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You misunderstand the purpose the F35- it is a jobs and pork program first and foremost, like SLS. It has the side benefit of keeping people trained to build th
by medium_burrito 6y ago
You misunderstand the purpose the F35- it is a jobs and pork program first and foremost, like SLS. It has the side benefit of keeping people trained to build this sort of thing, so SpaceX can hire them.
We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that.
- zdragnar 6y agoMore than that, thr SR-71 was purpose-built. That means fewer hands on thr steering wheel, and fewer compromises to achieve multiple missions. The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and missions. That means more voices demanding priority of features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many first-of-its-kind features for a variety of ancillary tasks. No real surprise that it didn't work out.
- VectorLock 6y agoExactly this. Hyper specialized boundary pushing things are easy compared to general purpose good for everything projects.
- ghaff 6y agoThe basic concept isn't even a terrible one. It was a reaction to the many functionally-overlapping aircraft that the various service branches were having designed and built. But it seems clear at this point that the F-35 tried to be too general purpose.
- dbreunig 6y agoOur vaccine effort is a perfect example of this. We got heroic, efficient results in developing vaccines because the requirements were so clear. Distribution is much, much harder!
- sandworm101 6y ago>> More than that, thr SR-71 was purpose-built. Not really. The SR-71 was the final plane of an extended program called OXCART which created the A-12. The program was nominally to replace the U2, but even oxcart was within a large aircraft design plan. There was even a interceptor (YF-12) that was meant for shooting down Valkyrie-class mach3+ bombers. These aircraft were very similar to the 71, so similar that most people seeing them might not spot any difference. Any assessment of the 71's development costs is therefore very difficult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12 "YF-12C: Fictitious designation for an SR-71 provided to NASA for flight testing. The YF-12 designation was used to keep SR-71 information out of the public domain."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 6y agoYeah it was "design by (military) committee" turned to 11 I'm surprised it got off the drawing boards
- chaoticmass 6y agoI am always reminded of this scene HBO movie The Pentagon wars when I read about the F-35. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
- tablespoon 6y ago> The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and missions. That means more voices demanding priority of features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many first-of-its-kind features for a variety of ancillary tasks. > No real surprise that it didn't work out. For a humorous presentation of this, watch the movie Pentagon Wars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
- RHSeeger 6y agoThat movie was wonderful. Highly recommend watching it if you haven't.
- jvanderbot 6y agoAND, the problem with F-35, as stated directly in the article, was not that we CANNOT build cool things, its that we didn't need something too fancy, and it became too fancy through add-ins that were not slated as requirements.
- stefan_ 6y agoAnd you still get the military benefits from that. Like the value of Starlink for military operations is huge.
- nemothekid 6y agoYes, a while back I was interested "where does billions we spend on national defense actually go" and I came to the conclusion that the DoD is really just a giant jobs program. Ultimately I think the reason we don't have things like flying cars is that the private sector gets stuck in local maxima (such as getting people to click ads) and in the public sector it's very hard to have focused time-blocked short term goals.
- bun_at_work 6y agoThis isn't entirely true. The US subsidizes military costs for all of our allies. It costs a lot, and a huge amount of funds go to that. There are parts that are like jobs programs, and the contractors intentionally drive up costs as part of their business model, but there are also real expenses to maintaining stability across the parts of the world where our military operates.
- dsr_ 6y agoThe foreign military aid is also a jobs program. It gives money to US manufacturers by giving money to other countries that they have to use to buy US products.
- KDJohnBrown 6y agoThe justification for foreign aid to Israel is always pretty much “but it’s OK because most of it comes back to us via arms sales”. Essentially billions of dollars of American taxpayer wealth transferred to defense contractors laundered through the IDF.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoIsrael stops Iran from blowing up or conquering the entire Middle East. Also, military intelligence. Also, the military industry is probably more beneficial to the US by being based there rather than being outsourced to China. I think the tax money given to weapons manufactures is paid back in double by tax. Also, you wouldn't want to fight wars with allies in Chinese planes. Hope this answers your concerns.
- 3nf 6y agoI have always assumed this and the $500 toilet seats are just making room for black projects. There were no publicly visible budgets for the U2/F117 projects.
- fallous 6y agoI had a friend who, many years ago, got a military contract to manufacture an item. I jokingly asked him if he was competing with $1200 hammers and $500 toilet seats and his response was "if you had any idea how much paperwork and red tape is involved in doing anything with the government you'd say that the $500 toilet seat was under-priced and the contractor probably lost money on every one."
- spiritplumber 6y agothat's my experience too. Basically it's the same PITA when it comes to getting things countersigned, approved etc. for spending $200 in parts as it is for spending $2000 in parts. So might as well order in bulk.
- treeman79 6y agoMy dad was involved in military aircraft purchasing. It was very tricky to avoid getting in trouble. Putting stuff out to bid was the main thing he managed. When possible he just went with previous winners as it cut down the paperwork needed. Lot of times someone would come in really low on the bid, he knew the people and that it would be crap product. So lots of work to get higher bids approved. Also apparently if you get a ride in the company limousine, the drivers have tons of juicy gossip.
- temp667 6y agoIn some places the cost to do a govt deal can be many multiplates easily (and totally justified) normal cost. The hammer is not actually $1,200. The paperwork can easily be. Do you have McBride Principles stuff done and documented? Have you trained your staff on McBride principles if they might purchase supplies, documented it and maintained proper documentation (this is about something in Northern Ireland which has very little to do with buying snacks for a kids program). Repeat x100. Where I am the ethnicity / race / national origin stuff is huge, and the different agencies don't have a common set of labels. So you are stuck asking everyone very personal questions even they don't understand. I mean, for ethnicity you are one thing, for race there is another set of labels, so you have to ask them the same race question 4 times under each random set of labels that are being used, for national origin another set etc. The actual quality of your hammer? Never tested. The details on the paperwork - lots of folks looking and nitpicking. Some of this just starts as a resolution at some level, that gets added on and added on over and over. So some politician will say McBride principles are great. 2 years later a contract analyst or internal auditor asks, how are we documenting / demonstrating compliance with this requirement. They then push their vendors to train staff involved in purchasing on the principles. Then they want documentation of that training. Each one in isolation is a small waste, but at scale it's a monumental waste. What's even funnier, stuff stays forever. There are requirements in contracts to hand out old IRS forms (W-5) for Advance EITC - that program is long gone, but you still have to hand out the forms - and tell staff that if they fill them out and submit them nothing will happen. Sure builds staff faith in govt efficiency. You can't even argue this stuff, I used to try and it's a brick wall. I can't stand it, but if you can push paper and have some political pull it's a gravy train, because cost / quality is so low on the basis of selection list. This tends to attract the wrong type of company (ie, scammers get a lot further than they should, and companies delivering good product don't).
- phkahler 6y ago>> We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that. I don't think they know how. They want cool shit too. Imagine a pork project that also produces cool shit - they would love that.
- misiti3780 6y agoit was money wasted that could have been spent on a lot of other more useful things.
- notional 6y agoIt's more than just a jobs program too. It's a reelection plan for senators/house members. Look at what states and districts get these big DoD contracts and then look at what committees the congressmen/women are sitting on. They approve plans that benefit them then direct the funds right into their districts so they can campaign on it. I mean it's not the worst form of corruption but it's pretty shitty when you realize how our infrastructure and defense is designed around congressional districts instead of what is best for our country.
- chmod600 6y agoThat's what "pork" means.
- Groxx 6y agoJust to expand on this a bit: "pork" as in "pork barrel": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel
- JKCalhoun 6y agoOr "stimulus" if you want to cast positive light on it.
- Decade 6y agoThat’s sort of a broken window fallacy. A direct stimulus doesn't take away people’s time and materials producing things that nobody wants.
- nerdponx 6y agoBut imagine if we put people to work building useful stuff instead of useless stuff. Power grid infrastructure, new bridges, new rail lines, etc.
- bumby 6y agoWhy do you think the current prioritization exists? The cynic in me thinks it has to do with power projection and the economy. The less cynical part of me wonders if it’s related to a cognitive bias that over-weights threats from rival “tribes” and the need to ensure stability
- jvanderbot 6y agoThis is a fun talking point, but the reality is more complex. The fact that jobs and multi-state payouts are leveraged to ensure programs have political staying power does not mean that the whole shebang is just a corporate / political handout. It just seems to be what people say when these programs fail, but I don't hear this said about programs that have succeeded.
- Supermancho 6y ago> This is a fun talking point, but the reality is more complex Not for this project.
- kube-system 6y agoFun fact, the DoD is the largest employer on the entire planet. 2.91 million total employees.
- sintaxi 6y agoLast I heard it's at 3.2 Million.
- bumby 6y agoThat doesn’t count the nearly 400k employed by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs
- tibbydudeza 6y agoHoly shit.
- tdubhro1 6y agoExactly, the US defence industry is a politically acceptable version of a welfare state
- WillPostForFood 6y agoAnd it isn’t just a domestic jobs program. Countries that agreed to buy the F35 were rewarded with subcontract work. There are at least a dozen partner countries.
- hinkley 6y agoAlso the Air Force admitting it is a failure proves nothing, since the reason it’s a mess is because the US Govt were trying to make one airframe for many customers, weren’t they? One customer, even one collaborator, being upset doesn’t mean the program has admitted anything.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago> We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies don't optimize for that. ARPA was always kind of a jobs program, but nonetheless it created the internet at the same time as NASA was putting a man on the moon, the government was successfully building the interstate highways and Bell Labs was Bell Labs instead of whatever it is now. Today we get the F-35 and the Big Dig and whatever other money furnace du jour that consumes more resources than the space race but has yet to put a single human on Mars or make fusion work or cure cancer or whatever else things it could have done but hasn't. Something's different.
- paulmd 6y agoFusion in particular has never been funded in line with project requirements, we are significantly below projecting "fusion never" levels and that's exactly what we've gotten. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusi... So it's different from those other projects.
- marshmallow_12 6y agodon't worry it just needs war to get there things going. Warfare drives all innovation. I can't think of anything major last century that wasn't developed for military uses. I think we will get another infusion of war in about 18 years when China will start blowing everyone out of antarctica. Government will carry on pretending to care about environment and proceed to release vast amounts of carbon in the South Pole. It's an entirely predictable conflict, yet only China will be partly prepared. -The Prophecy of The Thirteenth Marshmallow
- 6pac3rings 6y agoThe pieces on the wargame board are going in place for a round one canceling out of 2B+ population between India, China and expect the thermal nuclear exchange to melt the snow on the high altitude mountainous region keeping them apart.
- jessaustin 6y ago...a jobs and pork program first and foremost, like... ...everything in USA military. Have we won a war in your parents' lifetimes? Have any of our many military misadventures accomplished any of the goals cited as justification? Has anyone in the Pentagon ever been fired for spending too much money? Does the Pentagon even have any idea what it spends on what? (The answer to all these questions is "no".)