15 ms·

Pentagon Puts F-35 Full-Rate Production Decision on Hold

119 points by clouddrover 6y ago

rawgabbit 6y ago
I have only read about the F35 and seen a few videos. Can someone check my understanding? The F35 has the same or even better air superiority capabilities than the F22. It will have electronic command and control capabilities that will remove the need for AWACS or JSTARS. The vision is that the F35 will defeat any enemy aircraft, enemy air defenses, and provide the sensor coverage that will enable fleets of drones to operate. (The videos I saw had to do with the cockpit main display panel. I was very impressed by it. It really looked like a video game with its touch inputs and ability for the pilot to configure it any way he likes. I am also amazed at how minimalistic the cockpit is. Reminds me of the Tesla but with much more intuitive UI.)
- jariel 6y ago
  No, the F22 has much better capabilities than the F35, and many of them are kept secret. The F22 is designed to be the 'Uber Alpha' of the Skies and to have no peer. It's made in the USA and is not sold to allies. The F35 is a 'secondary 5th gen fighter. Cheaper, a little less stealthy, sometimes a little more purpose fit, designed to be exported to allies. The packages on these planes are getting more and more powerful, and to some extent, they are mattering more and more to the point where the plane itself is less of what matters. The need for supporting electronic warfare will only increase, even as the capability of individual units increases. FYI - it's really hard to tell how much more powerful the F22 is because it's much more secret than F35, results are not always published, and they are full of assumptions about pretend scenarios. For example, the stealth aspects are nebulous, small factors make a big difference, and radar systems are always improving. Edit: missed the obvious and that is F22 is very specifically an early stage A2A focus role, not so much ground attack, whereas F35 will probably spend most of it's life in those kinds of roles. F22 is 'own the skies' F35 is then 'use the sky'.
  - rawgabbit 6y ago
    Thank you.
bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
Good. The whole thing should be shut down.
- ardit33 6y ago
  It is not good. Like it or not, this is the only alternative NATO has for the forceable future. The British Tempest and the French/German stealth fighter won’t be operational until 2035-2040 The only alternative are modernizes 4gen fighters which are very vulnerable to modern air defenses. A ‘buggy’ F-35 might still be a better alternative. Also the British are counting for the F-35 to equip its carriers.
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    Buggy? It barely works. Short flight time. Crap wing loading. Not good at any of it's multi-roles. We could build 5-10 F-16s for each F-35, and many more A-10s, and they'd be better despite being ancient designs. They're so expensive we can't even do proper flight training in them, it'd cost too much if we break one.
    - dogma1138 6y ago
      The Israeli's seem to be happy with it, use it in combat and are buying more.
      - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
        They don't pay for them. It's where all the "aid" money goes.
        dogma1138 6y ago
        They do, even if it's partially done via aid money. And again they could buy multiple F-16's for the price of a single F-35 through the same aid program.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
fireattack 6y ago
What does "full-rate production" mean? I searched and find a few military/defense related articles, but none of them really explain it in average Joe's terms.
- claydavisss 6y ago
  600 have already been delivered. Covid caused a disruption in final certification, that's it. The F35 isn't being cancelled, although I predict most comments here will devolve into a debate of the plane's merits. The US and many allies are committed, the US will eventually own thousands.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    If you didn't know, you've been hell-banned (silently hidden from the HN that almost everyone else sees) for two years. That's why you get so few replies to your comments.
    - ahupp 6y ago
      I see their comments like normal, is there something that controls this?
      - mlyle 6y ago
        His stuff starts off "dead" and has to be "vouched" by someone with karma to be expanded/seen by default. Look at his post history.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        If someone like me chooses to reply they become visible. Otherwise they're talking into the void.
    - Der_Einzige 6y ago
      This kind of policy is so hostile to it's users that I cannot believe that people like HN moderation patterns. Sometimes I consider writing a bot to automatically upvote ALL downvoted comments because maybe half of downvoted comments are incorrectly downvoted by people who got emotionally upset rather than downvoting because the content is of low quality. Hopefully, I could also write a system to automatically vouch for flagged comments that are from hell banned accounts. Truly a terrible system and I'd leave this place tomorrow if there was any community with as much good content as HN to replace HN with (and no, slashdot does not count)
sschueller 6y ago
Yet for some weird reason this plane is still one of the 4 plains in the running to replace the old FA-18 in the Swiss air force.
- strictnein 6y ago
  Which plane, exactly, is superior to the F-35?
  - slac 6y ago
    I think the cost is one of the deciding factors...
    - lsllc 6y ago
      They'll just keep upgrading the F-18 design, new avionics, better engines, airframe tweaks. Way cheaper than the F-35. The B-52's are still in service after 60+ years, with pretty much everything upgraded several times over.
      - strictnein 6y ago
        You can't make the F-18 a stealth fighter. But those planes will still be used for a long time. The F-15 may even be making a small comeback: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a26413900/air-force-buying-new-f-15/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a26413900...
        lsllc 6y ago
        No, but probably 95% of air combat operations don't need stealth (well, as long as you have air superiority).
  - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
    Pretty much anything from the last generation. Embarrassingly the F-16 beat it in combat, for example. For close air support the A-10 is vastly superior. The F-35 is an employment program like the TSA.
ceejayoz 6y ago
It's really baffling that the US isn't looking more heavily at cheaper, easier to field aircraft like the A-29 Super Tucano for counter-insurgency operations like Iraq and Afghanistan.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Doesn’t the US have many combat aircraft that can fit that service role?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- leetcrew 6y ago
  the a-29 is really intended for US COIN partner nations (read: not first world militaries). the aircraft is much less survivable than an a-10 (which is already more vulnerable than people tend to think), making it inappropriate for most direct applications by US forces. edit: to be clear, the US is looking at the a-29; they just don't want to risk their own pilots in it.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The A-29 isn't that cheap compared to an F-35 (i.e. 1:4), especially when you consider that if you buy an F-35 (at the expense of maintenance costs) you avoid having to buy an F-35 anyway because you have a modern BVR platform
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    The A-29 costs $430–500/hour to run. Lockheed "hopes" to get the F-35 down to $25k/hour by 2025.
- manfredo 6y ago
  The A-29 is functionally not all that different than armed drones like the predator or reaper. Except the latter have an even longer loiter time, and take pilot losses out of the equation.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
waiseristy 6y ago
After seeing what happened in Armenia & Azerbaijan, I'm wondering if the US's customers are pushing for these cheaper drone options instead of the F35. The F35 has been in development so long, that it's seeing its own combat role supplanted
- mkr-hn 6y ago
  The F-35 is the Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) player of war machines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for the era when it was finally shippable.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    > Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for the era when it was finally shippable. Are you any good at lottery numbers? Traditional fighters will probably lull in use in between the proliferation of drones, and the proliferation of countermeasures to those drones.
  - pas 6y ago
    We've seen this argument many times, but is this true? Where's the data? Etc. I'm not saying it's a bad argument, but since the hypothesis space is vast (what kind of future conflicts the US/NATO will engage in, what intensity, what kind of economics, what kind of arms race will those bring, etc), and data is sparse, it seems like HN/pundits are not great at really reducing the uncertainty. Sure, it's still a fuckload of money, and probably it could be better spent on providing new skill training to unemployed/at-risk-workers in those states where the F35 money goes right now, but that's a hard sell, and doesn't really move the needle with regards to air-force capacity.
  - syshum 6y ago
    The F-35 was never about actual combat I do not believe for a second the F-35 was ever designed to be an actual combat jet, I think is was all just a giant smoke screen to serve several political goals on both the domestic and Foreign fronts. It is simultaneously a prime example of a Jet designed by committee, a 1 Trillion + dollar program that will never serve the purpose it was sold to the taxpayers for...
strictnein 6y ago
The Drive back again with another one of its anti-F35 articles. It would seem that this administration is just punting to the next one, which is probably a good idea. I would take anything they post about the plane with a grain of salt. They take any setback as if it's the first time a large technical project has ever experienced issues.
- jolux 6y ago
  The F-35 has been plagued with near-continuous setbacks for its entire life, and reporting on them is notable because it puts a spotlight on our colossal failure to execute on something we consider important (defense technology). It's not just The Drive.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    So just like any real engineering project? Or am I to really believe that the software engineers here are of some other worldly caliber who build flawless products? The "near-continuous setbacks" are reminiscent of same exact comments on the F-16[1] and the F-18[2] during their development and acquisition cycles. Building things is hard. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xJBvKJht78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xJBvKJht78
    - GVIrish 6y ago
      The F-35 program is more like the F-111 than the F-16 or F/A-18, except in the case of the F-35 the DoD doubled down instead cutting their losses early.
    - jolux 6y ago
      I'd say the same thing about a software project that had been in development for 30 years like this. My opinion of GNU Hurd would be considerably more negative if it cost half a trillion dollars to develop. Don't take it from me though, the Wiki article has an extensive section on the problems with the F-35's performance and its cost overruns and delays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Program_cost_overruns_and_delays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning.... Or try Kelsey D. Atherton talking about the pitfalls of using it as a humorous unit of cost and explaining how it was used as a jobs program in addition to a defense program: https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1331294614209392640?s=20 https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1331294614209392640?s=...
guscost 6y ago
Weird theory of mine: The DoD ultimately picks these winning planes based on which one “looks cooler” or basically has better aesthetics. I think the F-35 has better aesthetics than the Boeing X-32, just like the F-22 has better aesthetics than the YF-23. You could say I’m used to seeing the winning designs as “normal”, but I distinctly remember having this reaction before the JSF competition was over.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- porphyra 6y ago
  I don't think the F-22 has better aesthetics than the YF-23. The YF-23 looks super awesome with its diamond-shaped wing. The Boeing X-32's frog-mouthed appearance is a bit ugly though.
  - DanCarvajal 6y ago
    YF-23 is 30 years old and still looks futuristic.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey That makes this positively alien then
  - mrtksn 6y ago
    YF-23 looks like what the non-human enemy would have used. It’s cool but it doesn’t look like “ours”. I guess that the “If we are the goodies why the weapons look alien” question comes to mind since people would always think that they are the good ones and the foreigners are the ones that we should be suspicious of.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  This is not your weird theory. There is some truth to it. Look up Kelly Johnson’s account on several books about military airplanes. In case if anyone doesn’t know he is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer) Basically his philosophy, at some corner of his brains was "If it cools beautiful, it will fly well." The way I think of it is - streamlined shapes are generally more pleasing to human vision system. Not sure why, some innate biological/evolutionary trait. So, Kelly designed a lot of beautiful planes with his gut instinct when there is no data/objectivity, but only some instincts to rely on. Legendary engineer!
animex 6y ago
I feel like there's an orchestrated PR campaign around making these F-35s sound like a success. I wonder what exists for objective reporting & analysis in this space.
- strictnein 6y ago
  I mean, there's real life, like Israel taking out advanced Chinese radars: https://defence-blog.com/news/source-israeli-f-35-destroyed-chinese-made-radar-during-airstrikes-in-syria.html https://defence-blog.com/news/source-israeli-f-35-destroyed-... Which China claimed could detect the F-22: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23846/china-anti-stealth-radars-detect-f-22/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23846/chi...
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    Damascus is less than 40 miles from the Israeli border, so it's entirely possible that they detected the F-35s just fine; you can hit quite a few targets in Syria without ever actually violating Syrian airspace. Flying from Japan to China might be a little different.
  - andromeduck 6y ago
    with drop tanks attached
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    The two aren't exclusive at all. It's possible that the F-35 was detected by the radar and that the radar was destroyed, if it wasn't possible at the time to guide a weapon onto target. It's also possible that the radar wasn't actually destroyed, or that it wasn't destroyed using an F-35, or that it was destroyed using some kind of munition such as a cruise missile or loitering munition where stealth is immaterial. Also, VHF radars aren't intended to guide missiles onto their targets, they are only detection radars for now. They would need dual tracking at the very least. But as of now, the mission profile of these radars is to provide advance warning and tracking and sensor fusion to, for example, a wing of J-20s which would enable them to intercept and kill F-35s. For example, a group of stealth interceptors could fly towards the detected planes with their radars off and RWRs on, fire off missiles when they are close to engagement distance to the F35s datalinked to the radar to aprroach, and once they are close enough, the missiles and planes turn on their radars all together using sensor fusion, guiding the missiles already very close their targets and destroying the F35s before they have a chance to counterattack. There are a few other ways VHF counterstealth radar can be effectively used to neutralize stealth aircraft, but none of them are within the reach of Syria, so this isn't surprising if it happened.
andred14 6y ago
As an IT professional, from what I see here in Sidney Powell's 270 page report there is SOLID evidence of election fraud: https://wpcdn.zenger.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/24190822/2020-12-23-Sidney-Powell-Team-Binder-ZENGER-NEWS.pdf https://wpcdn.zenger.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2419082... President Trump will remain President Trump
belval 6y ago
Can someone more knowledgeable than me in this matter explain why fighter jets still require human pilots? Why aren't they completely replaced by drones?
- bodhiandphysics 6y ago
  Drones are dependent on an active satellite link to function. What happens if the enemy jams the satellite?
  - jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
    Peace at last.
  - fishnchips 6y ago
    Wouldn’t jamming the satellite affect F-35, too?
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Yes and no. The whole thesis of the F-35 is apparently an airborne sensor fusion and electronic warfare platform as well as a modern BVR jet - it's going to be harder to jam because of both redundancy and the amount of hardware real estate the designers can play with to counter said jamming. On the subject of electronic warfare - I assume it's still very classified but given that the current teen series aircraft apparently have some serious EW magic in them (I don't have any citations for exactly what they can do other than I read some comments by IIRC an Australian ground radar operator and apparently they were completely outgunned - i.e. fake formations rather than mere jamming) I think we will be reading about exactly they can do at great length on the hackernews's of the future.
      - fishnchips 6y ago
        Radar jamming and other magic aside, I’m just wondering to what extent the equipment in a modern jet like F-35 depends on satellite link. So to what extent putting a human in the machine actually changes its capability as opposed to a drone with an autonomous mode.
ed-209 6y ago
Who are these people, both smart enough and dumb enough, to build the high tech death machines anyway?
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I imagine the prospect of being able to play with genuinely unbelievably good equipment has to help when recruiting - e.g. think of the amount of physics, signal processing, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, materials science etc. used to blow up a plane 50 miles away in a modern active radar guided missile.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The individual components are well engineered, it's the integration that is completely flawed.
- euler_angles 6y ago
  I could easily flip the question around: Who are these people both smart enough and dumb enough to work at FAANG companies?
- tasubotadas 6y ago
  I would love to work on such things.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
As I read this latest update on the F-35 I can't stop thinking about the $741 billion the US Congress just approved. Bipartisan. And overrode a POTUS veto. In the 2016 State of the Union Obama said, "We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined." The budget then was significantly less. And the F-35 is just now finally being snuffed?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  >"We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined." I'll translate this to defense speak: We get ripped off more than the next eight nations combined.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    Well it might be the next 20, 25 or even 30 at this point.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
      I work in defense and it just makes me laugh when people cite money spent as putting us somehow ahead. We spend $10 for $1 of work. My scrum master has never heard of Git. I am in hell
- souprock 6y ago
  We like our aircraft "Made in USA" for obvious reasons. An aircraft "Made in China" is a great way to save money, and it works fine for China. It probably doesn't help that practically every congressional district gets to make a piece of the aircraft.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
I work in defense and I'm conflicted on this. On one hand the easiest way to defeat this jet is to convince Congress to cancel it. On the other hand, any program that takes this goddamn long should be cancelled. The future moves too fast.
euler_angles 6y ago
I'm really surprised on a forum like HN that there isn't more questioning of what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do and why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production of a tactical aircraft. JSE is really interesting, it's meant to be a high-fidelity electronic warfare simulation with actual aircraft software in the simulation loop. The F-35 that's present in the JSE is the same code that is running on a real jet, with sensor models specifically developed by all the sensor vendors. All this is fed with the latest intelligence data on threat aircraft and emitters. The point of all this is, the US should be able to better develop the aircraft -- and other aircraft types -- in the future if it has a high tech digital testing ground that it can step through iterations with very quickly. As far as I can tell nothing like this has been done before so it's no wonder that it's taking a while. Here's a US Navy PDF briefing on the JSE: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/test/Smith.pdf https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/te...
- OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
  > what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do It's for formal verification and validation (V&V). > why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production Why shouldn't it hold up production? The program has requirements for formal V&V that they haven't met yet. In theory, you could start production by accepting the risk that you might need to do some rework, but I don't know if that was even an option. > step through iterations with very quickly The argument for doing a simulation is to get higher fidelity. It doesn't really make the process any faster on its own. The simulations themselves take a trivial amount of time compared to the preparation and analysis. > nothing like this has been done before There's a lot of simulation in aerospace and defense. I don't know exactly how JSE compares in terms of extent and reliance on it, but it's not a completely new idea.
  - euler_angles 6y ago
    The DoD has done a lot of simulations (some for the purposes of higher fidelity, but that's definitely not the only reason), but this is the first time it's truly tried to fold a simulation into the formal acceptance of an air vehicle, and committed this hard to high fidelity at scale.
runawaybottle 6y ago
How can we assess any of this stuff without an actual world war? The disassociated current generations look bored enough to send the kids to a real war in 20 years, and then we’ll see the truth behind all of the war tech and what future war really is.
ajxs 6y ago
Reading through the Wikipedia article detailing serious issues with the avionics software's development[0], I can't help but think of the choice to use C++ as the standard language for development on most of the JSF's systems. I recall reading a document written by the (then-current) lead dev on the project outlining the criteria used to assess C++'s suitability for the project. He conceded that Ada was the superior choice in most every aspect except for the ease of finding developers. Unfortunately I can't find that document now. If anyone knows the document I'm referring to and could point me to it, I'd appreciate it. I thought I had it saved. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Program_cost_overruns_and_delays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
- ajxs 6y ago
  Here is the document I was referring to: https://web.archive.org/web/20111219004314/http://journal.thedacs.com:80/issue/53/158 https://web.archive.org/web/20111219004314/http://journal.th...
- fatbird 6y ago
  Has there ever been a study done of the costs of retraining an X programmer as a Y programmer? Talent availability is a huge factor for any development project; but if the software program clearly showed that Ada was superior, one wonders at the cost of taking all those experienced C++ coders and retraining them on Ada. Ideally, such a study would show a matrix of the dominant language a coder uses, and the costs/time to get them comparably efficient in another language.

119 points by clouddrover 6y ago

I have only read about the F35 and seen a few videos. Can someone check my understanding? The F35 has the same or even better air superiority capabilities than the F22. It will have electronic command and control capabilities that will remove the need for AWACS or JSTARS. The vision is that the F35 will defeat any enemy aircraft, enemy air defenses, and provide the sensor coverage that will enable fleets of drones to operate. (The videos I saw had to do with the cockpit main display panel. I was very impressed by it. It really looked like a video game with its touch inputs and ability for the pilot to configure it any way he likes. I am also amazed at how minimalistic the cockpit is. Reminds me of the Tesla but with much more intuitive UI.)

jariel 6y ago
No, the F22 has much better capabilities than the F35, and many of them are kept secret. The F22 is designed to be the 'Uber Alpha' of the Skies and to have no peer. It's made in the USA and is not sold to allies. The F35 is a 'secondary 5th gen fighter. Cheaper, a little less stealthy, sometimes a little more purpose fit, designed to be exported to allies. The packages on these planes are getting more and more powerful, and to some extent, they are mattering more and more to the point where the plane itself is less of what matters. The need for supporting electronic warfare will only increase, even as the capability of individual units increases. FYI - it's really hard to tell how much more powerful the F22 is because it's much more secret than F35, results are not always published, and they are full of assumptions about pretend scenarios. For example, the stealth aspects are nebulous, small factors make a big difference, and radar systems are always improving. Edit: missed the obvious and that is F22 is very specifically an early stage A2A focus role, not so much ground attack, whereas F35 will probably spend most of it's life in those kinds of roles. F22 is 'own the skies' F35 is then 'use the sky'.
- rawgabbit 6y ago
  Thank you.

bfieidhbrjr 6y ago

Good. The whole thing should be shut down.

ardit33 6y ago
It is not good. Like it or not, this is the only alternative NATO has for the forceable future. The British Tempest and the French/German stealth fighter won’t be operational until 2035-2040 The only alternative are modernizes 4gen fighters which are very vulnerable to modern air defenses. A ‘buggy’ F-35 might still be a better alternative. Also the British are counting for the F-35 to equip its carriers.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  Buggy? It barely works. Short flight time. Crap wing loading. Not good at any of it's multi-roles. We could build 5-10 F-16s for each F-35, and many more A-10s, and they'd be better despite being ancient designs. They're so expensive we can't even do proper flight training in them, it'd cost too much if we break one.
  - dogma1138 6y ago
    The Israeli's seem to be happy with it, use it in combat and are buying more.
    - bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
      They don't pay for them. It's where all the "aid" money goes.
      - dogma1138 6y ago
        They do, even if it's partially done via aid money. And again they could buy multiple F-16's for the price of a single F-35 through the same aid program.
  - mhh__ 6y ago

fireattack 6y ago

What does "full-rate production" mean? I searched and find a few military/defense related articles, but none of them really explain it in average Joe's terms.

claydavisss 6y ago
600 have already been delivered. Covid caused a disruption in final certification, that's it. The F35 isn't being cancelled, although I predict most comments here will devolve into a debate of the plane's merits. The US and many allies are committed, the US will eventually own thousands.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  If you didn't know, you've been hell-banned (silently hidden from the HN that almost everyone else sees) for two years. That's why you get so few replies to your comments.
  - ahupp 6y ago
    I see their comments like normal, is there something that controls this?
    - mlyle 6y ago
      His stuff starts off "dead" and has to be "vouched" by someone with karma to be expanded/seen by default. Look at his post history.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      If someone like me chooses to reply they become visible. Otherwise they're talking into the void.
  - Der_Einzige 6y ago
    This kind of policy is so hostile to it's users that I cannot believe that people like HN moderation patterns. Sometimes I consider writing a bot to automatically upvote ALL downvoted comments because maybe half of downvoted comments are incorrectly downvoted by people who got emotionally upset rather than downvoting because the content is of low quality. Hopefully, I could also write a system to automatically vouch for flagged comments that are from hell banned accounts. Truly a terrible system and I'd leave this place tomorrow if there was any community with as much good content as HN to replace HN with (and no, slashdot does not count)

sschueller 6y ago

Yet for some weird reason this plane is still one of the 4 plains in the running to replace the old FA-18 in the Swiss air force.

strictnein 6y ago
Which plane, exactly, is superior to the F-35?
- slac 6y ago
  I think the cost is one of the deciding factors...
  - lsllc 6y ago
    They'll just keep upgrading the F-18 design, new avionics, better engines, airframe tweaks. Way cheaper than the F-35. The B-52's are still in service after 60+ years, with pretty much everything upgraded several times over.
    - strictnein 6y ago
      You can't make the F-18 a stealth fighter. But those planes will still be used for a long time. The F-15 may even be making a small comeback: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a26413900/air-force-buying-new-f-15/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a26413900...
      - lsllc 6y ago
        No, but probably 95% of air combat operations don't need stealth (well, as long as you have air superiority).
- bfieidhbrjr 6y ago
  Pretty much anything from the last generation. Embarrassingly the F-16 beat it in combat, for example. For close air support the A-10 is vastly superior. The F-35 is an employment program like the TSA.

ceejayoz 6y ago

It's really baffling that the US isn't looking more heavily at cheaper, easier to field aircraft like the A-29 Super Tucano for counter-insurgency operations like Iraq and Afghanistan.

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Doesn’t the US have many combat aircraft that can fit that service role?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
leetcrew 6y ago
the a-29 is really intended for US COIN partner nations (read: not first world militaries). the aircraft is much less survivable than an a-10 (which is already more vulnerable than people tend to think), making it inappropriate for most direct applications by US forces. edit: to be clear, the US is looking at the a-29; they just don't want to risk their own pilots in it.
mhh__ 6y ago
The A-29 isn't that cheap compared to an F-35 (i.e. 1:4), especially when you consider that if you buy an F-35 (at the expense of maintenance costs) you avoid having to buy an F-35 anyway because you have a modern BVR platform
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  The A-29 costs $430–500/hour to run. Lockheed "hopes" to get the F-35 down to $25k/hour by 2025.
manfredo 6y ago
The A-29 is functionally not all that different than armed drones like the predator or reaper. Except the latter have an even longer loiter time, and take pilot losses out of the equation.
bpodgursky 6y ago

waiseristy 6y ago

After seeing what happened in Armenia & Azerbaijan, I'm wondering if the US's customers are pushing for these cheaper drone options instead of the F35. The F35 has been in development so long, that it's seeing its own combat role supplanted

mkr-hn 6y ago
The F-35 is the Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) player of war machines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for the era when it was finally shippable.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  > Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for the era when it was finally shippable. Are you any good at lottery numbers? Traditional fighters will probably lull in use in between the proliferation of drones, and the proliferation of countermeasures to those drones.
- pas 6y ago
  We've seen this argument many times, but is this true? Where's the data? Etc. I'm not saying it's a bad argument, but since the hypothesis space is vast (what kind of future conflicts the US/NATO will engage in, what intensity, what kind of economics, what kind of arms race will those bring, etc), and data is sparse, it seems like HN/pundits are not great at really reducing the uncertainty. Sure, it's still a fuckload of money, and probably it could be better spent on providing new skill training to unemployed/at-risk-workers in those states where the F35 money goes right now, but that's a hard sell, and doesn't really move the needle with regards to air-force capacity.
- syshum 6y ago
  The F-35 was never about actual combat I do not believe for a second the F-35 was ever designed to be an actual combat jet, I think is was all just a giant smoke screen to serve several political goals on both the domestic and Foreign fronts. It is simultaneously a prime example of a Jet designed by committee, a 1 Trillion + dollar program that will never serve the purpose it was sold to the taxpayers for...

strictnein 6y ago

The Drive back again with another one of its anti-F35 articles. It would seem that this administration is just punting to the next one, which is probably a good idea. I would take anything they post about the plane with a grain of salt. They take any setback as if it's the first time a large technical project has ever experienced issues.

jolux 6y ago
The F-35 has been plagued with near-continuous setbacks for its entire life, and reporting on them is notable because it puts a spotlight on our colossal failure to execute on something we consider important (defense technology). It's not just The Drive.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  So just like any real engineering project? Or am I to really believe that the software engineers here are of some other worldly caliber who build flawless products? The "near-continuous setbacks" are reminiscent of same exact comments on the F-16[1] and the F-18[2] during their development and acquisition cycles. Building things is hard. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xJBvKJht78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xJBvKJht78
  - GVIrish 6y ago
    The F-35 program is more like the F-111 than the F-16 or F/A-18, except in the case of the F-35 the DoD doubled down instead cutting their losses early.
  - jolux 6y ago
    I'd say the same thing about a software project that had been in development for 30 years like this. My opinion of GNU Hurd would be considerably more negative if it cost half a trillion dollars to develop. Don't take it from me though, the Wiki article has an extensive section on the problems with the F-35's performance and its cost overruns and delays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Program_cost_overruns_and_delays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning.... Or try Kelsey D. Atherton talking about the pitfalls of using it as a humorous unit of cost and explaining how it was used as a jobs program in addition to a defense program: https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1331294614209392640?s=20 https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1331294614209392640?s=...

guscost 6y ago

Weird theory of mine: The DoD ultimately picks these winning planes based on which one “looks cooler” or basically has better aesthetics. I think the F-35 has better aesthetics than the Boeing X-32, just like the F-22 has better aesthetics than the YF-23. You could say I’m used to seeing the winning designs as “normal”, but I distinctly remember having this reaction before the JSF competition was over.

deleted 6y ago
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porphyra 6y ago
I don't think the F-22 has better aesthetics than the YF-23. The YF-23 looks super awesome with its diamond-shaped wing. The Boeing X-32's frog-mouthed appearance is a bit ugly though.
- DanCarvajal 6y ago
  YF-23 is 30 years old and still looks futuristic.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey That makes this positively alien then
- mrtksn 6y ago
  YF-23 looks like what the non-human enemy would have used. It’s cool but it doesn’t look like “ours”. I guess that the “If we are the goodies why the weapons look alien” question comes to mind since people would always think that they are the good ones and the foreigners are the ones that we should be suspicious of.
systemvoltage 6y ago
This is not your weird theory. There is some truth to it. Look up Kelly Johnson’s account on several books about military airplanes. In case if anyone doesn’t know he is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer) Basically his philosophy, at some corner of his brains was "If it cools beautiful, it will fly well." The way I think of it is - streamlined shapes are generally more pleasing to human vision system. Not sure why, some innate biological/evolutionary trait. So, Kelly designed a lot of beautiful planes with his gut instinct when there is no data/objectivity, but only some instincts to rely on. Legendary engineer!

animex 6y ago

I feel like there's an orchestrated PR campaign around making these F-35s sound like a success. I wonder what exists for objective reporting & analysis in this space.

strictnein 6y ago
I mean, there's real life, like Israel taking out advanced Chinese radars: https://defence-blog.com/news/source-israeli-f-35-destroyed-chinese-made-radar-during-airstrikes-in-syria.html https://defence-blog.com/news/source-israeli-f-35-destroyed-... Which China claimed could detect the F-22: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23846/china-anti-stealth-radars-detect-f-22/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23846/chi...
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  Damascus is less than 40 miles from the Israeli border, so it's entirely possible that they detected the F-35s just fine; you can hit quite a few targets in Syria without ever actually violating Syrian airspace. Flying from Japan to China might be a little different.
- andromeduck 6y ago
  with drop tanks attached
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The two aren't exclusive at all. It's possible that the F-35 was detected by the radar and that the radar was destroyed, if it wasn't possible at the time to guide a weapon onto target. It's also possible that the radar wasn't actually destroyed, or that it wasn't destroyed using an F-35, or that it was destroyed using some kind of munition such as a cruise missile or loitering munition where stealth is immaterial. Also, VHF radars aren't intended to guide missiles onto their targets, they are only detection radars for now. They would need dual tracking at the very least. But as of now, the mission profile of these radars is to provide advance warning and tracking and sensor fusion to, for example, a wing of J-20s which would enable them to intercept and kill F-35s. For example, a group of stealth interceptors could fly towards the detected planes with their radars off and RWRs on, fire off missiles when they are close to engagement distance to the F35s datalinked to the radar to aprroach, and once they are close enough, the missiles and planes turn on their radars all together using sensor fusion, guiding the missiles already very close their targets and destroying the F35s before they have a chance to counterattack. There are a few other ways VHF counterstealth radar can be effectively used to neutralize stealth aircraft, but none of them are within the reach of Syria, so this isn't surprising if it happened.

andred14 6y ago

As an IT professional, from what I see here in Sidney Powell's 270 page report there is SOLID evidence of election fraud: https://wpcdn.zenger.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/24190822/2020-12-23-Sidney-Powell-Team-Binder-ZENGER-NEWS.pdf https://wpcdn.zenger.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2419082... President Trump will remain President Trump

belval 6y ago

Can someone more knowledgeable than me in this matter explain why fighter jets still require human pilots? Why aren't they completely replaced by drones?

bodhiandphysics 6y ago
Drones are dependent on an active satellite link to function. What happens if the enemy jams the satellite?
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  Peace at last.
- fishnchips 6y ago
  Wouldn’t jamming the satellite affect F-35, too?
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Yes and no. The whole thesis of the F-35 is apparently an airborne sensor fusion and electronic warfare platform as well as a modern BVR jet - it's going to be harder to jam because of both redundancy and the amount of hardware real estate the designers can play with to counter said jamming. On the subject of electronic warfare - I assume it's still very classified but given that the current teen series aircraft apparently have some serious EW magic in them (I don't have any citations for exactly what they can do other than I read some comments by IIRC an Australian ground radar operator and apparently they were completely outgunned - i.e. fake formations rather than mere jamming) I think we will be reading about exactly they can do at great length on the hackernews's of the future.
    - fishnchips 6y ago
      Radar jamming and other magic aside, I’m just wondering to what extent the equipment in a modern jet like F-35 depends on satellite link. So to what extent putting a human in the machine actually changes its capability as opposed to a drone with an autonomous mode.

ed-209 6y ago

Who are these people, both smart enough and dumb enough, to build the high tech death machines anyway?

mhh__ 6y ago
I imagine the prospect of being able to play with genuinely unbelievably good equipment has to help when recruiting - e.g. think of the amount of physics, signal processing, aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, materials science etc. used to blow up a plane 50 miles away in a modern active radar guided missile.
imtringued 6y ago
The individual components are well engineered, it's the integration that is completely flawed.
euler_angles 6y ago
I could easily flip the question around: Who are these people both smart enough and dumb enough to work at FAANG companies?
tasubotadas 6y ago
I would love to work on such things.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

As I read this latest update on the F-35 I can't stop thinking about the $741 billion the US Congress just approved. Bipartisan. And overrode a POTUS veto. In the 2016 State of the Union Obama said, "We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined." The budget then was significantly less. And the F-35 is just now finally being snuffed?

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
>"We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined." I'll translate this to defense speak: We get ripped off more than the next eight nations combined.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Well it might be the next 20, 25 or even 30 at this point.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    I work in defense and it just makes me laugh when people cite money spent as putting us somehow ahead. We spend $10 for $1 of work. My scrum master has never heard of Git. I am in hell
souprock 6y ago
We like our aircraft "Made in USA" for obvious reasons. An aircraft "Made in China" is a great way to save money, and it works fine for China. It probably doesn't help that practically every congressional district gets to make a piece of the aircraft.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

I work in defense and I'm conflicted on this. On one hand the easiest way to defeat this jet is to convince Congress to cancel it. On the other hand, any program that takes this goddamn long should be cancelled. The future moves too fast.

euler_angles 6y ago

I'm really surprised on a forum like HN that there isn't more questioning of what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do and why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production of a tactical aircraft. JSE is really interesting, it's meant to be a high-fidelity electronic warfare simulation with actual aircraft software in the simulation loop. The F-35 that's present in the JSE is the same code that is running on a real jet, with sensor models specifically developed by all the sensor vendors. All this is fed with the latest intelligence data on threat aircraft and emitters. The point of all this is, the US should be able to better develop the aircraft -- and other aircraft types -- in the future if it has a high tech digital testing ground that it can step through iterations with very quickly. As far as I can tell nothing like this has been done before so it's no wonder that it's taking a while. Here's a US Navy PDF briefing on the JSE: https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/test/Smith.pdf https://ndiastorage.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/ndia/2018/te...

OnlyOneCannolo 6y ago
> what the Joint Simulation Environment is really supposed to do It's for formal verification and validation (V&V). > why the development of a simulation should hold up the full production Why shouldn't it hold up production? The program has requirements for formal V&V that they haven't met yet. In theory, you could start production by accepting the risk that you might need to do some rework, but I don't know if that was even an option. > step through iterations with very quickly The argument for doing a simulation is to get higher fidelity. It doesn't really make the process any faster on its own. The simulations themselves take a trivial amount of time compared to the preparation and analysis. > nothing like this has been done before There's a lot of simulation in aerospace and defense. I don't know exactly how JSE compares in terms of extent and reliance on it, but it's not a completely new idea.
- euler_angles 6y ago
  The DoD has done a lot of simulations (some for the purposes of higher fidelity, but that's definitely not the only reason), but this is the first time it's truly tried to fold a simulation into the formal acceptance of an air vehicle, and committed this hard to high fidelity at scale.

runawaybottle 6y ago

How can we assess any of this stuff without an actual world war? The disassociated current generations look bored enough to send the kids to a real war in 20 years, and then we’ll see the truth behind all of the war tech and what future war really is.

ajxs 6y ago

Reading through the Wikipedia article detailing serious issues with the avionics software's development[0], I can't help but think of the choice to use C++ as the standard language for development on most of the JSF's systems. I recall reading a document written by the (then-current) lead dev on the project outlining the criteria used to assess C++'s suitability for the project. He conceded that Ada was the superior choice in most every aspect except for the ease of finding developers. Unfortunately I can't find that document now. If anyone knows the document I'm referring to and could point me to it, I'd appreciate it. I thought I had it saved. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II_development#Program_cost_overruns_and_delays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

ajxs 6y ago
Here is the document I was referring to: https://web.archive.org/web/20111219004314/http://journal.thedacs.com:80/issue/53/158 https://web.archive.org/web/20111219004314/http://journal.th...
fatbird 6y ago
Has there ever been a study done of the costs of retraining an X programmer as a Y programmer? Talent availability is a huge factor for any development project; but if the software program clearly showed that Ada was superior, one wonders at the cost of taking all those experienced C++ coders and retraining them on Ada. Ideally, such a study would show a matrix of the dominant language a coder uses, and the costs/time to get them comparably efficient in another language.