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Test Pilot Admits the F-35 Can’t Dogfight

• demarq 11y ago
  In the aviation industry designs really do stand the test of time. A large number of airliners,props and helicopters were designed back in the 60's and 70's with only a few minor upgrades here and there. I can almost understand why the new jet is having a hard time replacing the previous one. I say almost because at a trillion dollars... Lol
• javajosh 11y ago
  Jesus Christ, can't we kill this program already? What's going on, a trillion dollar sunk-cost fallacy?
  • beedogs 11y ago
    Just keeping the military-industrial complex well-fed, basically. It doesn't matter if the thing can even get off the ground.
    • XorNot 11y ago
      Also the long tail of air force generals who were originally pilots. The biggest shift which will happen over the next 15 years is when generals start being minted who were drone flight controllers or managed those operations. They'll have a very different perspective on where they want development funds.
  • Thriptic 11y ago
    Essentially, yes. How do you admit that your 1+ trillion dollar project was a complete failure? Doing so would be a career ender for a number of people.
    • drjesusphd 11y ago
      Why do these people get to decide if it's a failure or not?
      • deleted 11y ago
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      • Thriptic 11y ago
        I would speculate that at the end of the day everyone is aligned towards making it appear a success at all costs. Many parties want this for various reasons, and there are few dissenting voices: - Lockheed, subcontractors, their equity stakeholders, their employees, and people living in towns supported by the project have an obvious economic interest in the continuation of this project. Lockheed cleverly subcontracted this project out to numerous states to amplify this effect. - Ranking officials in the military have a vested interest as backlash from cancelling this program will potentially negatively impact their ability to suggest high cost projects in the future (please correct me if I am wrong here). Admitting failure with this project also makes our military look weak and incompetent. - Many congressmen voted for this project and they will be exposed politically for having authorized it if it is a failure. - Our president is exposed by not cancelling the project earlier / potentially voting for it as a senator. - Leadership of allied nations would look foolish for placing orders for this plane sight unseen. Meanwhile, most Americans could care less about military expenditures, so almost all the political pressure is directed against killing the program.
• majormajor 11y ago
  It's not at all what it's built for. I'd be interested in seeing articles critiquing it's designed mission (or more reporting on the software woes, which would be very relevant here), since I'm no military strategy expert, but reports like this seem rather useless. Do we expect to be doing a lot of WWI/WWII-style close-range air fighting? EDIT: this, for instance, seems much more interesting: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/22/us-navy-to-lockheed-martins-f-35-stealth-fighter-w.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/02/22/us-navy-to-... But it's hard to see how dogfighting prowess would be any help against long-range radar systems that can detect it before being in range.
  • trhway 11y ago
    while obviously nobody is planning to have dogfights, one can imagine 2 stealth fighters that no missile can lock onto while pilots can actually see each others planes - times for good old school dogfight :) (the probably exception for missiles is IR missiles - as long as you can get behind the enemy plane it would probably be able to lock onto it, even on the stealth one, and trying to get behind each other means pretty much dogfight again. Or similarly, say regular missile can lock onto a stealth plane only from much closer distance - from behind would be much more preferable position as stealth planes are less stealthier from that direction and at close distance the target plane has much less chances to shake off the incoming from behind missile)
    • ongoodie 11y ago
      Even SU-27 had passive locking. If pilot can see, electronics can as well.
  • _nedR 11y ago
    To borrow from a comment on another article, The question you ask is uncomfortably related to a bigger question "If you don’t really need competitive maneuverability, than why do we need a fighter at all?" It is a genuine question.
• CookieCutter2 11y ago
  The Phantom F4 had no main gun because everyone thought there were no dogfighst but only missle fights. Reality was different and they added a vulcan gun. The F35 is not designed for dogfights but long range missle fights and stealth.
  • somerandomone 11y ago
    But unlike F4, F35 has a main gun, and I think that demonstrates the dogfight doctrine still has its way. Unfortunately that gun has its own problem [1]. [1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/31/new-u-s-stealth-jet-can-t-fire-its-gun-until-2019.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/31/new-u-s-ste...
• adamnemecek 11y ago
  Do you guys think that they will eventually scrap the program and open source this future failed startup?
  • somerandomone 11y ago
    Nah, they will just sweep it under the rug in the name of national security. Not even a post-mortem because that would put some highly ranked people whom about to become the advisors of the defense industry on the grilling fire.
    • adamnemecek 11y ago
      I should use /s next time.
  • bluthru 11y ago
    China has already "open sourced" it.
• deleted 11y ago
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• pravda 11y ago
  Who cares? The mission of the F-35 was to get taxpayer money into the accounts of Lockheed Martin and its merry army of subcontractors. Mission accomplished!
  • BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    After doing government contracting myself that really seems to be the mission of all government projects. Unfortunately.
    • hndude 11y ago
      This book is dedicated to detailing some of the inner workings of that phenomena: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...
      • contingencies 11y ago
        That's a great book - and one that I've discussed at some length with real diplomats from involved countries - but actually it's more focused on the use of burdensome and unnecessary international debt to dominate developing nations (hence the name).
        • DennisP 11y ago
          I read the book too. Pretty curious what the diplomats thought of it.
          • contingencies 11y ago
            They validated its story for their country (Indonesia; opening chapter).
• zobzu 11y ago
  "“The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft.”" you can't see behind the F35 - even if you turn your head. there's a rear view camera because of that. The central fan is in the way. That's odd a pilot says he can't turn his head and see well.
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    • zobzu 11y ago
      they have the same design/same issue with the rear view/camera tho. http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets/Display/tabid/224/Article/478441/f-35a-lightning-ii-conventional-takeoff-and-landing-variant http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/FactSheets/Display/tabid/224/Artic...
• deleted 11y ago
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  • ProAm 11y ago
    What is a 'Flight Sciences Aircraft' in terms of all aircraft and in regards to the JSF? (honest question)
    • deleted 11y ago
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      • ProAm 11y ago
        How does that different from a, for lack of better term, combat ready aircraft? More sensors and weight? Does it lack bells and whistles for it to fair better in a dogfight test like this one? I know the prototype Have-Blues were essentially duct tape and Popsicle sticks, would this be a similar comparison?
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  • chaostheory 11y ago
    Yes, the article does fail to acknowledge that but does it matter? Next generation fighter planes should be able out maneuver previous gen fighter planes. Making strong assumptions like stealth always working (it doesn't), as well as longer range sensors being able to always compensate for the f35's sluggishness is foolhardy. Besides couldn't you retrofit most of the new sensors on previous gen planes? It's been done before. What if the f35 faces an opponent that's as agile as the previous gen with the same sensor range? imo The F35s aren't truly multi-role. They're improved stealth bombers and not fighters. my only question is why was the f22 cancelled? EDIT: apparently it was more expensive than the f35.
    • InclinedPlane 11y ago
      The F-22 was going to be more expensive than the F-35 was alleged to be. In practice, the F-22 is now looking like a bargain.
• WalterBright 11y ago
  It was predicted back in the 1960's that the price of fighters would rise to the point of the entire military budget would be expended building one fighter. So far, we're right on target. We have clearly shot past the point where anyone would dare risk employing the F-35 in any combat role.
  • harigov 11y ago
    Could it be the case that the whole point of "trying" to build this fighter jet is to research the necessary technologies just in case future demands it?
    • commandar 11y ago
      Trying to build this fighter has taken so long that our current aircraft inventory is aging out. That's a huge problem.
    • zipwitch 11y ago
      If it was a dozen aircraft, which is where the Russian 5th Gen fighter program is presently, then that might be it. But the US military is ordering over two thousand of them. That's a little much for keeping the skill and knowledge base around.
      • adventured 11y ago
        It's more likely that 2,000 of them will never be delivered. It'll be more like 500, and they'll kill the purchases in N years and move on to the next program. A higher volume mimic of the F22 outcome. The defense contractors will make 1/5th as many as planned in 2010, at 1/2 the cost.
  • WalterBright 11y ago
    More on aerospace cost escalation: http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter11.html http://generalatomic.com/jetmakers/chapter11.html
• vidoc 11y ago
  ".. cost the United States control of the air." when you think about the current situation in Irak, one might argue that it would not necessarily be a bad thing.
  • rwallace 11y ago
    Iraq was a clusterfuck, there's no doubt about that, but the current situation there is that American aircraft are among the few things keeping a whole lot more people from being enslaved or murdered by the Isis thugs. So while there are quite a few aspects of US government policy that I disagree with, at the end of the day, I pretty much do want them to keep control of the air, yes.
• akamaka 11y ago
  Some commenters are unclear about the role of the F35, so I figured I'd quote Wikipedia: The F-35A is expected to match the F-16 in maneuverability and instantaneous and sustained high-g performance, and outperform it in stealth, payload, range on internal fuel, avionics, operational effectiveness, supportability, and survivability. It is expected to match an F-16 that is carrying the usual external fuel tank in acceleration performance. The A variant is primarily intended to replace the USAF's F-16 Fighting Falcon.
  • rurounijones 11y ago
    It is also slated to replace the A-10 Thunderbolt II (AKA the Warthog, AKA the flying gun), another role for which there is much doubt regarding its capabilities.
    • rhizome 11y ago
      It's a dessert topping and a floorwax.
    • JupiterMoon 11y ago
      I didn't think that there was any doubt about this. It is totally incapable of performing the A-10's role.
      • rjsw 11y ago
        The A-10 will get shot down too easily today unless it stays high enough to be out of range of surface to air missiles and just uses missiles or bombs itself. At height it is too slow to cover a reasonable area compared to something like an F-16.
        • JupiterMoon 11y ago
          As I understand it the real advantage of the A-10 is persistence. It can stay around and provide close support for a long time period relative to a fast jet. Apparently the shooters on the ground like having this type of support... Why not let the Army decide what ground support planes it gets and leave the Air Force to gain air superiority and strategic bombing.
• anovikov 11y ago
  So what? It wasn't meant to be used for dogfight. It is a strike fighter with some A2A capability, to be used in combination with F-22 if the airspace is highly contested. When a small number of F-22s is escorting a large number of F-35s, their advantage of IRST and networking capability together with long-range, LOAL AIM-120D (and with European, and later potentially U.S. users too, even more capable MBDA Meteor), will ensure they will clear our most bandits long before getting to the WVR range, where F-22s will be able to take over the job.
  • commandar 11y ago
    This is all well and fine assuming you have enough F-22s. We don't. There's an infamous RAND study involving a conflict over the Strait of Taiwan: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/rgs_dissertations/2011/RAND_RGSD267.pdf http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/rgs_dissertations/... The tl;dr of it is that even assuming F-22s could score a perfect 1:1 missiles fired to kill ratio while perfectly evading all enemy missiles, the simple fact of the matter is that they'd get overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemy aircraft and run out of munitions. And then the airfields get destroyed and it doesn't matter how good your air superiority fighters are if they don't have anywhere to operate out of.
    • anovikov 11y ago
      Also, fulldome IRST means it won't need much of a dogfight. It can direct missile from any angle.
  • dogma1138 11y ago
    Eh? The US has about 100 F-22's which are used primarily for national defense. The bulk of the F-35's were supposed to go to the Navy which is the defacto offensive air force of the US armed forces which cannot fly F-22's off their carriers which means they'll actually need a fighter which is capable in CAP / A2A roles. But we'll see what comes out in the end of that, the 1st country which will get the F-35 as early as late 2015/early 2016 is supposed to be Israel, they are getting their own version which will include a different engine and their own avionic package. And the IAF doesn't care about BVR despite having what is arguably the best A2A BVR/WVR missile currently in service the Python-5, their doctrine is go for the gun kill and that anything else doesn't count. That said you can find similar reservations in pilots going from Gen 2 jet fighters to Gen 3/3.5 fights like from the Mirage 3 likes to an F-16 losing quite a bit of agility in the process. The F-16 at the time was the 1st negative stability FBW Jet and quite a few pilots took it to town complaining that it's too unresponsive too sluggish and you don't fly it but rather the computer flies you. That same issue would've probably been sensationalized just as much as the F-35 if it would've happen today, well the Aircraft will get better and pilots will learn how to use it's flight characteristics, so how much of an improvement needs to be done to the F-35 is yet to be seen.
• dkbrk 11y ago
  The F-35 wasn't designed to be a superlative dogfighter and the F-16 is one of the best handling aircraft in history. By no means am I saying that dogfighting is irrelevant -- history has shown that even with long-range missiles there will always be times when aircraft manage to close the distance, but this test is extremely artificial and doesn't by any means make the F-35 a waste of money. The claim that “The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft" is quite strange. Despite developmental issues, the F-35 Head-Mounted Display has been completed and displays imagery in a complete sphere (4pi steradian) from the aircraft's Distributed Aperture System. Additionally, the F-35 has a somewhat roomier cockpit than the F-16, though rear visibility is more obstructed. The control systems are still being tuned to some extent as well. The F-35 is fully fly-by-wire, and it tries to make sure the aircraft can't be overstressed or stall, but these limits can be too conservative. I'm not claiming that maneuverability will drastically improve, but this is one of the many objectives of testing.
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• bdamm 11y ago
  Well the good news is that Boeing is still cranking out F-18s with no end in sight. And for the price of a single F-35, you can get 10 F-18s. So hey, send out the platoon!
  • ydcvjk 11y ago
    Where are you getting your facts? F-35 doesn't cost 10 times as much. A simple Wikipedia check can confirm that.
  • threeseed 11y ago
    F-18 = 65.3 million F-35 = 148 - 251 million depending on model It actually looks reasonably decent value when you look at it is this way.
    • bdamm 11y ago
      Negative. The F-35 model that the Navy uses costs $337 million. And the same use (carrier F-18 E/F) is $57 according to a Navy web page. So I was a little off... the A models were much less expensive, but that's still 5 F-18F models for one F-35. I think in a skirmish 5 F-18s will beat the pants off a single F-35, since there is no way an F-35 can carry sufficient munitions to compensate for the anti-missile capabilities of 5 F-18s. The only possible way an F-35 could take out 5 F-18s is if its advanced electronics warfare package could remotely hack the avionics of the F-18s, or deploy some EMP weapon (then they all bail out!)
• colechristensen 11y ago
  For people who don't understand the context, this is incredibly misleading. >the Air Force organized specifically to test out the F-35’s prowess as a close-range dogfighter They fail to mention that dogfighting is as antiquated as Snoopy and the Red Baron. Talking about this test without the context is plain irresponsible. Modern air superiority strategy is about delaying detection with stealth combined with advanced electronic warfare and coordination intelligence suites to destroy the enemy before he even sees you, or at least when it's much to late to have any meaningful response. It isn't 'perfect' stealth, but it doesn't need to be. Just need to get close enough that your missiles get to where the need to go opening up the theater for other assets to do their thing. "Too close for missiles, switching to guns" is ancient history. The F-35 is no good at dogfighting because it wasn't designed to be, the test was just something you do to test your outer limits. "Failing" isn't failure.
  • srean 11y ago
    > dogfighting is as antiquated as Snoopy and the Red Baron So they said during Vietnam too.
    • colechristensen 11y ago
      People being wrong on a subject 40 years ago doesn't mean the same arguments are valid today.
      • lagadu 11y ago
        Had they really felt that dogfighting was obsolete, the F-35A wouldn't have a gun.
    • tsotha 11y ago
      Yes, and that was fifty years ago. Let's put this into context. Fifty years before US involvement in Vietnam Manfred von Richthofen was on the cutting edge of air combat.
  • colechristensen 11y ago
• NamTaf 11y ago
  To all those saying that dogfighting is an antiquited doctrine: I agree with you, but the F-35A is supposed to still do that, regardless of how archaic and improbable such a situation is supposed to occur. Because it's supposed to be able to dogfight, compromises in its other capacities have been reduced. Now we find out that, as everyone knew, it can't dogfight. So why even design it to do a mediocre job of dogfighting when they could equivalently eliminate that design constraint and allow it to do its other roles better? The simple fact is that the military has tried to bite off more than it can chew by asking that the F-35 can do everything at once. Because the F-35A is slated to replace the F-16, other sacrifices have been made to make it sort of approach being kind of nearly as capable as the F-16. As a result, it is doing its other roles worse than what would be the case if the military instead accepted that one size does not fit all and removed that requirement. Frankly, it doesn't matter how unrealistic the idea of dogfighting is. The military said 'make this thing able to dogfight at least equivalently to the F-16' so LM have gone away and made specific design decisions to try to achieve that. It's now fallen short of that target, and in doing so has also compromised other capabilities.
  • akssri 11y ago
    It's probably okay. They can always induct more F-22s if need be. That said, I think they're letting their allies (like Japan, Australia) down. These countries aren't allowed to import F-22, and they're stuck with the F-35 (or some European plane), which will probably be easily beaten by the newer Sukhois.
  • jonathankoren 11y ago
    Dogfighting was supposed to be archaic and improbable in 1968 as well, since who was going to get close and maneuver when you had guided missiles? Then the losses mounted, and they created TOPGUN. What really makes dogfighting unlikely, is the fact that United States hasn't fought anyone with airplanes in 40 years. From everything I read, the F-35 is shit for two reasons. First, the Pentagon hadn't learned it's lessons from all the other times they tried to make one fighter for every service which almost always has failed. (The F-4 being the notable exception.) And Second, the Marines insisted on a damn VSTOL aircraft. Really, it's the Marines's fault. If ignored them (and really you should, because they're just insisting on duplicated effort), then you'd have much narrower, and thus maneuverable, airframe. The reason why the airframe is so wide, is because it must accommodate a lift-fan than isn't even installed in the Air Force and Navy versions. Even when the lift-fan is installed, the extra weight, and the need to take off and land vertically, causes the Marine version to have less range and less armaments. If you had cut the Marines out, you would have gotten the <a href="http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/amazing-photos-of-chinas-newest-stealth-jet-show-growin-1657003826">J-31</a> http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/amazing-photos-of-chinas-ne.... It's really a shitty plane, and what really pisses me off about it, is that this seems to be incredibly common place anymore. Read the <a href="http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/broken-booms-why-is-it-so-hard-to-develop-procure-a-1698725648">perpetual http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/broken-booms-why-is-it-so-h... cluster fuck around the KC-X</a>. You can't read these things without wondering if the Pentagon doesn't actually know how to buy anything, and they're getting taken for a ride by overly complex (and thus very lucrative) contractors. I don't think the Pentagon knows what it's doing. Actually, I don't think anyone involved knows what they're doing.
• stretchwithme 11y ago
  Yes, but it really shines as a pork barrel generator. I'd rather see a swarm of drones one tenth the size and one twentieth the price fight our dog fights.
• grizzles 11y ago
  Crazy stuff. I'm bemused that this project goes on year after year and no one in the US govt has the onions to stand up to Lockheed Martin's lobbying machine. A trillion f ing dollars!! For that amount, you could fund 1000 startup companies a million dollars each to develop their best fighter, and stage a knockout tournament until you have whittled it down to the 15 best designs and you'd still have $993 billion to spread among the surviving designs. Oh, your war drones have humans strapped to them...how quaint. --Some future general
  • shakil 11y ago
    You could probably wipe out poverty on earth a 100 times over with that much money. But we cannot afford that kind of waste now can we?
    • adventured 11y ago
      Africa has received about a trillion dollars in aid since the mid 1960s. You can't wipe out much of the total global poverty (2 billion people in that category) for a trillion dollars. And the small impact you would make would be only temporarily unless you build up systems that drive income and self-sustaining economies. To put it another way, you could give the 2 billion people living in poverty around the world, $500 each. It wouldn't even remotely dent the problem.
      • netcan 11y ago
        I wouldn't go quite that far. $500 each (2.5k for a family of 5) for the world's poorest people is a decent sum. If you could actually get it into their hands, that'd make a dent.
      • merpnderp 11y ago
        A lot of the world's poor live in places with little to no infrastructure. A trillion dollar project to build up infrastructure (roads, power stations/lines, water/sewage treatment plants) would go further to eradicating poverty than you probably imagine.
  • 11y ago
• mrweasel 11y ago
  The F-35 is one of the planes Denmark is considering to replace it's F-16s. It's most likely going to be selected because of politics, regardless of it being expensive and not at all what we need. Three Danish defence experts pointed out that while the F-35 is the most advance plane "available", it doesn't matter. While dogfighting is out date, high tech is equally useless. Neither Denmark nor the US have been in a conflict since WWII, where the advanced features of the F-35 would have made any difference. Unless you decide to go to war with Russia or maybe China, the F-35 is so far beyond what you would reasonable require that the cost is completely unjustified. Sadly for Denmark we pissed of SAAB and they will no long bid to deliver plane to the Danish Royal Air Force, despite them having having a suitable plane.
  • VeejayRampay 11y ago
    Hey fellow European. I am not a plane specialist by any means, but I have a question about that F-35 potential purchase. Denmark is part of the European Union, so wouldn't it make sense for Denmark to purchase a European fighter jet like the Eurofighter or maybe a Rafale? Then again, maybe those jets are not very good, dated or too expensive, I'm just genuinely wondering why Denmark would not put its money where its interests lie.
    • smcl 11y ago
      This is exactly what Lewis Page (defence reporter @ The Reg) suggested, ditching the F35 order and buying in some Rafales or F-18 Hornets -http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/f35_carriers_plot_by_bae_and_raf/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/17/f35_carriers_plot_by... Seems the UK have also ordered a shedload of F35s to replace a number of different roles in the RAF including the carrier launched Harrier jets. We've since sold the Harriers to the US which is quite telling really.
      • arethuza 11y ago
        Buying Rafales would make a lot of sense - especially if the UK decided to operate a joint carrier fleet with the French. Never going to happen though.
• cromwellian 11y ago
  Do we really need manned fighter planes at all? For a trillion dollars, you can overwhelm enemy air defenses with cheap, primitive drones in a saturation attack. A tomahawk missile costs about $575k per unit, that lets you buy about 2 million tomahawks for $1 trillion. If you built a drone version that could loiter over an enemy airspace and then attack, sort of a tomahawk version of the Predator, you could buy a hundred thousand of them even if they were 10 million a piece. You could also built UCAV fighters that could out-turn and fly most fighters by avoiding the need for the cockpit overhead and restrictions in g-force. Missiles make 40g turns, and drone airfames have been build to sustain 12-15g turning. Are we spending a trillion dollars because the AirForce has a romantic notion of a human dogfighter in the seat when a guy with a joystick could do the job? Top Gun is a lot less interesting if robots or teleoperation is in play, but do we really that kind of engagement?
  • nextw33k 11y ago
    A pragmatist would say that you are right. However ethics teaches us that you are wrong. Remotely destroying things is not going to help us as a race. Keeping the human in the danger zone helps prevent violence, everybody has something to lose.
    • cromwellian 11y ago
      In practice, in recent battles, the US quickly gains air superiority and US fighter pilots face little if any challenge or danger. I'm not sure it's much of prevention. Before manned US fighters enter a war zone, cruise missile attacks, HARM missiles, and stealth bombers usually take out the air defense system and bomb runways. The US really hasn't faced a challenge to air superiority in decades. I'd prefer we find other ways to keep out of war rather than a few hundred pilots at negligible risk.
    • cheald 11y ago
      There is a reason that we fight our battles with guns and bombs rather than swords and shields; removing the soldier from danger insofar as is feasible while maintaining combat superiority has been the aim of most all warfare technology developments since the dawn of time. While you can most certainly argue against the ethics of war, if you're going to permit war as a reality of human existence, then I'd say it's quite unethical to insist on waging said war with technologies that put your soldiers at any further risk than necessary. It's not like we aim to fight fair wars.
• Supersaiyan_IV 11y ago
  This is what you get for choosing which aircraft to sponsor by going by looks. Boeing's alternative had the greatest manoeuvrability, and now the hay is beginning to stick out of their shoes, as they slowly admit that F-35 isn't as good as we were led to believe.
  • toolslive 11y ago
    Iirc, Boeing's alternative was the only one to successfully complete all tests in the challenge.
  • amarraja 11y ago
    The Boeing wasn't without its issues however. The main reason it lost to Lockheed was the thrust vectoring used for STOVL was flawed and could cause the engine to overheat which was a large showstopper. Funnly enough, I recently read about F35 overheating while in STOVL as well!
• lifeformed 11y ago
  Is this program literally the biggest waste of money of all time?
  • Tloewald 11y ago
    It's hard to beat unnecessary wars: http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/June2010CRScostofuswars.pdf http://cironline.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/June20... According to the linked article, Iraq and Afghanistan cost over $1T (and this was as of 2011 and does not include things like health care, replacing degraded equipment, etc.) and the Vietnam war cost $738B. It may be the first time a weapon system would qualify as a folly by itself (per The March of Folly, by Barbara Tuchman): * Perceived as counter-productive in its own time (not just hindsight) * Has clear alternatives * Decision made by a group, not a single individual It's generally worth noting that Tuchman's follies, and more recent cases that clearly fit her criteria (Iraq and the F35) seem to be follies in a fractal sense: you can just drill down and down and see more stupid as you go -- e.g. given you are fixated on going into Iraq, perhaps you include the State Department in the planning? Nope. Listen to your most experienced military leaders? Nope. At least make use of comprehensive existing plans for invasion? Nope. And on and on. With the JSF there are so many bad decisions bundled into the thing that it's hard to know where to start.
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• deanCommie 11y ago
  Can't believe noone posted yet [this clip from Pentagon Wars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA) about the clusterfuck that was the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
  • tlrobinson 11y ago
    It gets posted every time the F-35 is mentioned on Hacker News. But yes, very appropriate.
  • Vexs 11y ago
    I was about to post this, pentagon wars (and the book it's based on) so elegantly capture the whole problem with the military ATM, the terrible distribution of funds.
• oflordal 11y ago
  Here is a video of Pierre Spray (one of the F-16 designers) discussing the same thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw
• DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  “The flying qualities in the blended region...were not intuitive or favorable.” God, I love bureaucrat-talk. It's a pig. A trillion-dollar pig. But that doesn't mean we can't put lipstick on it! Last time this came up on HN, somebody recommended reading about the life of John Boyd. For those of you interested in how large systems of people operate, how the Pentagon ends up with bad airplanes, principles of organization change, and the philosophy of strategic planning? Go read as much as you can. Boyd was no Sun Tzu, but he significantly advanced the state-of-the art in a bunch of seemingly unrelated fields. I have a feeling we'll be parsing some of his stuff over the next few decades. Aside from providing promotions to large sections of the officer core and gainful employment to many large defense contractors in various districts of various politicians, I'm not sure what the F-35 is actually for. It's like the space shuttle: it's supposed to do so many contradictory things at the same time that it doesn't seem to do any of them well. In fairness, the Osprey tilt-rotor had a lot of the same type of procurement and delivery problems. Anybody remember ring vortex state? But the Osprey at least had somewhere it was going: take a squad of marines or special operators far inland as fast as an airplane without using runways at either end. It looks like the Osprey is turning the corner and can finally deliver the goods. Not so much with the F-35. I'm not sure what to do with the program now. My instinct says keep the close air support and air superiority fighters we have and concentrate on the F-35's stealth capabilities. But strategically, once somebody figures out how to use passive radiation to paint and plot airborne targets? The stealth game is up. Required computing power may be a decade or two away, but it's well within the expected lifetime of the airframe. I think maybe you just bail out on the whole thing and go back to strategy school.
• inglor 11y ago
  Here is the relevant software engineering term for relevance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee
• shomyo 11y ago
  Who cares about dogfight when you only bombing of civilians.
• YesThatTom2 11y ago
  I'm sure the military contractors that profited from this contract don't consider it a failure.
• acd 11y ago
  The stealth the anti radar feature is visible on long wave radio. Something that was likely sold as a feature to the tax payer but does as far as I understand work that well in practise. Pierre Sprey F16 and A10 co-designer speaks about F35 and specifically about dog fight 04:00 in the video. Stealth capabilities 06:00 in the video. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x203cgj_pierre-sprey-co-designer-of-f16-a10-explains-why-the-f35-will-not-cut-it-on-the-modern-battlefield_tech http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x203cgj_pierre-sprey-co-des...
  • TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Isn't stealth pretty much defeated for the last 40 years? I recall reading that Soviet ground radars were perfectly capable of detecting US stealth planes, as well as there being a crash of a stealth plane which was then recovered by the enemies of US.
    • tim333 11y ago
      I think there's only been one stealth aircraft detected and shot down in history and that was because they got a fix on it when the bomb doors were open rendering it non stealthy. Stealth isn't perfect but it makes hitting the things pretty hard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown
      • mikeyouse 11y ago
        And that stealth drone that was captured by the Iranians.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...
    • milspec 11y ago
      Stealth is not a boolean property. What you can do on the ground with giant arrays of huge antennas and/or supercomputers is way ahead of what can be done in a fighter plane, and that is way ahead of what can be done in the seeker of a small-diameter missile.
• justwannasing 11y ago
  Only skimmed the article but it looks like it's, "F-35 can't dogfight" followed by a lot of author opinions and rants. My question is, was the F-35 created to ever be put into a situation where it would be in a dogfight? B-1 bombers can't dogfight either. It seems like he's pretending that we have, or will have, no other fighter jets remaining.
  • onion2k 11y ago
    My question is, was the F-35 created to ever be put into a situation where it would be in a dogfight? Yes. It was created to be a multirole fighter - including air superiority.
• sudioStudio64 11y ago
  DOD spending is more about sustaining the companies in its orbit than producing superior solutions. 1 Trillion dollars for a shit plane...but we can't afford to take care of the veterans and retirees.
• MikeNomad 11y ago
  Unfortunately, the F-35 was predicted long ago in John Boyd's biography (or look up Pierre Sprey, which will bring you back to Boyd).
  • gshubert17 11y ago
    Robert Coram's biography of John Boyd is very good. http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316796883 http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...
• jleyank 11y ago
  Sounds like they've recreated the F-111, with VTOL thrown in. One would think that procurement/design history would be a mandatory study, but they continually recapitulate it. Guess it's easier to shovel out the money this way? Given the design freedom with multiple airframes, I would think it quite hard to outdo such divergent airplanes as the F-16 and A-10. Unless the spare-part situation is crippling, conservative design would be to tailor to individual roles. Call it a Unix approach to air combat?
• ongoodie 11y ago
  In the full-scale war the fighter planes are useless cause the air bases and carriers will be nuked out in the first hour. So the reality is that the planes are not made for fights, they are made for parades.
  • thrownaway2424 11y ago
    Quite. Carriers are useless in a war of equals. They will be at the bottom of the ocean in the opening minutes of the war. But they are brilliant against barbarians, which seem to be our main enemy these days.
    • tim333 11y ago
      In a full scale nuclear war most things would be useless. The US however has managed to use it's planes a fair bit since WW2 though and not just for parades.
• hopeless 11y ago
  I wonder how the F-35 performs against other current generation fighters like the Eurofighter or Saab Gripen. And considering the costs, it would need to be several times better, which I doubt. I suspect both aircraft could out-manoeuvre it. But then the F-35 is supposed to be stealthy so might be able to attack from a distance with relative impunity.
• kosmic_k 11y ago
  Am I going to be the only one who is going to question the source here? The author has a clear opinion on the F-35 that he interjects inbetween the comments and War is Boring's previous reporting on the F-35 have been mostly trying to take it down a couple of notches. Everything here is based on an unnamed source and a document which may or maynot even exist. According to Aviation Week, a reputable defense and aviation source, the F-35 has been doing loading tests. Meaning that if this report and dogfight happened then it was against a electronically limited F-35 against a platform that is very mature and limits understood. Here's a link to the story in question: http://m.aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-flies-against-f-16-basic-fighter-maneuvers http://m.aviationweek.com/defense/f-35-flies-against-f-16-ba...
  • thrill 11y ago
    No, you're not the only one. Without reading the entire and uneditorialized pilot's report then it's a questionable act of journalism on display. That said, even if the F-35 is about equal to the F-16 in maneuverability, there are many other capabilities that it will excel at.
  • fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >> “The door is open to provide a little more maneuverability,” says Lockheed Martin F-35 site lead test pilot David “Doc” Nelson. That's the best praise that the lead test pilot will give it? Also, did you have a look at those comments at aviationweek? Not a lot of love for the F-35 among readers there.
• Shivetya 11y ago
  the best we can hope is the turns out so bad it accelerates the move to drones and their lower costs replacing manned fighter and even bomber craft. While there is some romanticism still attached to fighter pilots the truth is in this day and age their relevance is dropping like a rock and there is little need to put pilots into danger when a drone can do the same. plus drones can be created to do all sorts of maneuvers human pilots could never do... let alone reduce the size of the craft to make it less visible
• protomyth 11y ago
  Well, we did build the F-22 as the air supremacy fighter. Sadly, the much maligned F-22 has actually been used in combat to bomb a ground target[1]. I find it interesting that the F-22 seems to have gotten over most of its teething problems, but the F-35 still cannot fire its gun (needs a new software)[2]. Even when it can fire its gun, it will only have ammo for 4 seconds of firing (2 bursts)[3]. I think the close combat air support / tactical role should be given back to the Army (changing Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966[4] and Key West Agreement[5]) and the Air Force can deal with strategic bombing and air dominance. The Air Force has been trying to get rid of the A-10 with various excuses, but the GAO recently said their budget reason were bunk[6]. They just don't want the job and their loiter time of their replacements is pathetic. 1) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/23/syria-air-strikes-f-22-raptor/16105291/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/23/syria-a... 2) http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/strike/2015/01/07/f35-gun-on-track/21401907/ http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/strike/20... http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/01/08/pentagon-f-35-gun-will-fire-in-2017/ http://www.dodbuzz.com/2015/01/08/pentagon-f-35-gun-will-fir... 3) http://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-guns-f-35-vs-a-10/ http://defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-guns... 4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson-McConnell_agreement_of_1966 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson-McConnell_agreement_of... 5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West_Agreement 6) http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/06/25/gao-report-air-force-a10-justification/29285967/ http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/06/25/gao-r...
• bayesianhorse 11y ago
  The lesson here is that it is really hard to manage projects like the JSF program. Cost, conflicting interests, technical challenges and secrecy requirements in the worst possible package.
• allengeorge 11y ago
  Keep in mind that the headline number (1 trillion dollars) includes the cost to service 2000 F-35 over 50 years. The amount spent on R&D and building it is in the (large, but not as eye-watering) 300 billion dollar range.
• bitmapbrother 11y ago
  The problem with the F-35 is that it's a jack of all trades and master of none. Put it up against a more nimble and agile fighter it'll lose in a dogfight every single time due to its limited aerodynamic operating range. So, what's the real purpose of the F-35? To support the military industrial complex, of course.
• mhomde 11y ago
  Isn't this old news? I remember watching this interesting diatribe from Pierre Osprey (designer of the F-16 & A-10 Warthog airplane) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI
• merpnderp 11y ago
  Has anyone thought of how many F-18 SuperHornets could have been purchased with the F-35's $1trillion in funding, or how long they could have been operated? Or How little the F-18 Advanced Hornet retrofits actually cost? Never mind that the SuperHornet will be cheaper to operate and will have 1/6th the unit cost even after development is over. Plus, the F-18 SuperHornet will never be accused of not being able to dogfight.
• hackuser 11y ago
  This story really is about propaganda and public manipulation. (The following might sound condescending, sorry; there's no easy way to say 'you're being manipulated'. Everyone is, at various times.) The F-35 is highly politicized, and that political fight takes place on the battlefield of public opinion, with both sides trying to manipulate the public with propaganda. And many here on HN are playing their roles perfectly, responding to the propaganda like mice responding to stimuli in a maze. We're all susceptable to it and I try hard to learn to recognize it. I think a good sign of propaganda is the choice of phrasing. If someone is trying to manipulate you, they often try to arouse anger and outrage -- angry people aren't open to reasonable discussion and other opinions, so if you get people outraged on your side then they are innoculated against other arguments. You can see the lack of balanced, smart analysis and the widespread expression of outrage here. Someone trying to inform you will take a much different approach, carefully presenting information and avoiding distorting your understanding with provocation. For example, consider the phrase, "New stealth fighter is dead meat in an air battle" -- clearly it's meant to arouse and not inform. The article represents the analysis, abridged and without context, of one tester in one test of a system that's in its test phase and not meant to be in production for 1.5 years. There are many other articles, representing individuals' opinions (including test pilots), some that praise the F-35 and some that criticize it. I'm not saying the F-35 is a good deal; I don't know. I don't know much at all about fighter planes (and reading the comments, I know more than many here). I don't know if dog-fighting is relevant; maybe it's gone the way of broadsides in combat between warships (and better dog-fighters are like Henry Ford's 'faster horses'). I don't know if the problems described by the test pilot are bugs of a test system (that's why we test!). Think about the state of your systems 1.5 years before production -- they may not look so great. I do know that propaganda like the OP reduces public knowledge; it doesn't increase it. EDIT: Edited to be a little less obnoxious.
  • duaneb 11y ago
    > I'm not saying the F-35 is a good deal I can't imagine how many lives the F-35 would have to save (or combatants to kill, not sure how these equations are calculated) for the money to be "a good deal". You can't put a price on human life. If we could, how much would the average life that was lost on september 11th be valued? In the billions?
• admax88q 11y ago
  The F-35 program is basically just government stimulus spending disguised as something else.
  • drjesusphd 11y ago
    As is almost the entire DoD budget.
• wiseignorant 11y ago
  what if all this talk about the f-35 being crap has to do with some sort of russian propaganda aimed at shaping the public opinion in the west, which should eventually pressure the politicians to drop the idea of buying the f-35. Because what the "Internet Age" has taught me is that the world is not short of suckers, and russian propaganda knows it. Think of it! Putin would have a much better sleep at night if the American allies and NATO members didn't have a stealth fighter/bomber able to penetrate the enemy lines without much problems and hitting the targets with high precision. The idea of f-35 and other stealth planes is to reduce some "costs", like political cost, while still exercising your geo-political control. For instance, the Europeans countries would never send a plane to east Ukraine if there is a chance it might be shot down. Imagine a European Prime Minister saying: "we sent a couple of ours f-35s, bombed the rebels, came back and opened the door for the Ukrainian army to reunify the country and bring peace"; to instead saying: "we sent a bunch of planes, some where shot down, some of our men were killed and the situation in east Ukraine is still not defined". The second sentence could translate into: "shit! I could lose the next election". The russians might not admit it in public, but they are always scared about the western military superiority and economic power, particularly the USA. (Yes, I said economic power, don't fall for the BRICS bullshit, the economic fragility of these countries is nothing compared to the fragility, that of course exists, in the developed nations). They (russians) have their own stealth fighter project, the T-50, that seems not to be working properly, besides the fact they are short of money and had to drop the number of planes they initially planed to build for the Russian air force from 52 to just 12 now. Meanwhile the f-35 is about to hit the skies, and the Americans already have almost two hundred f-22 and and 20 B-2 on top of 10 nuclear powered carriers with a bunch of f-18. So, I say it again, it wouldn't be surprising if the russian propaganda wants to shape public opinion to at least delay the acquisition of advanced stealth fighters/bombers by NATO members.
  • drzaiusapelord 11y ago
    This. Autocratic nations ability to shape public opinion has never been so easy. It was interesting to see /r/worldnews on Reddit go from a milquetoast forum into one of the internet's leading pro-Putin platforms overnight once Crimea was annexed. Suddenly all these guys with broken english were giving the same talking points. Now dumb white kids from the suburbs think Putin is some wonderful chap and NATO being on par with Hitler. Its incredible how well propaganda works. We have one opinion from one test here and suddenly everyone is convinced that the F-35 can't rule the skies. It will dominate many roles trivially and that's something China, Russia, and Iran don't like to hear. Anything they can do to make Americans hate their military and our fighting men is great for them, because their citizens are all in lockstep about defeating us and imposing autocratic dictatorships on their neighbors.
• JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  Come on. They put this up against a 16. Did _anyone_ believe the 16 couldn't out maneuver the 35?
• curiously 11y ago
  They should really start making memes of the F-35. Or maybe even a motivational picture of McNamara, with satirical captions.
• mikhailfranco 11y ago
  It's hard to imagine how so much money has been wasted developing such a mediocre aircraft. I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but maybe the F-35 does not exist, and all the money has actually been well spent on amazingly stealthy next-generation supersonic drone fleets which nobody has been able to see?!
• hglman 11y ago
  Drones. Thats why this doesn't matter.