5 ms·

They've been at this for more than 14 years. I was accidentally part of both the Boeing and Lockheed F-35 teams, and that was 23 years ago. For a humorous tak

They've been at this for more than 14 years. I was accidentally part of both the Boeing and Lockheed F-35 teams, and that was 23 years ago. For a humorous take on the U.S. military platform problem, look for a movie called The Pentagon Wars [1] starring Kelsey Grammar and Cary Elwes. It came out in 1998, and very little has changed since then. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/

hef19898 6y ago
Back the day an engineer cold be there at the start of program, see the maiden flight and even go on to see a second program. Today, the same engineer probalby enters years after the concept phase and retires before the first prototype takes of.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  A friend of mine working on a space telescope had to fix a mistake that someone had made on a diagram. When she tried to figure out who made the oopsie, turns out he had worked on the project more than a decade ago and retired while she was in middle school
misiti3780 6y ago
Wikipedia said it was started in 2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
- jhpankow 6y ago
  Lockheed and Boeing were building protoypes in the 1990s and the contract was awarded to Lockheed in October 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
  - misiti3780 6y ago
    thanks!
atommclain 6y ago
I think this is the quintessential scene from that movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
HPsquared 6y ago
The movie was based on a book of the same name written by Colonel James Burton, highly recommended. It is a history of how and why the kinds of scope creep occurred in the DoD procurement. Eerily prescient.
- p_l 6y ago
  ... and quietly avoids mentioning that a lot of the problem came from Burton, or that his proposals were found detrimental to the program. He also was staunch supporter of replicating Volksjäger concept, which was fortunately laughed out of the room (even dumbest Soviet design at the time wasn't that dumb)

hef19898 6y ago

Back the day an engineer cold be there at the start of program, see the maiden flight and even go on to see a second program. Today, the same engineer probalby enters years after the concept phase and retires before the first prototype takes of.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
A friend of mine working on a space telescope had to fix a mistake that someone had made on a diagram. When she tried to figure out who made the oopsie, turns out he had worked on the project more than a decade ago and retired while she was in middle school

misiti3780 6y ago

Wikipedia said it was started in 2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

jhpankow 6y ago
Lockheed and Boeing were building protoypes in the 1990s and the contract was awarded to Lockheed in October 2001. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
- misiti3780 6y ago
  thanks!

atommclain 6y ago

I think this is the quintessential scene from that movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

HPsquared 6y ago

The movie was based on a book of the same name written by Colonel James Burton, highly recommended. It is a history of how and why the kinds of scope creep occurred in the DoD procurement. Eerily prescient.

p_l 6y ago
... and quietly avoids mentioning that a lot of the problem came from Burton, or that his proposals were found detrimental to the program. He also was staunch supporter of replicating Volksjäger concept, which was fortunately laughed out of the room (even dumbest Soviet design at the time wasn't that dumb)