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“The F-35 has failed” is a strong statement that depends on what your definition of success is. Did it fail because it couldn’t replace the F-16? Did it fail be

“The F-35 has failed” is a strong statement that depends on what your definition of success is. Did it fail because it couldn’t replace the F-16? Did it fail because it’s expensive and bloated? Do those things even matter? I’m not defending the F-35 but anyone deeply and intimately familiar with the platform knows and understands that it is a Ferrari. You don’t bring your Acura TSX to a Formula 1 race track to win a race. Just like you don’t bring your Ferrari to the farm to haul material (not anymore anyways). The F-35 may be a Ferrari; but the thing about Ferraris is that their technology trickles down. Now we have electric cars with carbon fiber shells. The same is true for the F-35. The technology inside it has and will lead to the resurrection and long standing use of older planes like the B1 and U2. Where the airframe is solid but the tech and stealth is not. It will also lead to revolutionary new planes which are cheaper to make and build. Through the F35s use of distributed computing and treating hardware components and their software as services, we’re not going to be doomed to the same fate as the F16 where we can’t find hardware. Instead, we’ll have more component oriented aircraft systems where each aircraft is no bespoke and can use from a menu of technologies. So did the F35 fail because we spent too much? Depends on how much it saves us later. Did it fail because it didn’t replace the F16? What if it makes the F16 viable again? Did it still fail? Some may see this as a slippery slope. What matters is the objective outcome that comes from this project. Not the success criteria some folks have perpetuated or thrust upon the project.

ahelwer 6y ago
This reads word-for-word like an email from a PM to management talking about how their project that imploded embarrassingly has so many intangible future benefits that really, it's a huge success when you think about it.
- s0rce 6y ago
  Exactly, unless those were the upfront deliverables of the projects, its a failure. Sure, not all the effort was 100% completely wasted but the goal didn't get achieved.
- digi59404 6y ago
  No - I doubt any PM would write what I said. What I said is more a IC in tech saying "Sure, what the PM asked for an laid out was X. But really, in the middle we found out the architecture didn't work as expected. So we pivoted and in doing so found more success using Y's Suggested Architecture" Innovation and Tech is messy. More often than not, Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking. If you fail to meet your original goal because you are not capable of doing it, and then you change your goal to accommodate this reality, it doesn't change the fact that you failed in your original goal. If my goal is to go to Mars and I only make it to the moon because it turns our Mars is just too far away, even though I did something revolutionary, amazing, and extraordinary, it does not change the fact that I failed in my original goal. I don't even consider this to be semantics. It's people trying to justify to themselves that there is no failure. You've literally failed by your own definition of what success is. Changing the definition of success doesn't change reality.
    - IggleSniggle 6y ago
      I disagree that this is justification of failure. If anything, it’s the opposite. We failed in our goal. We also learned and developed things of real value while pursuing that goal. This is salvaging what can be salvaged to make headway in an adjacent goal. That said... > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking. Sometimes the goal is, itself, a failure. It was born of not fully understanding the problem at hand. When the goal is stupid, but that is only discoverable by pursing that goal (ie “intent”), then redefining success is the right thing to do.
      - Judgmentality 6y ago
        > We failed in our goal. Simply by admitting this, you've already contradicted the person I was responding to. His entire scribe is "what is failure? have we really failed? no" instead of "yeah we failed, but we can learn from it" Failure is fine. Failure is expected. Failure is the best way to learn an iterate. But then don't say "well we always got what we wanted out of it anyway, which was to learn" when your goal was "to build the ultimate fighter jet at this budget in this timeline"
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
>So did the F35 fail because we spent too much? Depends on how much it saves us later. It might not be a lot. The concept of flying Corvettes is strong, culturally and industrially, but it might be on the verge of becoming like cavalry with the advent of drone swarms.
- kcb 6y ago
  Drone swarms that can counter fighter jets is a concept that makes no sense. At best you can make something like a guided missile that can loiter. But I can't really see much benefit to that. It would still require the same the avionics and performance as a guided missile. Not to mention stealth aircraft counter the concept even further.
  - danjac 6y ago
    > But I can't really see much benefit to that Look at the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to see how much UAVs are a game-changer: https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-karabakh-lessons-future-strike-and-defense https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-ka...
    - kcb 6y ago
      But how do you translate that into hitting something going Mach 1 at 40k feet? A UAV capable of attacking a jet can exist. My point is that it would need to be a fully capable aircraft not something that can be produced cheaply and deployed in swarms. There's a lot of space in the sky.
      - nvoid 6y ago
        Makes you wonder, is there a time for an unmanned jet?
      - Zardoz84 6y ago
        At some point these jets must be at ground, not ? A swarm of UAVs can do a lot of damage on these situation.
Arnt 6y ago
Allow me to restate your comment more briefly: "The F-35 depends on your definition of success. It has not achieved the goals in its original funding application, but some of its traits might inspire future traits in future other things that might turn out to be good and worth the money we've spent so far, so therefore it's not right to call it a failure yet." That's not a friendly restatement, no. "Might" does not make right.
- digi59404 6y ago
  That's mis-categorizing my statement. There is no "might". The innovation that's occurred in the F-35 program has already produced fruit in many other airframes and the US Air Force has already "re-written the playbook" on what it means to have a new airframe and what revitalizing an old airframe is. It's not about whether it may or may not - It has, that's a definitive statement.
  - paulie_a 6y ago
    The US air force didnt need a new airframe
    - nradov 6y ago
      The old airframes were not survivable in a contested environment, and there was no practical way to make them survivable. That's still true today.
      - lumost 6y ago
        This may be a statement that the U.S militaries post-ww2 doctrine of air superiority is no longer viable. Large Battleships once had to face a similar reality that it was impossible to make them survivable if the enemy had air superiority. Drones are cheap, good missiles are 1/100th the price of an F-35. It's possible that aircraft will no longer be able to enter contested space without significant risks just as it was pre-ww2 where it was impractical to achieve air superiority or to destroy anti-aircraft placements. Considering the extreme investment of the US into aircraft as a means of projecting power and winning wars against conventional militaries, there is a chance that an opponent with a much smaller military budget could "win" in a conventional fight - making the multi-trillion dollar aircraft projects pointless.
Retric 6y ago
The F-35 failed because fighter jet airframes aren’t particularly relevant anymore. You can stick the same sensor systems and missiles on just about anything. Improved stealth etc is useful, but F-35’s are only slightly better than 40+ year old jets. Thus hardly worth the price vs cheaply manufacturing a minor update of an older design. Or as the saying goes “quantity has a quality all it’s own.”
- GcVmvNhBsU 6y ago
  Curious what your background is to make those statements. My experience from Red Flag and other exercises is that the 5th gens (22 & 35) have a much better K/D and survivability. When you expend all of your stand off weapons or need to get a B-2 deep into a contested airspace, including against SAMs, you need a 35 going in to do sanitization. No F-16 is fighting off both SAMs and a huge ass wave of J-10s or any J-20s while protecting a bomber. Now is that 35 worth the price? If our policy continues to insist for preparing against an impossible push peer adversary landmasses, then maybe. Personally I don’t see those pushes happening, but that’s more due to the tyranny of distance and having like 10 minutes of play time before needing to refuel.
  - Retric 6y ago
    I have some background wargaming for the DoD. As to Red Flag numbers generally reported, it was setup to heavily favor F-35’s. Amusingly at one point they further boosted the K/D ratio after the fact from 15:1 to 20:1. Actual air war looks very different, with a significant focus on cruse missiles early on etc. But again, comparing the F35 with outdated equipment is missing the point.
    - greedo 6y ago
      Yet you're the one comparing the F-35 to 40+ year old aircraft that would get smoked in combat by the F-35.
      - Retric 6y ago
hctaw 6y ago
The race car/pickup truck analogy is useful here. The F35 failed because they tried to make a vehicle that could be both a race car and a pickup truck, and wound up making one that is more expensive and worse at both jobs than building two different vehicles. Or just using existing fleets of vehicles. Although personally I think that in the event the US military needs to scramble a bunch of F35s to serve as in legitimate air to air combat we'll have bigger problems than a costly jobs program not producing something useful.
- patentatt 6y ago
  So you’re saying the F35 is the El Camino of fighter jets?
sorokod 6y ago
Even if it is a Ferrari, are squadrons of Ferraris is what needed to fight wars?
- digi59404 6y ago
  Sometimes you need a Ferrari. Sometimes you need a bunch of hooligans with bullets in a converted tractor. But being caught without either, when you need one isn't a good place to be in.
  - sorokod 6y ago
    Not one Ferrari but many. Sticking to the analogy, in what circumstances do you need many Ferraris?
    - decafninja 6y ago
      Peer state war where everyone has Ferraris? Or at least fleets of Benzes, so you want to one up them with fleets of Ferraris. Even without getting into a shooting war, you could argue your Ferraris will terrify the Benzes from even coming out to play, thus avoiding war. Not to mention the Toyotas and the Volkswagens. That said, I know some people will argue a peer state war between superpowers (say, US, Russia, China, etc.) will inevitably escalate to nuclear. I don't claim to know enough to say how valid that is. Also, at full production, the US is supposed to have a ridiculously overwhelming large zerg fleet of F-35s (more than 2000 between the branches, according to wikipedia). That totally eclipses anything planned by Russia or China for their own 5th gen fighters.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      Define many? When your operational area is most of the planet, you obviously need more than one! I could describe 25 as "squadrons" but that wouldn't be too many.
  - lmm 6y ago
    Building a handful of an experimental, envelope-pushing design is reasonable. Mass-producing hundreds of a mainline fighter is reasonable. Combining both in the same aircraft, and ramping up production before you've validated the design, always seemed crazy to me.
meowkit 6y ago
“By learning from our mistakes we have successfully failed.” The vibe I’m getting from this thread haha.
lucideer 6y ago
> Not the success criteria some folks have perpetuated or thrust upon the project. This isn't an art project where interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. This is a taxpayer-funded set of contracts; the success criteria are defined as part of said contracts, they're not "thrust upon" the project by "some folks". Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative project, whether it were a success or a failure. They'd just be more generally beneficial due to more extensive application in a successful project (and probably more cheaply usable by other areas of industry). Either way they would exist in either scenario: if their existence is what defines success, then failure is impossible.
- bluGill 6y ago
  In industry when you realize a project is going to fail it is common to pack it with a bunch of marginally related things that you want in your project but cannot afford. Then when they complete what you want you take it for no cost. It makes your project look better on the bottom line (ROI or whatever metric accountants use to judge), and the other project eventually is written off. Would the company be better off just paying for the things they want in each project and accepting a lower ROI is an open question. I just watch the game, not make the rules.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    Is the project a fail for Lockheed Martin? Didn't they get paid a bunch of money for it? Don't they get paid again each time there's a rev?
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Hard to say. Do they lose reputation? Did they not do something else?
- guardiangod 6y ago
  >Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative project, whether it were a success or a failure. Take the $3e11, convert them to physical banknotes, burn all $3e11 bills in Texas last week for warmth, and according to the grandparent the program would still be a success because the money ultimately provided utility to people! >Grandparent: What matters is the objective outcome that comes from this project. No one froze to death! We gained _something_ from the program! Operation successful! /s
AdamN 6y ago
[upvote for reference to Ferrari tractors :-)]
- rjsw 6y ago
  Lamborghini started out making tractors.
aqme28 6y ago
It doesn't seem to me like the Ferrari analogy works. The Ferrari excels at a narrow use to the detriment of other potential uses. The F-35 however was made to do everything, but excels at seemingly none of them.
antattack 6y ago
It's a fail because we are moving into unmanned fighting vehicles. Something that F-35 program has failed to foresee. Basically F-35 is the fighter of tomorrow fighting threats of yesterday.
- ancientworldnow 6y ago
  But that's not what this article says. They're claiming the air force requesting a new manned fighter is evidence it failed. Meanwhile the F-35 is explicitly designed to control swarms of unmanned drones.
- evgen 6y ago
  The F-35 program did not fail to foresee the rise of unmanned vehicles, they built and adapted the aircraft and avionics around this concept. The F-35 cockpit, avionics, and helmet are designed to allow an F-35 pilot to command a fleet of drones performing roles ranging from scouting and EW to SEAD and direct attack.
  - antattack 6y ago
    Human flying and directing drones to do some tasks is such a 20th century thinking. For one, human pilot in F-35 directing drones would be the weakest link. Why would you want to send a human pilot to face drone(s) that does not care for it's survival, can pull more Gs, calculate trajectory and make decisions faster?
    - thu2111 6y ago
      This comes up in every HN thread about fighter jets. Modern fighter aircraft are mobile missile launchers. They are judged primarily by whether they can get close enough to where they need to go without being detected, detect what they need to, and then launch good enough missiles. The missile is effectively the drone. Modern missiles are basically self-piloting autonomous drone rockets. In that regard the F-35 is fine, and automating the pilot is not necessarily a win because the AI isn't going to be doing ultra-high G dogfight turns anyway. The humans job is to react to unexpected situations and figure out something smart in situations where remote control isn't reliable or desirable (e.g. due to risk of detection).
johnklos 6y ago
Trickle down, whether it's in the economy or here, is bullshit. Spending a trillion dollars on a program may lead to some good coming out of it, but it's about as disingenuous as saying that spending $3000 on a shitty computer that crashes all the time is OK because the cat got a box out of the deal. Yes, it's technically true, but completely unrelated.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hef19898 6y ago
Well, it failed to replace the F-16, for starters. And the A-10. It failed in becoming the NATO / Western end-all jet. It is expensive, there aren't that many. The stealth capabilities are lacking by modern standards. Maintenaince if expensive and the combat aircraft equivalent of an iPhone. Compare that to the cold war fighters. High numbers, used by the majority of US allies and even comparable cheap. Desiged to be usable under cold war circumstances. And modernized to this very day. The biggest issue I see, also with stuff like the FCAS (French and German Eurofghter / Rafale replacement) is cost. Just imagine you loose, say, 50 of them in a war against Russia or China. How many you can reasonably replace? At that price tag? All other enemies, you hardly loose legacy fighters against those. And that is not even taking training into account. Well, the B-52 is still flying. Maybe it will reach 100 years of service.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  How has it failed to replace the F-16? It is objectively superior to the F-16 in just about every performance parameter. It costs less than 4.5 Gen peers like the Eurofighter and Rafale, while having more build at a total of 600 thus far with over 100 more built per year now. As for losing them, yes it would be bad, but it's the most survivable jet being produced today. Recent conflicts have shown just how lopsided a conflict is if you have a technological edge over your adversaries.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Survivability is not a given. They successfully tagged F-35s at various occossions with ground based radar. There are also account sof F-22s loosing dog fights against Rafales and Eurofghters. And the F-22 is the better dog fighter compared to the F-35. And there are still thousands of F-16s to be retired for F-35s, seemingly not going to happen if the Air Force is axing F-35 procurement.
    - onepointsixC 6y ago
      Air Force isn't axing procurement. Just because it has been tagged under ideal conditions on various occasions doesn't mean that it's survivability isn't vastly better than it's non stealthy alternatives. Yes F-22's have lost dog fights, that's why their K:D's ratios aren't infinite. I really don't understand what your point is though, because the F-22 has lost a dog fight it's overwhelming win rate no longer is relevant? And sure the F-22 is a better dog fighter but it doesn't have active production line and the costs of restarting production are exorbitantly expensive.
jboog 6y ago
~1.7 Trillion dollars so we can have a bleeding-edge Ferrari while our "enemies" in the PRC and Russia are still driving around in Yugo 45s So many people seem to still buy into the Cold War mindset that we just need the latest bleeding edge platforms or the Soviets are going to invade and we'll all be reading Trotsky. The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians and China it's comical to claim another 1.7 trillion dollars for a "ferrari" is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars. China can't even field a blue-water navy yet. I guess they're only about a century behind the US there lol
- paganel 6y ago
  > The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians and China it's comical to claim another 1.7 trillion dollars for a "ferrari" is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars. Russia and China don't need a Yugo to out-speed the US's Ferrari, they have ICBMs and the Russians have nuclear subs that work well enough. And the US's Ferrari did a really, really poor job in the off-road terrains of the Middle East, with Iraq at best a draw (and a huge loss for the local population, but who cares about that?) and a definite defeat in Afghanistan.
  - jboog 6y ago
    I'm talking about the conventional fight. Once you get into nukes it's another ballgame. How does the F35 or its cool successor prevent MAD? Iraq and Afgh were counterinsurgency fights. Any China or Russian fight will not be the same. And the US absolutely crushed the Iraqi military within a matter of days in both Desert Storm and OIF. The problem was the "nation building" COIN fight.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  Well you certainly don't stay ahead of your adversaries by resting on your laurels.
  - manquer 6y ago
    You don't stay ahead by spending way over yours means. it is a key reason the Soviet union collapsed. They were trying match US spending in many sectors and capitalism can outspend communist economies any day. Diverting spending from say infrastructure to miltary does not help a country in the long term.
peeters 6y ago
The Ferrari metaphor is revisionist at best. The F-35 program wasn't created to build a Ferrari, it was designed to build the best, cheapest commuter car possible using economies of scale and shared cost. That the only role left for it is as a Ferrari (after the design was butchered by stakeholders) is a testament to how far it fell from its goals, not a success story.
Daho0n 6y ago
>Did it fail because it didn’t replace the F16? What if it makes the F16 viable again? Did it still fail? Yes, because lots and lots of F-16s have been replaced with something that isn't what it was bought as. So unless you count it as a win that allies now have worse capabilities than they should have had and paid for because it might make them also buy F-16 parts, I would say it is a huge fail.
buu700 6y ago
I know nothing about the F-35, but it sounds like it's basically the Servo of aircraft? As in, it hasn't evolved into a complete product that can wholesale replace its predecessors, but its innovations will be incorporated into them over time.
goatinaboat 6y ago
The F-35 may be a Ferrari; but the thing about Ferraris is that their technology trickles down. Wait a second. The F35 was supposed to be the trickled-down thing from the F22.
- jki275 6y ago
  The F35 is far more advanced than the F22 in everything except actual kinematics. The F22 is faster and more maneuverable, and that's the least interesting thing that separates the F22 and the F35.

ahelwer 6y ago

This reads word-for-word like an email from a PM to management talking about how their project that imploded embarrassingly has so many intangible future benefits that really, it's a huge success when you think about it.

s0rce 6y ago
Exactly, unless those were the upfront deliverables of the projects, its a failure. Sure, not all the effort was 100% completely wasted but the goal didn't get achieved.
digi59404 6y ago
No - I doubt any PM would write what I said. What I said is more a IC in tech saying "Sure, what the PM asked for an laid out was X. But really, in the middle we found out the architecture didn't work as expected. So we pivoted and in doing so found more success using Y's Suggested Architecture" Innovation and Tech is messy. More often than not, Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking. If you fail to meet your original goal because you are not capable of doing it, and then you change your goal to accommodate this reality, it doesn't change the fact that you failed in your original goal. If my goal is to go to Mars and I only make it to the moon because it turns our Mars is just too far away, even though I did something revolutionary, amazing, and extraordinary, it does not change the fact that I failed in my original goal. I don't even consider this to be semantics. It's people trying to justify to themselves that there is no failure. You've literally failed by your own definition of what success is. Changing the definition of success doesn't change reality.
  - IggleSniggle 6y ago
    I disagree that this is justification of failure. If anything, it’s the opposite. We failed in our goal. We also learned and developed things of real value while pursuing that goal. This is salvaging what can be salvaged to make headway in an adjacent goal. That said... > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you get further into a project that's groundbreaking. Sometimes the goal is, itself, a failure. It was born of not fully understanding the problem at hand. When the goal is stupid, but that is only discoverable by pursing that goal (ie “intent”), then redefining success is the right thing to do.
    - Judgmentality 6y ago
      > We failed in our goal. Simply by admitting this, you've already contradicted the person I was responding to. His entire scribe is "what is failure? have we really failed? no" instead of "yeah we failed, but we can learn from it" Failure is fine. Failure is expected. Failure is the best way to learn an iterate. But then don't say "well we always got what we wanted out of it anyway, which was to learn" when your goal was "to build the ultimate fighter jet at this budget in this timeline"

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

>So did the F35 fail because we spent too much? Depends on how much it saves us later. It might not be a lot. The concept of flying Corvettes is strong, culturally and industrially, but it might be on the verge of becoming like cavalry with the advent of drone swarms.

kcb 6y ago
Drone swarms that can counter fighter jets is a concept that makes no sense. At best you can make something like a guided missile that can loiter. But I can't really see much benefit to that. It would still require the same the avionics and performance as a guided missile. Not to mention stealth aircraft counter the concept even further.
- danjac 6y ago
  > But I can't really see much benefit to that Look at the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to see how much UAVs are a game-changer: https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-karabakh-lessons-future-strike-and-defense https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-ka...
  - kcb 6y ago
    But how do you translate that into hitting something going Mach 1 at 40k feet? A UAV capable of attacking a jet can exist. My point is that it would need to be a fully capable aircraft not something that can be produced cheaply and deployed in swarms. There's a lot of space in the sky.
    - nvoid 6y ago
      Makes you wonder, is there a time for an unmanned jet?
    - Zardoz84 6y ago
      At some point these jets must be at ground, not ? A swarm of UAVs can do a lot of damage on these situation.

Arnt 6y ago

Allow me to restate your comment more briefly: "The F-35 depends on your definition of success. It has not achieved the goals in its original funding application, but some of its traits might inspire future traits in future other things that might turn out to be good and worth the money we've spent so far, so therefore it's not right to call it a failure yet." That's not a friendly restatement, no. "Might" does not make right.

digi59404 6y ago
That's mis-categorizing my statement. There is no "might". The innovation that's occurred in the F-35 program has already produced fruit in many other airframes and the US Air Force has already "re-written the playbook" on what it means to have a new airframe and what revitalizing an old airframe is. It's not about whether it may or may not - It has, that's a definitive statement.
- paulie_a 6y ago
  The US air force didnt need a new airframe
  - nradov 6y ago
    The old airframes were not survivable in a contested environment, and there was no practical way to make them survivable. That's still true today.
    - lumost 6y ago
      This may be a statement that the U.S militaries post-ww2 doctrine of air superiority is no longer viable. Large Battleships once had to face a similar reality that it was impossible to make them survivable if the enemy had air superiority. Drones are cheap, good missiles are 1/100th the price of an F-35. It's possible that aircraft will no longer be able to enter contested space without significant risks just as it was pre-ww2 where it was impractical to achieve air superiority or to destroy anti-aircraft placements. Considering the extreme investment of the US into aircraft as a means of projecting power and winning wars against conventional militaries, there is a chance that an opponent with a much smaller military budget could "win" in a conventional fight - making the multi-trillion dollar aircraft projects pointless.

Retric 6y ago

The F-35 failed because fighter jet airframes aren’t particularly relevant anymore. You can stick the same sensor systems and missiles on just about anything. Improved stealth etc is useful, but F-35’s are only slightly better than 40+ year old jets. Thus hardly worth the price vs cheaply manufacturing a minor update of an older design. Or as the saying goes “quantity has a quality all it’s own.”

GcVmvNhBsU 6y ago
Curious what your background is to make those statements. My experience from Red Flag and other exercises is that the 5th gens (22 & 35) have a much better K/D and survivability. When you expend all of your stand off weapons or need to get a B-2 deep into a contested airspace, including against SAMs, you need a 35 going in to do sanitization. No F-16 is fighting off both SAMs and a huge ass wave of J-10s or any J-20s while protecting a bomber. Now is that 35 worth the price? If our policy continues to insist for preparing against an impossible push peer adversary landmasses, then maybe. Personally I don’t see those pushes happening, but that’s more due to the tyranny of distance and having like 10 minutes of play time before needing to refuel.
- Retric 6y ago
  I have some background wargaming for the DoD. As to Red Flag numbers generally reported, it was setup to heavily favor F-35’s. Amusingly at one point they further boosted the K/D ratio after the fact from 15:1 to 20:1. Actual air war looks very different, with a significant focus on cruse missiles early on etc. But again, comparing the F35 with outdated equipment is missing the point.
  - greedo 6y ago
    Yet you're the one comparing the F-35 to 40+ year old aircraft that would get smoked in combat by the F-35.
    - Retric 6y ago

hctaw 6y ago

The race car/pickup truck analogy is useful here. The F35 failed because they tried to make a vehicle that could be both a race car and a pickup truck, and wound up making one that is more expensive and worse at both jobs than building two different vehicles. Or just using existing fleets of vehicles. Although personally I think that in the event the US military needs to scramble a bunch of F35s to serve as in legitimate air to air combat we'll have bigger problems than a costly jobs program not producing something useful.

patentatt 6y ago
So you’re saying the F35 is the El Camino of fighter jets?

sorokod 6y ago

Even if it is a Ferrari, are squadrons of Ferraris is what needed to fight wars?

digi59404 6y ago
Sometimes you need a Ferrari. Sometimes you need a bunch of hooligans with bullets in a converted tractor. But being caught without either, when you need one isn't a good place to be in.
- sorokod 6y ago
  Not one Ferrari but many. Sticking to the analogy, in what circumstances do you need many Ferraris?
  - decafninja 6y ago
    Peer state war where everyone has Ferraris? Or at least fleets of Benzes, so you want to one up them with fleets of Ferraris. Even without getting into a shooting war, you could argue your Ferraris will terrify the Benzes from even coming out to play, thus avoiding war. Not to mention the Toyotas and the Volkswagens. That said, I know some people will argue a peer state war between superpowers (say, US, Russia, China, etc.) will inevitably escalate to nuclear. I don't claim to know enough to say how valid that is. Also, at full production, the US is supposed to have a ridiculously overwhelming large zerg fleet of F-35s (more than 2000 between the branches, according to wikipedia). That totally eclipses anything planned by Russia or China for their own 5th gen fighters.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Define many? When your operational area is most of the planet, you obviously need more than one! I could describe 25 as "squadrons" but that wouldn't be too many.
- lmm 6y ago
  Building a handful of an experimental, envelope-pushing design is reasonable. Mass-producing hundreds of a mainline fighter is reasonable. Combining both in the same aircraft, and ramping up production before you've validated the design, always seemed crazy to me.

meowkit 6y ago

“By learning from our mistakes we have successfully failed.” The vibe I’m getting from this thread haha.

lucideer 6y ago

> Not the success criteria some folks have perpetuated or thrust upon the project. This isn't an art project where interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. This is a taxpayer-funded set of contracts; the success criteria are defined as part of said contracts, they're not "thrust upon" the project by "some folks". Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative project, whether it were a success or a failure. They'd just be more generally beneficial due to more extensive application in a successful project (and probably more cheaply usable by other areas of industry). Either way they would exist in either scenario: if their existence is what defines success, then failure is impossible.

bluGill 6y ago
In industry when you realize a project is going to fail it is common to pack it with a bunch of marginally related things that you want in your project but cannot afford. Then when they complete what you want you take it for no cost. It makes your project look better on the bottom line (ROI or whatever metric accountants use to judge), and the other project eventually is written off. Would the company be better off just paying for the things they want in each project and accepting a lower ROI is an open question. I just watch the game, not make the rules.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Is the project a fail for Lockheed Martin? Didn't they get paid a bunch of money for it? Don't they get paid again each time there's a rev?
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Hard to say. Do they lose reputation? Did they not do something else?
guardiangod 6y ago
>Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative project, whether it were a success or a failure. Take the $3e11, convert them to physical banknotes, burn all $3e11 bills in Texas last week for warmth, and according to the grandparent the program would still be a success because the money ultimately provided utility to people! >Grandparent: What matters is the objective outcome that comes from this project. No one froze to death! We gained _something_ from the program! Operation successful! /s

AdamN 6y ago

[upvote for reference to Ferrari tractors :-)]

rjsw 6y ago
Lamborghini started out making tractors.

aqme28 6y ago

It doesn't seem to me like the Ferrari analogy works. The Ferrari excels at a narrow use to the detriment of other potential uses. The F-35 however was made to do everything, but excels at seemingly none of them.

antattack 6y ago

It's a fail because we are moving into unmanned fighting vehicles. Something that F-35 program has failed to foresee. Basically F-35 is the fighter of tomorrow fighting threats of yesterday.

ancientworldnow 6y ago
But that's not what this article says. They're claiming the air force requesting a new manned fighter is evidence it failed. Meanwhile the F-35 is explicitly designed to control swarms of unmanned drones.
evgen 6y ago
The F-35 program did not fail to foresee the rise of unmanned vehicles, they built and adapted the aircraft and avionics around this concept. The F-35 cockpit, avionics, and helmet are designed to allow an F-35 pilot to command a fleet of drones performing roles ranging from scouting and EW to SEAD and direct attack.
- antattack 6y ago
  Human flying and directing drones to do some tasks is such a 20th century thinking. For one, human pilot in F-35 directing drones would be the weakest link. Why would you want to send a human pilot to face drone(s) that does not care for it's survival, can pull more Gs, calculate trajectory and make decisions faster?
  - thu2111 6y ago
    This comes up in every HN thread about fighter jets. Modern fighter aircraft are mobile missile launchers. They are judged primarily by whether they can get close enough to where they need to go without being detected, detect what they need to, and then launch good enough missiles. The missile is effectively the drone. Modern missiles are basically self-piloting autonomous drone rockets. In that regard the F-35 is fine, and automating the pilot is not necessarily a win because the AI isn't going to be doing ultra-high G dogfight turns anyway. The humans job is to react to unexpected situations and figure out something smart in situations where remote control isn't reliable or desirable (e.g. due to risk of detection).

johnklos 6y ago

Trickle down, whether it's in the economy or here, is bullshit. Spending a trillion dollars on a program may lead to some good coming out of it, but it's about as disingenuous as saying that spending $3000 on a shitty computer that crashes all the time is OK because the cat got a box out of the deal. Yes, it's technically true, but completely unrelated.

deleted 6y ago
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hef19898 6y ago

Well, it failed to replace the F-16, for starters. And the A-10. It failed in becoming the NATO / Western end-all jet. It is expensive, there aren't that many. The stealth capabilities are lacking by modern standards. Maintenaince if expensive and the combat aircraft equivalent of an iPhone. Compare that to the cold war fighters. High numbers, used by the majority of US allies and even comparable cheap. Desiged to be usable under cold war circumstances. And modernized to this very day. The biggest issue I see, also with stuff like the FCAS (French and German Eurofghter / Rafale replacement) is cost. Just imagine you loose, say, 50 of them in a war against Russia or China. How many you can reasonably replace? At that price tag? All other enemies, you hardly loose legacy fighters against those. And that is not even taking training into account. Well, the B-52 is still flying. Maybe it will reach 100 years of service.

onepointsixC 6y ago
How has it failed to replace the F-16? It is objectively superior to the F-16 in just about every performance parameter. It costs less than 4.5 Gen peers like the Eurofighter and Rafale, while having more build at a total of 600 thus far with over 100 more built per year now. As for losing them, yes it would be bad, but it's the most survivable jet being produced today. Recent conflicts have shown just how lopsided a conflict is if you have a technological edge over your adversaries.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Survivability is not a given. They successfully tagged F-35s at various occossions with ground based radar. There are also account sof F-22s loosing dog fights against Rafales and Eurofghters. And the F-22 is the better dog fighter compared to the F-35. And there are still thousands of F-16s to be retired for F-35s, seemingly not going to happen if the Air Force is axing F-35 procurement.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    Air Force isn't axing procurement. Just because it has been tagged under ideal conditions on various occasions doesn't mean that it's survivability isn't vastly better than it's non stealthy alternatives. Yes F-22's have lost dog fights, that's why their K:D's ratios aren't infinite. I really don't understand what your point is though, because the F-22 has lost a dog fight it's overwhelming win rate no longer is relevant? And sure the F-22 is a better dog fighter but it doesn't have active production line and the costs of restarting production are exorbitantly expensive.

jboog 6y ago

~1.7 Trillion dollars so we can have a bleeding-edge Ferrari while our "enemies" in the PRC and Russia are still driving around in Yugo 45s So many people seem to still buy into the Cold War mindset that we just need the latest bleeding edge platforms or the Soviets are going to invade and we'll all be reading Trotsky. The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians and China it's comical to claim another 1.7 trillion dollars for a "ferrari" is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars. China can't even field a blue-water navy yet. I guess they're only about a century behind the US there lol

paganel 6y ago
> The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians and China it's comical to claim another 1.7 trillion dollars for a "ferrari" is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars. Russia and China don't need a Yugo to out-speed the US's Ferrari, they have ICBMs and the Russians have nuclear subs that work well enough. And the US's Ferrari did a really, really poor job in the off-road terrains of the Middle East, with Iraq at best a draw (and a huge loss for the local population, but who cares about that?) and a definite defeat in Afghanistan.
- jboog 6y ago
  I'm talking about the conventional fight. Once you get into nukes it's another ballgame. How does the F35 or its cool successor prevent MAD? Iraq and Afgh were counterinsurgency fights. Any China or Russian fight will not be the same. And the US absolutely crushed the Iraqi military within a matter of days in both Desert Storm and OIF. The problem was the "nation building" COIN fight.
themacguffinman 6y ago
Well you certainly don't stay ahead of your adversaries by resting on your laurels.
- manquer 6y ago
  You don't stay ahead by spending way over yours means. it is a key reason the Soviet union collapsed. They were trying match US spending in many sectors and capitalism can outspend communist economies any day. Diverting spending from say infrastructure to miltary does not help a country in the long term.

peeters 6y ago

The Ferrari metaphor is revisionist at best. The F-35 program wasn't created to build a Ferrari, it was designed to build the best, cheapest commuter car possible using economies of scale and shared cost. That the only role left for it is as a Ferrari (after the design was butchered by stakeholders) is a testament to how far it fell from its goals, not a success story.

Daho0n 6y ago

>Did it fail because it didn’t replace the F16? What if it makes the F16 viable again? Did it still fail? Yes, because lots and lots of F-16s have been replaced with something that isn't what it was bought as. So unless you count it as a win that allies now have worse capabilities than they should have had and paid for because it might make them also buy F-16 parts, I would say it is a huge fail.

buu700 6y ago

I know nothing about the F-35, but it sounds like it's basically the Servo of aircraft? As in, it hasn't evolved into a complete product that can wholesale replace its predecessors, but its innovations will be incorporated into them over time.

goatinaboat 6y ago

The F-35 may be a Ferrari; but the thing about Ferraris is that their technology trickles down. Wait a second. The F35 was supposed to be the trickled-down thing from the F22.

jki275 6y ago
The F35 is far more advanced than the F22 in everything except actual kinematics. The F22 is faster and more maneuverable, and that's the least interesting thing that separates the F22 and the F35.