4 ms·

The goal of concept to aircraft in 36 months is admirable. Anduril recently built a jet in a similar timeframe. In the US at least, the last 30 years after defe

The goal of concept to aircraft in 36 months is admirable. Anduril recently built a jet in a similar timeframe. In the US at least, the last 30 years after defense industry consolidation has caused great stagnation. The F-35 took over a decade and went monstrously over budget, more as a jobs program than as a functional product. Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors.

wbl 1mo ago
The DoD changing its mind several times did not do the F-35 project any favors
- urbsgpw 1mo ago
  Yup, while I'm sure that part of it is that the big players got used to this modus operandi, part of it it just your client not knowing what they want. I work for a financial institution, I see this everyday. Our IT partners just have to wait for our ill-conceived and ill-defined tickets and changes of priorities, keep track of the tickets and the money keeps flowing by itself. I know the analogy isn't perfect, but still. Hats off to Anduril for shaking up the space. Wonder if the Swedes will be able to match them.
  - tyre 1mo ago
    The client not knowing what it wants, and then having multiple clients who all want different things. Making meaningfully different variants for different branches of the US military seems excessive. Do we really need a VTOL version? I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe it looks cool and we can do without / spend that money elsewhere.
    - urbsgpw 1mo ago
      It did look friggin cool tho:) But I always preferred the F22. That thing is beautiful and the metrics are insane. But for a while it seemed like there was no peer contender and they stopped the programme.
      - wbl 1mo ago
        The F-22 cannot do half the things the F-35 can. Yeah it's fantastic as an air superiority fighter, but the multirole versatility makes the F-35 the one plane most air forces need to have.
    - nradov 1mo ago
      We don't need it, but it's too late now to drop it. Going back the the Joint Strike Fighter program circa 1993, the primary requirement for the V/STOL "B" model came from the USMC. They had an institutional fear stemming from experience in WWII that they couldn't depend on Navy fleet carriers for the close air support mission so they insisted on having that capability organic to amphibious ships (which lack catapults and arrested landing equipment). Originally that mission was performed by the AV-8B Harrier, but they (correctly) recognized that it wasn't survivable against modern air defenses. Hence the requirement for a 5th-generation replacement. The Marines had a lot of political influence in Congress at the time and were able to get their way. Requirements from international program partners including the UK and Italy who wanted to pretend that their crappy little mini-carriers could still be relevant also played a part. Today the notion of conducting an opposed amphibious assault looks increasingly unrealistic. Even third-world terrorist groups now have drones and guided missiles that could massacre the connectors and transport rotorcraft. The F-35B can survive but there won't be any ground troops alive to support. So it's original reason to exist has largely vanished. And the sad thing is that the pointless V/STOL requirement forced a fat single-engine airframe on the entire program which badly compromised the "A" and "C" models in terms of reliability, range, speed, and payload. Oh well.
      - wbl 1mo ago
        VTOL opens up a lot of fun basing options. I'm a little surprised Finland eschewed it.
    - pseudohadamard 1mo ago
      The whole thing of nations trying to build the fastest, stealthiest, VTOL-est, most high-tech expensive fighter they can reminds me of the generals desperately trying to engineer cavalry charges in 1917 or the navy folks dreaming about bigger battleships in 1944. To see where this ends up, look at Ukraine, you've got a few of the remaining high-tech super-expensive fighters loitering a long way from the battlefield launching long-range standoff munitions and then leaving again, and that's it. Or look at Iran, lawnmower-engine-powered darts stalemating the country with the most expensive, high-tech fighters in the world, and the US is running out of munitions while Iran is a long way from running out of darts. A thousand darts beat one F-35 no matter how technically superior it is.
- pixelesque 1mo ago
  Block 4's still an absolute shit-show in terms of management and progress...
roosterIllusi0n 1mo ago
F-35 took nearly 3 decades. As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.
- junofan 1mo ago
  I mean looking at the state of that conflict… the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great. Maybe other countries will want to go with this kind of attritable aircraft concept instead.
  - krisoft 1mo ago
    > the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great In what sense do you mean that?
  - esseph 1mo ago
    Drones are the number one killer between all weapons deployed in Ukraine. More than artillery or airstrikes.
    - jijijijij 1mo ago
      I think they meant the kind of warfare cheap drones encourage. I believe they implied other means may result in quicker conflict resolution. I think the problem is, apart from deploying nuclear weapons, air-based warfare campaigns have never really been all that effective at achieving strategic goals. Bombing stuff always seems promising, but in reality consequences are hard to predict due to complexity and results tend to be underwhelming. For the same reason, cheap drones favor the defender IMO. A typical country can sustain quite a bit of damage on home soil, without losing will to fight and popular support. On the other hand, the attacking carrier on their coast line, becomes a singular target instrumental to the aggressor's war efforts. On the front, cheap drones freeze the contact line, which of course also benefits the defender. Ukraine is very successful at keeping front lines relatively stable, despite man power shortages, due to drones, but neither Ukraine, nor Russia are very successful with their deep strike drone campaigns. I mean stuff is burning all over, but it changes little for ending the war so far. Train tracks are quickly back in operation, refineries repaired, stocks replenished, behavior patterns changed. Population experiencing reverse hedonistic adaptation to the new shitty normal. No models to predict resilience. Collapse may happen instantly or not at all. Also pretty evident with the US/Israel aggression against Iran right now. It somehow always takes a lot more than expected to break your enemy in the deep.
mschuster91 1mo ago
> Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors. The problem is, will there be enough of a demand? Part of why military procurement programs are stretched so long now is because the hot war that these things might be used in (aka, an all out direct war with Russia or China) is... increasingly unrealistic, but at the same time the US (or EU) still have to maintain the know-how, and we don't need hundreds or thousands of unit which makes the unit price including R&D extremely high.
newsclues 1mo ago
Industry and wealth transfer and job creation programs have different goals. Congress is at odds with efficient industries.
godwinson__4-8 1mo ago
The DoD needs a kick in the opposite direction. Make the Pentagon finally pass an audit. Cut its funding. It is clear the profligacy is incentivizing bad decisions - the new normal in the Strait of Hormuz being only the latest. It's clearly too much of a toy and too much capability for the past few decades of both civilian and military administration. An entire generation only knows the United States military as an institution of blunder, excess and failure. After cleaning house, the United States should also bring back the draft. More social spending should be paired with more public service. It will be harder to start wars of choice and treat veterans like beggars when everyone's kids will have to sacrifice. This will not degrade capability, as many of the most capable militaries in the world have a draft - notably Israel. Making people from Iowa and New York serve together would be good for a dangerously fracturing country. The "volunteer professional" military was created to get around opposition to Vietnam. It's a disgrace.
- ecshafer 1mo ago
  I couldn't agree more on the draft. Draft and making congress actually declare wars would be a huge improvement.
  - jijijijij 1mo ago
    A draft would also likely enable/strengthen moral objection for soldiers. A professional army brings contractual obligations for any received benefits (e.g. education), which makes disobeying objectionable orders a question of dealing with existentially threatening consequences (e.g. debt). A draft would also mean the army would culturally approach population average, instead of selecting for a specific background. This strengthens the democratic foundation and surely would be somewhat effective against cultural polarization. However, in today's society, I think it would be most important to have a draft for everyone, not just young man. Otherwise it would be social dynamite. See South Korea. Personally, I would prefer a mandatory choice for everyone (no bone spurs) between social services (e.g. working in a hospital), ecological services (e.g. reforestation), technical services (e.g. firefighters) and military service. Everyone having to do one year for society. It would be a unifying shared experience if done right. People of different background would be exposed to each other, a reliable way to fight bias and prejudice.
tpowell 1mo ago
Canada is (rightfully) re-thinking their F-35 commitment after the current U.S. Administration bullied them in trade negotiations: https://youtu.be/ukYxk31zXWg https://youtu.be/ukYxk31zXWg
- throwaway894345 1mo ago
  Yep, I'm an American, and sadly we've proven that our country is neither honorable nor reliable. I hope Saab and others continue to provide the free world with options until my country learns that there are consequences for behaving like the slimiest used car salesmen.
nradov 1mo ago
That depends on what you mean by "concept to aircraft". Boeing and Lockheed Martin built flying JSF prototypes pretty quickly after receiving the initial program requirements. But it took a lot longer to reach operational status. Ironically the biggest delays were caused by software development, and that part isn't any easier for unmanned systems. Maybe Saab and Anduril will be faster than Lockheed on the software side but so far they haven't delivered anything with even a fraction of the capabilities.

wbl 1mo ago

The DoD changing its mind several times did not do the F-35 project any favors

urbsgpw 1mo ago
Yup, while I'm sure that part of it is that the big players got used to this modus operandi, part of it it just your client not knowing what they want. I work for a financial institution, I see this everyday. Our IT partners just have to wait for our ill-conceived and ill-defined tickets and changes of priorities, keep track of the tickets and the money keeps flowing by itself. I know the analogy isn't perfect, but still. Hats off to Anduril for shaking up the space. Wonder if the Swedes will be able to match them.
- tyre 1mo ago
  The client not knowing what it wants, and then having multiple clients who all want different things. Making meaningfully different variants for different branches of the US military seems excessive. Do we really need a VTOL version? I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe it looks cool and we can do without / spend that money elsewhere.
  - urbsgpw 1mo ago
    It did look friggin cool tho:) But I always preferred the F22. That thing is beautiful and the metrics are insane. But for a while it seemed like there was no peer contender and they stopped the programme.
    - wbl 1mo ago
      The F-22 cannot do half the things the F-35 can. Yeah it's fantastic as an air superiority fighter, but the multirole versatility makes the F-35 the one plane most air forces need to have.
  - nradov 1mo ago
    We don't need it, but it's too late now to drop it. Going back the the Joint Strike Fighter program circa 1993, the primary requirement for the V/STOL "B" model came from the USMC. They had an institutional fear stemming from experience in WWII that they couldn't depend on Navy fleet carriers for the close air support mission so they insisted on having that capability organic to amphibious ships (which lack catapults and arrested landing equipment). Originally that mission was performed by the AV-8B Harrier, but they (correctly) recognized that it wasn't survivable against modern air defenses. Hence the requirement for a 5th-generation replacement. The Marines had a lot of political influence in Congress at the time and were able to get their way. Requirements from international program partners including the UK and Italy who wanted to pretend that their crappy little mini-carriers could still be relevant also played a part. Today the notion of conducting an opposed amphibious assault looks increasingly unrealistic. Even third-world terrorist groups now have drones and guided missiles that could massacre the connectors and transport rotorcraft. The F-35B can survive but there won't be any ground troops alive to support. So it's original reason to exist has largely vanished. And the sad thing is that the pointless V/STOL requirement forced a fat single-engine airframe on the entire program which badly compromised the "A" and "C" models in terms of reliability, range, speed, and payload. Oh well.
    - wbl 1mo ago
      VTOL opens up a lot of fun basing options. I'm a little surprised Finland eschewed it.
  - pseudohadamard 1mo ago
    The whole thing of nations trying to build the fastest, stealthiest, VTOL-est, most high-tech expensive fighter they can reminds me of the generals desperately trying to engineer cavalry charges in 1917 or the navy folks dreaming about bigger battleships in 1944. To see where this ends up, look at Ukraine, you've got a few of the remaining high-tech super-expensive fighters loitering a long way from the battlefield launching long-range standoff munitions and then leaving again, and that's it. Or look at Iran, lawnmower-engine-powered darts stalemating the country with the most expensive, high-tech fighters in the world, and the US is running out of munitions while Iran is a long way from running out of darts. A thousand darts beat one F-35 no matter how technically superior it is.
pixelesque 1mo ago
Block 4's still an absolute shit-show in terms of management and progress...

roosterIllusi0n 1mo ago

F-35 took nearly 3 decades. As it stands US tech companies don't want to do high volume low cost drones, so ukraine will likely end up doing it and become the supplier for other countries.

junofan 1mo ago
I mean looking at the state of that conflict… the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great. Maybe other countries will want to go with this kind of attritable aircraft concept instead.
- krisoft 1mo ago
  > the low-cost drone thing doesn’t look that great In what sense do you mean that?
- esseph 1mo ago
  Drones are the number one killer between all weapons deployed in Ukraine. More than artillery or airstrikes.
  - jijijijij 1mo ago
    I think they meant the kind of warfare cheap drones encourage. I believe they implied other means may result in quicker conflict resolution. I think the problem is, apart from deploying nuclear weapons, air-based warfare campaigns have never really been all that effective at achieving strategic goals. Bombing stuff always seems promising, but in reality consequences are hard to predict due to complexity and results tend to be underwhelming. For the same reason, cheap drones favor the defender IMO. A typical country can sustain quite a bit of damage on home soil, without losing will to fight and popular support. On the other hand, the attacking carrier on their coast line, becomes a singular target instrumental to the aggressor's war efforts. On the front, cheap drones freeze the contact line, which of course also benefits the defender. Ukraine is very successful at keeping front lines relatively stable, despite man power shortages, due to drones, but neither Ukraine, nor Russia are very successful with their deep strike drone campaigns. I mean stuff is burning all over, but it changes little for ending the war so far. Train tracks are quickly back in operation, refineries repaired, stocks replenished, behavior patterns changed. Population experiencing reverse hedonistic adaptation to the new shitty normal. No models to predict resilience. Collapse may happen instantly or not at all. Also pretty evident with the US/Israel aggression against Iran right now. It somehow always takes a lot more than expected to break your enemy in the deep.

mschuster91 1mo ago

> Competition showing they can build a jet faster and cheaper is what we need to kick the DoD into gear with the large contractors. The problem is, will there be enough of a demand? Part of why military procurement programs are stretched so long now is because the hot war that these things might be used in (aka, an all out direct war with Russia or China) is... increasingly unrealistic, but at the same time the US (or EU) still have to maintain the know-how, and we don't need hundreds or thousands of unit which makes the unit price including R&D extremely high.

newsclues 1mo ago

Industry and wealth transfer and job creation programs have different goals. Congress is at odds with efficient industries.

godwinson__4-8 1mo ago

The DoD needs a kick in the opposite direction. Make the Pentagon finally pass an audit. Cut its funding. It is clear the profligacy is incentivizing bad decisions - the new normal in the Strait of Hormuz being only the latest. It's clearly too much of a toy and too much capability for the past few decades of both civilian and military administration. An entire generation only knows the United States military as an institution of blunder, excess and failure. After cleaning house, the United States should also bring back the draft. More social spending should be paired with more public service. It will be harder to start wars of choice and treat veterans like beggars when everyone's kids will have to sacrifice. This will not degrade capability, as many of the most capable militaries in the world have a draft - notably Israel. Making people from Iowa and New York serve together would be good for a dangerously fracturing country. The "volunteer professional" military was created to get around opposition to Vietnam. It's a disgrace.

ecshafer 1mo ago
I couldn't agree more on the draft. Draft and making congress actually declare wars would be a huge improvement.
- jijijijij 1mo ago
  A draft would also likely enable/strengthen moral objection for soldiers. A professional army brings contractual obligations for any received benefits (e.g. education), which makes disobeying objectionable orders a question of dealing with existentially threatening consequences (e.g. debt). A draft would also mean the army would culturally approach population average, instead of selecting for a specific background. This strengthens the democratic foundation and surely would be somewhat effective against cultural polarization. However, in today's society, I think it would be most important to have a draft for everyone, not just young man. Otherwise it would be social dynamite. See South Korea. Personally, I would prefer a mandatory choice for everyone (no bone spurs) between social services (e.g. working in a hospital), ecological services (e.g. reforestation), technical services (e.g. firefighters) and military service. Everyone having to do one year for society. It would be a unifying shared experience if done right. People of different background would be exposed to each other, a reliable way to fight bias and prejudice.

tpowell 1mo ago

Canada is (rightfully) re-thinking their F-35 commitment after the current U.S. Administration bullied them in trade negotiations: https://youtu.be/ukYxk31zXWg https://youtu.be/ukYxk31zXWg

throwaway894345 1mo ago
Yep, I'm an American, and sadly we've proven that our country is neither honorable nor reliable. I hope Saab and others continue to provide the free world with options until my country learns that there are consequences for behaving like the slimiest used car salesmen.

nradov 1mo ago

That depends on what you mean by "concept to aircraft". Boeing and Lockheed Martin built flying JSF prototypes pretty quickly after receiving the initial program requirements. But it took a lot longer to reach operational status. Ironically the biggest delays were caused by software development, and that part isn't any easier for unmanned systems. Maybe Saab and Anduril will be faster than Lockheed on the software side but so far they haven't delivered anything with even a fraction of the capabilities.