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I was an early armchair skeptic, and I've always had a not-so-secret love of the F-16. But after watching an F-35 demo at a recent airshow, I'm a convert. Any

I was an early armchair skeptic, and I've always had a not-so-secret love of the F-16. But after watching an F-35 demo at a recent airshow, I'm a convert. Anyone who says this plane can't out-dogfight an F-16 is delusional.

pwython 3y ago
Was it worth $1,700,000,000,000 though ($1.7 trillion)? I'm all for aviation innovation, but the US defense budget is just wild.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  It's had downstream benefits in the hardware, IoT, cybersecurity, devops, missle research, and aerospace segments just off the top of my head. I don't want to dox myself but a lot of GovCloud can be attributed to the F35 development cycle.
  - pwython 3y ago
    Interesting, I haven't looked into GovCloud before. While it seems weird that the US government would entrust their data with AWS, it's probably a lot better than their antiquated systems. This 2020 article is a good read for anyone still listening here: https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/30/us-navys-largest-migration-to-aws-govcloud-adds-security-and-analytics-benefits-awspssummit/ https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/30/us-navys-largest-migrati...
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  I wouldn't blame the F-35 for the entirety of the DoD budget. As far as the plane itself is concerned, however, the F-35 is actually a good deal. That's why we're able to sell it to other countries -- it's cheaper than than comparable Gen 4.5/5 fighters. And more reliable, too, than most everything else in our inventory.