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Pierre Sprey on the F-35 [video]
- RyanMcGreal 12y agoI'm reminded of the short story "Superiority" by Arthur C. Clarke: http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html
- akeck 12y agoDirect link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw
- dang 12y agoYes. We changed the url from http://digg.com/video/the-designer-of-the-f-15-explains-just-how-inanely-stupid-the-f-35-is http://digg.com/video/the-designer-of-the-f-15-explains-just..., which points to this. Pierre Sprey, btw, is an interesting character. After retiring from military projects he became a record producer specializing in highbrow jazz obscurities. An original hipster!
- noir_lord 12y agoTitle is still wrong, Pierre Sprey designed the F16 (co-designed) not the F15.
- dang 12y agoThanks. Fixed.
- ameister14 12y agoTechnically I believe he designed both, though his designs were implemented more in the F16 than F15.
- noir_lord 12y agoOut of curiosity do you have a source for that? Everything I've ever read about the guy as well as teen series of aircraft (F14, F15, F16 and F18) say he hated the F15 from the start.
- ameister14 12y agoI do, actually; he says it himself in the video. And the F15 didn't start as a multi-purpose fighter; it started as a single-purpose fighter. It was when the bureaucratic process started that the design of the plane changed and arguably ruined the design.
- stcredzero 12y agoSomeone managed to put enough thrust on the thing, such that the design couldn't get too ruined. The F-15 has enough thrust to fly a brick! One landed safely with a wing torn off by a mid-air collision.
- noir_lord 12y agoPartially it was thrust that allowed the one with no wing to land but also that the fuselage was designed as a lifting body itself creating significant lift.
- greedo 12y agoRuined? You've got to be kidding. The motto when the Eagle was being designed was "Not a pound for air to ground." This was consistent through the A model to the C model. But a funny thing happens when you design an aircraft with incredible performance; it can often succeed in secondary roles. This was true of the F-15, and it was also true of the F-14. This isn't something new, it harkens back to WW2 with the P-47. Considering the success of the F-15 in all of it's models, I'd love to see what you consider is ruined about its design.
- noir_lord 12y ago
- hangonhn 12y agoAlso the father of the A-10, which the air force hates but is so useful. He arrived at the design after studying how air power was used in WWII. We still get a lot of utility out of the A-10. The air force is of course trying to kill it still. Source: Boyd - http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/dp/B000FA5UEG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403040077&sr=8-1&keywords=boyd http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed-ebook/d...
- sukuriant 12y agoWhy does the airforce hate the A-10? That thing is terrifying.
- nostrademons 12y agoJust a guess: the A-10 is designed as a support aircraft for ground troops, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Army gets to claim a decisive victory. The F-15 is an air-superiority fighter, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Air Force claims a decisive victory. Inter-service rivalry is a Thing...from the POV of an ordinary citizen, it doesn't matter as long as we whup the bad guys, but from the POV of a career military bureaucrat it matters a lot whether the victory is credited to his branch of the service.
- hangonhn 12y agoYep exactly. The A-10 isn't glamorous. The air force hates interdiction missions even though they're among the most useful. The A-10 is also relatively cheap and can loiter over the battlefield for a long time
- hga 12y agoWait, I thought they liked interdiction missions (e.g. keeping the enemy from resupplying the front), and that's congruent with their service goals. Close air support is another matter altogether. Ugly, dirty, and a high potential for friendly fire causalities, which makes them look very bad in today's unrealistic no errors allowed environment. E.g. nowadays in our too common non-existential wars if an officer flying a plane hits friendlies, I'd suspect his career will be over. Of course, the A-10 can do both, but the greater ability to do close air support, unlike say the F-111 back when we were flying it, means it will be called up to do so. Another issue is that things like GPS guidance means close air support can be done without getting as up close and personal, and if the guys on the ground supply their own coordinates instead of the target's, as I seem to recall having happened at least once, it's on them.
- pravda 12y agoQ: What is the point of this plane? A: The real mission is for the US government to send money to Lockheed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw#t=443 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw#t=443 By that standard, the F-35 has been a trememdous success!
- angryasian 12y agowhile this is true, the justification I've heard is that there are only a few companies that can provide these types of services to the US Govt.
- buro9 12y agoAbsolutely, because the US Govt (and other governments) have the companies in question consult in helping to shape the requirements of this type of service. Simply: Lockheed define narrow criteria that only Lockheed can win and then lobby enough to ensure those criteria are applied.
- Justsignedup 12y agoSomeone once mentioned a long time ago, that this airplane is garbage for one reason only. Price. Let's say it performed flawlessly, succeeded in all it's goals, it would still be garbage. Because the point being that you counter that with a few cheap drones that all suck individually, but dollar for dollar you can get the hundred drones required to take these aircraft down, while the owners of the F-35 will simply not be able to keep up money wise. $200 MM is a VERY hefty price. Hell 5 of these guys will cover our education needs across the whole damn united states.
- bane 12y agoWhen you need the absolute best for something, you need to specialize. That's why there have historically been so many different kinds of aircraft, each with relatively discrete missions. The F-35 is a terrible aircraft, and the procurement is deeply suspect. The South Korean acquisition process leaked some surprising information about the acquisition process and the F-35 failed the relatively modest criteria the Koreans had set and an older aircraft (F-15) to be purchased. At the time there was loads of news about the F-35 failing the acquisition and it even made it into Aviation week. Doing a google search now, it looks like it was a smooth process from RFP to acquisition and I can't find many of the older articles [1] The rumor is that Lockheed bribed the hell out of the Korean National Assembly and "won" the initial round of acquisition, but the agency in Korea responsible for the acquisition (DAPA) saw right through it and awarded the final contract to Boeing. The National Assembly got upset, Lockheed got upset and probably some U.S. congressmen got upset and the entire acquisition was tossed out "recompeted" and of course the F-35 won the second time. It's a sad joke and I can't even begin to guess at the acquisition shenanigans that happened in the U.S. 1 - http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130928/DEFREG/309280008/F-35-Back-S-Korea-Fighter-Contest http://www.defensenews.com/article/20130928/DEFREG/309280008... edit a great movie about this is the movie "Pentagon Wars" which includes this great scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
- noir_lord 12y agoThe F35 is a dog and I suspect as a Brit we are going to get stuck with the thing when everyone else pulls out.
- XorNot 12y agoNo don't worry. Australia is cutting every single welfare, education and science funding program but by golly are we going to buy us some F-35s so Tony Abbott can have more photo ops in them!
- noir_lord 12y agoConsidering how lethal that thing is to it's own side that might be a good thing, $200 million dollars to get rid of Abbott sounds like a reasonable RoI (this is a joke, I don't want the man to die in a horrible fireball...merely to go away).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- WalterBright 12y agoAnyone interested in fighter design process should check out the biography "Boyd". John Boyd is acknowledged as the 'father' of the F15 and F16.
- hangonhn 12y agoI was about to say the same. Correction: him and the fighter mafia hated the F-15. His work lead to F-16 and F/A-18.
- WalterBright 12y agoBoyd's biography is one of the most rewarding biographies I've ever read.
- stcredzero 12y agoI was watching the "Dogfights of the Middle East." One of the aces interviewed was pretty jazzed about the F-15. He basically thought of it as "a flying SAM site!" Considering how dangerous SAMs got through the last half of the 20th century, it's perfectly understandable how a pilot would be jazzed about having that kind of firepower under his control!
- Symmetry 12y agoThe F-15 was always a bastard child in his eyes, but he's still a large part of the reason it was so awesome.
- pedrocr 12y ago>Correction: him and the fighter mafia hated the F-15. His work lead to F-16 and F/A-18. If I recall correctly the F-15 was partly his baby but he only got in mid-way so couldn't make it as good as he wanted it. Then the Lightweight Fighter program was run by him and generated the YF-16 and YF-17 prototypes. The YF-16 won the competition and became the F-16. Then the Navy didn't like a single engine plane (or didn't like an air force plane) and took the YF-17 and made the F-18. So I doubt they hated the F-15 but they definitely liked the F-16 better. I'm not sure how happy they were about the F-18 given that it was a run-around their LWF process.
- bediger4000 12y agoHow does any pair ("co-designer" implies two designers, doesn't it?) of people design anything as complicated as an F-16? I've only worked on rockets and missiles, but the design of something as small and simple as the old Harpoon anti-ship missile is a pretty complex interplay between guidance-and-control, aerodynamics, propulsion and structures.
- AmVess 12y agoProject leaders, primarily. As in, "This is what I want, and this is how you are going to engineer it."
- bediger4000 12y agoIt doesn't work that way. Some nominal "designer" might doing engineering drawings, but with so much input from other engineers that what you might think of as "design" just doesn't exist. Oh, sure, Old Man Douglas might have drawn the outline of the DC-7's tail up in the old "lofting room", or someone said "one engine" for the F-16, or "elliptical domes" for the Titan fuel and oxidizer tanks, but after that, saying someone is THE designer of a large project is just a fib.
- metaphorm 12y agothe actual production design must have involved hundreds of engineers. Sprey seems to have been on the pre-production design team that developed the theory and concept that was later realized as the F-16. specifically, the idea of a specialized fighter that was focused on aerodynamic performance above all other concerns.
- Jtsummers 12y agoSimilar relationship to famous architects (like Frank Lloyd Wright) and all the people working under them. You have engineers leading the design work (primarily responsible for something like the high level design documents and requirement documents) who oversee others (specialists, often) working on the low level designs.
- jauer 12y ago
- rosser 12y ago"The point is to spend money. That is the mission of the airplane, is for the US Congress to send money to Lockheed."
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 12y agoI don't disagree that the F-35 is poor in every respect (read up on the South Korean procurement vs the F-18), but I am a little puzzled at one part of the video. Is there an actual source that current stealth is easily beatable by long wave radar? I acknowledge the expertise of Pierre Sprey, but I have my doubts on how easy it is to beat.
- greedo 12y agoLong wave radar can reportedly "see" some stealth aircraft. But there's a big gap between being able to detect an aircraft, and being able to target it with a missile to destroy the aircraft.
- stcredzero 12y agoWasn't there a shoot-down of an F-117 over the Balkans enabled by long wave radar?
- greedo 12y agoThe reports I've read seem to indicate that the F-117 used the same ingress and egress routes, it was flying in daylight, and that it was shot down by an SA6 operating in electro-optical mode. Not very good mission planning.
- stcredzero 12y agoGood information! Links?
- nisa 12y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zolt%C3%A1n_Dani
- neurotech1 12y agoIt was at night. Poor planning was definitely a factor.
- virtue3 12y agohey guys, it's ok. The chinese jacked the f-35 designs. Removed the VTOL aspect, narrowed the chassis, and now it's a much MUCH better aircraft. Hopefully they're cool and let us buy them back from them!
- slater 12y agoMaybe this is all just an elaborate false-flag-y thing? The Chinese were allowed to "acquire" plans to a shitty plane, and in a few years the US Govt will be all "whoops that plane sucked, we've been working on a different plane, here it is"
- virtue3 12y agoI don't think our budget could handle another JSF disaster :(
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- nostromo 12y agoIsn't the whole idea of manned fighter jets antiquated? And if this tech isn't dated already, the Pentagon plans to still be using these jets in 2065. (http://online.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-looks-to-lower-costs-of-f-35-joint-strike-fighter-program-1402610449 http://online.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-looks-to-lower-costs...) I don't see a strong reason the Air Force should be investing so much in fighter jets and not focusing on drone technology. He mentions dogfights, do those even happen anymore? Why participate in a manned dogfight when you can simply send drones -- and if they are shot down, send one more, or one hundred more. The U.S. military is always fighting the last war. In this case, they aren't even fighting the last several wars, but are still locked into Cold War, pre-drone thinking.
- josefresco 12y agoDrones don't go on bombing runs during an invasion or as a precursor to large troop movements. Drones can't really support ground troops well due to limited ammo (although they can provide eyes in the sky support for long periods of time). Also, the air superiority that these aircraft enable, allows the use of drones, and other ground advantages. So yes, while air-to-air dog fighting is rare (although posturing certainly isn't), it's only one use for these planes.
- Crito 12y agoI don't understand why drones must inherently have limited ammunition or bomb payloads. Just make the same big beefy airplane you were going to, but instead of having a human fly it by wire, have a computer fly it by wire. Outfit it with more sensors if necessary, but I suspect modern fighter jets are pretty well decked out in that department already. The only thing I can think of is creative solutions to incoming missiles, but if that really is something that computers cannot currently do, I doubt that will remain the case for long.
- sliverstorm 12y agoI speculate that drones have limited capacity because drones are purposefully made small. Why? Because smaller means harder to see and shoot down- useful for a drone. They are more disposable than a pilot, but that doesn't mean they are cheap.
- greedo 12y agoI think Sprey's comments need to be taken with a huge grain of salt considering he thought the F-15 would be a huge failure. The F-15 is everything he didn't want in a fighter, yet it's probably the most successful jet fighter in history.
- discardorama 12y agoNitpick: you mean a small grain of salt. "Take it with a grain of salt" basically means "take it in a very small quantity", i.e., don't buy much into it. If you say "large grain of salt", you're saying "take more of it", which has the opposite meaning from what you intended. Sorry. I'll crawl back into my hole now.
- dntrkv 12y agoI'm pretty the parent has the correct use here. "If you say "large grain of salt", you're saying "take more of it", which has the opposite meaning from what you intended." The claim here is not the salt, the salt is the skepticism. Well, that's how I understand it anyway. http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/take-with-a-grain-of-salt.html http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/take-with-a-grain-of-salt...
- hga 12y agoAlthough in all fairness it must be pointed out the Air Force put it's thumb on the scales, you might say. The original F-16 concept included a thrust to weight ratio > 1, like the F-15's, plus 20 minutes of supercruise (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise which we've only achieved lately with the F-22). Sufficiently strict requirements with the low weight and low(ish) cost that it e.g. sacrificed night and all-weather capability. The Air Force wasn't interested in such a bird, but they were interested in a fighter-bomber based on it, which e.g. required serious additions to the frame and cost it the super high performance. But in an AU perhaps the original F-16 would have turned out to be a magnificent fighter.
- greedo 12y agoOh, the F-16 is a fantastic fighter. It's a great fighter-bomber as well, but it's been exceptional at dogfighting since day one. The USAF just doesn't use it for air supremacy since the F-15 is tasked for that. The USAF was really interested in a "cheap" aircraft that could replace the F-4/A7 in quantity, and function in a swing role as a bomber if it wasn't required for A2A work.
- knowaveragejoe 12y ago> Lockheed’s F-117 stealth fighter was developed in a breakneck 30 months by a close-knit team of 50 engineers led by an experienced fighter designer named Alan Brown and overseen by seven government employees. Brown said he exercised strict control over the design effort, nixing any proposed feature of the plane that might add cost or delay or detract from its main mission. > The F-35, by contrast, is being designed by some 6,000 engineers led by a rotating contingent of short-tenure managers, with no fewer than 2,000 government workers providing oversight. The sprawling JSF staff, partially a product of the design’s complexity, has also added to that complexity like a bureaucratic feedback loop, as every engineer or manager scrambles to add his or her specialty widget, subsystem or specification to the plane’s already complicated blueprints … and inexperienced leaders allow it. For those interested in a deeper look at why the F-35 is so, well, F'd, this is a great read: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-allies-got-stuck-with-the-worlds-worst-new-warplane-5c95d45f86a5 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-alli... It basically comes down to stupid design considerations forced upon the program by the various branches(mainly the Marine Corps) and how easily blinded Congress was by the notion of a (supposedly cheaper) one-size-fits-all solution.
- cowardlydragon 12y agoI'm guessing this is an outgrowth of modern management practices that explicitly do not value engineering experience and believe "process" will produce the desired result. People are interchangeable, there is no institutional knowledge, and management can solve all technical issues.
- infinotize 12y agoIn the video Sprey critisizes the F-15, which is not unsurprising considering the history of him going off and designing the F-16. But isn't the F-15 regarded as a great aircraft? It costs nearly double, but has a good record and capabilities, and is perhaps better than the F-16 at everything but slow dogfighting.
- Symmetry 12y agoYes, but the excellent F-15 was a synthesis between the ideas of the Figher Mafia[1] which Sprey represents and the more technocratic elements of the Air Force. By contrast, the F-35 seems to be an example of the worst excesses of the later. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter_Mafia
- bambax 12y agoLove this guy, and love the interview where the interviewer - LETS THE INTERVIEWEE SPEAK - listens so that she's able to accurately summarize what the guy said! Great moment -- thanks for sharing.
- henryw 12y agoWow, I didn't know stealth was a scam. WW2 radars can be used to find modern "stealth" planes.
- hga 12y agoAs other discussions have pointed out, that's not all that useful if you can't then kill them, which existent long wave radars are rather bad at.
- alphapapa 12y agoAn old, Russian, mobile, vacuum tube-using radar system guided an SA-3 as it shot down an F-117 over Serbia. What makes you think modern HF radars that use high-tech computers won't be able to do better?
- zobzu 12y agostealth still gives you the edge BVR. if anything, even if you'd be out of range of AIM120's you can choose to turn back if you know where the enemy is. close combat its IR missiles anyway.
- gnmj 12y agoIt isn't that much of a scam. The stealth planes were detected by the old radars when their bomb hatch was open.
- zenbowman 12y agoLots of lessons for software engineers in this lovely interview. Like Knuth, Pierre Sprey seems to relish "beauty in the particular". "The goal of generalization had become so fashionable that a generation of mathematicians had become unable to relish beauty in the particular, to enjoy the challenge of solving quantitative problems, or to appreciate the value of technique" - From the preface to Concrete Mathematics; Graham, Knuth and Patashnik
- neurotech1 12y agoPierre Sprey is way off base on practically everything. Almost no air-to-air combat starts out within visual range and this has been the case since the 1980s when the F-16 became available. Part of the reason the F-16 became popular is that its cheaper to buy and operate compared to the F-4 and F-15, and even the F-16 Block 5 had an avionics package that made it quite capable in combat and achieved its first Air-to-Air kill in 1980. Smaller jets like the F-5E and the SAAB Gripen don't have nearly the same combat radius on internal fuel. The F-35 is one of the most agile jets available when loaded for combat. Most of the claims about the F-16 are in airshow configuration and not combat loaded with drop tanks.
- hga 12y ago"Almost no air-to-air combat starts out within visual range..." Until the politicians require visual confirmation of the target. Which is exactly what happened in Vietnam under LBJ. At which point Sparrows were dead weight with a lot of drag.
- neurotech1 12y agoThe target is usually acquired and tracked on radar first. Getting visual ID before firing the missile is a different story. In Iraq '91 they required IFF transponder status to confirm a target as hostile which isn't always reliable. By 2003, the USAF made extensive use of E-3 AWACS and fighters required clearance from Joint Air Operations Center before engaging a target. The E-3 would vector the fighters for an intercept so it wouldn't start visually.
- sitkack 12y agoI think most weapons are huge failure, at least for their openly stated goals. This design [0] from Burt Rutan [1] is beautiful in its simplicity. While it doesn't have the mission of objectives as the F35, I'd rather have 300 Mudfighters than a single F35. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG9LlHcX8lg [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan
- hackuser 12y agoMany posters here are making definitive statements. Does anyone have expertise in this issue or know what they are talking about beyond repeating what they have read? IIRC, Pierre Sprey represents one side in a political battle about aircraft design, but I hope someone here knows more about it than I do.
- jmelloy 12y agoAnybody with current experience can likely not talk about it, due to security clearance issues.
- orangewire 12y agoExactly this. Lockheed tells its employees to be very careful about discussing the F-35 in public, lest information be inadvertently disclosed. Obtaining and maintaining a security clearance is a condition of employment in the defense world, so those who know and could clear up many of the disagreements cannot really say much. Even disclosing that you work on the program is not encouraged.
- hackuser 12y agoPeople with knowledge about airplane design, air force procurement, the personalities and politics involved, etc. could contribute quite a bit. They don't need to be Lockheed employees or to divulge top secret or proprietary information.
- greedo 12y agoThis is dangerously close to an appeal to authority. Yes, Pierre Sprey has more experience, insight, and knowledge than I do when it comes to aircraft design. But you also have to judge him on when he's been wrong (ie the F-15), and to also realize that he has zero inside knowledge of the F-35.
- andrewstuart 12y agoAustralia has just ordered 86 of these little beauties.
- SeriousM 12y agoAnd I thought we (Europe) have problems with our EuroFighter which wasn't able to take off if it was too cold...
- qwerta 12y agoPerhaps it is a good news. Junk airplanes means fewer wars. I am sure EU and US could make decent airplane very fast when some credible threat emerges.
- mclovin2014 12y agoYou can tell by this guy's body language (touching lips and chin) that he is lying about something or everything.
- zobzu 12y agoThe F-35 is actually a pretty awesome jet. Is it better than the F-22 in air to air combat? Nope. Does it have to be? Here's a similar jet: the Dassault Rafale. Its also multirole. Its not nearly as good as the F-35. Is it better than the F-22 in air to air combat? Nope. Did it shot down a F-22, ever? Yes (yes - they have official combat simulations with real planes, only the missiles are not real - and those are made to sell the airplanes so there is no incentive to go easy). Does that means its better then? Nope, still not. Most of the time, it loses. There's several points here: - you dont have to be the best tool for the job to be the best all rounder. - sometimes the best all rounder is better than the best tool for the job. its cheaper (imagine 3 or 4 F-22 scale programs vs 1 F-35 program), and it does the job well enough for many tasks. in fact, air to air superiority is one of the only tasks where you currently need to specialize. Turns out that the army has done this choice as well and has the F-22. - views you can see or read of what is "better" or "worse" regarding fighter aircrafts is most of the time completely wrong and extremely misleading. Most people have extremely, extremely high financial interests in this. Billions and billions. War is a very juicy business. One of the points of the "co designer of the F16" (mind you, id take a F15 over a F16 ANY DAY) are the "small wings" of the F35 giving it mediocre lift. I like this one. The F-35 has better lift and better aerodynamics than the F-16 or the F-15, or the F/A-18. But its non-obvious. This engineer knows that. The general public doesn't. (note that the main reason for this, beside better design for aerodynamics is that the body of the plane provides most of the lift). Some of the other commons points are generally either plain false, either have truth in them but pushed further than the reality.
- greedo 12y agoNot sure why people are downvoting you. Do I think the F-35 is a great jet? Hard to say since it's still in LRIP. But it's reported by pilots who have flown it to be more maneuverable than F-15/16/18. Not as fast as the F-22, and not as stealthy. Longer legged than the F-18 (either version). Where it falls down is in cost, largely due to it requiring so much commonality between the three versions. If the cost stays above $150M a copy (depends on how you calculate that, and it's a hard thing to do), it's too pricey. The F-22 would have been better for A2A, and if the line had been kept open, the Raptor's cost would have ended up below that. So if LM can get the cost down closer to the $100m mark, it'll be fine. New build F-16s are over $80M, the Silent Eagle was expected to cost North of $100m, and neither would be able to handle the role of the F-35.
- chamakits 12y agoAs an aside, it's kind of humbling to think how different the scope and the impact that these design decisions make versus the impact that most of us work on can make. Very few of us can say that a design mistake on our part is the difference between life and death.
- wahsd 12y ago"The point is to spend money. That is the mission of the airplane...is for the US Congress to send money to Lockheed Martin."
- aerocapture 12y agoThe best thing one can say about the F-35 is something akin to what rocket designer Robert Truax once said about the Space Shuttle, that it "represents a truly marvelous implementation of an absolutely absurd concept." If you've read the "Boyd" biography mentioned here by other commenters, you'll recognize many of Boyd's and Sprey's criticisms of the so-called "F-X" fighter procurement program (which eventually led to the F-15) in his critique of the F-35. [1] None of the Fighter Mafia actually "designed" any of these aircraft, but Boyd, Sprey, Christie and others did play a pivotal role in changing how the Pentagon defined and proved the specifications of the fighters it was buying. The F-X was supposed to be a larger, swing-wing, multi-role behemoth, similar to the abysmal F-111, which Boyd proved to Pentagon brass to be inferior to virtually all enemy fighters, by way of his brilliant "Energy-Maneuverability" theory. In this way, Boyd and Sprey influenced the final design of the F-15, but to a much lesser extent than the designs of the F-16 or A-10. [2] One key point Sprey brings up in several of his other interviews on the F-35 topic (which he curiously leaves out of this one) is that, regardless of the capabilities (or lack thereof) of the F-22 or F-35, neither will ever be as successful as the historically-great fighters like the P-51, F-4, F-15, or F-16, simply because they'll never be built in sufficient numbers. For a fighter to be great, its pilots must also be great, and to do that they must train regularly and often, something which has proven impossible with the low dispatch reliability of these complex fifth-gen fighters. Sprey notes that in WWII, the U.S. P-51 fleet triumphed over the vastly superior German fleet of ME-262s, by first developing tactics that could defeat this amazing jet (i.e., shooting them down while taking off or landing), and because there were simply more P-51s available to fight. Sprey and Boyd were right about a few things: build them light (which helps make them fast and maneuverable), build them cheap, and build lots of them. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#Or... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93maneuverability_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93maneuverability_...
- Borogravia 12y agoTo add to the WW2 examples - The German Bf-109 wasn't the best fighter of the war by most standards, yet it got flown by arguably the best fighter pilots in history (thanks to the insane Luftwaffe policy of keeping the best pilots on the front line in perpetuity), and so is responsible for more aerial victories than any other aircraft. Also small, also cheap, and the Germans built scads of them. You could really see the difference in training and experience, however, toward the end of the war, where badly trained German pilots were thoroughly outclassed by their Allied opponents.
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- tsotha 12y agoIt's a little bit early to write the F-35 off as a failure, unless you're talking purely about the financial side. Certainly it's a failure as a down-market F-22 with strike capability. It's far too expensive for that. We won't really know what kind of air superiority platform the F-35 is until it's had a few run-ins with other modern fighters. Stealth capabilities and superior sensors may be more than enough to make up for lack of maneuverability. Or maybe not.
- sytelus 12y agoThere are uncanny parallels here with software projects typically getting late, over budget and a complete mess of conflicting goals. In our industry, we have found that this typically happens when people detecting requirements are neither the end users nor the engineers. Best projects are the ones where people behind it are playing both roles. May be its time for military to instill this culture by assigning generals who are themselves pilots and engineers to lead such projects.
- meerita 12y agoI never understood why they went with such design when they have proper aircraft designs to evolve. Watch the russians: they've evolved the SU models over the years proving that it is better than create something from 0 again. Su-27, Su-30, Su-37 all of them are far more polyvalent than the F-35 and the F-22.
- kevin1 12y agoI am watching this video and thinking about unix design philosophy: "Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features."
- rbanffy 12y agoThe F-35 reminds me of the space shuttle. It tries do to many different things, with many different requirements and ends up being much more expensive, much less reliable and not particularly good at any of the things it was designed to do. I wonder what these projects have in common...
- Gravityloss 12y agoHow much would it have then cost to develop three different aircraft? The lightweight fighter program (LWF), which spawned F-16 and F/A-18, was done for daylight dogfights, but both aircraft have picked a lot of electronics during the years and are used for laser guided precision bombing (something for which you needed an A-10 in the nineties still). Further, AFAIK, the primary US adversary back in the seventies, the Soviet Union, was much closer technologically than what they or others are now. Russia and China are catching up though. So a "good enough" "jack of all trades" aircraft might make a lot of sense. You might just need less aircraft in total. The US Air Force and Navy have been simplifying their inventory a lot in the past years anyway. The F-14 and A-6 are retired for example, with worse aircraft (for specific missions) used instead. You can always go in a more "hot rod" direction - but what will be the price? General Dynamics' Harry Hillaker is the real designer of the F-16. Boyd, Riccioni, Christie and Sprey were part of the LWF mafia, while General Dynamics designed the actual F-16. GD used a lot of resources, did a very thorough analysis and spent a huge amount of time in the wind tunnel. You can see the very visual design evolution in various stories about it. (Incidentally the LWF third place competitor Boeing design looked a lot like the GD one, as did the Vought design.) Here is one history: http://www.codeonemagazine.com/f16_article.html?item_id=131 http://www.codeonemagazine.com/f16_article.html?item_id=131 IMHO, the fatness-inducing lift fan space could have been ditched to make the airplane perform better. A separate less commonal version could have been created for VTOL use.