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"Specific designs for specific roles" is a general engineering thing. Any engineer knows that it's easier to get good performance (in whatever dimension you're
by nostrademons 3y ago
"Specific designs for specific roles" is a general engineering thing. Any engineer knows that it's easier to get good performance (in whatever dimension you're measuring performance) if you're designing for only one use case than if you're trying to be everything to everyone. Designs that try to do everything end up being overconstrained and then having to make (often irrational from the POV of any one user) compromises to fit reality.
Software monopolies face this on a daily basis. Much of what we see as "enshittification" from a consumer standpoint comes from single products that need to serve the needs of 3B consumers. The idea of "unbundling" that was en vogue in startup circles from ~2013-2016 is just that startups which serve one use case for one customer base are able to eek out efficiencies that consumer tech giants cannot.
I'm not in aerospace or military so I can't comment on whether the JSF itself performs poorly. How would that even be defined, though? It doesn't have a whole lot of competition to measure against. (Seems like a common thread in these discussions...)
- 7thaccount 3y agoYeah that was basically my thought that perhaps they need a dogfighter, a long range bomber, some kind of thing like an A-10 or C-130 gunship. Not sure if Ukraine is showing us that some of those are now useless or not. It must be difficult to design something like the JSF that has to have a vertical takeoff version and all this other junk to make 4 branches of the military happy. Part of me thinks that having two different planes would have made more sense and lifted a lot of design constraints.