5 ms·

Of course he does. He gets to fly it! This passage caught my eye: > The last major reason the F-35 has seen so much criticism is that it was the first jet dev

Of course he does. He gets to fly it! This passage caught my eye: > The last major reason the F-35 has seen so much criticism is that it was the first jet developed in the social media age. The paradigm shift, cost, and early problems, coupled with concurrency, led to an explosion of negative social media that grew into mainstream media coverage. Cost buried second in a list of factors contributing to…social media as major factor? If it weren't for those pesky kids on the Internet!

tootie 5y ago
This is like saying it got a lot of bad press because everyone noticed how bad it was. We never got to complain about top secret projects because we didn't know what they cost.
throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
Assuming you think the USA should have the "most powerful military" (whether this should be the aim or not is a separate question); how much money is required to achieve that goal and what are your justifications for that amount? Without answering that question, how can you say that the F35 costs too much? Personally i have no idea what the true US military budget should be and I'm not even sure how you'd begin to calculate that as a civilian. One of the few things that gets passed in a bi-partisan manner by the US legislature is the military budget (apparently for 59 straight years). It's easy to look at a big number and say it's bad. But it's also easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. The average FAANG team probably costs their company multiple millions of $ per year in just employee costs. It's easy to parachute in and say that you could do it for less, and you'd probably be right. But that also loses track of bigger picture.
- pydry 5y ago
  >Without answering that question, how can you say that the F35 costs too much? How much is too much to spend on bayonets pre WW1 to face the machine gun? The F-35 is a 1.5 trillion dollar bet on human dog fighters who cant execute high G maneuvers in a world dominated by fleets of cheap, disposable, AI piloted drones that can. Nagorno-Karabakh and Yemen have already shown a taste of this. >One of the few things that gets passed in a bi-partisan manner by the US legislature is the military budget The F35 is curious in this regard because it is so heavily criticized by Congress yet still funded. This is coz Lockheed distributed F35 jobs across the country on the basis of congressional votes. A vote to kill the F35 is thus a vote to destroy jobs in your district. Lockheed engineered the world's most unkillable military program and then milked it to kingdom come. The shareholders are certainly happy. This is, sadly, the most impressive form of F35 engineering. We will look back on many things after the next war and shake our collective heads but I suspect the most glaring and shameful error will be our willingness to indulge corporate profit margins at the expense of the body politic.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >The F-35 is a 1.5 trillion dollar bet on human dog fighters who cant execute high G maneuvers in a world dominated by fleets of cheap, disposable, AI piloted drones that can. "High G maneuvers" is a meaningless capability. Each of those "AI piloted drones" will require a support radar (putting the radar on each drone will make them cost $10+ million a pop, eliminating the throwaway strategy), if a F-35 can destroy the support radar you've just lost all your drones because they cannot detect the F-35.
    - csunbird 5y ago
      If a F-35 costs more than several 10 millions, throwing several 10+ million radar equipped drones to a F-35 fleet is now a viable and cost effective strategy.
- gremlinsinc 5y ago
  The current military is like google saying: We're number 1 in browsers and search, but we need to spend 80% of our profits to ensure we stay ahead of the game. We also need to spend more than the 3x the next 10 competitors combined, or we might as well quit. They'd be broke in record time.
- unreal37 5y ago
  The F-35 program was expected to cost $200 billion, but delays brought the total in over $400 billion. With a lifetime cost in the $1.5 trillion range. When you're talking about trillion dollars to acquire some aircraft, I think the word expensive is justified.
- galangalalgol 5y ago
  What are the rest of the budget items that pass with bipartisan support? Is their salary package one?

tootie 5y ago

This is like saying it got a lot of bad press because everyone noticed how bad it was. We never got to complain about top secret projects because we didn't know what they cost.

throw_nbvc1234 5y ago

Assuming you think the USA should have the "most powerful military" (whether this should be the aim or not is a separate question); how much money is required to achieve that goal and what are your justifications for that amount? Without answering that question, how can you say that the F35 costs too much? Personally i have no idea what the true US military budget should be and I'm not even sure how you'd begin to calculate that as a civilian. One of the few things that gets passed in a bi-partisan manner by the US legislature is the military budget (apparently for 59 straight years). It's easy to look at a big number and say it's bad. But it's also easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. The average FAANG team probably costs their company multiple millions of $ per year in just employee costs. It's easy to parachute in and say that you could do it for less, and you'd probably be right. But that also loses track of bigger picture.

pydry 5y ago
>Without answering that question, how can you say that the F35 costs too much? How much is too much to spend on bayonets pre WW1 to face the machine gun? The F-35 is a 1.5 trillion dollar bet on human dog fighters who cant execute high G maneuvers in a world dominated by fleets of cheap, disposable, AI piloted drones that can. Nagorno-Karabakh and Yemen have already shown a taste of this. >One of the few things that gets passed in a bi-partisan manner by the US legislature is the military budget The F35 is curious in this regard because it is so heavily criticized by Congress yet still funded. This is coz Lockheed distributed F35 jobs across the country on the basis of congressional votes. A vote to kill the F35 is thus a vote to destroy jobs in your district. Lockheed engineered the world's most unkillable military program and then milked it to kingdom come. The shareholders are certainly happy. This is, sadly, the most impressive form of F35 engineering. We will look back on many things after the next war and shake our collective heads but I suspect the most glaring and shameful error will be our willingness to indulge corporate profit margins at the expense of the body politic.
- imtringued 5y ago
  >The F-35 is a 1.5 trillion dollar bet on human dog fighters who cant execute high G maneuvers in a world dominated by fleets of cheap, disposable, AI piloted drones that can. "High G maneuvers" is a meaningless capability. Each of those "AI piloted drones" will require a support radar (putting the radar on each drone will make them cost $10+ million a pop, eliminating the throwaway strategy), if a F-35 can destroy the support radar you've just lost all your drones because they cannot detect the F-35.
  - csunbird 5y ago
    If a F-35 costs more than several 10 millions, throwing several 10+ million radar equipped drones to a F-35 fleet is now a viable and cost effective strategy.
gremlinsinc 5y ago
The current military is like google saying: We're number 1 in browsers and search, but we need to spend 80% of our profits to ensure we stay ahead of the game. We also need to spend more than the 3x the next 10 competitors combined, or we might as well quit. They'd be broke in record time.
unreal37 5y ago
The F-35 program was expected to cost $200 billion, but delays brought the total in over $400 billion. With a lifetime cost in the $1.5 trillion range. When you're talking about trillion dollars to acquire some aircraft, I think the word expensive is justified.
galangalalgol 5y ago
What are the rest of the budget items that pass with bipartisan support? Is their salary package one?