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The Jet that Ate the Pentagon
- rollypolly 14y agoF-35 lacks the F-16's agility in the air-to-air mode and the F-15E's range and payload in the bombing mode, and it can't even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude close air support for troops engaged in combat. "jack of all trades, master of none". :(
- D_Alex 14y agoYou sound like my wife... she says I lack the good looks of Hugh Jackman and athletic abilities of Michael Phelps, and I can't even compare to Bill Gates in the amount of money I bring in. Not defending the F-35 though. My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all.
- evoxed 14y agoThe US doesn't need them– but they'd love to sell them to other countries to recoup some of their costs. Too bad their pricing difficulties have pretty much ruined any chance of that working though, as Japan's already announced that they don't want them for more than the original projection.
- arethuza 14y agoThe F-35 is causing the UK all manner of problems as well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17437272 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17437272 Unfortunately, we're already commited over $10 billion to building new carriers for them.
- 46Bit 14y agoOne new carrier and one floating Scottish island, you mean.
- arethuza 14y agoJust looked at the Wikipedia page for the new carriers, it seems we are going to operate one and keep the other in "extended readiness": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_class_aircraft_carrier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_class_aircraft_... I presume "extended readiness" is civil service jargon for "scrapped as soon as it is built".
- 46Bit 14y agoMore or less, yes. The thing is only being built because Labour managed to make it barely any cheaper to cancel the contracts than to actually build a second, unused & unusable one.
- potatolicious 14y ago> "My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all." I don't usually find myself defending defense spending... but war-related technology is something you don't know you need, until you do, by which time it's too late to procure it. If the US is going to continue its M.O. of attacking countries whose military air presence can be counted on two hands, and consists mostly of old Soviet cast-offs, then sure, the current level of tech is more than sufficient. Overkill, even. I don't think there has been a single loss of U.S. military aircraft to enemy action since... Kosovo? I think a main impetus of this particular project is because both Russia and China are rapidly developing their own 5th-generation fighters, and while a head-to-head with China doesn't seem entirely likely, it's certainly less farfetched than the idea was 20 years ago. Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not defending this particular boondoggle of a project, but the need for a 5th-generation fighter is entirely understandable. On the plus side, it doesn't look like other countries' 5th-gen fighter projects are doing much better... The Chinese project has faced delay after delay after delay, and the Russians too.
- 7952 14y agoIf there was a war with China (thankfully far-fetched) why would they want to use 5th generation fighters at all? How many drones could Foxconn make in a day?
- jbooth 14y agoWell, the thing is, drones aren't sporting. Not honorable. No respectable air force general wants to build a career on drone acquisition.
- FelixP 14y agoIsn't what they said about tanks and horses?
- jbooth 14y agoThat's the point. A few years ago, in a wargame predicated around the persian gulf, this retired marine who was playing the bad guys launched a low-tech attack on carrier groups which consisted of a ton of drones and fishing boats filled with high explosives. He won. Result? They did a "redo" with a new rule that he can't do that stuff. Because carriers are awesome and admirals want to command them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
- philwelch 14y agoThe F-16, F-18, A-10, and Harrier are aging airframes that won't last forever. They need to be replaced. And frankly, stealth is such an improvement in terms of survivability in combat that the marginal expense of stealth technology is easily worth it just to protect the monetary investment the government makes in a trained pilot. The F-35 might not be the best design (they'd be better off with a cheaper F-22 derivative and a separate replacement for the Harrier I think) but it fulfills a real requirement.
- pilom 14y agoI think a lot of people underestimate the differences between the F-22 and the F-35 on a price standpoint. The F-22 costs $2 billion per plane. The F-35 at $18X million per plan is a pittance in comparison for 80% of the capabilities.
- greedo 14y agoThe F-22 doesn't cost anywhere near $2billion dollars per plane.
- pilom 14y agoI stand corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor. If you divide the number of aircraft built by the amount spent on the program, the GAO puts that at $412 million per plane. You can still buy more than 3 F-35's for each F-22.
- philwelch 14y agoThat's not the marginal cost per plane, because that amortizes the cost of R&D over the current production run. If you ordered more F-22's, they would cost far less since the R&D is already done.
- jakeonthemove 14y agoThey're stealthy because they're new - if a real war breaks out, I have no doubt anti-measures would be developed pretty quickly, just like the radar during WW2. Why would they need to make such an overly complicated plane is beyond me, it's like the F-14 situation all over again. Plus, the F-22 works (and looks) pretty well already...
- rdtsc 14y agoIt is needed because it is designed to replace all those. Imagine your wife had Hugh Jackman, Michael Phelps and Bill Gates as her husbands in some strange polyamory type setup (hey you brought your wife into the conversation first ;-) ). And then one day, all those husbands disappeared and she was left with you.
- D_Alex 14y agoWell, she'd have a lot less ironing to do... Look, I think this analogy has gone too far already!!!
- darnton 14y agoHard to believe the article can make this observation without mention of John Boyd. http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/B002B55XHM/ http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/B002...
- yread 14y agoSounds a bit like the Space shuttle
- newbie12 14y agoThe politicians' "make it do everything" mantra is the same reason the space shuttle was a disastrous, budget-consuming failure.
- starpilot 14y agoThe F-35 is stealthier and has far better avionics than all of those aircraft. It could detect and shoot down an F-16 before it knew it was there, and do the same to ground targets. It doesn't have the low-speed loitering ability of the A-10, but that feature makes sense only for a pre-MANPADS era or battle.
- philwelch 14y agoActually, the STOVL variant of the F-35 has exactly the low-speed loitering ability, not of the A-10, but of the Harrier. That's what it was designed for.
- bcl 14y agoSoftware isn't the only thing that suffers from feature creep (or bloat). The V-22 Osprey has similar problems, driven by their attempt to meet the requirements of all the branches of service.
- chris_wot 14y agoYou know something - I just tried to load this website as the article looks interesting. But it was taking forever to load. So I downloaded YSlow to find out what on earth was causing the problem, and the site has: * 41 external javascript files * 22 external CSS files * Totals to 2106.9K of files, of which 1151.4K are javascript files, and 598.9K in images. It took 204 HTTP requests to get this page to load. * has about 37 different DNS lookups to get access to all the files One of the websites that host external javascript files took over 9 seconds to load approximately 350K. On top of this, I've never seen so much analytics and tracking on any website - ever! Seriously, someone needs to have a good look at the way that this site is constructed. Such a massive bandwidth hog - and noticably slow!
- showerst 14y agoI'm actually the guy responsible for this site (Web Director at FP). The reason for all of this is that it's a kitchen-sink Drupal install, plus every ad industry service in history. We've been working to cut all of this down, but I haven't been on the job for very long =P. A fair number of the images aren't even properly minimized! You'll see it improve soon though =).
- chris_wot 14y agoNice - welcome aboard :-)
- jakeonthemove 14y agoJust use NoScript (and optionally AdBlock Plus) and forget about it :-)...
- evoxed 14y agoI didn't notice until I read this and pulled up the page again. My connection is apparently fast enough for it not to matter, but I was watching the DNT+ badge. 4... then 6... then incrementing up to 14 blocks. I guess they've got a lot goin' on.
- 14y ago
- spodek 14y agoVisiting Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for the first time, their Vietnam War museums reminded me of the consequence of a tactical advantage (like air superiority) in the context of a failed strategy (like invading without a good reason). You lose wars. The life and business on the streets there reminded me what happens when you don't invade for no reasons. Capitalism flourishes. At least from what you see on the street level, capitalism is doing better there than in the bailout-laden U.S. Did I oversimplify? Of course. But until the U.S. shows some strategic intelligence like "don't invade countries without a reason" its tactical choices will always fail too. By the way, they call it the American War there.
- hnhg 14y agoGiven a time when everyone was told there was a great threat from the aggressive expansionism of the Soviet Union and China, they felt they had a good reason. They thought Vietnam would result in a domino effect across the region. I don't think it was a great reason and most now don't, but then again I thought Afghanistan could never work, and there were very few of us who would say so. It's easy to get swept up by militaristic arguments it seems.
- darklajid 14y agoAnd Afghanistan did 'work'?
- toyg 14y ago"few of us" were actually quite a majority... Of people who knew what they were talking about. And we were right: Afghanistan cannot be "conquered" or "fixed", as 10+ years of failed occupation have proven.
- dabeeeenster 14y agoIt's more like 70 years of failed occupation...
- bergie 14y ago
- staunch 14y agoI just assume they're funneling huge portions of that money into secret projects. How else do they get their hands on a spare $100 billion without anyone noticing? Better to seem incompetent than reveal you've got a warp drive/time machine/transporter project. I know it's kind of an optimistic view, but it does make me feel better.
- toemetoch 14y agoHave a look at all the bells and whistles that pop out for vertical take off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm7_PPE-8nk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm7_PPE-8nk Those are all intricate mechanisms that need to withstand severe levels of stress.
- its_so_on 14y agoOh man, you're right. Can you imagine if it could also turn into a submarine and have to withstand immense water pressure, have an intricate periscope, etc? That would justify 100billion for sure. Note to military: no, please don't. I'm only kidding....
- philwelch 14y agoThat's what happens when you have a reasonable idea, i.e. let's replace the F-16 and F/A-18, and all of a sudden someone says "hey, the Harrier is getting old too" and you realize the politicians aren't going to pay for two new planes at once, especially not after how much they've already spent on the F-22 and B-2, so you just throw all the requirements together, so by the time it lands on the desk of an actual engineer who realizes what a hash of things you've made, it's too late to change course.
- jakeonthemove 14y agoI really like the F-22 - they should've kept building it and maybe modified it for different purposes. The F16 are also pretty capable. The only way the F35 will pay for itself is if it can turn into a space fighter :-D - otherwise, with all those components onboard, it will cost even more to maintain it over the next several decades. Heck, in a real war, I'd rather take something simpler that is easy to build and cheaper to repair - Russia seems to have it right with the SU/MIG 3X, which are just perfected 2X designs...
- api 14y agoThe clusterfuck of competing requirements reminds me almost exactly of the space shuttle, a similar disaster that barely worked. The shuttle could have been really awesome had its requirements only been set by NASA. Instead they had the NRO and other agencies jumping in there with space-irrelevant stuff that never even got used.
- lonnyk 14y agoPlease elaborate on what was added by whom and not used?
- sgt101 14y agoFor the Shuttle the big unused and underused capabilities were "retrieval to cargo bay and return to earth" and "launch to polar orbit". I believe that this was imposed on the program by the US Airforce due to the need to collect spy satellites for service and put large payloads into polar orbit. I think that the polar orbit requirement was never used, and had a very significant impact.
- roberte3 14y agoThe first polar orbit was supposed to be Discovery, about six months after the challenger disaster. One of the things that was to enable the polar orbit was a new set of solid rocket boosters, the 'Filament-wound' models that had a lighter weight outer case, and more propellent. The book Riding Rockets was written by an astronaut who was in the middle of prep on that discovery mission when Challenger happened, and has a few details on the proposed polar orbit launch.
- ck2 14y agoThey'll never admit that war is an outdated business model. But the military industrial complex needs to be slowly starved to death.
- jbattle 14y agoThe business model isn't fighting the war, it's selling stuff prior to prepare for a war that may or may not happen.
- dantillberg 14y agoThis is kind of an unfortunate title for those of us that still remember 9/11.
- RyanMcGreal 14y agoThis story will also have strong significance for Canadians, whose government is currently in the throes of a controversy over how much we're planning to spend to buy a fleet of F35s.