[HN Gopher] It's Official: Pentagon Puts F-35 Full-Rate Producti...
___________________________________________________________________
It's Official: Pentagon Puts F-35 Full-Rate Production Decision on
Hold
Author : clouddrover
Score : 68 points
Date : 2021-01-02 21:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| bfieidhbrjr wrote:
| Good. The whole thing should be shut down.
| ardit33 wrote:
| It is not good. Like it or not, this is the only alternative
| NATO has for the forceable future. The British Tempest and the
| French/German stealth fighter won't be operational until
| 2035-2040
|
| The only alternative are modernizes 4gen fighters which are
| very vulnerable to modern air defenses.
|
| A 'buggy' F-35 might still be a better alternative.
|
| Also the British are counting for the F-35 to equip its
| carriers.
| lsllc wrote:
| I was going to correct you and say maybe you meant the
| Typhoon, not Tempest, but indeed there is a proposed UK
| aircraft program called Tempest:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Tempest
| mhh__ wrote:
| PS2Bn seems like a hilariously British amount of money to
| develop a modern fighter for.
| SpaceRaccoon wrote:
| There's speculation that the cutting edge radars fielded by
| China and Russia can detect stealth aircraft, so the
| advantage may be moot now.
| lumost wrote:
| I keep hearing concerns that modern radars may be able to
| defeat the F-35's stealth, or will be able to defeat it in
| the near future. I can't help but think that it will be hard
| to keep a plane flying at mach 1 hidden in the face of fast
| scanning and networked phased array radars with modern deep
| learning based detection algorithms.
|
| My understanding is that if you take away the stealth aspect
| the F-35 is a sluggish fighter bomber that would be
| outperformed by most 4th gens. Considering an F-35 is nearly
| the price of 10 4th gen fighters the choice to "upgrade"
| becomes pretty suspect for a lot of Nato partners.
| bfieidhbrjr wrote:
| Buggy? It barely works. Short flight time. Crap wing loading.
| Not good at any of it's multi-roles.
|
| We could build 5-10 F-16s for each F-35, and many more A-10s,
| and they'd be better despite being ancient designs.
|
| They're so expensive we can't even do proper flight training
| in them, it'd cost too much if we break one.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The Israeli's seem to be happy with it, use it in combat
| and are buying more.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > 5-10 F-16s
|
| The new F-16V costs as near as makes no difference the cost
| of an F-35
| strictnein wrote:
| > "Crap wing loading"
|
| Yes, why does this super stealthy plane not have support
| for lots of reflecting metal things hanging from its wings?
| ed-209 wrote:
| Who are these people, both smart enough and dumb enough, to build
| the high tech death machines anyway?
| imtringued wrote:
| The individual components are well engineered, it's the
| integration that is completely flawed.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I imagine the prospect of being able to play with genuinely
| unbelievably good equipment has to help when recruiting - e.g.
| think of the amount of physics, signal processing,
| aerodynamics, mechanical engineering, materials science etc.
| used to blow up a plane 50 miles away in a modern active radar
| guided missile.
| fireattack wrote:
| What does "full-rate production" mean?
|
| I searched and find a few military/defense related articles, but
| none of them really explain it in average Joe's terms.
| claydavisss wrote:
| 600 have already been delivered. Covid caused a disruption in
| final certification, that's it. The F35 isn't being cancelled,
| although I predict most comments here will devolve into a
| debate of the plane's merits. The US and many allies are
| committed, the US will eventually own thousands.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If you didn't know, you've been hell-banned (silently hidden
| from the HN that almost everyone else sees) for two years.
| That's why you get so few replies to your comments.
| ahupp wrote:
| I see their comments like normal, is there something that
| controls this?
| mlyle wrote:
| His stuff starts off "dead" and has to be "vouched" by
| someone with karma to be expanded/seen by default. Look
| at his post history.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If someone like me chooses to reply they become visible.
| Otherwise they're talking into the void.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Basically, "will we make the several thousand we originally
| planned to make?"
|
| For example, the B-2 was planned with over a hundred aircraft,
| but we wound up making only about 20.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| I think it's a contract checkpoint that signals a major $$$
| release to the vendor.
| sschueller wrote:
| Yet for some weird reason this plane is still one of the 4 plains
| in the running to replace the old FA-18 in the Swiss air force.
| strictnein wrote:
| Which plane, exactly, is superior to the F-35?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Arguably nothing at the moment, at least for the role the
| F-35 is designed for.
|
| Realistically for Switzerland these aircraft are basically
| 9/11 prevention and national penis-enlargers, so any modern
| jet would do the trick (subject to politics i.e. no Sukhois).
| slac wrote:
| I think the cost is one of the deciding factors...
| lsllc wrote:
| They'll just keep upgrading the F-18 design, new avionics,
| better engines, airframe tweaks. Way cheaper than the F-35.
|
| The B-52's are still in service after 60+ years, with
| pretty much everything upgraded several times over.
| strictnein wrote:
| You can't make the F-18 a stealth fighter. But those
| planes will still be used for a long time. The F-15 may
| even be making a small comeback: https://www.popularmecha
| nics.com/military/aviation/a26413900...
| bfieidhbrjr wrote:
| Pretty much anything from the last generation. Embarrassingly
| the F-16 beat it in combat, for example.
|
| For close air support the A-10 is vastly superior.
|
| The F-35 is an employment program like the TSA.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Embarrassingly the F-16 beat it in combat, for example.
|
| What kind of combat?
|
| If an F-35 actually makes it to a merge somethings gone
| wrong, and reports vary wildly
| https://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-vs-f-16-15-18-lost-
| beat...
|
| Ultimately a lot of F-35 hysteria seems to derive from it
| being the first US aircraft developed entirely post-
| internet where news travels quickly - i.e. If your projects
| early tests and teething problems were being reported on
| publicly by everyone you'd probably look fairly bad too.
|
| That's not to say the F-35 is flawless in any way, but
| these conversations usually end up in a reductive cycle of
| arguments we can't know the answer too without security
| clearance.
| laverya wrote:
| > For close air support the A-10 is vastly superior.
|
| Vastly superior for providing CAS in uncontested airspace
| against enemies that struggle to acquire MANPADS, let alone
| a modern air defense network or their own air force,
| perhaps.
|
| But the argument is that the US military should be designed
| for fighting the biggest plausible enemy, and that's Russia
| or China, not goat herders in Afghanistan. A major
| inefficiency in counterinsurgent air support is expensive
| and survivable, using A-10s against a major threat _isn
| 't_.
| strictnein wrote:
| Interesting how you heard about that one dogfight, but not
| its record since then. Again, places like The Drive have
| been pushing bad F-35 news because it draws lots of clicks.
|
| The F-35's k/d ratio since that dogfight in 2015, when
| pilots were just figuring the plane out:
|
| 15-1
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-once-beaten-
| by-f-16s-sh...
|
| > Since then, the F-35 has mopped up in simulated dogfights
| with a 15-1 kill ratio. According to retired Lt. Col. David
| Berke, who commanded a squadron of F-35s and flew an F-22
| -- the US's most agile, best dogfighter -- the jet has
| undergone somewhat of a revolution.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's really baffling that the US isn't looking more heavily at
| cheaper, easier to field aircraft like the A-29 Super Tucano for
| counter-insurgency operations like Iraq and Afghanistan.
| manfredo wrote:
| The A-29 is functionally not all that different than armed
| drones like the predator or reaper. Except the latter have an
| even longer loiter time, and take pilot losses out of the
| equation.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Doesn't the US have many combat aircraft that can fit that
| service role?
| [deleted]
| leetcrew wrote:
| the a-29 is really intended for US COIN partner nations (read:
| not first world militaries). the aircraft is much less
| survivable than an a-10 (which is already more vulnerable than
| people tend to think), making it inappropriate for most direct
| applications by US forces.
|
| edit: to be clear, the US _is_ looking at the a-29; they just
| don 't want to risk their own pilots in it.
| mhh__ wrote:
| The A-29 isn't _that_ cheap compared to an F-35 (i.e. 1:4),
| especially when you consider that if you buy an F-35 (at the
| expense of maintenance costs) you avoid having to buy an F-35
| anyway because you have a modern BVR platform
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The A-29 costs $430-500/hour to run. Lockheed "hopes" to get
| the F-35 down to $25k/hour by 2025.
| waiseristy wrote:
| After seeing what happened in Armenia & Azerbaijan, I'm wondering
| if the US's customers are pushing for these cheaper drone options
| instead of the F35. The F35 has been in development so long, that
| it's seeing its own combat role supplanted
| ardit33 wrote:
| Bingo. The F-35 as a bomb delivery platform might be already
| obsolete, as drones are far cheaper. You still need air
| defense/air superiority fighter though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And the f-35 is neither. It is the complement to the f-22,
| not its replacement. There are more effective air superiority
| fighters out there for far less money.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Drones should be inherently better anyway since they don't have
| to carry 80KG of meat that needs to be kept alive.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| armenia is 3 million people with old russian equipment. i think
| the success of drones is overrated, after all they ve been in
| use in libya & syria
| nitwit005 wrote:
| There were always far cheaper options than what they chose to
| build. They didn't seem to care.
|
| They seem to care more about delays and possible unreliability
| than squandering billions of dollars.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The F35's competition isn't a comparable enemy aircraft or a
| drone swarm. It's political corruption and hostile
| Facebook/Twitter troll farms.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| The F-35 is the Capacitance Electronic Disc (CED) player of war
| machines.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA
|
| Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for the
| era when it was finally shippable.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > Perfect for the era development started in, but useless for
| the era when it was finally shippable.
|
| Are you any good at lottery numbers?
|
| Traditional fighters will probably lull in use in between the
| proliferation of drones, _and_ the proliferation of
| countermeasures to those drones.
| strictnein wrote:
| The Drive back again with another one of its anti-F35 articles.
| It would seem that this administration is just punting to the
| next one, which is probably a good idea.
|
| I would take anything they post about the plane with a grain of
| salt. They take any setback as if it's the first time a large
| technical project has ever experienced issues.
| guscost wrote:
| Weird theory of mine: The DoD ultimately picks these winning
| planes based on which one "looks cooler" or basically has better
| aesthetics.
|
| I think the F-35 has better aesthetics than the Boeing X-32, just
| like the F-22 has better aesthetics than the YF-23. You could say
| I'm used to seeing the winning designs as "normal", but I
| distinctly remember having this reaction before the JSF
| competition was over.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Oh boy I couldn't disagree more, the F-22 is doubtlessly cool,
| but it has nothing on the YF-23. And the X-32 was positively
| adorable (which isn't cool I guess, but I still love it.) I
| think the F-35 is downright fugly though, it's too bloated and
| bumpy looking.
| WJW wrote:
| Damen shipyards is on record for stating that they regularly
| tweak warship designs to "look sleeker and meaner" because it
| both makes the admirals happy and also reaffirms the beliefs of
| the public of how warships are "supposed" to look. I'd be very
| surprised if military aircraft designers did not do something
| similar.
|
| In any case it's also good military thinking. Sun Tzu already
| said that the pinnacle of warfare is to gain victory without
| fighting, and one of the ways to do so is to look so menacing
| that your opponent does not want to engage. Sleek, powerful
| looking military hardware has that effect much more than
| bloated and clunky stuff.
| Animats wrote:
| That was an issue with US guided missile cruisers when
| vertical launch came in. The launchers just show as little
| hatches in the deck. There's usually a modest gun turret, the
| only visible weapon. There are some Close In Weapons System
| units, but they just look like machine guns.
|
| The USSR built ships with much more visible armament on deck,
| facing outward. Partly because it looked fierce, and partly
| because they didn't quite trust their missiles not to launch
| straight up and come back down on the ship.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > In any case it's also good military thinking.
|
| Or more likely enemies see it as posturing and strike full
| force, thinking they can pierce the superficial veil of
| technological supremacy.
|
| Come on, security theater is bullshit. How many people
| actually think the TSA does anything useful? If anything it
| lulls people into a false sense of safety, making us weaker.
|
| If our enemies are so easily deterred that our appearance
| matters more than our capabilities, then they are not enemies
| worth taking seriously.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/the-
| tsa...
|
| https://www.heritage.org/transportation/commentary/heres-
| how...
| wtvanhest wrote:
| Hijackings were extremely common prior to flight security.
| TSA was another level, that was extremely frustrating
| throughout the 2000s, but at a minimum it prevents wildly
| unstable people from boarding with weapons
|
| Check out this list
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > at a minimum it prevents wildly unstable people from
| boarding with weapons
|
| The TSA reliably fails penetration tests; they miss
| between 70% and 95% of them. https://www.forbes.com/sites
| /michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa...
|
| What's likely caused hijackings to fall off a cliff is a)
| reinforced cockpit doors and b) the knowledge of crew and
| passengers that the hijackers might be homicidal.
|
| Pre-9/11, advice was to cooperate, get the plane on the
| ground, and negotiate/assault, with pretty good overall
| results for the passengers. That is... _not_ the advice
| today.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I wrote a rebuttal with sources but on second thought, I
| think you make a good point. I should look at the data
| more and revisit my stance.
| anonisko wrote:
| It's not complete bullshit. Against other sophisticated
| actors, yeah, it's bullshit. But posturing and intimidation
| is important to keep less sophisticated actors in check.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Who are the less sophisticated actors willing to attack a
| military based solely on appearance of 'not looking
| intimidating?'
|
| We're talking about a fighter jet, not a security guard.
| anonisko wrote:
| I'd see it as more about PR.
|
| If poor desperate people regularly see these kinds of
| badass weapons that a foreign power has, it's just going
| to be that much harder to recruit for organizations that
| violently resist oppression, because the individuals you
| need are fearful and demoralized.
|
| Then you need crazy things like religious indoctrination
| that promises rewards in heaven for fighting such an
| unassailable power.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Human factors are real.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Sun Tzu didnt have stealth aircraft. In many ways, if they
| see enough of you to be intimidated then they can see enough
| of you to kill you. The f-35 wants to make the kill before
| the target even realizes it is in danger, let alone sees the
| aircraft comming. I doubt Sun Tzu would have encouraged his
| spies or saboteurs to stand out from the crowd.
| stretchcat wrote:
| The enemies of America are presumably meant to see American
| stealth aircraft in movies and TV shows, not over their
| capitols.
|
| However, I think these airplanes are indeed designed
| foremost for function. The similar appearances of the B-1
| and Tu-160 suggest that when two planes are designed using
| similar technology with similar mission requirements, they
| tend to have a lot of similarities. (In the years since
| they were initially designed, the way these aircraft are
| used has changed. But they were initially designed to meet
| similar requirements.)
| asdff wrote:
| How many decades will it be before we see an F35 used in
| film?
| ben_w wrote:
| On the other hand, the foreign government may see pictures
| of the plane and go "that's scary" and not start the fight
| which the less-scary-more-stealthy alternative can win
| better.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not in the skies, in _Jane 's Defense Weekly_.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Used to be done with uniforms. Hence the Pope's guards with
| Michelangelo uniforms, and the Nazis with Hugo Boss.
| stretchcat wrote:
| I could be wrong, but IIRC Hugo Boss was one of the
| companies that made Nazi uniforms, but did not design those
| uniforms.
| manfredo wrote:
| The F-35 also has a better (lower) radar cross section than the
| X-32 which had exposed turbine blades. And crucially, the
| prototype X-32 failed to demonstrate simultaneous VTOL and
| supersonic flight, while the X-35 did. Seeing as this was the
| main characteristic the military wanted, this is a pretty
| significant shortcoming.
|
| It's true that more conservative designs have historically
| prevailed over technically more impressive exotic designs. I
| think this is not about looking cooler (the YF-23 looked cooler
| than the F-22 IMO), and more about risk aversion when billions
| of dollars and people's lives are on the line. And there are
| still exceptions to this like the B-2. Although it drew on
| experience from the XB-35.
| enw wrote:
| I think this is much more common and crucial for success than
| we admit. Aesthetics have a very real impact on customers and
| observers, but we like to pretend it's not that important.
| [deleted]
| porphyra wrote:
| I don't think the F-22 has better aesthetics than the YF-23.
| The YF-23 looks super awesome with its diamond-shaped wing.
|
| The Boeing X-32's frog-mouthed appearance is a bit ugly though.
| DanCarvajal wrote:
| YF-23 is 30 years old and still looks futuristic.
| mhh__ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey
|
| That makes this positively alien then
| mrtksn wrote:
| YF-23 looks like what the non-human enemy would have used.
|
| It's cool but it doesn't look like "ours". I guess that the
| "If we are the goodies why the weapons look alien" question
| comes to mind since people would always think that they are
| the good ones and the foreigners are the ones that we should
| be suspicious of.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is not your weird theory. There is some truth to it. Look
| up Kelly Johnson's account on several books about military
| airplanes.
|
| In case if anyone doesn't know he is:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)
|
| Basically his philosophy, at some corner of his brains was "If
| it cools beautiful, it will fly well." The way I think of it is
| - streamlined shapes are generally more pleasing to human
| vision system. Not sure why, some innate
| biological/evolutionary trait. So, Kelly designed a lot of
| beautiful planes with his gut instinct when there is no
| data/objectivity, but only some instincts to rely on. Legendary
| engineer!
| anonisko wrote:
| I'd be shocked if the military doesn't include aesthetics when
| considering which new equipment to use.
|
| You'd want to look badass and cool to the people you serve and
| hellish and terrifying to those you attack. The psychological
| impact in both directions almost certainly has important, real
| world consequences.
| stretchcat wrote:
| I think _to an extent_ the public will decide ugly planes
| look badass if the planes are presented that way in media.
| The F-117 was a really bizarre plane, but became so iconic
| gamers today still buy computer mice that look like it.
|
| This said, I think there are limits. I don't think the F-35
| will ever achieve the same level of coolness that the F-22
| has; the F-22 look very sleek while the F-35 looks like it
| ate too many hamburgers.
| ardit33 wrote:
| The Boeing was not just ugly, it failed to do both stovl and
| supersonic in one fighter, which was a requirement
|
| ' Due to the heavy delta wing design of the X-32, Boeing
| demonstrated STOVL and supersonic flight in separate
| configurations, with the STOVL configuration requiring that
| some parts be removed from the fighter. The company promised
| that their conventional tail design for production models would
| not require separate configurations. By contrast, the Lockheed
| Martin X-35 concept demonstrator aircraft were capable of
| transitioning between their STOVL and supersonic configurations
| in mid-flight.[4]
| animex wrote:
| I feel like there's an orchestrated PR campaign around making
| these F-35s sound like a success. I wonder what exists for
| objective reporting & analysis in this space.
| strictnein wrote:
| I mean, there's real life, like Israel taking out advanced
| Chinese radars: https://defence-blog.com/news/source-
| israeli-f-35-destroyed-...
|
| Which China claimed could detect the F-22:
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23846/chi...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Damascus is less than 40 miles from the Israeli border, so
| it's entirely possible that they detected the F-35s just
| fine; you can hit quite a few targets in Syria without ever
| actually violating Syrian airspace.
|
| Flying from Japan to China might be a little different.
| andromeduck wrote:
| __with drop tanks attached
| andred14 wrote:
| As an IT professional, from what I see here in Sidney Powell's
| 270 page report there is SOLID evidence of election fraud:
|
| https://wpcdn.zenger.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/2419082...
|
| President Trump will remain President Trump
| belval wrote:
| Can someone more knowledgeable than me in this matter explain why
| fighter jets still require human pilots? Why aren't they
| completely replaced by drones?
| bodhiandphysics wrote:
| Drones are dependent on an active satellite link to function.
| What happens if the enemy jams the satellite?
| jacobwilliamroy wrote:
| Peace at last.
| fishnchips wrote:
| Wouldn't jamming the satellite affect F-35, too?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Yes and no. The whole thesis of the F-35 is apparently an
| airborne sensor fusion and electronic warfare platform as
| well as a modern BVR jet - it's going to be harder to jam
| because of both redundancy and the amount of hardware real
| estate the designers can play with to counter said jamming.
|
| On the subject of electronic warfare - I assume it's still
| very classified but given that the current teen series
| aircraft apparently have some serious EW magic in them (I
| don't have any citations for exactly what they can do other
| than I read some comments by IIRC an Australian ground
| radar operator and apparently they were completely
| outgunned - i.e. fake formations rather than mere jamming)
| I think we will be reading about exactly they can do at
| great length on the hackernews's of the future.
| fishnchips wrote:
| Radar jamming and other magic aside, I'm just wondering
| to what extent the equipment in a modern jet like F-35
| depends on satellite link. So to what extent putting a
| human in the machine actually changes its capability as
| opposed to a drone with an autonomous mode.
| mhh__ wrote:
| > I'm just wondering to what extent the equipment in a
| modern jet like F-35 depends on satellite link.
|
| Not very much, the datalink is sort of peer-to-peer - the
| F-35 is one of the first aircarft to have a satellite
| datalink.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Sure but a human doesn't have issue still executing their
| mission, making decisions based on changing circumstances,
| and successfully return to base.
| mhh__ wrote:
| 1. Technology isn't there yet - the recent AI vs. F-16 thing
| was a publicity stunt: The performance of the AI was
| impressive, but it was both cheating and competing in an
| environment where the pilot wasn't really comfortable (IIRC
| Simulators are almost never used to practice combat tactics, so
| they might as well've got a competitive DCS player in)
|
| 2. A pilot isn't just a sack of meat that uses monkey-instincts
| to steer the plane forward, they are a cog in a very large
| machine both making decisions and following and interpreting
| orders as the situation changes around them.
|
| Drone jets have existed for decades, they're called cruise
| missiles.
| [deleted]
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