5 ms·

I don’t think its failure, its just obfuscation of reality. Make promise that you will be able put 3x (or more) different use-cases in to same plane. You have t

by orlovs 5y ago

I don’t think its failure, its just obfuscation of reality. Make promise that you will be able put 3x (or more) different use-cases in to same plane. You have to make many tradeoffs to put into same design: carrier jet, conventional jet and jump jet. Actually you have built 3x pretty “mediocre” jets (if we look from perspective) how it could be if there would be 3x separate designs. I can bet costs would be comparable

dublin 5y ago
The F-111, which eventually (and accidentally) became useful in a role other than the several it was designed for and failed at, should have been a warning beacon here. Eisenhower was right, though, and the military-industrial complex (which now pales in significance to the Social/Tech-Government complex)rammed through a monster one-size-fits-all plan that was farcical on its face, but successfully stole well over a trillion dollars from the taxpayers, and delivered a plane so unreliable it's unflyable 75% of the time, and in trying to do everything, winds up being good at nothing. Really? The F-35 a replacement for the A-10 in its low-altitude, tight-turning, monster-gun close air support role?! AND a world-beating air superiority fighter (to rival or surpass the F-22, Su-57, and J-20), AND a top carrier-based fighter, AND a stealth fighter/bomber to replace the F-117,AND a supersonic VSTOL Harrier replacement? The very idea is completely ludicrous. The real-world F-35 is even worse than the old SNL commercial for Shimmer - It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping! (but with HappyFunBall's unpredictability...) Anyone with the sense God gave geese can clearly see that one airplane could never do all this (again, especially after the F-111 debacle), but the corrupt Pentagon, Congressmen (but I repeat myself), and military-industrial complex took all of us for a ride on their trillion-dollar turkey. The worst thing is that we've wasted decades worth of R&D and procurement money on a plane that does not and cannot work and be useful in the real world. We had better pray we never need this airplane in a fighting war, because it CANNOT be relied upon, and we can't afford enough of them anyway!
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  The situation isn't that dire but the F-35 program is still a screw-up. At a minimum, it still can perform its primary role - get into contested areas stealthily, gain and share firing solutions to well-equipped friendlies in the area, bugging out, and rinse/repeat.
- chipsa 5y ago
  The F-111 was always useful in the role that the USAF wanted it for: light bomber. It's the USN role that it failed miserably at. And the experience gained from the F-111 directly fed into the F-14. The F-35 program hasn't cost over a trillion dollars. It's supposed to cost over a trillion by the time they retire it, sometime 50 years from now. That is to say, over the 70 years that the program is expected to last, it'll have cost over a trillion. The F-35 is a replacement for the A-10 for CAS, but it's conception of how to do CAS is different, because we expect enemies that aren't just guys with a rifle to have the ability to hit stuff at low altitude. So we don't want to have our new stuff operate at low altitude. Literally every aircraft in the USAF/USN/USMC tactical fleet can do CAS in the way the F-35 is supposed to: drop munition from medium altitude. The F-35 is just supposed to be generally better at it (better sensor fusion, etc). Hell, we even have B-1 bombers doing CAS, by dropping bombs from medium altitude. The F-35 isn't supposed to rival or surpass the F-22. It's supposed to complement it.

by orlovs 5y ago

dublin 5y ago

The F-111, which eventually (and accidentally) became useful in a role other than the several it was designed for and failed at, should have been a warning beacon here. Eisenhower was right, though, and the military-industrial complex (which now pales in significance to the Social/Tech-Government complex)rammed through a monster one-size-fits-all plan that was farcical on its face, but successfully stole well over a trillion dollars from the taxpayers, and delivered a plane so unreliable it's unflyable 75% of the time, and in trying to do everything, winds up being good at nothing. Really? The F-35 a replacement for the A-10 in its low-altitude, tight-turning, monster-gun close air support role?! AND a world-beating air superiority fighter (to rival or surpass the F-22, Su-57, and J-20), AND a top carrier-based fighter, AND a stealth fighter/bomber to replace the F-117,AND a supersonic VSTOL Harrier replacement? The very idea is completely ludicrous. The real-world F-35 is even worse than the old SNL commercial for Shimmer - It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping! (but with HappyFunBall's unpredictability...) Anyone with the sense God gave geese can clearly see that one airplane could never do all this (again, especially after the F-111 debacle), but the corrupt Pentagon, Congressmen (but I repeat myself), and military-industrial complex took all of us for a ride on their trillion-dollar turkey. The worst thing is that we've wasted decades worth of R&D and procurement money on a plane that does not and cannot work and be useful in the real world. We had better pray we never need this airplane in a fighting war, because it CANNOT be relied upon, and we can't afford enough of them anyway!

captainredbeard 5y ago
The situation isn't that dire but the F-35 program is still a screw-up. At a minimum, it still can perform its primary role - get into contested areas stealthily, gain and share firing solutions to well-equipped friendlies in the area, bugging out, and rinse/repeat.
chipsa 5y ago
The F-111 was always useful in the role that the USAF wanted it for: light bomber. It's the USN role that it failed miserably at. And the experience gained from the F-111 directly fed into the F-14. The F-35 program hasn't cost over a trillion dollars. It's supposed to cost over a trillion by the time they retire it, sometime 50 years from now. That is to say, over the 70 years that the program is expected to last, it'll have cost over a trillion. The F-35 is a replacement for the A-10 for CAS, but it's conception of how to do CAS is different, because we expect enemies that aren't just guys with a rifle to have the ability to hit stuff at low altitude. So we don't want to have our new stuff operate at low altitude. Literally every aircraft in the USAF/USN/USMC tactical fleet can do CAS in the way the F-35 is supposed to: drop munition from medium altitude. The F-35 is just supposed to be generally better at it (better sensor fusion, etc). Hell, we even have B-1 bombers doing CAS, by dropping bombs from medium altitude. The F-35 isn't supposed to rival or surpass the F-22. It's supposed to complement it.