4 ms·

The Lockheed Martin F-35: one of the most colossal pieces of shit ever created

14 points by ant6n 8y ago

ryanmercer 8y ago
You can say that about nearly every government-contractor designed hardware (or service cough the healthcare site cough).
- ant6n 8y ago
  Weren't the planes the F-35 replaces also government-contractor designed hardware? One trillion is quite a lot of money...
- richmarr 8y ago
  Not every piece of procured hardware is a massive compromise, designed to replace many types of previous model with wildly varying purposes. It's supposed to replace the A10 as a close air support craft, at the same time as taking primary responsibility for air superiority. These are wildly different sets of requirements, so different that even doing custom models of the same airframe isn't enough to fix it. The air superiority models are hindered by the fact that the airframe was designed to support vertical lift fans to support the VTOL use case that the Marines wanted. It's a collossal shitshow. I'd keep my nose out of it as a US problem, but the UK government has committed to buying these.
  - dingaling 8y ago
    > It's supposed to replace the A10 as a close air support craft So was the A-16 ( no error ) with the Pave Claw cannon pods. It had a brief outing in the Gulf War and the A-10 prevailed. Probably the same will happen with the F-35 until the A-10 finally falls apart. I wouldn't hold it against the F-35 at this point, there are plenty of more critical issues with that project.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >Not every piece of procured hardware is a massive compromise, No but most, if not all, government projects of hardware like this usually have all sorts of cost inflation due to the fact they use companies/contractors that have made it their business to extract every last cent out of taxpayers. It's why companies like SpaceX are important for the future of space travel, they're offering considerably cheaper alternatives to old-school government contractors because they aren't billing you 100$ for a 1$ widget, they're billing you 11$ for a 6$ widget.
    - asdsa5325 8y ago
      > government projects of hardware like this usually have all sorts of cost inflation due to the fact they use companies/contractors that have made it their business to extract every last cent out of taxpayers Clearly you are not familiar with the government contractor world. It's actually the opposite. Government contracts are regularly audited and contractor's profit margins are tightly capped. The major money leakage is when the government buys products from companies where the majority of revenues are not from government contracting. Those companies don't have to follow the same laws about profit margins.
      - ryanmercer 8y ago
        Then explain how the private space industry is doing things for considerably cheaper companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
        asdsa5325 8y ago
        Lockheed and Boeing are very much involved in space. They just don't build rockets like SpaceX, because they take lower risk projects to avoid being propped up by investors. FYI, one of the biggest space companies is Orbital ATK (now owned by NG).
- Arnt 8y ago
  I think you may not realise the size of the F35 black hole. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... there are only six countries in the world whose total state budget is bigger than the F35 budget. The F35 is equivalent to two or three months of the total expenses of the US federal budget, depending on what you count as expense. You can't say that about every expensive gadget. Even if you tried you couldn't have ten such projects per year. There's only one word to describe the F35, and the word is awesome.
- asdsa5325 8y ago
  Don't dumb this down. A fighter jet is an incredibly complex machine. It's not easy to make. Comparing this to the Obamacare site is ridiculous.
erentz 8y ago
Thing is it’s parts are not all shit. Just as a whole it’s shit. They tried making a Swiss Army knife using advanced, not yet ready or tested technology. They should kill the project, and write it off as a huge R&D project. Take all the advances in technology that have come out of the project as wins. Continue working on those technologies more with more experimental projects until they’re ready for use. Meanwhile use what we got for strike fighters and air support roles since they’re still more than sufficient. Build more F22s to fill out air superiority since that program seems to have delivered well.
- eugeniub 8y ago
  Your alternative idea is to build MORE military jets?
  - erentz 8y ago
    If we are determined to have an obscenely huge military waging wars around the world then yes: killing the F35, use what already works well while the tech matures is the smart move. But if you want to wave a wand and grant me the power I’d cut the military budget 10% per year until it is down to $350b in present day dollars. That’s still 50% larger than the EU and many multiples larger than all our “enemies”.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
steve19 8y ago
Maybe we have reached peak-fighter-plane? If it can cost so much to develop the next gen, maybe we are better off spending half of that developing better surface to air missiles and the other half buying older gen planes.
dogma1138 8y ago
Considering that the only nation to use it in combat so far is Israel and they seem to like it and despite theirs being heavily modified I would err on the side of caution swallowing these gloomy statements whole. The same thing was said about the F16 in it’s early days. And in fact it was the IAF that proved that it was suited for both long distance combat sorties and old school bomb sights bombing runs when they used it to take out Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq which proved many F16 critics at the time wrong. The truth is that these days no replacement for a fighter jet would that much superior to what it’s replacing not because it’s poorly designed but because what it’s replacing has had 40 years worth of improvements. Current block 70 F16s have nearly nothing in common with the original fighting falcon there likely isn’t a single part that is even interchangeable between them. That said the F16 unlike the F35 doesn’t have another 40 years it’s air frame has already been stretched (literarily) beyond its limits so we do need a new platform regardless of its growing pains. And for people criticizing the F35 over its low order numbers well they are low compared to the F16 but the F16 has been in service for 40 years and introduced during essentially the largest arms race the world has ever seen aka the Cold War. P.S. On a tangent since when did Twitter outside of rare current events became a source worthy of an HN post?
jarfil 8y ago
Is that true though? https://twitter.com/Kaitain_FL/status/1015442373793468416?s=19 https://twitter.com/Kaitain_FL/status/1015442373793468416?s=...
donttrusthim 8y ago
I've never seen a denser pile of misinformation in my entire life. 1.5 trillion includes the maintenance cost distributed over half a century or longer. If the air force, marines or navy decide to order less planes then that cost will go down significantly. [1] "Beast mode" doesn't exist? What kind of trash are you talking about? The F-35 can obviously mount weapons externally at the cost of losing stealth (bombers don't need stealth so this is not a problem). [1] [2] The ejection mechanism on any fighter jet is dangerous to the pilot and only used a last resort to avoid death. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-fighter/exclusive-u-s-sees-lifetime-cost-of-f-35-fighter-at-1-45-trillion-idUSBRE82S03L20120329 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-fighter/exclusiv... [2] http://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/1246350/external-pylon-training-increases-f-35a-weapons-payload-capability/ http://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/1246350/external-pylon... [3] https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/16/f-35-weapons-suite https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/16/f-35-weapons-suite
simonblack 8y ago
It's no use your weapons having a 20:1 kill ratio if they're so expensive that the enemy finds it better/cheaper/easier/faster to throw 21 'good enough' weapons at them. The US is falling into the German WW2 trap of having the 'best technological' weapons that are so expensive that only a few can be built. In WW2 both the US and the Soviets swamped the Germans with huge numbers of 'good enough' weapons. Sometimes on the East Front the Germans had a handful of extremely good Tiger tanks which had no hope at all against hundreds of T34s. And the same thing happened in Normandy against the Shermans.

14 points by ant6n 8y ago

You can say that about nearly every government-contractor designed hardware (or service cough the healthcare site cough).

ant6n 8y ago
Weren't the planes the F-35 replaces also government-contractor designed hardware? One trillion is quite a lot of money...
richmarr 8y ago
Not every piece of procured hardware is a massive compromise, designed to replace many types of previous model with wildly varying purposes. It's supposed to replace the A10 as a close air support craft, at the same time as taking primary responsibility for air superiority. These are wildly different sets of requirements, so different that even doing custom models of the same airframe isn't enough to fix it. The air superiority models are hindered by the fact that the airframe was designed to support vertical lift fans to support the VTOL use case that the Marines wanted. It's a collossal shitshow. I'd keep my nose out of it as a US problem, but the UK government has committed to buying these.
- dingaling 8y ago
  > It's supposed to replace the A10 as a close air support craft So was the A-16 ( no error ) with the Pave Claw cannon pods. It had a brief outing in the Gulf War and the A-10 prevailed. Probably the same will happen with the F-35 until the A-10 finally falls apart. I wouldn't hold it against the F-35 at this point, there are plenty of more critical issues with that project.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >Not every piece of procured hardware is a massive compromise, No but most, if not all, government projects of hardware like this usually have all sorts of cost inflation due to the fact they use companies/contractors that have made it their business to extract every last cent out of taxpayers. It's why companies like SpaceX are important for the future of space travel, they're offering considerably cheaper alternatives to old-school government contractors because they aren't billing you 100$ for a 1$ widget, they're billing you 11$ for a 6$ widget.
  - asdsa5325 8y ago
    > government projects of hardware like this usually have all sorts of cost inflation due to the fact they use companies/contractors that have made it their business to extract every last cent out of taxpayers Clearly you are not familiar with the government contractor world. It's actually the opposite. Government contracts are regularly audited and contractor's profit margins are tightly capped. The major money leakage is when the government buys products from companies where the majority of revenues are not from government contracting. Those companies don't have to follow the same laws about profit margins.
    - ryanmercer 8y ago
      Then explain how the private space industry is doing things for considerably cheaper companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
      - asdsa5325 8y ago
        Lockheed and Boeing are very much involved in space. They just don't build rockets like SpaceX, because they take lower risk projects to avoid being propped up by investors. FYI, one of the biggest space companies is Orbital ATK (now owned by NG).
Arnt 8y ago
I think you may not realise the size of the F35 black hole. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen... there are only six countries in the world whose total state budget is bigger than the F35 budget. The F35 is equivalent to two or three months of the total expenses of the US federal budget, depending on what you count as expense. You can't say that about every expensive gadget. Even if you tried you couldn't have ten such projects per year. There's only one word to describe the F35, and the word is awesome.
asdsa5325 8y ago
Don't dumb this down. A fighter jet is an incredibly complex machine. It's not easy to make. Comparing this to the Obamacare site is ridiculous.

erentz 8y ago

Thing is it’s parts are not all shit. Just as a whole it’s shit. They tried making a Swiss Army knife using advanced, not yet ready or tested technology. They should kill the project, and write it off as a huge R&D project. Take all the advances in technology that have come out of the project as wins. Continue working on those technologies more with more experimental projects until they’re ready for use. Meanwhile use what we got for strike fighters and air support roles since they’re still more than sufficient. Build more F22s to fill out air superiority since that program seems to have delivered well.

eugeniub 8y ago
Your alternative idea is to build MORE military jets?
- erentz 8y ago
  If we are determined to have an obscenely huge military waging wars around the world then yes: killing the F35, use what already works well while the tech matures is the smart move. But if you want to wave a wand and grant me the power I’d cut the military budget 10% per year until it is down to $350b in present day dollars. That’s still 50% larger than the EU and many multiples larger than all our “enemies”.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

steve19 8y ago

Maybe we have reached peak-fighter-plane? If it can cost so much to develop the next gen, maybe we are better off spending half of that developing better surface to air missiles and the other half buying older gen planes.

dogma1138 8y ago

Considering that the only nation to use it in combat so far is Israel and they seem to like it and despite theirs being heavily modified I would err on the side of caution swallowing these gloomy statements whole. The same thing was said about the F16 in it’s early days. And in fact it was the IAF that proved that it was suited for both long distance combat sorties and old school bomb sights bombing runs when they used it to take out Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq which proved many F16 critics at the time wrong. The truth is that these days no replacement for a fighter jet would that much superior to what it’s replacing not because it’s poorly designed but because what it’s replacing has had 40 years worth of improvements. Current block 70 F16s have nearly nothing in common with the original fighting falcon there likely isn’t a single part that is even interchangeable between them. That said the F16 unlike the F35 doesn’t have another 40 years it’s air frame has already been stretched (literarily) beyond its limits so we do need a new platform regardless of its growing pains. And for people criticizing the F35 over its low order numbers well they are low compared to the F16 but the F16 has been in service for 40 years and introduced during essentially the largest arms race the world has ever seen aka the Cold War. P.S. On a tangent since when did Twitter outside of rare current events became a source worthy of an HN post?

jarfil 8y ago

Is that true though? https://twitter.com/Kaitain_FL/status/1015442373793468416?s=19 https://twitter.com/Kaitain_FL/status/1015442373793468416?s=...

donttrusthim 8y ago

I've never seen a denser pile of misinformation in my entire life. 1.5 trillion includes the maintenance cost distributed over half a century or longer. If the air force, marines or navy decide to order less planes then that cost will go down significantly. [1] "Beast mode" doesn't exist? What kind of trash are you talking about? The F-35 can obviously mount weapons externally at the cost of losing stealth (bombers don't need stealth so this is not a problem). [1] [2] The ejection mechanism on any fighter jet is dangerous to the pilot and only used a last resort to avoid death. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-fighter/exclusive-u-s-sees-lifetime-cost-of-f-35-fighter-at-1-45-trillion-idUSBRE82S03L20120329 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-fighter/exclusiv... [2] http://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/1246350/external-pylon-training-increases-f-35a-weapons-payload-capability/ http://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/1246350/external-pylon... [3] https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/16/f-35-weapons-suite https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/16/f-35-weapons-suite

simonblack 8y ago

It's no use your weapons having a 20:1 kill ratio if they're so expensive that the enemy finds it better/cheaper/easier/faster to throw 21 'good enough' weapons at them. The US is falling into the German WW2 trap of having the 'best technological' weapons that are so expensive that only a few can be built. In WW2 both the US and the Soviets swamped the Germans with huge numbers of 'good enough' weapons. Sometimes on the East Front the Germans had a handful of extremely good Tiger tanks which had no hope at all against hundreds of T34s. And the same thing happened in Normandy against the Shermans.