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US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets
- Pica_soO 8y agoThe problem is not bad engineering- its bad project management. As in, project management that was unable to stand up to feature creep and additional demands - saying no. We in germany have an airport that is in a similar state of affairs, due to late additional wishes. Huge projects need waterfall, else..
- DJBunnies 8y agoIf only it were permanent.
- sololipsist 8y agoWhy? Air superiority is important for power projection. Edit: So I'm getting a comments here that are much lower-quality than I expect from this place. Geopolitics is not like interpersonal relationships. There is nobody governing governments. It's a free-for-all, literally the state of nature. In societies it seems like "Might makes right" is a dated concept, but you have to remember that's within the frame of a governed society. Geopolitically we're literally in a kill-or-be-killed mode. There is no game-theoretical solution to geopolitics except to be able to defend yourself with deadly force. At a minimum you must be able to inflict enough damage on other geopolitical entities to disincentivize them from projecting their power within your borders. A better solution is to have as much be able to inflict so much damage other geopolitical entities can't do this to you so that you have the choice to deploy that power wisely, as opposed to not having the opportunity to deploy it wisely. The military dominance of the US post-WW2 has unambiguously been a stabilizing force on the world. I understand that doesn't guarantee it will continue to be so, but that isn't an argument against game-theoretical geopolitical realities. We can't let the fact that we're inside a governed society make us forget what it's like outside a governed society. Acting like geopolitical dynamics are like social dynamics is profoundly stupid.
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- Faaak 8y agoDo you really think that someone would attack the USA if they hadn't air superiority ?
- stcredzero 8y agoTaiwan would fall. If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship. Nowadays pretty much, if one side can establish air superiority, the other side is relegated to guerilla tactics. In terms of geopolitics in 2018, it's pretty much about air and naval bases.
- ceejayoz 8y ago> If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship. This is a little bit silly. South Korea was ruled by various dictatorships for decades after the war. North Korea still is.
- stcredzero 8y ago> > If the UN didn't establish air superiority during the Korean War, an entire country would have lost its freedom and would now be under a dictatorship. > This is a little bit silly. South Korea was ruled by various dictatorships for decades after the war. North Korea still is. In South Korea today, you have one of the most vibrant economies in the world. Sorry, but you're more than a bit silly. South Korea was ruled by dictatorships, post Korean War. However, this was a transitional period to today. In South Korea, you don't have camps where entire families are sent, basically to die, because someone said the wrong thing. One half of my family is from present-day North Korea. My grandfather was a physician and entrepreneur. He had to move the family south because he could see what was coming. My mother remembers being smuggled in a pitch-black compartment of a freighter. She also remembers walking down the road with the family's belongings strapped to her back. A stack of bills, thick from wartime inflation, likely saved the life of my grandmother. I and my sister wouldn't even exist, were it not for the Korean War and US intervention. All you have to do, to see the difference between the Koreas, is to look at nighttime pictures from orbit. All of the vibrancy of present-day South Korea was enabled by the intervention. The amount of human happiness that was allowed and the amount of human misery that was avoided by that is vast.
- stcredzero 8y agoIf the US were to permanently lose a big chunk of its airpower, Taiwan would have to rejoin China soon after.
- craftyguy 8y agoConsidering the US won't formally recognize Taiwan, they are, according to the US government, already part of China so I guess we apparently don't need that 'big chunk' of our airpower.
- stcredzero 8y agoIf the US loses Taiwan as a potential staging area, geopolitics all around the South China Sea would change significantly. Basically, every country adjacent to the South China Sea would lose a big chunk of their autonomy.
- craftyguy 8y agoThen perhaps they should recognize Taiwan and pledge to protect them. This current strategy of appeasement will only work for so long, airpower or not.
- stcredzero 8y agoThis current strategy of appeasement will only work for so long, airpower or not. You are correct, in a way. As it turns out, Taiwan is very hard to conduct landings on. The seas there are very rough, and the weather would interfere in all but 2 weeks of the year. Also, there is very little coast suitable for an amphibious landing. A landing on Taiwan could well make D-Day look like a cakewalk. However, China may grow its economy to the point, where it could still be feasible. In the meantime, the delaying action which you call "appeasement" is probably the best strategy for the US. Recognizing Taiwan would be a huge provocation of China, which is a potential tool best left for a future contingency.
- kibwen 8y ago
- dralley 8y agoFor 24-48 hours.
- raverbashing 8y agohttps://twitter.com/MikeRoach3/status/1015212921071329281 https://twitter.com/MikeRoach3/status/1015212921071329281
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoSo he's undecided?
- robotrout 8y agoThat was a very educational tweet steam. I hadn't heard of 2/3rds of the issues he raised.
- chris72205 8y agoI'd take some of it with a grain of salt. He brought up one point about peeling paint and requiring special hangars. But outside of the RT article he linked to, I can't find mention of that elsewhere. I didn't look into all of his points, but that one struck as me a little ridiculous even for this flying bucket of crap... which makes me question some of his other tweets in that stream.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoI can't find a source for a lot of the things he says... Norway is parking their F-35s outside under tarps while they build hangers, so the 0% humidity thing seems questionable
- mrguyorama 8y ago>Every time they're flown, they have to be repainted. And because the F-35's fuel is heat sensitive, EVERY TRUCK THAT CARRIES IT ALSO has to be painted with a special heat-resistant paint. I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if the F-35 were to use a different fuel than standard.
- raverbashing 8y agoAh it seems this is misquoted. Not the best source, but it gives a more plausible explanation https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-warm-gas-from-a-fuel-truck-that-sa-1668120726 https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-warm-... Tl;dr: if fuel stays in the sun it gets too hot and the plane won't run
- nkantar 8y agoI haven't been paying any specific attention to F-35 news, but I can only ever recall reading negative press. I know this particular project has been extra troubled, but is that the norm for new military vessels/vehicles?
- dragonwriter 8y agoIt's the norm for new instances of categories which are nearing the end of their viability because costs of protecting them against the current threat environment dwarfs utility; the F-35 also fell victim to a flawed strategy to mitigate the costs inherent to that situation by a common project for many different roles.
- 666lumberjack 8y agoI'm not an expert by any means, but as far as I know a lot of the issues are partially attributable to the fact the F-35 is trying to do everything for everyone. If that's true then I imagine planes that try to do one thing well have fewer issues on average.
- dragontamer 8y agoWhen you realize that the point of the F35 is to be a realistic Iron-man suit for the pilot, then you realize what is really going on. There are some issues of pork-spending as well. A lot of representatives who weren't on board with the project got jobs delivered to their districts instead. (IE: Build the engine in this state, so that the citizens you represent get a job-creator in their region). Sure, politics is a bit dirty, but that's how you get things done today. It doesn't seem like the most efficient project, but it has to be a project that everyone supports monetarily. F35, for all of its faults, won't have any issues financially due to how politics were played. But a lot of people are uncomfortable with how politics works at all.
- jki275 8y agoIt's very much the norm. The JSF is the safest program that's ever been fielded -- the Osprey had multiple crashes and fatalities at this stage of its development. Government procurement needs an overhaul, and this program has been badly over budget and time, but it is delivering a successful product.
- signa11 8y agosensationalist headlines at best. grounding is temporary for 24-48 hours due to crash in sc
- jki275 8y agoPretty standard response -- inspect everything to make sure there aren't any more of the faulty components (which evidently they've identified, which is a bit surprising in terms of speed), and then let them fly again. Happens all the time.
- 1001101 8y agoThis surprised me: "If suspect fuel tubes are installed, the part will be removed and replaced. If known good fuel tubes are already installed, then those aircraft will be returned to flight status." How do they not know this? What if we were at war?
- jki275 8y agoWhat exactly are you asking?
- zip1234 8y agoFormer Air Force here. Standard thing. Not big news.
- 3rdAccount 8y agoDoes anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area decently? I know in theory that there would be savings having one platform, but making one jet modular for 3 different roles is seeming to be more difficult than just designing 3 different jets. It can't beat the EuroFighter in a dog fight and can't match the stealth bomber for ordinance carried (actually a guess...please correct me if wrong) and can't match the A-10 for ground support. It just seems like a massive mistake that is now too big to fail.
- stcredzero 8y agoDoes anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area decently? It's the same disease that McNamara caught, resulting in the F-111. The F-111 was supposed to be the super plane for the Navy and the air superiority platform for the Air Force. Synergistic with this is that idea that there would be no more dogfighting and it would all be done with missiles. Tactical data sharing, complex systems like missiles, and the infrastructure which supports them all involve a lot of planning. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
- starpilot 8y agoBecause of the theoretical cost savings, as you mention. The JSF was aggressively fashioned toward futuristic notions of distance warfare. Missiles today have phenomenal performance, versus Vietnam era seekers that would fly into the sun. This might have been premature with the unexpected turn into asymmetric warfare. Also, any internet discussion on the A-10 (or SR-71, or Concorde) devolves into uninformed fanboyism, so I won't even go there.
- bborud 8y agoCan you blame them? I mean come on, it is called a Warthog, it looks like one and has the unexpectedly unpleasant personality of one. Adorable :)
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
- kibwen 8y agoOver a trillion dollars over 28 years. There are about 250 million U.S. taxpayers. That's $150 out of the pocket of every single taxpayer, every year, just to cover the cost of this one monumentally embarrassing failure. If you're a U.S. citizen born after 1974, you've been setting fire to this money annually for your entire adult life. No value has been provided other than as a government subsidy to military contractors, and if the whole point is just to transfer wealth to military contractors then we might as well just call it a subsidy and have them sit on their hands rather than continually embarrass us with their empirical incompetence. It's hard not to seethe with rage at the thought of all the better things that this money could have been spent on. I look forward to wasting my tax dollars on this boondoggle for the rest of my life.
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoIt’s even worse, since there is also the opportunity cost of what could have been done with all the time & materials. A purely direct wealth transfer of the net profit would at least save that all, which could have gone into something else. And possibly also environmental costs.
- saas_sam 8y agoI mean it's not like the money just went into a hole. These things were built by U.S. factories. Not the best use of taxpayer money by any means, and we are right to be angry, I just want to point that out.
- greeneggs 8y agoMisallocating labor is worse than throwing the money into a hole. The money itself doesn't matter, it's just an accounting tool.
- mikestew 8y agoI mean it's not like the money just went into a hole. It went into a big ol' hole that had a billboard next to it labelled "Opportunity Cost".
- sosborn 8y ago
- clircle 8y agoAre there any good, dedicated DoD blogs/websites? Most of the stuff I read about defense comes from more general news sites.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoMost people reading will recognize that it is a standard procedure to ground everything until you understand the risk. In this case the risk is a faulty fuel line, and apparently there is a test that will let you know in the field if you have it or not so you can return the plane to service immediately if the test comes up negative. There is a remarkable amount of disinformation that is spread around about this plane. My father (who is ex-Air Force) assumes it is because it is so far beyond what "opposing" forces can field they will do anything to delay its operation. I don't know where it comes from but I do not that the relative transparency of the US procurement process makes it easy to talk about problems which are later addressed and never return. You can compare that to a more secretive system where all of the kinks are worked out behind the curtain and the end product is presented ready to fly. It "feels" better from a marketing sense but I haven't read anything that suggests the Russians or the Chinese have any fewer issues when they build a bunch of new technology into a plane, it just gets reported on less.
- imglorp 8y agoThat's an interesting theory, that there's a foreign disinformation campaign smearing the program, because they don't want it fielded against them. I'd argue against that theory though, on the grounds that a corrupt/greedy congress, military and defense contractor network will do more against the country than our opponents ever will. Remember that time we bankrupted the USSR in an arms race? This time we're doing it to ourselves. So if anything, I think the flag waving F35 program supporters are both the defense contractors (obviously) but also all the foreign states that would like us bankrupt and saddled with decreased air power in three armed services. It's genius.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> there's a foreign disinformation campaign smearing the program Do we have any evidence of this? > Remember that time we bankrupted the USSR in an arms race? This time we're doing it to ourselves The Soviets spent 25% of their national income on their military in 1980 [1]. Most years, it was above 10%. In contrast, the United States spends low single digits of its GDP on its military [2]. [1] https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet-union-military-spending/ https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet-union-military-spen... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS
- netcan 8y agoAt the turn of the century, the Wright brothers were building their bicycle planes. Within 10 years, by the start of WW1 there were triplanes fit for war use. By the end of the war, Germany had metal planes with a single wing... not all that different from a modern crop duster. Amazing what the competitive (and "save our nation") pressure of an industrial war can do. Immediately after the great war, helicopters and all sorts of new planes were invented. By the time WW2 rolled around 20 years later, there were Spitfires & heavy bombers. Japan had floating airports. The sky became the place where land, naval and air battles were won or lost. The pace kept up in the generation after the war. Jet engines. 3 generations of jet fighters, each outclassing the last. Airliners more or less like modern ones. The f-15 is still The Cavalary. 747s are not out of place in a modern airport. 1967 & 1977 respectively. 50 years of peace, 50 years of stagnation. This is a lesson about people and a lesson about progress.
- 0xcafecafe 8y agoIt might seem like stagnation but we have made rapid advancements in other sectors (the mobile computing revolution being an example). About air travel, I think the evolution has been more about safety than anything else ever since (barring exception of concorde which tried to optimize for speed). The modern passenger jet is much safer than its 60s counterpart.
- derefr 8y agoThat's one way to explain the last 100 years, sure. Another way: militaries around the world stumbled upon a new source of low-hanging fruit (air supremacy), one that could win wars with just the slightest investment, as long as the enemy had invested less/none. Technological progress sped up in the space as everyone exploited the low-hanging fruit. Then, having picked all the low-hanging fruit, further advances in avionics were now just as expensive as advances in any other domain—so the world's military spending moved back to a general balance. This same thing happened for submarines, and for steel-hulled warships before that. When R&D has higher ROI (i.e. wins more battles for less money) than simply building more of what you've got, you invest in R&D. When it doesn't, you don't. For the latest 50-year period, the low-hanging fruit in military spending has been satellite technology—i.e., C2 and intelligence superiority. GPS-guided ICBMs on the one hand; reports from spies delivered over Iridium on the other. We got the Internet and cell phones from this one, before it slowed down. But this latest R&D "sprint" has indeed had most of its low-hanging fruit plucked as well, which is why we've lately seen military R&D spending leak away from satellites and back into other targets—including avionics R&D! (Sometimes a mesh-network of jet fighters works better than a satellite uplink. Expensive, though.) Not sure what the world's next military R&D focus might be. Cyberwar, maybe, but that might be point-of-view bias.
- 1024core 8y ago> The crash in South Carolina involved an F-35B, which is able to land vertically and costs around $100m And earlier it mentions a total cost of the program of 1 trillion dollars. So we'd have to sell at least 10000 planes to have any hope of recouping the costs??
- SubiculumCode 8y agoI hope they are also assessing the risk posed by hardware supply line hacks, regardless if the Bloomsberg article is factual. There are other concerns... https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/09/many-u-s-weapons-systems-are-vulnerable-to-cyberattack/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/09/many-u-s-weapons-system...
- OverLoadGenius 8y agoProbably the biggest engineering project fiasco of modern times. The money invested in this F-35 project could probably solve the homeless problem.
- jostmey 8y agoQuote: "The US government's accountability office estimates all costs associated with the project will amount to one trillion dollars." What a waste. The money could be better spent, and I'm not referring to spending money on something better than a weapons system. That money could buy a lot more gun-power that a buggy fleet of fighter planes that will soon be soon with the rise of drones.