9 ms·

The F-35 as a Subscription Service

114 points by sorokod 2y ago

oceanhaiyang 2y ago
why wouldn't all nations just reverse engineer them once they buy them?
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  Easier said than done. Iran got a large number of this plane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat which is highly capable but a particularly bad choice for a developing country, especially one that has bad relations with the U.S. Iran showed great ingenuity in maintaining and upgrading the planes as well as missiles for them.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  The code was written by programmers working in shifts because LM was so late already. Probably easier to just rewrite than try to reverse engineer that crap.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  It's probably easier just making your own version from what I heard.
- cwillu 2y ago
  The software is a huge part of the value of the fighter; think the cooperative engagement abilities of aegis.
- RhysabOweyn 2y ago
  From my understanding, Israel pretty much did exactly this; however, I remember listening to a British military expert on Deutsche Welle explaining that when a nation reverse engineers the F-35, it locks them out of a lot of intelligence sharing from the US that keeps the F-35 military hardware functioning versus their opponents (Russia, Iran, China, etc). Keep in mind that as a nation develops new military capabilities, its opponents will react to this and switch up their own hardware/tactics so these updates are incredibly important to keep the fighter jet effective over time. Not as much of a problem for Israel since they have well established and funded intelligence agencies and a local military industry that can do this themselves. Their main opponents are also not as militarily capable as Europe's (Russia) so that probably plays a role as well.
  - justin66 2y ago
    I don't think it's a matter of reverse engineering. What I read indicated Israel paid the vendor for access to the source code, which makes a little more sense. (the reason given was kind of interesting, involving a prediction that within a decade the stealth technology of fifth-gen fighters might very well be compromised by improved sensor and signal processing technology, and Israel wanted to stay on the pointy end of that)
- libertine 2y ago
  There was a time when an Ally used to mean something—to be clear, it still does for the most part, despite the US Administration's shift away from its allies toward Russia. An "Alliance" used to be built on core principles, trust, and alignment, it's not just a fancy word. So the question is, why would an Ally of yours need to spend resources to reverse engineer technology you're willing to exchange with him, and vice versa? Looking back, maybe it's not such a bad idea when an Ally shows signs of shifting to an adversarial position against you.
  - aerostable_slug 2y ago
    Or because Israel has sold technology to China before against the US's wishes. Lockheed and its contractors have no interest in betting their intellectual property, nor the US in betting our national security advantage, to the whims of the current administration of whomever buys our F-35s. Therefore the avionics are constructed with robust anti-tampering/RE mechanisms. You can have them, but you can't make more or sell the secret sauce.
    - libertine 2y ago
      Leaks and property theft happen, both internally and on the outside - even the anecdotes of the War Thunder leaks are a good example of it. With that said, it looks like what's happening is that Europe, Canada, and probably more to come, have no interest in betting their National Security on the whims of one guy pulling the rug on them, as Trump did to Ukraine to appease Putin. The problem here isn't IP theft - it's about reliability.
- olelele 2y ago
  The purchase of the Saab Gripen by Brazil also included a technology transfer component so the planes can be serviced and kept in shape without being dependent on Sweden. The plane engine is American so apparently they are able to influence sales through this as well as the normal bully/soft power/shenanigans the US use.
- acdha 2y ago
  It’s on the order of 10 million lines of code running some very specialized, very complex hardware. The reason everyone was buying them is because it’s even more expensive to develop that on your own but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a lot of reconsideration going on now. As a simple question, some people say there isn’t a “kill switch” which I’d bet is true in the sense that there isn’t an admin panel somewhere you could just ground Finland with but … how could you be confident about anything in a codebase that large? That’s even before you consider whether, say, the chaotic DOGE cuts haven’t created an opening for Russia or China to find something exploitable even if the original designers didn’t intend it to be.
- sorokod 2y ago
  In addition to the objective complexity there may be a "Warranty void if sticker removed" clause in that sales contract.
- oceanhaiyang 2y ago
  Why and how am I getting downvoting for asking this question? I thought HN was non-toxic…
adriand 2y ago
Hence why Canada is now considering bailing on its purchase of F-35s. The prospect of getting cut off is hardly theoretical: the US already partially halted support for Ukraine's F-16s (I'm not sure where this stands at this precise moment). The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence. Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight. This doesn't just mean that platforms like F-35 are vastly less desirable to Western militaries, it also means that other things we thought we could rely upon, like the nuclear umbrella, are also unreliable, which is likely to lead to nuclear proliferation.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  The purchase didn't make much sense in the first place. The F-35 is intended to operate in contested airspace, which Canada is not. It cannot intercept serious supersonic threats or maintain a strategic advantage in WVR/VFR escorts. If Russia is the threat, the F-35 is not a real defense. It's a cool jet, but there's something to be said about having the right tool for the job. Canada doesn't need a joint strike fighter, they need a cost-effective interceptor.
  - llm_nerd 2y ago
    Canada doesn't maintain a military for self defence. If it did we would have pursued nuclear weapon ambitions in the 1940s and focused overwhelming on terrestrial missile systems and attack submarines. Even the interception routine of playing the games with Russian bombers at the edge of airspace is just meaningless theatre -- not only would those bombers long have deployed cruise missiles in a real conflict, the vast majority of devastation would have come from ICBMs launched by ground and sea. In reality our peacetime military has been a welfare project to assist the US in whatever (mis)adventures it gets in around the globe. Our choice of jets, guns, vehicles, and so on is predicated on "when the US drags us into some conflict or other, what equipment integrates with whatever their goals are". So when we signed up for the F-35, that was purchasing criteria. The world is quite obviously changing. If Canada were seriously interested in true self defence against all realistic foes, it would be nuclear weapons and nuclear powered submarines...like the sort the US blocked us from being able to buy from the UK back in the 80s.
somanyphotons 2y ago
Lockheed Martin must be really annoyed at the current administration. Who's going to want to put in new F35 orders now
- justin66 2y ago
  Honestly, the annoyance probably extends beyond Lockheed Martin corporate. It does not appear to have sunken in that damage to the F-35 export market will affect the per-unit cost of the F-35 and its parts for the US military. Given the amounts of money involved, it seems likely a really big abandonment of F-35 overseas will do more damage to the federal budget than all the oddball firings they're doing could offset.
- libertine 2y ago
  They didn't pay Trump like the SV tech oligarchs.
  - thrwaway1337 2y ago
    Must have forgotten to say "thank you"
    - libertine 2y ago
      Publicly, it needs to be done in public.
- pavlov 2y ago
  Especially when co-president Musk is tweeting that the F-35 is a dud and the US should leave NATO. That's a double whammy for European countries who signed on to spend hundreds of billions on these planes in the belief that they're part of a NATO security umbrella. Now it seems like NATO will soon be in shambles and the planes might not even fly if that one drunk frat guy with Nazi tattoos running the Pentagon says so. Finland bought F-35's recently, and the Finnish government is saying that nothing should change because America will hopefully be back to normal before the fighters are delivered. I don't think that kind of ostrich strategy is going to pay off.
readthenotes1 2y ago
"Imagine buying a state-of-the-art smartphone, but its full functionality is locked behind a subscription service. " Why is the word 'imagine' necessary? -- Also, love the advert at the bottom "Hate subscriptions?"
- karamanolev 2y ago
  Because you're buying a plane and the phone is an analogy. Separately, both iPhone and Android have essentially their full functionality available without *paying* for a subscription.
  - lodovic 2y ago
    It's more like a Tesla car
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    > both iPhone and Android have essentially their full functionality available without paying for a subscription. This is untrue. iOS ships with several features that you cannot enable without government regulation or an annual developer fee. Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge. iOS undeniably ships with disabled entitlements that only paying users can access. Whether or not you consider these software limitations salient is debatable, but the fact they exist is concrete. The F-35 is "essentially" full featured without American support, as long as the functionality you're referring to is the airfoil. We can make all sorts of silly definitions that confer innocence to OEMs, and many of them are both factually and practically wrong.
    - jlkuester7 2y ago
      > Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge. This is assuming a pretty narrow definition of "full feature-set". It is a inacurrate to say there is feature parity between an Android phone running Google Play Services vs one that is not.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
nradov 2y ago
This previously submitted article covers some of the same topics in greater technical detail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43329336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43329336
- howard941 2y ago
  Your link points to a much better, more interesting, article
neilv 2y ago
So what's the "vintage Linux ThinkPad" of fighter aircraft -- capable, maintainable, affordable, and no-nonsense? F-16? (I'm going to start thinking of my big ThinkPad T520 as an F-15E.)
- olelele 2y ago
  Being a bit proud of where i grew up I will posit the JAS 39 Gripen as a contender. Developed since the seventies and still in active production after six? revisions or so.
  - ohgr 2y ago
    Glorious bit of kit that. Any engineer would tip their hat towards that fine piece of engineering.
  - nradov 2y ago
    The Saab JAS 39E Gripen is fine for what it is, and perfectly capable of limited missions like homeland defense. But it's not survivable for penetrating strikes into defended airspace (i.e. Russia). And it's quite small which, while an advantage in some scenarios, means that if you load it up with external fuel tanks and ordinance for a long range strike mission then performance and efficiency goes to crap. The Gripen is powered by the US-made GE F414 engine, so any purchases can still be vetoed by the US government and buyers will be dependent on US supply chains for maintenance.
- ohgr 2y ago
  From a European perspective, the Panavia Tornado. Was heavily involved in that project from an avionics perspective. To this day I learned more on that than I did at any startup, tech company or bullshit merchant. It was engineering at its finest.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Tornado production ended in 1998 and it has been retired. It's not an option any more.
- 2y ago
maxglute 2y ago
It's hilarious (really borderline treasonous) as a "joint strike fighter" program, no none US partners thought maybe they could secure some sort of sole-source provider deal to at least have some leverage. Well I think Martin Baker does all ejection seats.
- dboreham 2y ago
  This is why Israelis wrote their own software for the F-35I Defense vendors backdooring/degrading/IFF-ing their products when sold for export has been a thing for many decades. Heck the UK sold enigma machines to a bunch of countries after WW2, specifically because they could break its code. This issue is why there is a French and UK and Swedish (and Russian) defense industry.
  - bigyabai 2y ago
    Makes me wonder what the Israeli avionics look like in India/Malaysia's Su-30s. They're awfully good at putting American insights to use...
- nradov 2y ago
  The UK is the only Level 1 partner on the F-35 program and they are the sole source providers for several essential components. They have significant leverage. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/how-much-of-the-f-35-is-british-built/ https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/how-much-of-the-f-35-is-brit...
Sharlin 2y ago
The Commander of the Finnish Air Force gave an interview on the matter (Finland recently purchased 64 F-35As). He dismissed any concerns, of course – what else could he officially say? > He expressed confidence that the United States and Lockheed Martin would ensure the operational capability of Finland’s F-35 fleet in all circumstances, given the decades-long partnership. He also noted that all modern weapons systems, including those used in Europe, contain software components primarily originating from the United States. https://yle.fi/a/74-20150575 https://yle.fi/a/74-20150575
- wrs 2y ago
  That’s such an outmoded and naive statement that it’s almost like a coded warning.
  - impossiblefork 2y ago
    By warning mean in the sense that 'we expect it to work as it should' can be the last thing your customer says before he sues you?
    - wrs 2y ago
      What he said amounts to “all modern weapons systems can be disabled at the whim of the United States”. And the reference to “years of partnership” highlights the sudden about-face that is now happening with respect to many of those partnerships.
  - jgilias 2y ago
    But what else could they say? “Yeah, we’re fucked now that the US is turning into a dictatorship and a Russian ally!”? That’s a fast track to those kill switches being deployed on hardware delivery.
- bergie 2y ago
  Going with the F-35 was a bet that sadly went wrong. The assumption was that it'd be paying protection money to US to help us against Russia if SHTF. In hindsight, Gripen or Rafale would've been a much better option. But few saw how different US foreign policy would soon get.
rqtwteye 2y ago
Let's hope Europe finally starts developing their own again. It will be good for jobs and technical knowledge. Globalization can be good but for critical things like weapons or also chips, it's better to have capability at home. I think Trump may be miscalculating the situation. The Ukraine war already caused a shift of some countries away from the West towards Russia/China. With Trump being so openly hostile towards former allies, the US may lose influence world wide.
- fatbird 2y ago
  Europe has the Eurofighter Typhoon and is working collectively on its successor. France has the Rafale. Even if the F-35 is superior, Europe has plenty of fighter tech to continue developing as a comparable platform. This is true for virtually all American military tech: Patriot/SAMPT, Abrams/Leopard, etc. What Europe doesn't currently have is the production capacity to match American capacity, but that's exactly what they're changing now.
  - acdha 2y ago
    The other big thing I’m wondering about is how much the invasion of Ukraine has people reconsidering super-expensive fighters versus drones and missiles. It feels like the cost-benefit ratio has fundamentally shifted in a way everyone is still fully updating their tactics for.
    - fatbird 2y ago
      I can't imagine the scale of doctrine rewriting that will be done over the next 10 years, constantly argued by companies like Lockheed Martin who are so heavily invested in large scale expensive platforms (while simultaneously drooling over new contracts for drones). It's not just planes, either. WW3 was going to be a huge tank battle fought in Europe. I don't think we've seen the end of tanks, but I suspect we'll see them no longer being the central weapon around which combat formations are built.
    - nradov 2y ago
      It depends where those people are expecting to fight. Small drones have proven effective for defensive, attritional warfare on geographically constrained battlefields. But the US military is pivoting to fight China in an island hopping campaign in the western Pacific Ocean, where ranges are orders of magnitude longer and a little battery powered drone can't get anywhere. There it looks like super-expensive fighters will be the only way to accomplish the mission. https://www.twz.com/air/next-generation-fighter-critical-to-future-air-superiority-key-usaf-study-concluded https://www.twz.com/air/next-generation-fighter-critical-to-...
delichon 2y ago
I've read speculation about robocars that will drive themselves back to the dealership if you're late on a payment. An F-35 can operate as a big drone. They don't even have to send Maverick to repo it. On its next outing it can fly itself home at the administration's whim. Which may be inconvenient for the pilot, their wingman, their mission, etc.
r0ckarong 2y ago
You wouldn't download a national defense grid.
hipsterstal1n 2y ago
These planes that we sell, not just the F-35, all come with a bevy of support from US folks. I have friends and family that travel that globe, visiting US allies, in order to support, train, and meet with counterparts in the respective countries to assist their use of US aircraft they purchase. These friends and fmaily also get flown around if there are any accidents or investigations involving these planes. The F-35 is just the next step in the "subscription service".
jlkuester7 2y ago
The "issues" described here seem to me to be basically just run-of-the-mill aquisitions considerations. Is anyone out there buying any kind of enterprize-grade hardware in any industry and not doing the due dilligence to consider operating costs over the lifetime of the unit? All technology of sufficient complexity requires a supply chain to be in place to support it. Folks are not just waking up today and realising those F-35s they bought will need to be supported or maintained. The only thing remotely newsworthy here may be a story around a loss in global confidence in the US "brand", but I think the actual implications of that (if any) still remain to be seen....
mwinatschek 2y ago
Could that become a problem with any electronic product made by US companies? If their government demands Apple, Google & Co. to remotely brick computers, phones, and tablets for whatever reason, why should I bother buying them in the first place?
high_na_euv 2y ago
>Software Updates: The F-35 is driven by complex software systems that require constant updates to maintain operational effectiveness, security, and functionality. Without these updates, the jet's capabilities degrade over time. Why it degrades? Any examples of that?
- TeaBrain 2y ago
  Sound like marketing to me.
ZeroTalent 2y ago
Imagine buying something for $100-150M and having it disabled...

114 points by sorokod 2y ago

oceanhaiyang 2y ago

why wouldn't all nations just reverse engineer them once they buy them?

PaulHoule 2y ago
Easier said than done. Iran got a large number of this plane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat which is highly capable but a particularly bad choice for a developing country, especially one that has bad relations with the U.S. Iran showed great ingenuity in maintaining and upgrading the planes as well as missiles for them.
Jtsummers 2y ago
The code was written by programmers working in shifts because LM was so late already. Probably easier to just rewrite than try to reverse engineer that crap.
markus_zhang 2y ago
It's probably easier just making your own version from what I heard.
cwillu 2y ago
The software is a huge part of the value of the fighter; think the cooperative engagement abilities of aegis.
RhysabOweyn 2y ago
From my understanding, Israel pretty much did exactly this; however, I remember listening to a British military expert on Deutsche Welle explaining that when a nation reverse engineers the F-35, it locks them out of a lot of intelligence sharing from the US that keeps the F-35 military hardware functioning versus their opponents (Russia, Iran, China, etc). Keep in mind that as a nation develops new military capabilities, its opponents will react to this and switch up their own hardware/tactics so these updates are incredibly important to keep the fighter jet effective over time. Not as much of a problem for Israel since they have well established and funded intelligence agencies and a local military industry that can do this themselves. Their main opponents are also not as militarily capable as Europe's (Russia) so that probably plays a role as well.
- justin66 2y ago
  I don't think it's a matter of reverse engineering. What I read indicated Israel paid the vendor for access to the source code, which makes a little more sense. (the reason given was kind of interesting, involving a prediction that within a decade the stealth technology of fifth-gen fighters might very well be compromised by improved sensor and signal processing technology, and Israel wanted to stay on the pointy end of that)
libertine 2y ago
There was a time when an Ally used to mean something—to be clear, it still does for the most part, despite the US Administration's shift away from its allies toward Russia. An "Alliance" used to be built on core principles, trust, and alignment, it's not just a fancy word. So the question is, why would an Ally of yours need to spend resources to reverse engineer technology you're willing to exchange with him, and vice versa? Looking back, maybe it's not such a bad idea when an Ally shows signs of shifting to an adversarial position against you.
- aerostable_slug 2y ago
  Or because Israel has sold technology to China before against the US's wishes. Lockheed and its contractors have no interest in betting their intellectual property, nor the US in betting our national security advantage, to the whims of the current administration of whomever buys our F-35s. Therefore the avionics are constructed with robust anti-tampering/RE mechanisms. You can have them, but you can't make more or sell the secret sauce.
  - libertine 2y ago
    Leaks and property theft happen, both internally and on the outside - even the anecdotes of the War Thunder leaks are a good example of it. With that said, it looks like what's happening is that Europe, Canada, and probably more to come, have no interest in betting their National Security on the whims of one guy pulling the rug on them, as Trump did to Ukraine to appease Putin. The problem here isn't IP theft - it's about reliability.
olelele 2y ago
The purchase of the Saab Gripen by Brazil also included a technology transfer component so the planes can be serviced and kept in shape without being dependent on Sweden. The plane engine is American so apparently they are able to influence sales through this as well as the normal bully/soft power/shenanigans the US use.
acdha 2y ago
It’s on the order of 10 million lines of code running some very specialized, very complex hardware. The reason everyone was buying them is because it’s even more expensive to develop that on your own but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a lot of reconsideration going on now. As a simple question, some people say there isn’t a “kill switch” which I’d bet is true in the sense that there isn’t an admin panel somewhere you could just ground Finland with but … how could you be confident about anything in a codebase that large? That’s even before you consider whether, say, the chaotic DOGE cuts haven’t created an opening for Russia or China to find something exploitable even if the original designers didn’t intend it to be.
sorokod 2y ago
In addition to the objective complexity there may be a "Warranty void if sticker removed" clause in that sales contract.
oceanhaiyang 2y ago
Why and how am I getting downvoting for asking this question? I thought HN was non-toxic…

adriand 2y ago

Hence why Canada is now considering bailing on its purchase of F-35s. The prospect of getting cut off is hardly theoretical: the US already partially halted support for Ukraine's F-16s (I'm not sure where this stands at this precise moment). The US is clearly demonstrating it is an unreliable partner in defence. Western nations cannot buy into a platform when its supplier might go from being a democratic part of the West to aligning with dictators and autocrats literally overnight. This doesn't just mean that platforms like F-35 are vastly less desirable to Western militaries, it also means that other things we thought we could rely upon, like the nuclear umbrella, are also unreliable, which is likely to lead to nuclear proliferation.

bigyabai 2y ago
The purchase didn't make much sense in the first place. The F-35 is intended to operate in contested airspace, which Canada is not. It cannot intercept serious supersonic threats or maintain a strategic advantage in WVR/VFR escorts. If Russia is the threat, the F-35 is not a real defense. It's a cool jet, but there's something to be said about having the right tool for the job. Canada doesn't need a joint strike fighter, they need a cost-effective interceptor.
- llm_nerd 2y ago
  Canada doesn't maintain a military for self defence. If it did we would have pursued nuclear weapon ambitions in the 1940s and focused overwhelming on terrestrial missile systems and attack submarines. Even the interception routine of playing the games with Russian bombers at the edge of airspace is just meaningless theatre -- not only would those bombers long have deployed cruise missiles in a real conflict, the vast majority of devastation would have come from ICBMs launched by ground and sea. In reality our peacetime military has been a welfare project to assist the US in whatever (mis)adventures it gets in around the globe. Our choice of jets, guns, vehicles, and so on is predicated on "when the US drags us into some conflict or other, what equipment integrates with whatever their goals are". So when we signed up for the F-35, that was purchasing criteria. The world is quite obviously changing. If Canada were seriously interested in true self defence against all realistic foes, it would be nuclear weapons and nuclear powered submarines...like the sort the US blocked us from being able to buy from the UK back in the 80s.

somanyphotons 2y ago

Lockheed Martin must be really annoyed at the current administration. Who's going to want to put in new F35 orders now

justin66 2y ago
Honestly, the annoyance probably extends beyond Lockheed Martin corporate. It does not appear to have sunken in that damage to the F-35 export market will affect the per-unit cost of the F-35 and its parts for the US military. Given the amounts of money involved, it seems likely a really big abandonment of F-35 overseas will do more damage to the federal budget than all the oddball firings they're doing could offset.
libertine 2y ago
They didn't pay Trump like the SV tech oligarchs.
- thrwaway1337 2y ago
  Must have forgotten to say "thank you"
  - libertine 2y ago
    Publicly, it needs to be done in public.
pavlov 2y ago
Especially when co-president Musk is tweeting that the F-35 is a dud and the US should leave NATO. That's a double whammy for European countries who signed on to spend hundreds of billions on these planes in the belief that they're part of a NATO security umbrella. Now it seems like NATO will soon be in shambles and the planes might not even fly if that one drunk frat guy with Nazi tattoos running the Pentagon says so. Finland bought F-35's recently, and the Finnish government is saying that nothing should change because America will hopefully be back to normal before the fighters are delivered. I don't think that kind of ostrich strategy is going to pay off.

readthenotes1 2y ago

"Imagine buying a state-of-the-art smartphone, but its full functionality is locked behind a subscription service. " Why is the word 'imagine' necessary? -- Also, love the advert at the bottom "Hate subscriptions?"

karamanolev 2y ago
Because you're buying a plane and the phone is an analogy. Separately, both iPhone and Android have essentially their full functionality available without *paying* for a subscription.
- lodovic 2y ago
  It's more like a Tesla car
- bigyabai 2y ago
  > both iPhone and Android have essentially their full functionality available without paying for a subscription. This is untrue. iOS ships with several features that you cannot enable without government regulation or an annual developer fee. Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge. iOS undeniably ships with disabled entitlements that only paying users can access. Whether or not you consider these software limitations salient is debatable, but the fact they exist is concrete. The F-35 is "essentially" full featured without American support, as long as the functionality you're referring to is the airfoil. We can make all sorts of silly definitions that confer innocence to OEMs, and many of them are both factually and practically wrong.
  - jlkuester7 2y ago
    > Android is Open Source and therefore does have a full feature-set available free of charge. This is assuming a pretty narrow definition of "full feature-set". It is a inacurrate to say there is feature parity between an Android phone running Google Play Services vs one that is not.
- readthenotes1 2y ago

nradov 2y ago

This previously submitted article covers some of the same topics in greater technical detail. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43329336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43329336

howard941 2y ago
Your link points to a much better, more interesting, article

neilv 2y ago

So what's the "vintage Linux ThinkPad" of fighter aircraft -- capable, maintainable, affordable, and no-nonsense? F-16? (I'm going to start thinking of my big ThinkPad T520 as an F-15E.)

olelele 2y ago
Being a bit proud of where i grew up I will posit the JAS 39 Gripen as a contender. Developed since the seventies and still in active production after six? revisions or so.
- ohgr 2y ago
  Glorious bit of kit that. Any engineer would tip their hat towards that fine piece of engineering.
- nradov 2y ago
  The Saab JAS 39E Gripen is fine for what it is, and perfectly capable of limited missions like homeland defense. But it's not survivable for penetrating strikes into defended airspace (i.e. Russia). And it's quite small which, while an advantage in some scenarios, means that if you load it up with external fuel tanks and ordinance for a long range strike mission then performance and efficiency goes to crap. The Gripen is powered by the US-made GE F414 engine, so any purchases can still be vetoed by the US government and buyers will be dependent on US supply chains for maintenance.
ohgr 2y ago
From a European perspective, the Panavia Tornado. Was heavily involved in that project from an avionics perspective. To this day I learned more on that than I did at any startup, tech company or bullshit merchant. It was engineering at its finest.
- nradov 2y ago
  Tornado production ended in 1998 and it has been retired. It's not an option any more.
2y ago

maxglute 2y ago

It's hilarious (really borderline treasonous) as a "joint strike fighter" program, no none US partners thought maybe they could secure some sort of sole-source provider deal to at least have some leverage. Well I think Martin Baker does all ejection seats.

dboreham 2y ago
This is why Israelis wrote their own software for the F-35I Defense vendors backdooring/degrading/IFF-ing their products when sold for export has been a thing for many decades. Heck the UK sold enigma machines to a bunch of countries after WW2, specifically because they could break its code. This issue is why there is a French and UK and Swedish (and Russian) defense industry.
- bigyabai 2y ago
  Makes me wonder what the Israeli avionics look like in India/Malaysia's Su-30s. They're awfully good at putting American insights to use...
nradov 2y ago
The UK is the only Level 1 partner on the F-35 program and they are the sole source providers for several essential components. They have significant leverage. https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/how-much-of-the-f-35-is-british-built/ https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/how-much-of-the-f-35-is-brit...

Sharlin 2y ago

The Commander of the Finnish Air Force gave an interview on the matter (Finland recently purchased 64 F-35As). He dismissed any concerns, of course – what else could he officially say? > He expressed confidence that the United States and Lockheed Martin would ensure the operational capability of Finland’s F-35 fleet in all circumstances, given the decades-long partnership. He also noted that all modern weapons systems, including those used in Europe, contain software components primarily originating from the United States. https://yle.fi/a/74-20150575 https://yle.fi/a/74-20150575

wrs 2y ago
That’s such an outmoded and naive statement that it’s almost like a coded warning.
- impossiblefork 2y ago
  By warning mean in the sense that 'we expect it to work as it should' can be the last thing your customer says before he sues you?
  - wrs 2y ago
    What he said amounts to “all modern weapons systems can be disabled at the whim of the United States”. And the reference to “years of partnership” highlights the sudden about-face that is now happening with respect to many of those partnerships.
- jgilias 2y ago
  But what else could they say? “Yeah, we’re fucked now that the US is turning into a dictatorship and a Russian ally!”? That’s a fast track to those kill switches being deployed on hardware delivery.
bergie 2y ago
Going with the F-35 was a bet that sadly went wrong. The assumption was that it'd be paying protection money to US to help us against Russia if SHTF. In hindsight, Gripen or Rafale would've been a much better option. But few saw how different US foreign policy would soon get.

rqtwteye 2y ago

Let's hope Europe finally starts developing their own again. It will be good for jobs and technical knowledge. Globalization can be good but for critical things like weapons or also chips, it's better to have capability at home. I think Trump may be miscalculating the situation. The Ukraine war already caused a shift of some countries away from the West towards Russia/China. With Trump being so openly hostile towards former allies, the US may lose influence world wide.

fatbird 2y ago
Europe has the Eurofighter Typhoon and is working collectively on its successor. France has the Rafale. Even if the F-35 is superior, Europe has plenty of fighter tech to continue developing as a comparable platform. This is true for virtually all American military tech: Patriot/SAMPT, Abrams/Leopard, etc. What Europe doesn't currently have is the production capacity to match American capacity, but that's exactly what they're changing now.
- acdha 2y ago
  The other big thing I’m wondering about is how much the invasion of Ukraine has people reconsidering super-expensive fighters versus drones and missiles. It feels like the cost-benefit ratio has fundamentally shifted in a way everyone is still fully updating their tactics for.
  - fatbird 2y ago
    I can't imagine the scale of doctrine rewriting that will be done over the next 10 years, constantly argued by companies like Lockheed Martin who are so heavily invested in large scale expensive platforms (while simultaneously drooling over new contracts for drones). It's not just planes, either. WW3 was going to be a huge tank battle fought in Europe. I don't think we've seen the end of tanks, but I suspect we'll see them no longer being the central weapon around which combat formations are built.
  - nradov 2y ago
    It depends where those people are expecting to fight. Small drones have proven effective for defensive, attritional warfare on geographically constrained battlefields. But the US military is pivoting to fight China in an island hopping campaign in the western Pacific Ocean, where ranges are orders of magnitude longer and a little battery powered drone can't get anywhere. There it looks like super-expensive fighters will be the only way to accomplish the mission. https://www.twz.com/air/next-generation-fighter-critical-to-future-air-superiority-key-usaf-study-concluded https://www.twz.com/air/next-generation-fighter-critical-to-...

delichon 2y ago

I've read speculation about robocars that will drive themselves back to the dealership if you're late on a payment. An F-35 can operate as a big drone. They don't even have to send Maverick to repo it. On its next outing it can fly itself home at the administration's whim. Which may be inconvenient for the pilot, their wingman, their mission, etc.

r0ckarong 2y ago

You wouldn't download a national defense grid.

hipsterstal1n 2y ago

These planes that we sell, not just the F-35, all come with a bevy of support from US folks. I have friends and family that travel that globe, visiting US allies, in order to support, train, and meet with counterparts in the respective countries to assist their use of US aircraft they purchase. These friends and fmaily also get flown around if there are any accidents or investigations involving these planes. The F-35 is just the next step in the "subscription service".

jlkuester7 2y ago

The "issues" described here seem to me to be basically just run-of-the-mill aquisitions considerations. Is anyone out there buying any kind of enterprize-grade hardware in any industry and not doing the due dilligence to consider operating costs over the lifetime of the unit? All technology of sufficient complexity requires a supply chain to be in place to support it. Folks are not just waking up today and realising those F-35s they bought will need to be supported or maintained. The only thing remotely newsworthy here may be a story around a loss in global confidence in the US "brand", but I think the actual implications of that (if any) still remain to be seen....

mwinatschek 2y ago

Could that become a problem with any electronic product made by US companies? If their government demands Apple, Google & Co. to remotely brick computers, phones, and tablets for whatever reason, why should I bother buying them in the first place?

high_na_euv 2y ago

>Software Updates: The F-35 is driven by complex software systems that require constant updates to maintain operational effectiveness, security, and functionality. Without these updates, the jet's capabilities degrade over time. Why it degrades? Any examples of that?

TeaBrain 2y ago
Sound like marketing to me.

ZeroTalent 2y ago

Imagine buying something for $100-150M and having it disabled...