11 ms·

The cost is incredibly high... but as I'm reading the article, it sounds like most of these issues would apply to any fighter we build _with these capabilities_

The cost is incredibly high... but as I'm reading the article, it sounds like most of these issues would apply to any fighter we build _with these capabilities_. How much of this is just the cost of building these new capabilities? The capabilities described sound useful. And some of what we learn from it can be applied in the future to new planes. So is it a good idea to simply back off from the advanced software, and build a dumber plane just to save money? The f16 is 40 years old.. we're going to have these new planes around for a long time.

ChuckMcM 8y ago
That is correct, the article is written to support the narrative of 'National Disaster' rather than 'Stretch goals, slowly being reached by continued development.' What is left unspoken is that while the JSF is behind schedule and over budget, it has design specs that are currently unavailable to the "enemy" forces. So when the US builds and fields a new fighter (like the F-22 before it) it forces opposing forces to build a counter to it or some way to defeat it. In a "cold war" situation where nobody is actually shooting at each other and are just running simulations to see who would win if they did start shooting, it allows a larger economic nation to defeat the weaker economic nation by driving their economy into dirt. It also means that as long as a country is far enough ahead in that calculus it can make threats (implied or overt) that people who don't want to lose power will respect. The first F-35 squadron has reached operational status[1] and that means that war planners have to include the F-35's capabilities in their simulations. And if in those plans they find their own aircraft are now obsolete[2] then they will have to back down rather than "poke the bear" as the vernacular goes in order to avoid a conflict that would see them removed. The F-35 is an expensive weapons program. People want to "kill it" for different reasons. That is has encountered issues during its development are not good reasons, nor were they good reasons when they were used against the F-22 either. But the F-35 is not a 'disaster'. [1] https://www.f35.com/news/detail/first-operational-f-35a-squadron-receives-final-aircraft https://www.f35.com/news/detail/first-operational-f-35a-squa... [2] Obsolete means that in a fight all or most of their aircraft would be defeated when faced with an aircraft with the F-35's design capabilities.
maxerickson 8y ago
Yeah, a big part of the problem is that the military has blended R&D into their procurement programs. It's a recipe for every ambitious, failed research idea to look like a clusterfuck boondoggle.
- slededit 8y ago
  The old way of having contracters compete with designs and the loser getting $0 isn't possible when costs are this high. You need a guaranteed market or nobody will participate.
  - godzillabrennus 8y ago
    Pay companies to submit a design...
    - slededit 8y ago
      Lockheed Martin was payed to do the original design (X35). They've done as you wanted.
    - MrMember 8y ago
      The F-35 was the result of such a program. Lockheed and Boeing were each give a billion dollars and a set of requirements and told to make the best plane possible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    It's not like the costs are some weird artifact of time itself, they come from specifying capabilities 25 years before they exist. But sacred cow programs that are too big to cut are good for all the people that make the decisions.
    - slededit 8y ago
      Capabilities are not inevitable. You have to create R&D programs to bring them to fruition. Is the complaint here that its rolled up under the same line item?
adventured 8y ago
The cost isn't incredibly high. There's no scenario where the US builds an advanced manned fighter or bomber of any type where it doesn't cost ~$75 million plus per unit (Russia's MiG-35 will cost them at least $80-$100m in total lifetime costs per unit for example; the Chinese Chengdu J-20 is going to be $150-$200m lifetime total cost per unit or more). And then throw in the lifetime maintenance costs. Now build two thousand of them or more, and there you go, right back at a $1 trillion program. That seemingly crazy figure will go up perpetually with inflation over decades. The next big program that involves thousands of planes will be $2 trillion, and so on. Spending $400 billion to acquire 2,000+ planes isn't the real problem, although the click-bait headlines pretend that it is. That cost would exist no matter what, we're not building & maintaining manned planes for decades for $25m each, period. The problem is the F35 isn't really great at any specific thing.
- Latteland 8y ago
  And of course we should have just built more f22s. And we need something to replace A10s. Why can't we just redesign new planes like the f22 and a10 using today's tech, repeating the excellent design elements, no need to make them that different than before - they should be relatively cheap, right?
  - nradov 8y ago
    Certainly it would be possible to design new aircraft with new technology. But it would take 10+ years, meanwhile the existing fleet is literally falling apart from heavy use. And there's no reason to expect an alternative design would be significantly cheaper.
yogthos 8y ago
The whole concept of manned jet fighters is laughably obsolete today. If you were designing an actual modern weapon it would be a mostly autonomous drone. Basically think of a rocket with a lot more intelligence in it. These things would be much lighter since they wouldn't need to carry a pilot, would be able to handle Gs that would turn humans into a paste, and react to changes in the environment in microseconds. There would be no competition between that and canned meat flying around. Note that Russia is moving precisely in that direction with their modern arsenal https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-ever-why-putins-nuclear-powered-missile-is-possible-and-awful/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-ever-w...
- mrep 8y ago
  Last time I suggested something similar, it was pointed out that unmanned aircraft are highly susceptible to jamming. Thus, the only way to make them really resilient is to make them completely operable without any human intervention. It would not be cheap (if even possible currently) to write the software to handle all the unique cases that a human can deal with. To make matters worse, if the enemy breaks into your military drones, they can flip your entire fleet of drones right back against you. That scenario reminds me of the start of Battlestar Galactica where the cylons destroy pretty much all of humanity because everything was so network connected they were able to hack into everything and the only ship that really survives the first strike is an old one that relies on humans to do most things.
  - antpls 8y ago
    > Last time I suggested something similar, it was pointed out that unmanned aircraft are highly susceptible to jamming. Thus, the only way to make them really resilient is to make them completely operable without any human intervention. What would a human pilot be able to do if all the fighter instruments are jammed? At best the human pilot may be able to escape the battlefield I guess.
    - nradov 8y ago
      Human pilots train constantly to operate effectively in a hostile electromagnetic environment. And the aircraft are designed around it. This is expected.

ChuckMcM 8y ago

That is correct, the article is written to support the narrative of 'National Disaster' rather than 'Stretch goals, slowly being reached by continued development.' What is left unspoken is that while the JSF is behind schedule and over budget, it has design specs that are currently unavailable to the "enemy" forces. So when the US builds and fields a new fighter (like the F-22 before it) it forces opposing forces to build a counter to it or some way to defeat it. In a "cold war" situation where nobody is actually shooting at each other and are just running simulations to see who would win if they did start shooting, it allows a larger economic nation to defeat the weaker economic nation by driving their economy into dirt. It also means that as long as a country is far enough ahead in that calculus it can make threats (implied or overt) that people who don't want to lose power will respect. The first F-35 squadron has reached operational status[1] and that means that war planners have to include the F-35's capabilities in their simulations. And if in those plans they find their own aircraft are now obsolete[2] then they will have to back down rather than "poke the bear" as the vernacular goes in order to avoid a conflict that would see them removed. The F-35 is an expensive weapons program. People want to "kill it" for different reasons. That is has encountered issues during its development are not good reasons, nor were they good reasons when they were used against the F-22 either. But the F-35 is not a 'disaster'. [1] https://www.f35.com/news/detail/first-operational-f-35a-squadron-receives-final-aircraft https://www.f35.com/news/detail/first-operational-f-35a-squa... [2] Obsolete means that in a fight all or most of their aircraft would be defeated when faced with an aircraft with the F-35's design capabilities.

maxerickson 8y ago

Yeah, a big part of the problem is that the military has blended R&D into their procurement programs. It's a recipe for every ambitious, failed research idea to look like a clusterfuck boondoggle.

slededit 8y ago
The old way of having contracters compete with designs and the loser getting $0 isn't possible when costs are this high. You need a guaranteed market or nobody will participate.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Pay companies to submit a design...
  - slededit 8y ago
    Lockheed Martin was payed to do the original design (X35). They've done as you wanted.
  - MrMember 8y ago
    The F-35 was the result of such a program. Lockheed and Boeing were each give a billion dollars and a set of requirements and told to make the best plane possible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
- maxerickson 8y ago
  It's not like the costs are some weird artifact of time itself, they come from specifying capabilities 25 years before they exist. But sacred cow programs that are too big to cut are good for all the people that make the decisions.
  - slededit 8y ago
    Capabilities are not inevitable. You have to create R&D programs to bring them to fruition. Is the complaint here that its rolled up under the same line item?

adventured 8y ago

The cost isn't incredibly high. There's no scenario where the US builds an advanced manned fighter or bomber of any type where it doesn't cost ~$75 million plus per unit (Russia's MiG-35 will cost them at least $80-$100m in total lifetime costs per unit for example; the Chinese Chengdu J-20 is going to be $150-$200m lifetime total cost per unit or more). And then throw in the lifetime maintenance costs. Now build two thousand of them or more, and there you go, right back at a $1 trillion program. That seemingly crazy figure will go up perpetually with inflation over decades. The next big program that involves thousands of planes will be $2 trillion, and so on. Spending $400 billion to acquire 2,000+ planes isn't the real problem, although the click-bait headlines pretend that it is. That cost would exist no matter what, we're not building & maintaining manned planes for decades for $25m each, period. The problem is the F35 isn't really great at any specific thing.

Latteland 8y ago
And of course we should have just built more f22s. And we need something to replace A10s. Why can't we just redesign new planes like the f22 and a10 using today's tech, repeating the excellent design elements, no need to make them that different than before - they should be relatively cheap, right?
- nradov 8y ago
  Certainly it would be possible to design new aircraft with new technology. But it would take 10+ years, meanwhile the existing fleet is literally falling apart from heavy use. And there's no reason to expect an alternative design would be significantly cheaper.

yogthos 8y ago

The whole concept of manned jet fighters is laughably obsolete today. If you were designing an actual modern weapon it would be a mostly autonomous drone. Basically think of a rocket with a lot more intelligence in it. These things would be much lighter since they wouldn't need to carry a pilot, would be able to handle Gs that would turn humans into a paste, and react to changes in the environment in microseconds. There would be no competition between that and canned meat flying around. Note that Russia is moving precisely in that direction with their modern arsenal https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-ever-why-putins-nuclear-powered-missile-is-possible-and-awful/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-ever-w...

mrep 8y ago
Last time I suggested something similar, it was pointed out that unmanned aircraft are highly susceptible to jamming. Thus, the only way to make them really resilient is to make them completely operable without any human intervention. It would not be cheap (if even possible currently) to write the software to handle all the unique cases that a human can deal with. To make matters worse, if the enemy breaks into your military drones, they can flip your entire fleet of drones right back against you. That scenario reminds me of the start of Battlestar Galactica where the cylons destroy pretty much all of humanity because everything was so network connected they were able to hack into everything and the only ship that really survives the first strike is an old one that relies on humans to do most things.
- antpls 8y ago
  > Last time I suggested something similar, it was pointed out that unmanned aircraft are highly susceptible to jamming. Thus, the only way to make them really resilient is to make them completely operable without any human intervention. What would a human pilot be able to do if all the fighter instruments are jammed? At best the human pilot may be able to escape the battlefield I guess.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Human pilots train constantly to operate effectively in a hostile electromagnetic environment. And the aircraft are designed around it. This is expected.