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The Pentagon is battling the clock to fix serious, unreported F-35 problems
- simonblack 7y agoBrewster Buffalo II. Sounds good on paper, disaster in practice.
- wpasc 7y agoIf the military-industrial voting complex (defense companies geographically spreading manufacturing operations over key swing congressional districts), I believe more can be done than most think. I believe their key influence is what props up US military spending that the pentagon does NOT want [1]. [1]: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tell...
- DSingularity 7y agoif what?
- stupidcar 7y agoLots of countries burn money on labor and goods they don't need, they just call it "socialism" instead of "defence". The US might be better off of they acknowledged that the fruits of this particular labor weren't going anywhere real.
- h0l0cube 7y ago> Lots of countries burn money on labor and goods they don't need, they just call it "socialism" instead of "defence" I suppose in your eyes, 'need' is a loaded term. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, while subject to some debate, has become a popular consensus on what the term means. Many socialist policies are in favor of universal health-care, food and housing programs etc. which sit at the foundation of the hierarchy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago> Lots of countries burn money on labor and goods they don't need, they just call it "socialism" instead of "defence" Got any examples?
- Nition 7y agoI wouldn't know anything about this except that there was one excellent example on Hacker News the other day, about whaling in Soviet Russia: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/one-of-the-greatest-environmental-crimes-of-the-20th-century.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/on...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- r00fus 7y agoTurning that on its head, is “defense” (a euphemism used to justify wars) really worth it compared to better healthcare and bridges that don’t fall apart?
- Havoc 7y ago>controlled flight into terrain Uhm what? Presumably no pilot will fly into terrain if in control. That whole thing just reads like a nightmare project
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ajross 7y ago"Controlled flight into terrain" is a euphemism (one of several) for "pilot error". It's a term of art in the aviation safety industry for "the aircraft didn't break, it wasn't in an unsafe state like a dive or spin, the pilot just flew it into the ground". In this case, though, it seems to be used incorrectly because it's being applied to a problem that causes the aircraft to be difficult to control. A plane that is too hard to fly isn't the pilot's mistake.
- jussij 7y ago> Presumably no pilot will fly into terrain if in control. The history of flight has many instance where this has happened. A very common cause is bad visibility mixed in with mountainous terrain.
- manicdee 7y agoControlled flight into terrain can cover incidents such as flying in limited visibility using instruments where the instruments aren’t wrong, the pilot is conscious and in control, but gets task focussed or misinterprets a signal and takes deliberate action that ends up in an unplanned lithobraking event. Flying limited visibility or with horizon obscured is a typical scenario for controlled flight into ground. Some pilots will also feel less confident with a particular implementation of the artificial horizon. Then there are transition states between particular instrument assisted flight modes (“autopilot”) and manual flight modes, as well as assisted flight modes where the pilot and the computers disagree on the appropriate course of action (similar to, say, automatic trim of horizontal stabiliser in aircraft with engines slung under the wing). The pilot might switch modes and assume control over pitch and yaw but the computer was handing over control of throttle. So the pilot ends up fighting the computer for control rather than actually flying the aircraft. Labelling it “pilot error” can cause investigators to stop looking for the root cause. “Controlled flight into ground” leads to the question “why would an otherwise competent pilot do what this pilot did?”
- scanny 7y agoIsn't this sort of thing expected through the process of developing cutting edge hardware and software? I can't imagine there are many airframes that are pushing the technological boundaries as the F-35, aren't bleeding edge products prone to difficult development? I don't see how this wont be worth it in the long run in terms of getting ahead in an arms race as a superpower. It seems as though this is probably the hardest thing to get industry insight into given the secret nature of it all.
- JshWright 7y agoThe F-35 isn't that "bleeding edge" though. Most of the "innovation" comes from trying to accomplish a bunch of different roles with a single aircraft (shockingly, this has resulted in a plane that excels at none of them).
- Klathmon 7y agoBut would the alternative of designing and manufacturing many different aircraft be cheaper? And would it be as effective? For it's faults, the F-35 is a weapon that can be configured and deployed at the drop of a hat for just about anything. That's a very powerful capability to have as a defensive and offensive weapon.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cryptonector 7y agoIt might not be cheaper, though I suspect it would be just because white elephants will white elephant. And besides, what's the likelihood that three separate projects will fail? But the likelihood that a jack of all trades will be a master of none, and thus perhaps ineffective, is pretty high. > at the drop of a hat Ha! There are still multiple variants, and you cannot reconfigure instances of one variant to be instances of another, and certainly not at the drop of a hat.
- deleted 7y ago
- Analemma_ 7y agoOne point five trillion dollars.
- m0zg 7y agoTiming is impeccable: Trump is about to sell a bunch of F-35's to Poland, so let's hit them with a "cluster of damning reports" to sour the deal. If you read the actual article, you'll see that most problems are either fixed already or aren't as severe the headline would make you believe. But nobody really reads the articles.
- jayashe 7y agothey made a loud-as-hell flyover of DC today in celebration
- josefresco 7y agoIn your scenario, who is behind the "cluster of damning reports"? Liberals? Poland? Russia? China? Defense contractor competitors? I agree with the second part of your comment.
- m0zg 7y agoCould be anyone. Could even be several parties simultaneously feeding information to the media. The only unlikely party is the competitors, since it's not in their interest (in this case) to shit on Lockheed.
- rlt 7y agoWhat are the chances all of the negative press the F-35 has gotten is disinformation designed to mislead adversaries?
- colechristensen 7y agoMost of it is fanboys or anti-fanboys. You'd think people in software would be more familiar with having defects in your product not meaning doom or incompetence.
- zipwitch 7y agoI hardly think the Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation counts as an "anti-fanboy". And their reviews of F-35 progress of been the bureaucratic equivalent of damning. Full report here: https://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2018/pdf/dod/2018f35jsf.pdf https://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2018/pdf/dod/2018f35j... Article summarizing it here: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/dote-delivers-another-scathing-report-on-f-35-progr-455483/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/dote-delivers-ano...
- mrguyorama 7y agoIf my product fucks up, someone can't buy something on the internet If the F35 fucks up, people can die, international relations can be harmed, etc etc etc
- jSully24 7y agoZero.
- GVIrish 7y agoVery unlikely. Ideally you want your adversaries to be so afraid of how capable your new weapons system is that it acts as a strong deterrent. Not only that, but a large component of the Joint Strike Fighter program was selling it to allied militaries. It would be silly to trash the aircraft publicly if you want a dozen other nations to buy it.
- decoyworker 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- madengr 7y ago“Lockheed Martin plans to implement a software fix for the flight control system.” Now where have we heard that before. Software patches to fix inherently unstable hardware. Move fast and break shit.
- colechristensen 7y agoF-35 and all fighter jets all use and must use by design synthetic stability, without computer control the airframe would be impossible to pilot. You need this aerodynamic instability to be maneuverable. If you don't have it turning is very slow. Flight characteristics are very much dependent on software. It isn't a glitch or a "move fast break shit" but a fundamental design feature of fast maneuverable planes.
- madengr 7y agoHow does an F-14 and others of the same vintage fly? Isn't that all hydraulic servos? Not trying to be an ass, just curious.
- colechristensen 7y agoFor the F-14 that doesn't seem to be the case https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Air_Data_Computer https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Air_Data_Computer They had flight computers that did ultimately actuate the control surfaces.
- NegativeLatency 7y agoThe last couple generations of fighters have moved away from airframes that are passively stable (imagine a car or something that requires no control to remain upright). Newer designs are only stable when their attitude is constantly monitored and adjusted by control software. (To continue the metaphor, imagine a Segway or a pogo stick, more agile than a car) The benefit you get from giving up passive stability is increased maneuverability in the case of fighters.
- 7y ago
- stevenjohns 7y agoI'm really of the belief, based purely on imagination, that a lot of the spending and research went into being able to make the F-35 autonomous with a switch. Drone warfare really is the next step and having full jets that appear to be piloted but are actually completely autonomous would put the US ahead by decades.
- tlb 7y agoStarting with a manned aircraft is a terrible way to build an unmanned one. A good fraction of the weight is there to provide life support and safety for the pilot. The canopy is a huge compromise between aerodynamics and visibility. And for manned aircraft, it's worth spending 10x more to get a slightly lower failure rate, because pilots are so valuable. For unmanned aircraft, the reliability calculations are all different.
- stevenjohns 7y agoBut it gives access to thousands of hours of training data for that particular aircraft across a range of different situations, and it allows you to test that ML model in real situations. Moving to something lighter or more aerodynamic becomes a lot easier after that. If you look at the Boeing Airpower/Loyal Wingman UAV, it looks like its based on this concept quite closely.
- DuskStar 7y agoThat doesn't seem to be the route the XQ-58 is going, though. [0] It's an attritable stealthy missile/bomb truck - and at a projected unit cost of $2-3 million, they'd be cheaper than some US air-to-air missiles. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratos_XQ-58_Valkyrie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratos_XQ-58_Valkyrie
- viraptor 7y agoA remotely controlled UAV would provide more hours of training data for less money.
- r00fus 7y ago
- aswanson 7y agoI worked in defense contracting early in my career. White-collar welfare. Disgusting level of waste.
- vegetablepotpie 7y agoI work at a defense contractor. One of the guys in my row of cubicles has his wall plastered with political cartoons mocking welfare, social programs and anyone who thinks the government has a role to play in reducing poverty. Every-time I pass this gentleman's desk, I see him playing solitaire on this computer. Defense contractors are adult daycare.
- gonational 7y agoThink of the irony here. Government is the one funding this guy’s adventures in Solitaire. What makes you think Government can do anything efficiently, let alone reduce poverty?
- jahewson 7y agoWhy stop there? What makes you think human beings can do anything efficiently?
- gonational 7y agoThe nice thing is that, if left alone, one doesn’t need to be concerned with or frustrated by the inefficiency of others. Markets work this way, and when individuals are left, for the most part, to operate in the same fashion the intrinsic efficiency of supply satisfying demand is better than anything we might, as a group, think up.
- ndarwincorn 7y agoYou must've skipped tragedy of the commons day in micro 101.
- 7y ago
- nwrk 7y ago>a so-called "green-glow" night vision Go to 28:30 (actual flight helmet recording) https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B30EHgj_ikFIOTlEeGh6UHFPOTQ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B30EHgj_ikFIOTlEeGh6UHFPOTQ... ”Use the force, Luke.”
- retSava 7y agoBetter link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faxuDFHJ3NY&t=28m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faxuDFHJ3NY&t=28m30s (the google drive never loaded for me)
- eloff 7y agoThis is a terrible project for many reasons. The insane cost, a plane trying to be everything but master of none, and the whole concept of human piloted planes is so antiquated. Air craft carriers are obsolete, the same way the carrier made the battleship obsolete in the second World War, but nations were slow to realize it. Missiles make the carrier obsolete today. If you look at China's fast missile boats, they know this already. However it's quite handy still for projecting air power against much weaker foes - which to be fair is what the USA does today. Human planes are just silly though. Make drones, work on improving the ability to control then accurately remotely. They can out fly and out manoeuvre piloted planes at a fraction of the cost without risking the pilot's lives.
- GVIrish 7y agoThe big risk I see with drones is that with aggressive jamming and cyber attacks your drone fleet could ostensibly be crippled. But as you said a drone could easily turn harder than any manned aircraft could, loiter/patrol for far longer, and have a much smaller radar cross section since it wouldn't have to accommodate a cockpit. Sooner or later unmanned combat aircraft will dominate. I also agree that the aircraft carrier will be supplanted at some point because of sophisticated anti ship missiles. But, if carriers can launch drones from much greater distances it will allow carriers to extend their usefulness for quite some time.
- eloff 7y agoI think lots of smaller done carriers make way more sense than supercarriers when all it takes is one missile to sink them. Drones don't have the same runway requirements. Jamming remotely piloted drones is a good point. A backup autonomous system can help there. But I don't understand enough about how easy it is to jam signals designed to work through jamming would be.
- tlear 7y agoBackup autonomous system is how Iranians(not Russians or Chinese..) managed to take over and land completely in tact top of the line US drone. Autonomous fool proof weapon system that are actually given freedom to kill things are VERY far away. I think looking at Russian commitment to EW is one of the possibilities of next step. Imagine war with no gps, barely functional coms etc. Basically go back 40+ years that is war vs adversary with good EW. Now the counter is killing EW platforms as they necessarily emit.. so emit less or communicate less to not get fixed and pounded into the ground etc. Manned platforms are not going anywhere any time soon. Humans are just too clever and adaptable
- RappingBoomer 7y agothe entire govt is a sort of scam...I should know--i recently retired as a fed govt employee...they create more regs and rules etc so as to give themselves more to do...and don't even think that it can be reformed...it cannot...breakup of the USA is the only way to go about this..
- segmondy 7y agoHas there every been a USA military aircraft built in the last 20 yrs that didn't have damning reports, tons of waste and over budget issues?
- gonational 7y agoThe F-35 has been in development for 27 of those last 20 years.
- DuskStar 7y agoProbably, but we have no idea what it is. (We might find out in 20 years, though - I'd expect a pocket force of stealth UCAVs) The US's 'black' planes have been remarkably successful, though that might be due to the fact that we never see their development and testing phase.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThere’s a few more zeroes in this one, it’s not even comparable.
- onepointsixC 7y agoIt's been like this for a long time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM
- p1esk 7y agoWhat is the main problem with developing a remotely controlled fighter jet? Is it signal jamming? If so, why not make it autonomous? After all, we are actively developing self driving cars...
- apoorvkumar 7y agoWe already have a fairly good auto pilot. The complexity lies in rules of engagement.
- p1esk 7y agoCan you give an example of such complexity?
- johngalt 7y agoThe optimal design for a 'jet fighter without a pilot' rapidly converges on a missile.
- DuskStar 7y agoDoes it though? I suppose it heavily depends on your definition of "fighter", but cranked-kite and flying wing designs have been the go-to for subsonic stealth jets and UCAVs. Under a "something that is intended to kill other planes" definition a subsonic stealth air-to-air platform with good sensors might qualify as a fighter, but many people seem to think "fast, hypermaneuverable" are requirements too. Confusing the goal with the method, IMO. Another major design constraint difference between "unmanned fighter" and "cruise missile" would be the deployment and reusability goals. Cruise missiles tend to need to fit in launch tubes or under wings, while presumably an unmanned fighter would not be so constrained (and thus be able to use larger wings). And while cruise missiles are very single use, the sensors on an unmanned fighter may make it too expensive to discard that way.
- tlear 7y agoJamming, hacking, possibility of being exploited(thing adversarial ML) etc etc If we get real self driving cars how long till someone figures what you need to plaster on a tree to fool ML into crashing a car :) now imagine full nation state behind such effort. The risk of not having human in the loop is just too great. You also just can’t do anything limited. I mean you can have even now fighter jet just kill anything it finds that does not transmit id, good in war maybe not so good at other times. Aegis is old tech and it is automated to kill anything that looks like a missile in full auto mode. Iron dome probably same thing, engages and fires on full auto. Now imagine you hook it up to some automated 155mm battery, the moment missile get painted, it would start counter battery, I am guessing the round would land in Gaza before the rocket hits Israel. Now how many people would be ok with this is another question.
- gravy 7y agoReminds me of https://youtu.be/4xJBvKJht78 https://youtu.be/4xJBvKJht78 (The F-18: Just how good is it? (1980))
- AlexCoventry 7y agoCute that they were worried back then about an expenditure of $4B.
- onepointsixC 7y agoJust to add to your video there is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM (F-16, Sale of the Century).
- meatbaggies 7y agoOkay, super high tech F-35 versus low tech A-10... There's probably an envelope that the A-10 fills, where you just need the enemy meat bags to know that the sound of jet engines circling for more than 4 hours is absolutely backed by some really nasty heavy machine gun fire and some munitions dropped on your head. Is that going to happen with the F-35? Is it going to show up and never go away, breaking a stalemate by testing the patience of pinned enemies that are hungry, tired and looking for a way to walk off the battlefield? The idea seems to be that the only thing people need to do, in a fight anymore is call in for help on a radio, wait for some bombs to hit a spot on the ground, and expect that to perfectly solve everything troops encounter. One size fits all. Just use that same gambit over and over. Got a problem? Call in the 50 million dollar plane. It flies in at mach 1.2 in under thirty seconds and drops a bomb from 25,000 feet. Then leaves just as fast. Wait. That didn't work. Okay just have another one supercruise into the killzone. One more bomb. Oh you missed. Uh... Third time's a charm? I have a suspicion that supersonic flight in the stratosphere with a strategy of "just try more bombs until it seems to fix things" isn't going to really work. Maybe in another ten years it simply won't be possible for a meat bag to survive on the ground and the idea of close air support will seem silly because robotic killer death machines create stretches of no man's land so huge that the only means to fight is from supersonic jets miles above their electro laser incendiary ballistic chainsaws...
- Causality1 7y agoCost+ needs to die. Contractors should be forced to either meet their original bid or go bankrupt trying.
- burfog 7y agoDisaster possibility 1 is that nobody bids on the project. It is too risky. Disaster possibility 2 is that the original bid is met... but one critical feature is left out of the contract (overlooked) and is thus not in the result. Disaster possibility 3 is that the company does go bankrupt. Uh, oops, we needed that company. Now we can't get parts for other products. This could be fixed via a huge bailout.
- amitport 7y agoSo the companies would go bankrupt and the project would remain unfinished
- pas 7y agoThis is a problem that cannot be solved by hard and fast rules. There needs to be a decision making process that can guide the R&D project. Unless of course goals, progress, etc. can somehow be quantified. (But these are complex projects, complex goals, even coming up with relevant metrics is hard, and somehow coming up with one utility function is kind of impossible - without spending a lot of money on R&D for that, but then you're back to square one.) That said, yes, risk should be better spread, but also the following are all critically related to public spending/procurement: Personal accountability and motivation, too big to fail, cartel/oligopoly, agent-principal problems, corruption, institutional deadlock, too much bureaucracy, bad responsibility-authority allocation, etc.
- RantyDave 7y agoThe whole thing is missing the point. The F-35 is a hugely expensive prop for a Top Gun reboot, probably great for fighting a largely mythical 1980's air battle against MiG's but bugger all use in a modern war. For instance: * Somebody "gets radicalised" and decides to fly a plane into a building (again). * Right wing nutcases blow up a bridge in the middle of a gay pride march. * The Chinese put a few million cellphones into the US with backdoors so their radios can be used to jam wireless transmissions. * Or track people. * Or listen to their conversations. * The Iranians, having been shown how effective industrial espionage was against their nuclear program, get busy doing some of their own. The next war is the Russians persuading the American electorate to vote for a muppet. Unthinkable quantities of damage, whole thing probably cost less than one wing of an F-35. The next war is ... the lights go off. Water stops coming out of taps. The banking system breaks. Gullible people get persuaded to do stupid things. A big piece of metal that can fly above the speed of sound ... for eighty seconds ... is not going to help at all (and hasn't been).
- PeterStuer 7y agoNot sure why this is downvoted. The nature of conflict has changed many times through history, obsoleting state-of-the-art technologies (which arguably the F-35 is unconvincing at) from a bygone era.
- burfog 7y agoI think it is because the "nutcases" (a rude term BTW) were specified to be on one side of the political spectrum, and that the country chosen for the example of "persuading the American electorate" (later referred to as "Gullible people") also implies something about one side of the political spectrum. Overall, the comment strongly implies that one side of the political spectrum has the "nutcases" and "Gullible people". That just isn't very nice.
- RantyDave 7y agoWell, when did left wing anybody engage in violence against a right wing anything? Nobody's driven their car through a Trump rally, have they? I'm from England, BTW, where "nutcase" is a part of the common vernacular and I'm sorry you've taken offence. But I'm not sure about gullible. Did people vote for Trump because they were persuaded he would be a good leader? If they merely decided of their own accord then presumably this is naivety. Are there people who voted for Trump and are happy with his performance? In which case their decision making skills have served them well. As for the electorate as a whole, well, that's democracy for you.
- floriferous 7y agoWhy do so many people on hackernews appear to really know their stuff when it comes to aeronautics? Between the F-35, the ethiopian crash, and plenty other related topics, I’m amazed at the quantity and quality of the comments. I would expect this topic to be kind of niche, and not attract >100 comments everytime!
- stunt 7y ago> I’m amazed at the quantity and quality of the comments. How do you measure the quality if you are not an expert? Surely many are an enthusiast in aeronautics. There are plenty of documentaries and incredibly lots of information on the internet about aeronautics. And I believe that's still just some shallow information.
- colordrops 7y agoLots of software people work in aerospace and military.
- divbyzer0 7y agoPerhaps the perceived shortcomings appear to be obvious to even the non-aeronautically trained? I recall the MCAS issue being discussed here well before governments grounded the 737max. The FAA being one of the last to ground. The F-35 issues appear to share those common in engineering. Over promising, over spending and not able to deliver on those promises, because no solution can satisfy all wants/requirements. In my explicitly unqualified view, the F-35 tries to be everything to all services, yet my limited understanding on aeronautics is (similar to marine engineering); is the best designs are those that focus on a specific task.
- robin_reala 7y ago“The F-35’s logistics system currently has no way for foreign F-35 operators to keep their secret data from being sent to the United States.” Wow.
- supergirl 7y agocountries that buy f35 don't really have secrets from the US anyway
- picklepete 7y agoI hope you’re joking.
- fluffything 7y agoThe US won't sell F35 to non-friendly countries, and friendly-countries are already in bed with the US intelligence-wise, where the US typically allow the other countries to use their intelligence-gathering systems, in exchange for the US to get access to the information they gather. That ends up meaning that all intelligence that other countries intelligence-agencies end up collecting are available to the US.
- alkonaut 7y agoI'm sure Norway and the US are friendly and exchange lots of information within NATO, but if Norway wants to tell the US how their F-35 moves between various caves for service I'm sure they want to do so in a high level intelligence exchange type of way, and not because some Lockheed logistics system automatically phones home about Norwegain F-35 locations.
- delfinom 7y agoWell, thanks to Trump exposing Israeli intelligence and requiring immediate extraction of an agent. Most countries are extremely wary to share shit while the dementia filled man is in the white house.
- 7y ago
- yc-kraln 7y agoCould this be related to the fatal crash of the F-35 in Japan?
- OliverJones 7y agoIt's a counterfactual speculation now, but what would have happened if there were two airplane projects, one designed for vertical takeoff and landing, and another for more general use? What if airplanes had to be cranked out at a rate like the WWII Merchant Marine Liberty Ships: 2,700 of them from 1941-1945? (There's a restored one, SS Jeremiah O'Brien, at pier 45 in San Francisco.) Are these machines so complex now that it necessarily must take a generation to develop a new one?
- cantrevealname 7y ago> The 13 deficiencies include: The F-35’s logistics system currently has no way for foreign F-35 operators to keep their secret data from being sent to the United States. I marvel at how foreign buyers of something as complex as stealth aircraft can have any confidence that the system is not riddled with back doors, remote control capability, "phoning home", surveillance, and kill switches. How would you prove to a foreign buyer that your F-35 would not: - upload all your secret flight data to a tire pressure monitor every time a maintenance worker checks the tires with the special gauge he has to use, which then retransmits the data when the gauge is put back in the hanger, without needing any cooperation from the maintenance worker - cause all your F-35s to fall out of sky everywhere in the world when the GPS satellites transmit an extra 64-bit coded message that cause fuel actuators to shut off - put your F-35 under remote control when a coded microwave message is transmitted directly to the plane during combat or a close encounter Even children's toys and home appliances are routinely discovered to be phoning home and doing sneaky unexpected things. I'm going to hazard a guess that all large weapons systems are compromised —— perhaps by more than one nation simultaneously since parts and expertise come from hundreds of contractors and many different countries. I'm not aware of any revelations of weapon-system backdoors yet, but we might hear about some of them in the aftermath of the next major war.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoBack in 1982's Falklands war, the Argentines sunk two British destroyers with French-made Exocet surface missiles, towards the beginning, and then stopped scoring any hits. I once heard unsourced speculation that the French might have given the British the scoop on how to sabotage incoming missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War
- tyingq 7y agoIt seems they only had 5 total of the Exocets to fire. One hit the HMS Sheffield, two hit the merchant ship Atlantic Conveyor, and one hit the destroyer HMS Glamorgan. So that's 4 of the 5. I think they just ran out of missiles. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17256975 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17256975 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet#The_Falklands_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet#The_Falklands_War
- gkanai 7y agoJapan recently lost one of their first F35s and the pilot. One wonders whether one of these problems was the cause of the loss of the airplane and the pilot, not pilot error.
- greedo 7y agoThe most recent report shows that the pilot lost spatial awareness.
- blunte 7y agoFor the trillion(s) that have gone into this fighter, one could wonder if there were other better uses of that money. Even if defense is a necessary evil, it should be obvious by now that electronic (cyber - forgive me) warfare is the future of military. Why attack with physical weapons when you can literally shut down the power to an entire country? Or jam its communications en masse. Or cripple its transportation infrastructure.
- DanielBMarkham 7y agoThere is no "future of warfare" in terms of just being one thing. When guns came out, they said it would be the end of warfare. Instead of spending years training archers, you could pull farmers from the fields, put together huge armies almost overnight. When machine guns came out, it was the end of warfare. How could massed formations fight against so many rounds going downrange at the same time? This continued on with aircraft, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, missiles, and so forth. Nuclear weapons are especially interesting because instead of eliminating war, it looks like they eliminated formal war, pushing all that conflict down into police actions and non-state actors. All those other things stuck around. What became really tough is that you had to integrate all of those other things together so that you use that right tools in the right way, almost like putting together a symphony. Cyber is the same way. What we're seeing now -- and I'm a firm believer we are currently in a cyber war -- are a lot of different actors seeing how hard they can push things. It's a war without any conventions about what "fighting fair" means. Bad place for us to be. I think the F-35 has been a giant disaster, but that's part of a different discussion about military priorities versus strategic planning.
- blunte 7y agoBut I think you need to take a step back and ask what the point of a military is. If the point were actually about defending one's country, then there are surely more effective ways to spend the money. By all appearances, the modern military is just a convoluted way to funnel public money into the pockets of a few contractors and corporations (whose investors and shareholders win). It's an immensely inefficient way to skim money from the general population. One might say the modern military is more precise, suggesting that we care about avoiding civilian casualties. However, the US drone use blows that theory. If the goal were to defend a country from terrorists (modern invaders), then we would be concerned with right wing extremism which is responsible for more deaths than foreign "terrorists". Lastly, if we were just concerned with human lives and longer lifespans, we would be putting most of our money into combating heart disease.
- S_A_P 7y agoIts funny how I hear that a lot of UFO activity is really just "secret defense projects" that are not available yet, like there is some skunk works out there that is building stuff that is light years ahead of the state of the art. Meanwhile when we look at what the defense department is actually doing, they are building a plane that is trying to be all things to all people that defies the laws of physics with the expected results.
- AndyMcConachie 7y agoWar, war never changes ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBDrv1PY-uU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBDrv1PY-uU
- Dirlewanger 7y agoIf there was ever a contender for the most complex _thing_ humanity has ever made, I think DoD bureaucracy is a strong favorite.
- SEJeff 7y agoCounterpoint: http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/June%202019/Lockheed-Reported-Deficiencies-in-F-35-Already-Fixed-or-Being-Resolved.aspx http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/June%202019/L...
- KONAir 7y agoF-35 project is infinitely more valuable as its contuined production provides A LOT of employment and contracts. I sincerely don't expect the project ever end or deliver anything worthwhile.