by CapriciousCptl on 6/3/21, 12:19 AM with 180 comments
by pg_bot on 6/3/21, 1:05 AM
While I don't doubt that it is better to fly than the F-16, so would every other plane we would have developed instead of this nightmare. I also am worried that it will be obsoleted with the development of advanced military drones. Why risk a human life when you can just send a robot to the battlefield instead?
by aeturnum on 6/3/21, 12:58 AM
This makes me think about naval development before WW2. Everyone had lots of ideas about battleships and how to pack more guns onto a faster ship and all these other things, but lots of people missed how aircraft carriers would change things. I'm sure the next war will be different. The obvious development is drones, but I also think about the plotline of the second Battlestar Galactica series where the protagonists only initially survive because their ship eschews network connections. It seems like we aren't quite sure what future battles will look like and the US is making a guess in the form of a $1.5tn plane project.
by kemitchell on 6/3/21, 1:03 AM
This passage caught my eye:
> The last major reason the F-35 has seen so much criticism is that it was the first jet developed in the social media age. The paradigm shift, cost, and early problems, coupled with concurrency, led to an explosion of negative social media that grew into mainstream media coverage.
Cost buried second in a list of factors contributing to…social media as major factor?
If it weren't for those pesky kids on the Internet!
by quelsolaar on 6/3/21, 1:59 AM
War is about winning the economics. Can your economy and industrial output out pace what your enemy destroys, vs your opponents output and what you can destroy.
Even in peace time, this is a major factor. Keeping up with the US on military spending bankrupted the USSR, at the same time as Japanese and German industries where able to leap ahead of both, since they didn't spend on military post WW2.
The US may want to have a good Military to defend against China, but if it spends too much, and not enough on civil industry (and education) China may crush the US economically, without firing a bullet.
You can have the most Nukes of any country, but at some point, you have enough nukes to do anything you want, and after that, any nuke you add is a drain on your economy. Having the "best" or "most" weapons isn't the same as having the right allocation of resources.
by irjustin on 6/3/21, 1:02 AM
Does the bad press miss the point?
So much that "point" is the cost per aircraft is nutso for what you get. Something that's stealth, dogfight, and close-in air support.
And perhaps the article is right, the stealth is fantastic. Lets you fire without being seen. But after you've fired it, then what? Now everyone knows where you are and a potential dog fight is coming.
It's well known its dog fighting is weak even compared to other older fighters, but maybe it's also fair to say dog fighting is a thing of the past[1].
Being a stealth mobile missile battery... Is a good long range offense a strong defense? These kinds of things can only be tested, so... jury's still out.
My personal criticism comes in the close in air support, what good is all that money that was dumped into stealth doing as it just hovers above in plain view/access? Also, it does a poor job at flying slowly. It's just not specialized in it.
Time will tell if the price tag is even close to being justified, but I'm still a strong skeptic.
[1] https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/f-35-pilot-heres-wha...
by pton-throw on 6/3/21, 12:48 AM
He also calls it a supersonic fighter, which isn't true. The coatings cannot withstand sustained periods of supersonic flight.
by Animats on 6/3/21, 1:13 AM
[1] https://www.aetc.af.mil/News/Photos/igphoto/2002209050/
by jlawer on 6/3/21, 1:56 AM
It IS a very capable war-plane for many of its roles. Much more capable then the harrier and with many capabilities that the F-16 & F-18 lack. It has different solutions to the problems it faces though.
Many of these new approaches to old problems that are arguable. Is a stealthy approach (F-35) more effective then raw manoeuvrability (F-16) in fighter vs fighter combat? Probably if the stealth can be maintained. Is high flying precisions guided weaponry as better then what an A-10 can do in close air support? Maybe? These points will be argued by airchair air marshals until we have another big war to "answer" the question.
But the F-35 has failed at being the cheap general purpose aircraft it was promised to be. It has been earmarked to replace the F-16 in its entirety, as the low end fighter to the F-22 raptor as the high end. This was one of the reasons the F-35 has a single engine. Recent moves are to make the F-35 the new high end fighter w/ a new lightweight fighter the low end that can be cheap enough to fulfil this need.
by johnklos on 6/3/21, 1:15 AM
by mikehollinger on 6/3/21, 1:31 AM
It's well worth the hour if you're an aviation geek.
by phendrenad2 on 6/3/21, 1:07 AM
by ncmncm on 6/3/21, 3:17 AM
The actual point is that we are absolutely stuck with the F-35, so had better make it good--or at least take up thinking it's good, where we can't.
It is not correct to compare it to an F-16. It needs to be compared to a whole fleet of aircraft, because it costs as much as much as a fleet. Could it take on 8 F-16s at once?
It is not correct to compare it to an F-16 because you can afford to fly your plentiful F-16s in harm's way, but have to keep your paltry few F-35s a hundred miles back, out of any possibility of danger.
The reason we are stuck with the F-35, despite its still suffering over 600 class-A design flaws (each risks loss of airframe), is that it is built in 48 states. To kill it you would need to get senators from 24 of those states, and the other two besides, to vote against it. It could explode every time the gear doors shut, and we would still be stuck with it, and they know. Be glad it can take off and land.
by ldh on 6/3/21, 1:07 AM
Sounds like the national defense equivalent of rewriting your website from scratch in $LATEST_WEBSHIT_FRAMEWORK. Sure, it's a worse product, but just imagine how great it _could_ be if we halt development of the working version and spend a trillion dollars making the new one work. See? It's better! And the customer is paying hand over fist, so everyone wins.
by rjvs on 6/3/21, 8:24 AM
I imagine that a Chinese fighter probably costs a lot less to get into the air than an F-35 does. The airframe and engines might not have a higher MTBF than F-35 (or maybe they do) but they are certainly cheaper and easier to replace, regardless.
There's an obvious economic and industrial capability question to all of this. A player with cheap planes can erode the benefits of the technologically superior one by simply encouraging them to be used more, or forcing the decision to not use them for fear of stretching supply lines... Thus reducing the required response time when it's decided to actually deploy the expensive weapon.
[1] https://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/japan-denies-report-tha...
by thelucky41 on 6/3/21, 1:13 AM
Whether the F-35 will be successful or not does not matter whether there are armchair journalists or mainstream reporters covering the project, but in this case we can enjoy the increased accountability. This should be seen as a positive effect of social media, if anything.
This had me wondering how many mistakes in previous projects were smoothed over by clever marketing, and how many are being exposed now. Does social media make it easier or harder for the general public to get accurate information on this sort of thing?
by ioseph on 6/3/21, 1:00 AM
by ummonk on 6/3/21, 1:54 AM
by emmelaich on 6/3/21, 1:26 AM
by Sophistifunk on 6/3/21, 4:08 AM
by Pet_Ant on 6/3/21, 1:01 AM
by mbgerring on 6/3/21, 1:54 AM