4 ms·

It's a camel designed by committee. On paper it looks cool. In practice it was /never/ the right plane. The contractors knew and didn't care.

philipallstar 6mo ago
Well yes, we have a load of taxpayer funded people to decide what to build.
- consumer451 6mo ago
  The taxpayer funding is often the smaller part the complete lifetime pay package. > A 2014 study of U.S. Department of Defense appointees showed that 28% exited to industry. As of 2023, 80 per cent of U.S. four-star retirees are employed in defense industry.[0] There are actually entirely reasonable, rational explanations for this, but it's not a great look. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
  - philipallstar 6mo ago
    Undoubtedly so! But blame the people who get free money out of your income to be impartial and make decisions, not the people who have to earn their pay to carry out the decisions. If they wanted to prohibit that sort of thing they could.
Terr_ 6mo ago
> designed by committee I've seen an argument--which I don't have enough expertise to advocate for--that the F35's broad but shallow appeal ("jack of all trades, master of none") has an indirect strength: A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed. Speaking of military hardware in general, I can easily imagine there are cases where "best for logistics" completely trounces "best for the job".
- Jtsummers 6mo ago
  > A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed. Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35, let alone maintain them, and the geographic distribution of the effort only makes that worse. And then they made it worse again by making many parts of the F-35 F-35 specific. You can't just drop in the same radio LRU from most other airframes and use it with the F-35, it has its own and its own maintenance cycles. The thing was designed to be expensive, it was not designed for manufacturing efficiency.
  - doctorpangloss 6mo ago
    part of its mission is being expensive, but surely you can see how that changes with the stroke of a pen?
  - dralley 6mo ago
    > Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35 This is completely wrong, though. It's cheaper to build an F-35 than it is to build a Eurofighter, Rafale or Gripen, which are significantly older and less capable platforms. And not even "a little" cheaper - quite a bit cheaper. Economies of scale are real
    - jemmyw 6mo ago
      After reading your comment I did read up on the Gripen. Seems very interesting. Procurement is about the same as the F-35 but the running costs are about 1/4 so over its expected lifetime it'll be considerably cheaper. On the procurement front though Saab seems to offer factory set up as part of the deal, so you make back some of the cost into your economy. Being able to build and maintain them yourself seems like a big plus. Capability wise the gap isn't as large as I thought either. The latest Gripen-E has similar radar, possibly better software, and they can be kitted out to fire the same air to air weapons. What they don't have is a stealthy airframe and they aren't designed for some of the same mission profiles. If you're a country that doesn't make your own aircraft then having access to both, or just the Gripen for interceptors would make some sense.
wnc3141 6mo ago
I think it's more contractors were responsible for providing only their deliverables. The program design as a whole is done by the DoD when they bid out their requirements.
- dlcarrier 6mo ago
  Yeah, military pricing isn't because of it's good quality, it's because it's compliant, and they are usually at odds with each other.
robocat 6mo ago
Camels are very well designed. Pick on a less useful animal.

philipallstar 6mo ago

Well yes, we have a load of taxpayer funded people to decide what to build.

consumer451 6mo ago
The taxpayer funding is often the smaller part the complete lifetime pay package. > A 2014 study of U.S. Department of Defense appointees showed that 28% exited to industry. As of 2023, 80 per cent of U.S. four-star retirees are employed in defense industry.[0] There are actually entirely reasonable, rational explanations for this, but it's not a great look. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
- philipallstar 6mo ago
  Undoubtedly so! But blame the people who get free money out of your income to be impartial and make decisions, not the people who have to earn their pay to carry out the decisions. If they wanted to prohibit that sort of thing they could.

Terr_ 6mo ago

> designed by committee I've seen an argument--which I don't have enough expertise to advocate for--that the F35's broad but shallow appeal ("jack of all trades, master of none") has an indirect strength: A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed. Speaking of military hardware in general, I can easily imagine there are cases where "best for logistics" completely trounces "best for the job".

Jtsummers 6mo ago
> A wider base of demand goes with a manufacturing and supply chain that is constantly active and can be ramped-up if needed. Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35, let alone maintain them, and the geographic distribution of the effort only makes that worse. And then they made it worse again by making many parts of the F-35 F-35 specific. You can't just drop in the same radio LRU from most other airframes and use it with the F-35, it has its own and its own maintenance cycles. The thing was designed to be expensive, it was not designed for manufacturing efficiency.
- doctorpangloss 6mo ago
  part of its mission is being expensive, but surely you can see how that changes with the stroke of a pen?
- dralley 6mo ago
  > Except it can't really be ramped up. It's enormously expensive to build a single F-35 This is completely wrong, though. It's cheaper to build an F-35 than it is to build a Eurofighter, Rafale or Gripen, which are significantly older and less capable platforms. And not even "a little" cheaper - quite a bit cheaper. Economies of scale are real
  - jemmyw 6mo ago
    After reading your comment I did read up on the Gripen. Seems very interesting. Procurement is about the same as the F-35 but the running costs are about 1/4 so over its expected lifetime it'll be considerably cheaper. On the procurement front though Saab seems to offer factory set up as part of the deal, so you make back some of the cost into your economy. Being able to build and maintain them yourself seems like a big plus. Capability wise the gap isn't as large as I thought either. The latest Gripen-E has similar radar, possibly better software, and they can be kitted out to fire the same air to air weapons. What they don't have is a stealthy airframe and they aren't designed for some of the same mission profiles. If you're a country that doesn't make your own aircraft then having access to both, or just the Gripen for interceptors would make some sense.

wnc3141 6mo ago

I think it's more contractors were responsible for providing only their deliverables. The program design as a whole is done by the DoD when they bid out their requirements.

dlcarrier 6mo ago
Yeah, military pricing isn't because of it's good quality, it's because it's compliant, and they are usually at odds with each other.

robocat 6mo ago

Camels are very well designed. Pick on a less useful animal.