight hour for the F-35 should eventually be lower than the F-15/16. This will be the only way the US can maintain an adequately sized air force, and naval air arm.
- petermcneeley 8y agoJust in case nobody has seen the documentary about the initial design of this fighter craft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_WPLeDmU6o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_WPLeDmU6o
- rootbear 8y agoThanks! I watched that when it was show on PBS (Nova?) back in 2003 and I've been meaning to see if it was online.
- rayvd 8y agoHow do the issues with the F-35 platform stack up against those of earlier models? I've read anecdotes that early on the F-16 and F-15 also had significant flaws, yet those were eventually sorted out and both have become mainstays of air forces around the world. I've no doubt there have been massive costs overruns (what government program doesn't), but would be willing to bet that the F-35 turns out to be a really good plane and does nothing to threaten the US's position as the premier air power. Some good discussion: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-F-35-as-bad-as-many-people-claim-Will-it-be-a-good-fighter-when-its-needed https://www.quora.com/Is-the-F-35-as-bad-as-many-people-clai...
- Retric 8y agoIt's questionable if manned high performance fighter aircraft have a vital aka non symbolic role in a modern army. That's not to say the F-35 will not be used or even preform well, but consider unmanned satellites made manned high altitude surveillance obsolete even if they where not as directly useful.
- tropo 8y agoIt is tempting to dismiss the possibility of a serious war. We did that after the Great War, the War to End all Wars, now known as World War I. It's been a while, over 70 years now, but you can be sure that there will be another serious war. When that happens, there will be no satellites. There will be no way to remotely operate any equipment. Mere navigation and communication will be difficult again. Any sort of unmanned equipment will have to operate autonomously, making deadly decisions in an unfamiliar and hostile environment. That's a tall order for modern AI.
- Retric 8y agoBack in the 90's missiles where already able to navigate by landmarks and stars. GPS is nice, but it's in no way needed for Drones. The kind of war you are talking about is exactly the kind of war where small numbers of expensive F-35's will very quickly be destroyed and how quickly new weapons can enter the battlefield will be a major issue. The vast distributed supply chain is probably the number 1 issue with F-35's for that kind of a fight. While not great as spy satellites, using flocks of cube satellites for communications would be very hard to shut down. A single launch could put hundreds of separate targets up which would need to be individually targeted. Similarly unmanned drones can fill in for spy aircraft in tactical situations and are very cost effective. I can't say what the modern version of total war between modern supper powers would look like, but I very much doubt it would look much like WWII.
- unit91 8y ago> DoD has estimated that all training and operational operations over the 50-year life of the program (assuming a 30-year life for each aircraft) will be $1 trillion, making the cost to buy and operate the F-35 at least $1.4 trillion. A little bit of clickbait there. $1.4 trillion projected over 50 years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a great fighter. But we haven't spent $1.4 trillion on it (yet).
- AcerbicZero 8y agoOne of the key expectations of the F-35 program early on was that "stealth" technology would proliferate further, and the market for exporting the F-35 would be much larger than it ended up. That made it easier for everyone to keep throwing money at the problem, although I'm sure the lobbyist did more than their fair share. This isn't exactly the first time we've seen attempts at "universal" solutions to discrete military problems. The F-111 program was another disaster in the making, only mitigated by massively changing the requirements and dropping the Navy aspect entirely. The F-35 S/VTOL Marine variant is the largest anchor around the programs neck, but its essentially the same set of problems the F-111 project ran into. The easiest fix would have been to just tell the Marines and Navy to go find their own aircraft solutions, and let the F-35 turn into a semi-stealthy F-16 replacement. I think we might be a little past that point now, unfortunately.
- amorphid 8y agoThe F-111 Aardvark: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111_Aardvark https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics_F-111_Aardv...
- randyrand 8y agoFor some opposite perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GfqB7P6uAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GfqB7P6uAE
- lsh123 8y ago"There is an app for that" (another view on F-35 program): https://theaviationist.com/2018/04/18/why-does-the-public-have-trouble-understanding-the-f-35-air-force-reserve-pilots-tell-us-the-f-35a-is-a-powerful-force-multiplier/ https://theaviationist.com/2018/04/18/why-does-the-public-ha...
- bitmapbrother 8y agoI realize that the F-35 is a stealth fighter, but I can't help but think of this quote whenever the F-35 is mentioned. The results were crushing. In not a single dogfight was the F-35 able to either defend itself against an attack from the F-16 or to convert its attack into a kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8xzLxFIjno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8xzLxFIjno
- JakeTyo 8y agoThe F-35 promised a major a leap in technological capability. However, technology is not at the point where it deliver on that promise. As a software engineer, I can relate to the difficulty of joining multiple sources of data. This is something that AI can potentially do very well. I foresee the next generation of F-series aircrafts having something more akin to an AI co-pilot. This would prevent information overload. Instead of a pilot ingesting hundreds of data points, they could have a simple interface and all the cohesion handled by the AI.
- zubi 8y agoQuote from page 13: `After extensive troubleshooting, IT personnel figured out they had to change several settings on Internet Explorer so ALIS users could log into the system. This included lowering security settings, which DOT&E noted with commendable understatement was “an action that may not be compatible with required cybersecurity and network protection standards.”` They use Internet Explorer?
- djohnston 8y agowe should just be building more warthogs
- oliwarner 8y agoPeople always seem to forget that money doesn't evaporate. Public expenditure usually gets ploughed directly into national and local economies. A quarter of it comes flying right back in direct tax revenue. The rest gets spent too. I'm not saying it couldn't have done that in a better way, educational bursaries, healthcare, etc but if you're looking at this from a purely economic standpoint, the US exports this stuff. Not something you can lump on some other causes.