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This seems like a PR piece. Too positive, a lot of discussions of pilot's smiles. Given the very high program costs and the need by Lockheed Martin to convince
by hyeonwho4 8y ago
This seems like a PR piece. Too positive, a lot of discussions of pilot's smiles. Given the very high program costs and the need by Lockheed Martin to convince US allies to buy the plane despite the high price tag, I think HN readers would be well served by skepticism.
To put it another way, it the F35 was really as good as the F22, as the article seems to claim, then it would not be available for export.
- canada_dry 8y ago> This seems like a PR piece No kidding... it comes across more like a late night Ronco ad rather than real opinions.
- threeseed 8y agoThe word smile was mentioned once in the article. And the F35 was always going to be shared with allies for cost and geopolitical reasons so not sure how that can be considered a negative. The US structured the F35 program to specifically avoid the F22 failures.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoSharing with allies for cost and geopolitical reasons is good for the contractors designing and building th plane. You spread around the tax dollars spent on jobs between many different US states and counties, and voila, immunity from politicians. Kick that up to a nation scale, and you really have something good going. Taking advantage of people’s interest in only their immediate future and their immediate surroundings, and people’s willingness to ignore long term and worldwide costs is a path to success and a downside of “democracy”.
- et2o 8y agoA strategy to advance the geopolitical stability of America and its Allies is about the opposite of taking a short-term view.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoThere are far better ways to advance geopolitical stability than a boondoggle of an aircraft project, especially when the military is already so far ahead of everyone else. However, this specifically results in lots of long term high paying defense contractor jobs in many congressional districts. We could have beefed up education, research, space exploration, energy efficiency improvements, mass transit, etc.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoI guess they will structure the F48 program to avoid the failures of the F35 program.
- dodobirdlord 8y agoIt would be pretty bizarre to refuse on principal to learn from experience. The F35 is expected to be in use through the 2060s. Part of the engineering challenge is designing around the fact that human pilots are expected to be phased out mid-lifecycle for these airframes.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoThe whole thing makes a lot more sense knowing just that.
- neuronic 8y agoI have read countless of pieces bashing the F-35 without ever mentioning strategic details like that... I suppose propaganda and political articles tend to put a spin on everything after all...
- threeseed 8y agoNot just that human pilots would be phased out. But that the F-35 is planned on being a command and control centre for a fleet of drones flying alongside it. In that context weapons capabilities and dogfighting aren't important but its key strengths in stealth and sensor unification definitely are.
- Already__Taken 8y agoIsn't this being sort for beta-phase at the moment because currently the f35 doing the targeting doesn't have to be the one launching the weaponry?
- FrojoS 8y agoWouldn't the sensors and fusion system be entirely swapped out in that case, too?
- forgotmypw3 8y agoI kind of assumed so because it would be hard to find pilots that would put their name on a critical piece.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThe F22 hasn’t upgraded its cockpit yet, so is a bit behind the F35 generationally. Additionally, the F22 has much more stealth that makes exports more difficult than the F35. This is really orthogonal to whether the F35 is great in its role or not.
- thunderbird120 8y agoThe cost per unit has actually come down below modern variants of older generation fighters. Boeing has been trying to get the air force to buy some new F-15Xs over the next few years, this has been controversial to say the least because they would cost more per plane than F-35s while being unable to operate in contested airspace. An ex Boeing CEO as secretary of defense has not eased the controversy to say the least.
- coolsunglasses 8y ago>they would cost more per plane than F-35s https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26305/f-15x-will-come-in-two-variants-and-no-it-wont-cost-100m-per-copy https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26305/f-15x-will-come-...
- TomVDB 8y ago"Maybe what's more important, is that the F-15X is being designed specifically to slot directly into the USAF's deeply established F-15 infrastructure, even down to seamless pilot conversion. Our sources say it will only take one or two flights per F-15C pilot to convert to the F-15X for the air superiority mission, saving millions on retraining aircrews, not to mention ground crews, that are already intimately familiar with the Eagle. " Sounds familiar!
- smiley1437 8y agoYes, the new F-15 MAX
- jeremy_wiebe 8y agoCanopy glass goes edge to edge!
- discordance 8y agoLet's hope it's MCAS ships and can read from two AOA sensors
- 8y ago
- tyingq 8y agoMilitary pilots might tend to project their assigned aircraft's reputation to their own. And therefore focus on the selling points.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoYeah no working military pilot is going to publically disrespect their aircraft, lest their career take a sudden turn toward desk duty.
- threeseed 8y agoNobody giving an interview to the media is going to disparage their own company if they want to continue working. It's just common sense.
- wiz21c 8y agoit's not common sense, it's fear. That's very different.
- JohnBooty 8y agoAgreed! However, not all of the pilots in the article were actively flying, so there's that.
- jandrese 8y agoI did get a sense of "These sandwiches are acceptable." "Permission to speak freely?" "Permission denied" "These sandwiches are acceptable."
- fireflash38 8y agoLike many fields, they will bitch non-stop to fellow pilots, but to 'external' groups will always say how much they love it. It's natural.
- rbanffy 8y agoThey didn't get to fly the most prestigious planes for lacking soft skills. I'd like to see anonymous reports.
- caycep 8y agoalso...can't really build more F-22s either, not without significant additional Congressional cash...
- Simple_Guy 8y agoBut F35 has a different role from the F22. How can it be 'as good'? By what metrics would you compare them?
- anovikov 8y agoIt was originally developed by many nations sharing the data. So, it can't probably be kept as much in secret as F22 anyway, this is why it is available for export. It also fills a completely different role. U.S. has such an overwhelming air superiority in any potential combat theater from Somalia to Moscow that they shouldn't be worried about someone having a better plane to bomb then.
- jayalpha 8y ago"Given the very high program costs " I am skeptical about the F32. It looks to me like a one trick pony. But an individual plane is not expensive (which is different from program costs). It is on par with the Eurofighter/Thyphoon.
- jayalpha 8y agoWhy the downvote? 1. It is a one trick pony. I can't fly fast, can't carry big payload, can't dog fight and takes a shit-load of maintenance. The only advantage is that it may or may not be "invisible" to opponents. I am sure it outclasses any third world countries like Iran, Iraq, whatever. But against China or Russia this is a big if. And if not (invisible) then you are screwed big time. You bought a ton of trade-offs for one advantage that disappeared. Take this as an example: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-s-500-f-35-or-f-22-stealth-slayer-30637 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-s-500-f-35-or... Or this one (dubious source) https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-24/russian-su-35-pilot-says-he-intercepted-us-f-22-raptor-over-syria https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-09-24/russian-su-35-pilo... 2. The price of the two planes (Eurofighter vs. F35) is basically the same. Fact. So the price of the F35 is not really an issue. https://aviatia.net/eurofighter-vs-f35/ https://aviatia.net/eurofighter-vs-f35/
- zaphirplane 8y agoWell the f22 was canned 8 years ago, hard to sell even if you wanted to sell as is, let alone with all the downgrades that are require for export which would push the price up It’s not good enough for us by hey want to buy one ?
- et2o 8y agoIt was just too expensive
- HelloNurse 8y agoWhat makes this article look like a PR piece, more than the smiles, is the appearance of a firm directive to talk about situational awareness etc. instead of flight performance and the clear defensive intent of some sections (e.g. the airshow demo). There seem to be a large blind spot in these pilot accounts, some elephant in the room, but not being an expert I'm unable to pinpoint what it is.
- cabalamat 8y ago> There seem to be a large blind spot in these pilot accounts, some elephant in the room, but not being an expert I'm unable to pinpoint what it is. I'm not an expert either. But I suspect it might be one of the following: 1. the F-22 has a higher thrust to weight ration than the F-35, meaning the F-22 is more manouvrable. 2. the F-22 has a lower wing loading than the F-35, again making the F-22 more manouvrable. 3. the stealth on the F-35, while good against the radars of 20 years ago, might be a lot less effective against the radars of the future, for example long-wavelength radars with lots of ground-based sensors all tied together with sensor fusion. This is a big deal since the F-35 is expected to stay in service until 2070 and I'm sure the Chinese and Russians are looking at ways to counter it.
- LifeLiverTransp 8y agoI though stealth as a concept was near obsolete due to cheap passive radar becoming feasible for about everyone? I didnt know they still built planes for this concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar
- krapht 8y agoStealth is relative; as long as your detection distance is greater than the adversary's, you're good. Also, passive is great, but I'd expect in a war situation all large transmitters would get disabled first.
- LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
- ptidhomme 8y agoAgreed on the skepticism. However you can't just say that a combat aircraft is better than an other. It highly depends on the kind of mission considered (Air defense, Close air support, Ground strike, etc...), and on the underlying warfare infrastructure (refueling tankers, AWACS, jamming vectors, etc...). As to export of the F35 vs. F22 : the F35 program was designed from the ground up as an international "cooperation program", so as not to say a "sharing costs" program, so it would be exported.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> However you can't just say that a combat aircraft is better than an other. It highly depends on the kind of mission considered (Air defense, Close air support, Ground strike, etc...), and on the underlying warfare infrastructure (refueling tankers, AWACS, jamming vectors, etc...). So maybe they should've published a spreadsheet instead, or an interactive, explorable chart. There are ways for effectively communicating multidimensional spaces of trade-offs, and I'm saddened that those ways are almost never used.
- ptidhomme 8y agoThis won't happen for a combat aircraft, because most of the true detailed performance is kept secret (for obvious strategic -and commercial- reasons).
- TeMPOraL 8y agoFull data - sure. But to the extent of information you can publish, comparisons could be done in a way that are not misleading. Otherwise, why publish?
- LifeLiverTransp 8y agoYour argument basically boils down to- we need specialized aircrafts depending on the mission. However, the F35 was exactly created to circumvent this- to have a aircraft that can fullfill any aircraft mission and excell in it. It was supossed to be the swiss-pocket knife of airplanes. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnjvb9/the-us-air-force-watered-down-the-f-35-to-avoid-embarrassment https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnjvb9/the-us-air...
- varjag 8y agoThe U.S. allies don't need much convincing, F-35s sell like hot cakes despite the recent degradation of American foreign policy. With Russia still unable to produce an S-400 missile modification capable to intercept it, this warplane is largely unchallenged in the skies.
- ptidhomme 8y agoDon't fool yourself into thinking US allies are unilaterally wanting the F35. There's heavy lobbying and strategic pressure underneath. If on only one example, in the recent Belgian Tender (which led to adoption of the F35) appeared a wholly new operational requirement for the Air Force to do stealth-requiring missions, such as SEAD (suppression of enemy air defense) [1]. Up to then, the Belgian Air force was not trained nor expected to do such aggressive undertakings. It seems this requirement came from NATO. [1] https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/la-belgique-a-achete-un-avion-furtif-sur-une-decision-de-l-otan-stavros-kelepouris-knack-797911.html https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeron... PS : Apologies for my source being in french, there might be some english versions of the story somewhere. The guy reporting the story is Stavros Kelepouris.
- et2o 8y agoDon't understand the issue with this mandate coming from NATO.
- ptidhomme 8y agoThe Belgian military policy has never been an aggressive one (modest-sized country and army), yet SEAD missions are. NATO is some sort of US military policy deployed in european countries, and can serve (as in this case) US commercial interests.
- et2o 8y agoNATO is definitely serving Western European interest. NATO is probably the major reason there has not been a land war against NATO members since WW2. Since the 1950s the Belgian military policy has been that it will do whatever is required of it as a NATO member.
- Amygaz 8y agoNo discussions about how we smile at the costs?
- throwaway284721 8y agoI doubt US allies are going to buy a plane because of a PR piece.