[HN Gopher] The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fi...
___________________________________________________________________
The U.S. Air Force just admitted the F-35 stealth fighter has
failed
Author : dlcmh
Score : 342 points
Date : 2021-02-24 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.forbes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.forbes.com)
| naebother wrote:
| Maybe the real treasure was the jobs we made along the way.
| m00dy wrote:
| Turkey got kicked out of this programme. It can't be a
| coincidence right ?
| Pxtl wrote:
| Obvious. Radar invisibility is justifiably valuable to the air
| force, but it's also almost-prohibitively-expensive.
|
| It's not even a cost-benefit thing, because the benefit is
| there... But you don't want that cost on _every_ plane.
|
| Tim Krieder said it best: "we have radar-invisible planes and our
| enemies don't have radar".
|
| For the Al Qaedas and Isises of the world that the US seems to
| fight so much, the F-35 is absurdly overspecced.
| decafninja wrote:
| My armchair general understanding is that the requirement of the
| F-35B variant is responsible for a whale sized portion of the
| F-35's woes?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My armchair general understanding is that the requirement of
| the F-35B variant is responsible for a whale sized portion of
| the F-35's woes?
|
| The desire for commonality between the A/B/C variants
| (notionally to reduce cost) is the big driver, but the B
| (STOVL) variant probably has the most difficult individual
| requirements.
| t_minus_3 wrote:
| They should be congratulated and promoted. Failing is courageous
| - you can move to next better thing from the learnings. F36 ???
| exar0815 wrote:
| It's quite simple. The successfull military programs are the ones
| building one thing to do one thing well. A-10, F-16, B-52. The
| Programs wanting to do everything in one System fail. F-35,
| Zumwalt, Eurofighter.
| HalfANut wrote:
| I'm so glad you named these specific models/platforms. Thank
| you for your half-nut, as went with everyone else. Best post on
| Hacker News. Totally agreed.
| openasocket wrote:
| I'm not sure how the F-16 is an example of "building one thing
| to do one thing well," it's a great example of a multi-role
| fighter. Almost all combat aircraft developed in the last 30
| years are multi-role aircraft too. And by what metric the
| Eurofighter is a failure?
| hef19898 wrote:
| I wouldn't pu the Eurofighte rin there. It is working just fine
| for the Brits and others. And is still a rather capable
| fighter, even if more dedocated strike aircraft, e.g. Tornado
| or a strike eagle, are slightly better in these roles.
| samstave wrote:
| Two of my favorite craft in there - B52 and A-10 are two of the
| best aircraft ever made...
|
| Its just sad how the B52 was abused by the CIA in LAOS.
|
| The A-10 is just a robust vehicle, hence the namesake Wharthog
| wintorez wrote:
| Over-engineering always fails.
| cdiamand wrote:
| I think I read that this generation of fighter requires a lot of
| rare earth materials?
|
| I wonder, in light of a shifting geopolitical situation, if the
| next generation of fighter might be a stab at something the west
| can build completely independently on it's own materials?
| Aunche wrote:
| Is there any benefit for a multi-role fighter to have stealth? It
| seems like any applications where stealth is important, you might
| as well have a specialized air-superiority fighter.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| The risks to CAS aircraft and fighter-bombers from SAMs and AA
| are actually significant enough to warrant stealth/low-
| signature technology.
| greedo wrote:
| Every aircraft can benefit from stealth. Stealth helps to
| protect you not just from other fighters, but from SAMs etc.
| Aunche wrote:
| That's a good point about the usefulness of stealth in
| general, but I don't think that applies for multi-role
| fighters. From what I understand, the main benefit of multi-
| role fighters is one of cost. You don't need to pay for a
| bunch of specialized planes during peacetime. The trade off
| is that they're not particularly great at anything, but that
| doesn't matter when your enemy is much weaker than you. In
| the F-35's case, stealth completely cancels out any cost-
| benefit of being multi-role.
| greedo wrote:
| 1) Almost every fighter is now "multi-role." So the word
| really doesn't add any meaning.
|
| 2) Stealth is now table stakes for fighting a peer or near
| peer opponent. Modern A2AD systems are extremely difficult
| for non-stealth fighters and bombers to counter. Sure, you
| can soften them up with Tomahawks, but even those are
| starting to be less effective. (which is why the US has
| been developing JAASM and LRASM).
|
| 3) While stealth does add costs, especially in maintenance
| routines, compared to software and systems costs, it's not
| as significant. And stealth generally doesn't affect
| performance; the F-35 is an excellent aircraft in terms of
| range and maneuverability, as is the F-22, the Chinese J-20
| and FC-31.
| breck wrote:
| Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. I
| wouldn't call this a failure by any means. Failure would be to
| stop pivoting/adjusting.
| zests wrote:
| Where's the quote from the Air Force saying the F-35 failed?
| There is none. As far as I can tell this article is just
| misrepresenting a quote to push a narrative.
| [deleted]
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| I cannot find any other sources on this topic.
| peeters wrote:
| It's an inference. The author is saying that because the Air
| Force is pursuing a _new_ plane with the same fundamental goals
| that launched the F-35 program, then the F-35 evidently failed
| to deliver. He 's saying they're really just asking for a do-
| over.
|
| > Instead of ordering fresh F-16s, he said, the Air Force
| should initiate a "clean-sheet design" for a new low-end
| fighter. Brown's comments are a _tacit_ admission that the F-35
| has failed.
|
| (Emphasis mine. Tacit means "implied without being stated".)
| merpnderp wrote:
| I took his quotes about how the F-35 is now a high end boutique
| plane instead of the replacement for everything. The Air Force
| changed the F-35's designation, which the author takes as a
| tacit admission of failure. How else would you read the Air
| Force's statement? "That plane that was supposed to replace all
| our planes will only replace a few of our planes. We need a new
| plane to replace all the rest."
| greedo wrote:
| Shocked that a project that started out in 1993 would change
| goals? That requirements would change as both the
| political/military environment as well as technology changed?
| It's like saying the B-1 bomber was a failure because we're
| sending them to the boneyard.
|
| And this is not to mention that the Air Force ALWAYS wants
| something new and shiny.
| greedo wrote:
| David Axe (the Forbes author) has been gunning for this
| aircraft for years. This article is junk.
| zabzonk wrote:
| And from the UK's perspective, this useless aircraft has also
| driven the production of two useless aircraft carriers.
| mikece wrote:
| To quote Pierre Spray, one of the "Fighter Mafia" who had a hand
| in the design of the F-15 and drove the design of the F-16, the
| F-35 has been a massive success. What's not asked is "What is the
| mission of the F-35?" and in Spray's opinion the mission of the
| F-35 has been to drive funding to Lockheed.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Pierre Spray is also a luddite who vehemently rejects the
| concept of a multirole fighter. The F-16 he advocated for is
| not anywhere close to the actual F-16. If it were up to him the
| USAF fighter force would consist of low tech pure dogfighters
| that didn't have radars or long range missiles. To him the F-5
| is the pinnacle of fighter technology.
|
| His and the rest of the fighter mafia's extreme views are not
| popular within the defense community.
| mikece wrote:
| Preferring a fighter that doesn't rely on electronics isn't
| the same as being a luddite. Also, the state of electronics
| since the early/mid 70s has changed significantly:
| specifically they have become much lighter, compact, and
| reliable (none of the three were true when 45 years ago).
|
| The main design driver shaping the F-16 was Boyd's energy-
| maneuverability theory. A major criticism of Sprey is that
| the F-15, which was crap according to Boyd's math is
| undefeated in combat. This is true but it also hasn't gone up
| against the best opposition in the world either. Boyd, Sprey,
| and the rest of the Fighter Mafia have been hated for decades
| in the Pentagon but history is showing that their predictions
| are accurate. One thing which is too classified to know at
| the moment is whether advances in missile technology have
| finally gotten to the point where electronics and firing
| first matter more than the ACM abilities of the pilot and the
| airframe to which they are strapped.
|
| Either way, dismissing Spray as a luddite is an incorrect
| statement.
| ElMono wrote:
| I would guess that the NGAD prototype[0] has given USAF
| leadership confidence to publicly alude to F-35 shortcomings.
|
| [0]
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a34030586...
| greedo wrote:
| Well, if USAF want a "cheaper 5th minus" fighter, the NGAD is
| going almost the opposite direction.
| digi59404 wrote:
| The NGAD Prototype is built upon some of the technology that
| the F-35 pioneered. The F-35 now is and has been used as an
| airframe to test more advanced technologies. Like distributed
| computing and autonomous technologies.
|
| So, it's reasonable to say that NGAD may not be possible if it
| weren't for the F-35. I'd argue this is less about the F-35's
| shortcomings and more about the fact that we're seeing a
| dramatic change in air war-machine design, development, and
| theory.
|
| In defense news below, you can see them speak (in meta) about
| how the NGAD Prototype was built. Some of those things were
| pioneered on the F-35.
|
| https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-us-...
| CharlesW wrote:
| Having also seen your comments elsewhere this thread, I'm
| wondering: Did you have a personal stake in the F-35?
|
| "Failed" things nearly always embody good and great ideas
| that go on to be used in successful things. For example, the
| Newton was clearly a failure, and yet there are echos of it
| all over today's phones and tablets.
| samstave wrote:
| >*Like distributed computing and autonomous technologies.*
|
| Can you expound on this? Why is distributed computing neeeded
| - is it simply such that "if hit in this location, there are
| backups that can handle the load?"
|
| For autonomous, what relief does this bring to the pilot?
| Targeting? Nav? Trim?
| gumby wrote:
| Why order more F-16s and miss out on all the rich contracting and
| design deal flow?
|
| Plus because the length of development is longer than pharma's,
| nobody involved in kicking off the project will be around to deal
| with the deployment problems.
|
| Make hay while the sun shines.
| nindalf wrote:
| The F-16 was introduced in 1978 and no new F-16s have been
| purchased since 2001. Are you suggesting that they don't want
| new F-16s in 2021 because ... they want to make money? Isn't
| the simpler explanation that maybe a 42-year old design is out
| of date?
| tandr wrote:
| B52 is even older, and still kicking (I think...)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They're planning to retire it after 95 years of service.
| gumby wrote:
| > Are you suggesting [...] they want to make money? Isn't the
| simpler explanation that maybe a 42-year old design is out of
| date?
|
| I'm sorry I was too pithy. To answer your second question
| first:
|
| Old aircraft are not inherently bad. The most famous case is
| the B-52, already in its sixties and when the current round
| of refurbishment completes (if it hasn't already) should
| continue fighting with airframes over a century old. The A-10
| Thunderbolt (Warthog) is still in service despite many
| attempts to kill it as there is no replacement.
|
| (Old aircraft aren't inherently good either; even the
| Harrier, despite being heavily used and not really having a
| replacement, eventually became too expensive to maintain)
|
| The F-16 was brought up specifically in the article; the
| claim was that it is too difficult to upgrade its
| electronics, not that the airframe or engine were obsolete.
| Indeed the specific use case a new plane is being considered
| for is the kind of thing where an older, airworthy craft
| would be better (the station wagon vs Ferrari example from
| the article).
|
| So for your first question, money: yes I am explicitly
| suggesting that. Without getting into the politics of
| consolidation in the US arms industry, since the B-1, weapons
| production has been structured in part as a jobs program (The
| B-1 was the first weapons system to explicitly have had its
| supply chain structured to have parts made in 100% of all
| congressional districts) while the purchasing procedures are
| so complex that they require ex military on the private
| sector side just to make them viable. That revolving door is
| not subject to any lobbying rules and is, TBH the only real
| retirement plan for senior officers below three star rank.
| And of course spending money on arms is always popular with
| the voters, as part of the "support the troops" slogan, even
| though the actual troopers, humans, get low pay, mixed-
| quality post-service health care (some amazingly excellent,
| other terrible) and are not protected against the
| depredations any number of predatory corporations while in
| the service. Oh, but that shiny gear shows off as well in the
| USA as it does in norks.
|
| To be more charitable, generals and admirals also always want
| to push for the new and shiny because that's how they
| demonstrate status, in war and especially in peacetime. This
| is a social factor in all groups, this is merely how it
| manifests in military hierarchies world wide. Doesn't mean
| it's an effective use of funds nor that it necessarily
| improves warfighting (much less prevents it).
| ktln2 wrote:
| F-35 is not expensive if you consider the alternatives:
|
| Brazil bought 36 JAS-39E for $5.8 billion. [1]
|
| Taiwan ordered 66 F-16V for $8.1 billion. [2]
|
| Korea is going to get 20 F-35A for $3.3 billion. [3]
|
| [1] https://www.flightglobal.com/saab-brazil-finalise-gripen-
| ng-...
|
| [2]
| https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-f-16v-fighter-j...
|
| [3] https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-
| pacific/2019/10/10/s...
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Militarism is a colossal waste of taxpayer money.
| some_random wrote:
| Well, that's not really what's being discussed here.
| filoleg wrote:
| Not when you have a few adversarial nation-states around the
| corner that do not consider it a waste of taxpayer money.
| hctaw wrote:
| A $10 billion investment in anti aircraft missiles that
| forces a $100 billion investment in aircraft instead of
| schools and semiconductor fabs is great ROI for an
| adversarial nation state that knows their government would
| be wiped off the face of the planet if they ever decided to
| use them.
| ktln2 wrote:
| Modern AA missile systems are also very expensive - a
| S-400 battery cost you $500 million. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/russia-lures-buyers-
| as-s-400...
| nickik wrote:
| Nukes and rockets exist.
| ktln2 wrote:
| For many countries they have no choice - you either spend the
| money on Military or you get invaded by Russia/China/North
| Korea.
| hadlock wrote:
| Buying weapons from your global security partners is part of a
| larger geopolitical picture/strategy. The cost is almost
| secondary. Look at who the US sells weapons to, what countries
| are banned by us weapons export ban laws. Look at who Russia
| sells weapons to. There is not a whole lot of overlap between
| the two countries.
|
| Posting countries and dollar figures is part of the picture,
| but does not tell the whole story.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And when there is an overlap, people freak out. Just take
| Turkey as an example. They almost got kcked out of the F-35
| program after buying Russion air defence systems. The US
| feared the Russians could learn too much about the F-35.
| openasocket wrote:
| Keep in mind that it's very difficult to compare prices like
| this, because you're buying a lot more than just the aircraft.
| There's spare parts, maintenance equipment, and simulators. The
| prices are also going to vary based on the procurement
| schedule: ordering 12 planes to arrive in the next 6 months is
| going to be more expensive than requesting one plane arrive
| each month for the next year. Countries also try to include
| some sort of technology sharing or shared production deals,
| where the company agrees to build some of the parts or
| components in the host country. This is often done to benefit
| the country's domestic arms industry (NB: this isn't
| necessarily nefarious, there are plenty of benefits to having a
| good domestic arms industry. It means your weapons and
| components are made locally, so they can't be intercepted in a
| time of war and your enemy can't use diplomacy to cut you off
| from your supplier. And other countries tend to have export
| restrictions, so that the top-of-the-line equipment their
| companies make won't be available to others.)
| mikece wrote:
| Someone else mentioned a few of the costs not taken into
| account, such as the Navy needing to spend money they didn't
| initially plan on spending so the heat of the F-35B doesn't
| damage the flight deck of the amphib ships. Those had been
| built to expect the heat of the A/V-8B which is significantly
| less than what comes out of the tailpipe of the F-35.
| protastus wrote:
| Brazil's purchase from Saab includes technology transfer.
|
| The United States bid on this contract with the F/A-18E. I
| can't imagine the U.S. approving the sale of F-35 technology to
| Brazil at any reasonable price.
| bootlooped wrote:
| The funniest anecdote about the F-35 I like to tell is this: the
| Air Force decided the F-22 was too expensive, they needed
| something cheaper, so they made the F-35. The F-35 ended up being
| the most expensive weapons program in human history.
|
| Now, I understand that is oversimplifying things, bending the
| truth a little, and omitting crucial details... but it's not
| _that_ wrong.
| OliverJones wrote:
| Well, $100M for a device intended to be shot at!
|
| A device that's faster and slicker than everything else. That has
| a version that can fly vertically.
|
| If you're in the sf bay area, go take a tour of the SS Jeremiah
| O'Brien when things reopen. It's a WWII Liberty Ship freighter.
| They built well over 2000 of these things, fast, and cheap, to
| haul military stuff from continent to continent. They had to be
| fast to build: many were needed. They had to be reasonably cheap:
| the enemy sank many of them.
|
| And, look at the design of this here Hacker News web app.
| Functional. High capacity. Simple.
|
| Why can't US weapons factories build stuff like liberty ships and
| simple web sites, that work and are serviceable?
|
| Too many committees? Too many senators? Unwillingness to tell
| some branch of the service (the Marines) to use helicopters?
| Another branch (the Navy's aircraft-carrier service) to use
| purpose-built planes?
|
| I wonder if engineering and business schools should reintroduce
| this thing I was taught in college. "Any clod can build something
| heavy for a dollar. It takes skill and dedication to build
| something light for a quarter."
|
| Grumble.
| thu2111 wrote:
| Arguably it is the wrong strategy, especially if the unspoken
| possibility of war with China becomes a spoken one. The USA has
| an edge in raw technological prowess. The F-35 plays to that
| strength, with tons of advanced technology that took a long
| time to master and develop. Setting up factories that can churn
| out cheap planes en-masse is certainly possible and if the USA
| found itself in a war of attrition it'd probably do that
| surprisingly fast. But why get into such a situation, in which
| the US would have no real advantage and perhaps some
| disadvantages, when it can compete on pure tech and build one
| plane that can take out many of the opponents cheap planes?
| rayhendricks wrote:
| It did not fail at providing money to the military-industrial-
| congressional complex. But of course we need more fighter jets
| instead of Medicare for all and UBI.
|
| China is not going to send fighters over to Bomb the us mainland,
| this thing is totally unnecessary.
| [deleted]
| mohaine wrote:
| How are you sure someone isn't `going to send fighters over to
| Bomb the us mainland`?
|
| I'm pretty sure no one is going to do that and yes we way
| overspend on the MIC but really sending militaries over to
| other countries was the status quo for almost as long as
| countries have existed.
|
| There is no real reason to expect that will not happen again
| just because we are going on 80 years since anyone made a
| serious effort to do it. You could also argue that it has been
| 80 years because it was made so expensive to wage war that
| money/resources is no longer a reason to do it. There just
| isn't an ROI.
| jboog wrote:
| The US and NATO is so far ahead of China and Russia in the
| conventional fight it's comical.
|
| No one outside of the US or its allies even has a blue-water
| Navy. China has ONE carrier and it's a pile of shit compared
| to what we have. We have 11 super carriers, add in the
| smaller ones and we have another 40 or so. That's not even
| counting the rest of NATO.
|
| Let's not even get into to the backwater that is the PRC's
| air force.
|
| Yeah they have 1.3 billion people. Big deal. How exactly do
| they get them over here?
|
| Nuclear war, now that's a different story but having another
| cool bleeding-edge fighter jet isn't going to stop a full
| scale nuclear conflict. China and Russia have enough nukes
| they all might not make it to the continental US but it's
| enough to destroy us. We can certainly do the same. The basic
| game theory of MAD hasn't changed much in the past few
| decades.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There are multiple account of carriers being "sunk" during
| excersices by non-nuclear subs. Numbers still matter, and
| while the Russians and Chinese are't he best in force
| projection, the Chinese not yet, neither one is to be
| triffeled with in their backyards.
| jboog wrote:
| I'm not saying China can't sink a carrier or two.
|
| What I am saying is that if they do we have a backup of
| about 40-50 more. And that's not even counting Nato.
|
| Or the fact that hundreds of other ships and subs led by
| Navy folks that are far better trained and with better
| equipment than anything China or Russia could ever hope
| to compete with in the next 15-20 years at best.
|
| My point isn't that China can't give us a bloody nose or
| two, it's just that they are so far behind the NATO
| force's militaries that we don't need to waste another
| few trillion on the latest greatest tech.
| michaelt wrote:
| If the American establishment thought there was any chance of
| attack by Chinese fighters, they wouldn't have built a shitty
| plane as a jobs program.
| andys627 wrote:
| It's unlikely enough that we should spend this money on
| Medicare for All, climate change, etc. We already have a
| gillion fighter jets too...
| missedthecue wrote:
| The total costs to keep all F-35s in the air until 2070 (likely
| after you and I are dead and in the ground), would not even
| cover 6 months of Medicare for all or UBI. Not sure how you can
| draw such an equivalence.
| thanatosmin wrote:
| Just the acquisition costs would cover the entire NIH budget
| for a decade, though.
| missedthecue wrote:
| That wasn't the comparison being made
| lakecresva wrote:
| How are you calculating the cost of medicare for all?
| missedthecue wrote:
| I just took Bernie Sander's estimate, which looks like it
| comes from Yale. His website says $4.7 Trillion per year.
| But you can really take any estimate out there, and it
| wouldn't change my point.
|
| https://berniesanders.com/issues/how-does-bernie-pay-his-
| maj...
| cwhiz wrote:
| You could take the entire defense budget, and the defense
| budget from every other country in the world, and you would be
| less than 50% of the funding you would need for a single year
| of Medicare for all. The US spends about $3.6 trillion per year
| on health care. I have no idea what UBI might cost, but I know
| we don't have the tax revenues to get even close.
|
| Maybe the money printer can go brrrr a little bit faster.
| tele wrote:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
|
| "Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and
| the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for
| All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-
| care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national
| health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450
| billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The
| entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than
| is incurred by employers and households paying for health-
| care premiums combined with existing government allocations.
| This shift to single-payer health care would provide the
| greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we
| estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans
| would save more than 68 000 lives and 1*73 million life-years
| every year compared with the status quo."
| syshum wrote:
| The Lancet study is very flawed on several economic fronts,
| the biggest being that it assume the government could tax /
| collect 100% of spending that Americans do voluntarily
| today in the private system to devote it to a government
| run plan. That is completely improbable and unrealistic
| expectation.
|
| it also assumes government run systems will be as or better
| efficient than private system, we have 100's of years of
| history (including this very story) the proves that to be a
| fallacy
| 542458 wrote:
| That really doesn't have any bearing on the point that the
| costs of the F-35 and M4A are dramatically different.
| Funding or not funding the F-35 isn't the determining
| factor in funding M4A.
| [deleted]
| cwhiz wrote:
| There are dozens of these studies. Vermont tried to
| implement a single payer system to realize these costs, and
| it was an epic failure. Read up on it.
|
| https://www.vox.com/2014/12/22/7427117/single-payer-
| vermont-...
|
| What people don't seem to understand is that you can't just
| vacuum money out of a giant industry. The money we spend in
| health care doesn't go into an incinerator. There are
| approximately 16.5 million people working in the health
| care industry. This study assumes we'll save 13%, a wildly
| optimistic figure, but we'll go with it.
|
| Pick the 2.15 million people to fire.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Healthcare is super expensive in the US though. If the system
| was more efficient, like European systems, it could work.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > $3.6 trillion per year on health care
|
| Yes, and this would decrease, significantly if the us
| healthcare system were more proactive and more people had
| good insurance. Not to mention that much of this is what is
| already spent, so clearly we can afford it. If taxes
| increased by exactly what your premiums were before, it's
| revenue neutral.
| grecy wrote:
| > _You could take the entire defense budget, and the defense
| budget from every other country in the world, and you would
| be less than 50% of the funding you would need for a single
| year of Medicare for all._
|
| How in the world to other countries pay for Healthcare?
|
| The USA has tax revenue per capita very similar to New
| Zealand, the UK, Italy and Canada - all of which have good
| Healthcare for all. [1]
|
| The USA has more than double the tax revenue per capita than
| South Korea, which also has good healthcare.
|
| It's not about the cost, it's about how the USA is choosing
| to spend it's tax dollars.
|
| [1] https://countryeconomy.com/taxes/tax-revenue
| LegitShady wrote:
| Many countries have far worse standards of care than the
| US.
|
| I live in Canada, and waited more than a year for a
| specialist. It took me 2 years to find a family doctor with
| decent reviews who was accepting patients . I needed an MRI
| once and the wait was measured in months. I waited four
| months for just a cortisone shot, before the pandemic.
|
| I'm not claiming one system is better than another.
| Certainly if you're wealthy and have good benefits in the
| US, the standard of care is much much higher.
|
| On the flipside, if you need cancer care in Canada you're
| probably not going to need to declare bankruptcy.
| grecy wrote:
| > _Many countries have far worse standards of care than
| the US._
|
| I'll need a citation for that.
|
| When a country has 29 million people without health
| insurance [1], and medical bills are the number one cause
| of bankruptcy, I think it's safe to say the average
| standard of care is way, way lower than Canada,
| Australia, Germany, etc. where literally every person
| gets care.
|
| [1] https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-
| about-th...
| [deleted]
| Unklejoe wrote:
| It really depends on what you mean by "standard of care".
|
| Yes, there are a lot of people without coverage in the
| USA, and there are a lot of people in deep medical debt.
|
| However, when it comes to the actual quality of the
| healthcare facilities, the USA does have some of the best
| in the world (CHOP, UPenn, Mayo Clinic, etc.). The fact
| that it's extremely expensive/overpriced is a different
| issue.
| rayhendricks wrote:
| It's just distributed weirdly and almost designed to be
| difficult to navigate.
|
| If you're poor and in a blue state you get free
| healthcare comparable to the rest of the developed world.
| But go over the 30k/year threshold and you're getting a
| high-deductible plan and a random number generator for a
| hospital billing department. Then once you get a job at
| FAANG and you get great healthcare.
| nradov wrote:
| It depends how you look at standards of care. Despite
| medical coverage gaps the US still has the highest or
| among the highest 5 year survival rates for most forms of
| cancer.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I think you have to actively ignore the last three
| sentences that I wrote to think this is a reasonable
| reply.
| grecy wrote:
| I live in Canada.... (and Australia)
|
| Your reply is anecdotal with a sample size of one.
|
| You need to look at how healthcare works for _everyone_
| in a society. It 's not OK when the mega rich have it
| great, the middle class OK and literally 30 million
| people have nothing.
| LegitShady wrote:
| your reply to this comment is too many deep - I can't
| reply.
|
| My reply is a sample size of one because I actively don't
| speak for other people, on purpose. That isn't a flaw in
| my argument, that's intentional. If there was one delay
| in a health procedure it wouldn't be of note. But there
| are lots of delays, and my doctor needs 2-3 months notice
| for an appointment, and only wants to discuss one thing
| per appointment so he can maintain the # of appointments
| he needs to do throughout a day by not making any one to
| long, and get paid again for another consult, and he's a
| good doctor (for real).
|
| But again, you have to actively ignore the last 3
| sentences of the post you replied to, for this to be a
| reasonable and in good faith response to what I wrote. I
| have no interest in engaging with people who don't read
| what I write, while telling me what I have to think.
| cwhiz wrote:
| They started from a different baseline. Now we have an
| industry that supports over 16 million employees and is a
| significant percentage of GDP. You can't just pull the rug
| out from under it.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| The money will come from folk not paying for private health
| insurance and wildly expensive hospital bills. No money
| printer needed.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Sure, if you pretend we aren't already paying for health care
| and don't credit that against the price of MFA, MFA looks
| awfully expensive!
| cwhiz wrote:
| Ah so now we're talking about the elephant in the room, the
| huge tax hike. Most people pay a percentage of their
| healthcare costs, their employer covers the rest, and it
| comes out of pre-tax dollars. We'll still need all that
| money so now it will have to come in the form of a huge MFA
| tax on businesses and individuals.
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| Just because we SPEND money doesnt mean that the price is
| VALID.
|
| "Medicine" is grossly overpriced.
|
| our entire model is FUCKED.
|
| Source: designed and built and commissioned several hospitals
| and an entire family of doctors. Fuck the US health care
| system and fuck the military-industrial-spyware-
| congressional-graft system. I was the tech designer for SF
| General (before Zuck stuck his name on it) (I designed the
| entire nurse call system there, among many other things)
|
| My brother was the head of the VA for Alaska, commander of
| the 10th medical wing USAF, personal flight surgeon to the
| Joint Chiefs of Staff at the pentagon.
|
| Grandmother was a surgical nurse for decades in Silicon
| Valley.
|
| Top cardiologist in California (and mayor of Saratoga)
|
| Aunt is top NICU nurse at El Camino Hospital (which I was TPM
| on building...
|
| Among other many accolades that my family has; we all agree -
| Healthcare is GROSSLY overpriced and BS.
|
| FFS I had to go to the hospital recently and they charged me
| $4,000 for the ride to the hospital and $12,000 for giving me
| vitamins and holding me over night.
|
| FUCK the medical industry pricing.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| The business model for healthcare is divorced from the
| actual healthcare provided. Emergency care for instance
| tends to be billed at nutty rates. IMO, the best thing to
| do is to avoid ambulance/emergency if possible, although
| this isn't always an option and can be risky, and to shop
| around for everything where possible. Call up your
| insurance company with codes and provider numbers and find
| out what everyone around you actually charges for
| something.
|
| Each medical group can also have their own economic models
| which are optimized for different things. One local group
| actually has reasonably priced specialty visits, but their
| outpatient services are crazy expensive ($1000 in-network
| for a NCS/EMG), and that's how they've structured things.
| Another semi-public group (University of California based)
| charges significantly more for visits, but significantly
| less for outpatient procedures ($1000 for an in-network
| 3.0T MRI).
| markus_zhang wrote:
| That 3.6 trillion dollar, I don't think it's well spent and I
| wonder how much went to the Insurance companies, big Pharmas.
| SOmehow as the most powerful country in the world, US has
| shitty medicare comparing to Canada, Germany, etc.
| glaucon wrote:
| Not a USAian but from distant observation I wonder what
| proporation of the total spend would disappear if you had
| "socialised medicine". In an ideal world this would be
| counter-intuitive, because competition usually increases
| efficiency, but as far as I can tell the provision of medical
| care in the US suffers from the same legalised near monoplies
| that many other parts of the US economy do.
| openasocket wrote:
| I disagree with the conclusions of this article, and feel that
| the author didn't provide nearly enough evidence to back up a
| pretty big claim. The notion that the F-35 is a high-end and
| expensive asset is not some new admission, nor does it mean it is
| a failure. While it was meant to be a lower-end plain initially,
| it hasn't been considered that way in a long time. And while I
| agree that the F-35 is expensive and we may need to supplement it
| with a lower-end fighter, that's hardly a failure. That's exactly
| why we ended up developing the F-16: because we needed a lower-
| end fighter to supplement the F-15.
|
| There's plenty to criticize about the F-35, particularly about
| the procurement strategy and development cycle. But we are
| starting to see real results. The F-35 has performed very well in
| exercises like Red Flag. And I don't think you can understate the
| importance of the F-35B. Yes, it has markedly worse availability
| rates and maintenance issues than the other variants, but that's
| pretty common for STOVL aircraft, like the Harrier it is
| replacing. And not only is the F-35B the only stealth STOVL, it's
| also the first production STOVL aircraft capable of supersonic
| speed.
|
| I also think it's weird to imply the reason the F-35 has failed
| (and I don't belive it has) because it's been made in three
| different variants. That really isn't the reason for all of these
| delays. There are several examples of aircraft being able to work
| in multiple roles, like the F-4 and the French Rafale. The
| fundamental issue is in avionics and logistics. All of these
| sensors and systems are very complex and difficult to integrate
| together. Any aircraft with a modern, full-featured AESA radar
| and IRST sensors sees a protracted development time.
|
| In terms of purchasing new, lower-end aircraft, I do think that's
| a good idea. Depending on where you want that to fit in in terms
| of doctrine, you've got a couple of options. The USAF is already
| starting to purchase some F-15EX planes. It's got decent range,
| good performance in air-to-air and air-to-ground engagements, and
| it's based on a mature platform which should reduce costs and
| improve availability. But it's a fairly big beast, and
| operational costs will still be higher than legacy F-16s. The
| other option is to go with a genuine light fighter like the
| JAS-39 Gripen. Cheaper, much lower operational costs, and capable
| of operating from short, rudimentary runways, but shorter range
| and less payload capacity. I also think there's space for a
| "featherweight" plane, like the A-29. When we're engaging Taliban
| targets that don't have anti-aircraft defenses beyond small arms
| fire, a simple turboprop will get the job done efficiently and
| cheaply, and that frees up jets to be used in other theaters.
| vhcd wrote:
| Wasn't the goal of the F-35 to sell an inferior aircraft to
| allies and keep the F-22 for the real action?
|
| I don't know the sales figures, but it may have been a success
| using those metrics.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Allies have cut back on the F-35 orders too on about the same
| scale. But no I don't think it was ever planned to replace the
| F-22. The F-22 is really an interceptor, the F-35 is much more
| multirole like the F-16.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Exactly. It's like:
|
| F-15 -> F-22 + some F-35 F-16 -> F-35 F-18 -> F-35 carrier
| version AV-8B -> F-35 STOVL
|
| It is unfortunately compromised in weight by needing to do
| the carrier role. But on the flip side, the extra strength in
| the fuselage means they could last a long time.
| tus89 wrote:
| > The F-35 is a Ferrari, Brown told reporters last Wednesday.
| "You don't drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive
| it on Sundays. This is our 'high end' [fighter]
|
| The F-35 is not a fighter, it is a strike aircraft. It is big and
| heavy and bloated and would be eaten alive in air to air combat.
| bookmarkable wrote:
| I'm not a military expert, but just as a civilian tired of seeing
| my taxes wasted, doesn't the US military need to be completely
| reimagined anyway? Who is it built to defend against?
|
| As an example - the flyover at Super Bowl 55. Terrifying air
| power that could wipe out a civilization, but those bombers don't
| stop some rogue idiots from storming the Capitol, or any number
| of foreign and domestic hacking threats.
| blt wrote:
| The problems with the F-35 feel analogous to problems we face in
| the software industry.
|
| At the implementation level, we tend to underestimate the cost of
| making a system extensible and "future-proof", and underestimate
| the value of implementing a narrowly focused system from scratch.
|
| At the specification level, product managers too often are
| willing to add every feature that big customers request.
| abarringer wrote:
| If the primary purpose was to funnel money from you -> .mil ->
| military industrial complex it succeed wildly beyond all
| expectations. Otherwise not so much.
|
| I lived and worked very close to Eglin Air Force base where all
| the initial F35's went. Many Air Force people thought the primary
| design decisions were to spend money and little else.
| usrusr wrote:
| But there's a reason to funnel that money besides padding
| pockets: the nominal reason (and not a bad one if you are not a
| full pacifist) is to retain development capability for the next
| time you actually do need a military aviation innovation burst.
| And arguably this wasn't really successful. Chances are that
| rebuilding capability from a hypothetical starved state would
| yield better results than restoring efficiency from the
| comically fattened state they got.
| craftinator wrote:
| > the nominal reason (and not a bad one if you are not a full
| pacifist) is to retain development capability for the next
| time
|
| Is the F-35 a good example of what we want our next aircraft
| to be? It seems to me that we now have a whole development
| infrastructure set up to build expensive, buggy aircraft.
| That "development capability" that we've retained isn't a
| good one.
| usrusr wrote:
| Exactly what I meant. The money funneling has a valid
| purpose beyond actual aircraft, but as it stands it doesn't
| really serve that purpose.
| nvoid wrote:
| >With a sticker price of around $100 million per plane, including
| the engine, the F-35 is expensive
|
| Why say including the engine? Do they sell them without the
| engine?
| rjsw wrote:
| That is how the US military accounts for them, yes. The engine
| is not included in the price paid to Lockheed Martin.
| nvoid wrote:
| Oh interesting. Can they get them with a different engine?
| Like an add-on when buying your car. Maybe like a sport mode?
| onepointsixC wrote:
| At the time they were the best production engines in the
| world. General Electric originally was competing with the
| Pratt and Whitney engine F-135, called the F-136 but that
| was since canceled. However they're is the GE Adaptive
| Cycle Engine that has since been developed which produces
| greater thrust while having the ability to also achieve
| greater fuel efficiency for greater range by changing it's
| characteristics.
| toddh wrote:
| The time of planes has ended and the time of drones has begun it
| has.
| newsclues wrote:
| The horse and the automobile were used in two world wars last
| century.
| toddh wrote:
| And how did the work out for the british in WWI? They could
| have invested in tanks and used the Blitzkrieg one war early,
| but the officers loved their horses. Using horses was not a
| sign of health, it was sign of backward thinking and nearly
| cost them everything.
| hctaw wrote:
| You still have to shoot down a fighter jet to disable it. An
| enemy can't hack the pilot remotely and safely land it on their
| own air strips, which has happened with drones.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| I think if you make a fighter jet expend its missiles putting
| it in Winchester mode, and block its path to safety, thus
| expending its fuel... it drops from the sky. IMHO that would
| be a disable/defeat.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| That seems like all the more reason to invest more in our
| cyber-warfare/security capabilities instead of dumping the
| money in machines designed to carry meat-bags.
| hctaw wrote:
| we dump money into both
| tablespoon wrote:
| > That seems like all the more reason to invest more in our
| cyber-warfare/security capabilities instead of dumping the
| money in machines designed to carry meat-bags.
|
| We're talking about nation-state on nation-state hacking
| here. The kind of investment you're talking about would
| have to be absolutely massive, and even then it still might
| not do the job.
|
| And even if that kind of investment in cyber-
| warfare/security capabilities is undertaken, the military
| isn't going to stop "dumping the money in machines designed
| to carry meat-bags" until _after_ it 's _very_ clear the
| investment was successful. It 's not realistic for a first
| rate to take the kind of risk you're talking about if it
| wants to remain first rate.
| moistbar wrote:
| If the plane is connected to anything else, it can be hacked.
| Just because it hasn't been reported yet doesn't mean it's
| impossible or even that it hasn't happened.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If the plane is connected to anything else, it can be
| hacked. Just because it hasn't been reported yet doesn't
| mean it's impossible or even that it hasn't happened.
|
| And if that's a realized threat, the planes can be
| disconnected and still function at a reduced capacity.
| That's not true for drones.
|
| It's like GPS. It's a really nice technology, but warplanes
| and weapons also have IMUs, so they'll still be effective
| if GPS has been jammed/knocked out.
| hctaw wrote:
| The risk of downing a manned aircraft for a nation state is
| much higher than a drone.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Take a look at how John Boyd upended the Air Force dev process,
| but of course that ended with his untimely death. Nobody else was
| able to do it.
|
| He ran the "Fighter Mafia" which was responsible for the F-15 and
| F-16 aircraft.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...
| [deleted]
| shirro wrote:
| Time for NASA to admit the same for SLS/Orion.
| Havoc wrote:
| The irony is the Chinese just copied it...but threw out the jack
| of all trades part. Which is the problem with the f35
| sschueller wrote:
| Great and Switzerland still has this feature crep dumpster fire
| on its list of possible planes to buy. 32 of them....
| [deleted]
| adev_ wrote:
| So on one side, we have a program that costed > 406.5 Billions
| (2017) [1] for a failed jet.
|
| On the other side, we have the entire Apollo program that cost
| $156 billion (2018)[2], was stopped because too expensive. And we
| never have been able to go on the Moon since because "cost".
|
| Decisions that lead to the usage of public money by governments
| is definitively a mystery.
|
| I wish the Lobbyists of the Army/Lockheed Martin/Military complex
| could do a bit of training for NASA and the research sector.
| Something tell me humankind could benefit a lot from it.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_program
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| I wonder if that also means that they are going to cut funding to
| the astroturfers who show up in every thread in every forum on
| every post singing the praises of the F-35 now.
| knolax wrote:
| This has got to be my favorite astroturfing conspiracy. Imagine
| the US government paying people to convince the oh so important
| programmers at HackerNews that their jet fighter is effective.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| If that's you're favorite astroturfing conspiracy, what's
| your favorite astroturfing reality? Was it Microsoft
| astroturfing blogs in 2014?
|
| https://www.pcworld.com/article/2365060/microsoft-caught-
| ast...
|
| Or perhaps it was astroturfing of the Pharmaceutical Research
| and Manufacturers of America?
|
| https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2016/02/new-
| patient-...
|
| Or perhaps the energy industry?
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/energy-
| utility...
|
| But certainly its an unhinged conspiracy that government and
| the military would push their own narratives via
| astroturfing. Everyone knows they have far too much respect
| for how they spend our taxpayer dollars and they have far too
| much integrity to be so devious. Certainly all of the
| stalwart defenders of the F-35 that pop up on every internet
| forum and message board to sing the praises of that
| boondoggle must be sincere.
| protastus wrote:
| > The F-35 is a Ferrari, Brown told reporters last Wednesday
|
| It _became_ a Ferrari due to feature creep and an enormously
| complex and expensive technology stack. The F-16 is not a Ferrari
| and NATO needs a multirole single-seat fighter that is affordable
| to purchase and fly.
|
| My most charitable view is the F-35 became a jobs program for
| Lockheed Martin and subcontractors. People were trained and
| (allegedly) useful technology was developed. But the price tag
| appears unreasonable by an order of magnitude, and this puts no
| accountability on the program management or people signing the
| checks.
|
| As for arguments about technology trickling down from the F-35:
|
| * The argument needs evidence. I've seen no attempt to identify
| the value of the technologies developed against the time and
| money spent.
|
| * Too much time was surely spent on integration and one-off
| details specific to the F-35 platform, and this is sunk cost
| unlikely to be recovered in future platforms designed by new
| teams.
| noir_lord wrote:
| The US has done this before, they had a winner with the
| F5E/F-20 Tigershark back in the day, they could have sold those
| to everyone but they killed the program to boost F16 sales.
|
| It was cheap to buy, cheap to run (like really cheap for the
| capability which in the case of the F20 matched F16's of the
| era) but because the USAF didn't want to buy them it got cut
| off at the knees.
|
| Damn thing has a thrust to weight ratio of 1.16 to 1 (it could
| accelerate in a vertical climb) and do Mach 2, largely because
| they shoved a single F18 engine in to replace the two much
| older engines the F5 had.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| Gee I never would have guessed that a one size fits all
| replacement for every F- aircraft (and more than a few A-'s) in
| the inventory for every branch would be difficult.
|
| It was a trillion dollar stimulus package (or welfare) directed
| at the good old military industrial complex, plus it helps
| placate the chicken hawks in Congress who wanted pork for their
| district. Like most weapon systems developed in peacetime with
| unclear use cases, it's kind of just an expensive tech demo.
| simonblack wrote:
| Just a 21st century Brewster Buffalo.
| zafka wrote:
| John Boyd and the defense reform movement pretty much predicted
| this outcome from the beginning.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| 323bn spent.
|
| There are 331 million Americans.
|
| = every American paid around $1000 for this failure.
|
| These funds could have gone into schools, roads, social
| programmes, ... Instead they served to enrich the small crowd
| owning the defense industry, with little to show for it all.
| fnord77 wrote:
| are manned fighter aircraft even relevant anymore?
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Remind me of the Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle whose
| conflicting requirements from the Army/Marines/Navy was lampooned
| in a movie.
| stuaxo wrote:
| How much money has the UK wasted on these at the same time as
| implementing austerity ?
| sorokod wrote:
| Uk is committed to buy 48 but likely to go for 70.
|
| 48 x 90 = 4320 mil.$
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > The 17-ton, non-stealthy F-16 is too difficult to upgrade with
| the latest software, Brown explained. Instead of ordering fresh
| F-16s, he said, the Air Force should initiate a "clean-sheet
| design" for a new low-end fighter.
|
| It's more difficult to upgrade the F-16 systems than to design a
| whole new aircraft? I mean, maybe there are other reasons to
| design a new aircraft, but this doesn't sound like the whole
| story.
| gnu8 wrote:
| They could upgrade the systems all day long, but the fact
| remains that the F-16 is a pre-stealth airframe and it is
| simply the wrong shape. What the Air Force wants in a low end
| fighter is F-16 level systems in a new stealthy airframe.
| Vaderv wrote:
| Once again proving what Eisenhower said ...
| superkuh wrote:
| Keep in mind that modern updates of the F-16 sell for about $100
| million each. They are comparable in cost to the F-35.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| The saddest thing about all of this IMO is they have been working
| on this for 14 years, and how much money was spent/wasted? Now,
| read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71 (without
| supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a fraction of
| the cost.
|
| This isn't just planes, this seems to be everything nowadays.
| Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs on
| Japan in 1945. No chance we could do something like that in this
| toxic environment of today.
|
| I know Peter Thiel is not popular here, but his conversations
| about technological progress seem to be spot on: we just cant
| build cool shit anymore. I really did want a flying car, and all
| I have is 140 characters and promises of AI that never come true.
|
| Maybe, you could say there are some exceptions like CRISPR, but
| that is TBD.
| phaemon wrote:
| > we dropped two bombs on Japan in 1945. No chance we could do
| something like that in this toxic environment of today.
|
| Indeed. If you killed hundreds of thousands of civilians today
| you'd probably get cancelled by leftists or something! Toxic.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I work in defense and the approach to software development is
| hell. Imagine package managers and Git being newfangled scary
| technologies and not unit testing anything. Now slap tens or
| hundreds of millions of dollars on there and you've got a
| defense program.
|
| I'm actually quite tired of it and I'm looking elsewhere.
| thewarrior wrote:
| The requirement specs for this plane seem crazy. It has to be
| as agile and fast as an F-22. It needs to do ground support
| like an A-10. It has to be able to do carrier missions and on
| top of that it has to take off and land vertically.
|
| And yeah do all this while being cheap and maintainable. It's
| basically a unicorn.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/864/
|
| Also, well
|
| "Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs
| on Japan in 1945. No chance we could do something like that in
| this toxic environment of today"
|
| I believe some people consider WW2 and the nuclear wipeout of 2
| cities of common people to be "toxic environment", too.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Because Boeing is now ran by MBAs who want to maximize profit.
| A low cost F-35 means less money for Boeing in the short term.
|
| What about the long term? Fuck the long term. It is all about
| quarters, and short term bonuses.
| Aunche wrote:
| I love the SR-71 as much as anyone else, but I don't think
| that's entirely fair. 12/32 were lost in an accident, so it
| looks like we lost a lot of reliability in exchange for a much
| faster development.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| It was also pushes the boundaries of what aircraft were
| capable of. Required all sorts of new materials technology,
| probably required new controls as well. I think it is fairer
| to compare the development of the SR-71 to something like the
| early development of rockets/missiles, than to the F35, which
| is much more incremental.
| hansthehorse wrote:
| The time from project start to first flight of the SR 71 was 47
| months - with slide rules and manual drafting.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Not dropping radioactive bombs = toxic.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| The point was how quickly it went from theory to
| implementation.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I know what your point was. But the expedience of those
| times came at an incredible human cost.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Is this a race to Godwin's law?
| Thorentis wrote:
| > we just cant build cool shit anymore
|
| I sadly agree. Unis spend so much time teaching CAD software,
| processes, etc, you wonder how much understanding engineering
| grads actually have. I just think we've stagnated as a
| technological society. We rely so much on computers to do
| everything, that we can't innovate in the same way anymore.
| Unless our new x has an onboard super-computer, we just can't
| get it to do anything.
| captain_price7 wrote:
| > Unis spend so much time teaching CAD software, processes,
| etc, you wonder how much understanding engineering grads
| actually have
|
| That's interesting. The popular sentiment in programming
| world seem to be Unis don't tech practical stuff enough, or
| interviews for (junior) developers don't test their practical
| knowledge enough- a point I always found a bit strange.
| eitland wrote:
| > That's interesting. The popular sentiment in programming
| world seem to be Unis don't tech practical stuff enough,
|
| I think the point might be that there might be a sweet spot
| somewhere between
|
| - demanding Java code to be created by students using only
| Notepad and javac
|
| and
|
| - just teaching the latest js trends
|
| I think it is fully possible - and a lot more motivating -
| to teach theoretical problems hand in hand with practical
| problems.
| unishark wrote:
| I'm in a university dealing with this stuff and we get both
| ends at the same time, they (companies) want more immediate
| technical skills (e.g. programming) while also complaining
| that grads don't know their math fundamentals enough.
|
| In an engineering department (as in not CS) I'd say the
| bias is overwhelmingly towards the math end of the
| spectrum, partly because faculty largely don't even keep up
| with the technology. You'd have to heavily revise your
| course constantly (imagine teaching how to use google
| products...). Plus it just feels less worthwhile teaching
| things that will become obsolete in a few years.
|
| Oh and by the way we need to teach them to write better
| too. Kids can't communicate these days. And economics. And
| ethics. It ends up being a very tight squeeze we can cram
| in maybe two courses on programming if it's a top priority.
| benjamoon wrote:
| I'm in the UK, over here we developed a vaccine to an unknown
| virus in about 10 months and then gave it to nearly 20 million
| people in 2 months. I'll take that over the next generation of
| pointless aircrafts any day!
| rubicon33 wrote:
| I wonder if anyone has any theories as to why? Assuming it's
| true that technological innovation peaked in the mid 40s/50s,
| it begs the question why it has ground to such a halt now.
|
| Recognizing that is a big assumption of truth, would anyone
| here be willing to posit an explanation?
| mikewarot wrote:
| We don't have a government anymore... it started breaking
| down with the death of FDR. The only thing that kept it going
| was the cold war.
|
| We don't invest in research like we should.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| It's a combination of factors but all with the same theme.
|
| Basically nobody is willing to take any risk for anything.
|
| This is on every level, from being wrong about a simple
| decision all the way up to not taking any personal risk with
| your life.
|
| And it's impossible to argue against it because at any point
| you can always make an argument for reduction of risk, and
| anyone arguing against it is demonized.
|
| How can you argue against more health and safety standards
| after all? More rigourous engineering standards? More
| environmental protection standards? More consultation with
| the public?
|
| But it's not just a government thing, it's on a societal
| level. In large companies it's the same exact phenomenon of
| buck passing and responsibility dodging.
|
| Each thing only has a tiny multiplicative cost, but the sum
| total of all of it is the inability to make any progress.
| FooHentai wrote:
| Necessity is the mother of invention. In the mid 40s a very
| large urgent necessity, the war effort, went away. There were
| some residuals after that as motivations and industries
| shifted.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| My pet theory is we rely too much on computers.
| adwww wrote:
| 1940s-1950s two big factors - necessity to win a war.
|
| But also opportunity. Even widespread mains electricity is
| fairly new back then, there were a lot of fairly obvious
| opportunities to quickly exploit.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Maybe check out Ross Douthat's recent book about "decadence"
| as a place to start. Not sure I buy the argument, but this is
| part of what he's talking about.
|
| For me personally, I think it's just the point we're at in
| the current technological revolution (in the Carlota Perez
| sense). We're due for a new one (maybe biotech, eg. driven by
| crispr, mrna, etc.) so things feel stale.
| xwdv wrote:
| Because it's not worth it. People built all the low hanging
| fruit of cool shit already. A plane would have been "cool
| shit" 100 years ago, today it's just a glorified bus.
|
| What else is there to build? Spaceships? For what? We've seen
| Mars and the Moon. More military crap? USA already won now
| it's just showing off. AI stuff? Turns out people think it's
| creepy and they like to keep their jobs anyway because it
| makes them money. Mega structures and arcologies? NIMBY!
|
| We're in the long tail of cool shit now. Each generation gets
| harder and harder to impress.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| While the US does have a problem with building civil
| engineering projects today, that dynamic isn't really what
| happened with the F-35.
|
| The root of the F-35 program's problems is a cost plus style
| contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun on cost
| and time table. Ash Carter fixed that by telling Lockheed if
| they didn't agree to his new contract he'd kill the entire
| thing. And oh hey what a surprise suddenly the marginal cost of
| a new F-35 started hitting the target numbers.
|
| The aircraft itself is apparently excellent at what it does,
| but that doesn't erase just how much grift was involved in this
| program for decades.
|
| The other big thing driving the Air Force to heavily
| restructure it's approach is they know they just can't have
| these decades long development programs. They want to be able
| to iterate much faster. It's all still classified, but
| apparently the first few attempts at this more agile approach
| are in fact actually working, like with the NGAD program.
| bumby wrote:
| > _The root of the F-35 program 's problems is a cost plus
| style contract that gave Lockheed every incentive to overrun_
|
| I'm fond of the saying "once you understand people's
| incentives, you understand everything" as it applies to
| contracting.
|
| I will add, however, that fixed price contracts have their
| own problems as it relates to cutting corners. E.g., it can
| put downward pressure on retaining talent and performing best
| practices because it incentivizes under-bidding and then
| cutting corners to make a profit. E.g., "you cobbled together
| some VBA in a spreadsheet once 20 years ago and will work for
| pennies? Congratulations, you're our new head of software
| development!"
|
| A lot of the problems can be attributed to poor contract/spec
| management and poor oversight. Part of the key is having good
| requirements and also the contractual teeth/intestinal
| fortitude to hold contractors feet to the fire
| jacques_chester wrote:
| There was a good discussion about NGAD when it became
| publicly known:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24493698
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| You can see some openly available artifacts of earlier
| efforts at the more agile approach to highly complex
| cyberphysical systems with programs like DARPA's Adaptive
| Vehicle Make (RIP).
|
| Though AVM was killed by sequestrations, the work continued
| in other programs -- and of course there was a lot of
| learning taken from various unclassified programs to behind
| the green door, so to speak.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The next-gen bomber program (B-21) as far as I'm aware is
| also going well. Fast purchase of an a platform intentionally
| only incrementally more advanced than the current model.
| sayhar wrote:
| Thank you for bringing a structural, informed approach to
| this. I'm getting a little tired of the tendency to handwave
| blame "cultural decline" rather than actual looking into the
| policies and details.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Aren't policy and details a product of culture? If a group
| of people, be it a team or nation, dont have have a solid
| culture then surely they cant achieve solid results. And
| indeed it would appear that gradually there is a decline in
| achieving great results from countries that have
| historically achieved such results. Dont get me wrong, the
| US is still doing great, but maybe when the rest of the
| world keeps raising red flags then criticism should be
| taken on board as not all is ill intentioned.
| [deleted]
| ldbooth wrote:
| How much can we attribute to the financialization of
| capitalism? I think it's the driving force. Some historical
| societies have recognized paying interest on capital at every
| level of the value stack creates an anti-competitive costs of
| production. Maybe they just didn't like creditors.
| clownpenis_fart wrote:
| Yeah, it's really sad how we can't have nice things anymore
| like nuking hundreds of thousands of civilians.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| You are obviously taking my comment in bad faith, but even if
| you ignore the the two bombs, I believe nuclear energy is the
| cleanest renewable.
| jnwatson wrote:
| They've been at this for more than 14 years. I was accidentally
| part of both the Boeing and Lockheed F-35 teams, and that was
| 23 years ago.
|
| For a humorous take on the U.S. military platform problem, look
| for a movie called The Pentagon Wars [1] starring Kelsey
| Grammar and Cary Elwes. It came out in 1998, and very little
| has changed since then.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Wikipedia said it was started in 2006
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning.
| ..
| jhpankow wrote:
| Lockheed and Boeing were building protoypes in the 1990s
| and the contract was awarded to Lockheed in October 2001.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Strike_Fighter_program
| hef19898 wrote:
| Back the day an engineer cold be there at the start of
| program, see the maiden flight and even go on to see a second
| program. Today, the same engineer probalby enters years after
| the concept phase and retires before the first prototype
| takes of.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| The point is that if every project is just for the votes and
| friends then essentially you are going to ignore the
| engineering and other parts. I'd argue further that it's the
| same for business projects as well, just that you do it for the
| stocks and friends.
| totetsu wrote:
| If it stops us producing Civilization Ending technologies like
| the A-bomb then I'm all for the toxicity... Not all progress is
| linear, efficiency is no as vitrue unto itself!
| antattack wrote:
| Speaking of military expenses. One would think spending
| fraction of military budget towards vaccine research would
| protect our country better.
|
| Alas, building machines of destruction seems to the
| prerogative.
| [deleted]
| ausbah wrote:
| I think it's a combination of science is simply harder because
| the low picking fruits have mostly been picked, and
| environments that lead to breakthroughs like fission appear
| only under exceptional circumstances
| [deleted]
| nxm wrote:
| Abys? lowest unemployment in 50 years (including for
| minorities) before corona (out of his control) and first
| president in 40 years to NOT start a war. Not to mention the
| peace deals in the middle east. Give credit where it's due
| beowulfey wrote:
| You need a purpose behind progress. Look at any of the major
| developments of the 20th century and there is something huge
| providing the motivation.
|
| Science continues on and incredible discoveries are made all
| the time. But when it comes to _building_ incredible things...
| there just isn't any push for it right now.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I thought the Singularity is near because innovation is
| accelerating. I'm perpetually confused.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| It is digital technology specifically where we are seeing
| accelerating progress, largely because the progress
| compounds, using one generation's machines to design and
| produce the next generation's.
|
| Also, most digital technology is developed outside of the
| government procurement / military industrial complex, so all
| the problems inherent to those systems do not apply.
|
| If the Singularity is reachable, it doesn't depend on the
| ability to create aircraft or weapons of any sort, whereas it
| would be impossible to reach the Singularity without digital
| technology.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Maybe someone with more industry knowledge or interesting
| sources can corroborate --
|
| But I believe that one of the things that happened to the
| military aviation industrial complex was that in the WW2, early
| Cold War era, planes and military development programs were
| very much driven by _individuals_ or very small teams
| responsible for designing the requirements, overseeing the
| planning, and the outcome of new aircraft. That was how you got
| such distinctive (and long lasting designs) that served well
| the needs of the military, even in use up to today. Let 's call
| it (using today's fashionable term, "passion" about the
| aircraft, and unwillingness to put out a piece of crap.) You
| could name who was responsible for an aircraft design.
|
| But in the 1970s, 1980s, something happened where the size of
| projects or the professionalization of military projects caused
| them to have distributed (read, lack of) ownership by very
| critical people, and instead by an anonymous/dispersed
| "committee style" management. Also, the experts within the
| military often left for better pastures at the contractors (NG,
| LM, etc).
|
| Add to that the requirement (by Congress, regulation) that you
| couldn't just use your expert / private connections to other
| experts to "get things done" and bring in contractors who had
| expertise, and instead had to farm out RFPs to every company,
| get their bland input, and fill out a heat map of who did what
| best, and cobble together a solution "mutually acceptable to
| all stakeholders".
|
| So no longer was an aircraft project owned by someone who had
| very certain opinions about what was needed, and not needed,
| and who something should be designed for. But instead, projects
| follow a certain recipe, hoping that form produces function,
| yet not actually produce useful output because of what happens
| when you lack ownership. You cannot today name who is
| responsible for an aircraft design (I would say). It is the
| metaphorical side project among many, of a large dispersed
| group of people.
|
| It seems to me something was missed in the migration to this
| new method of working.
|
| But as I said, I would love to hear corroborating observations
| about whether this was a major factor.
| cgearhart wrote:
| At least three things happened:
|
| - congressional oversight increased, with the result that the
| purchasing authority is no longer generally the end user. We
| aren't just buying a ship (plane, gun, etc.), we're
| maintaining a logistics and manufacturing industrial base to
| produce that type of item (and maintain jobs in congressional
| districts). So maybe we _should_ buy a few more tanks
| /ships/bombs than we need so that we don't forget how. (A bit
| dubious, but it's one of the reasons we make the funding
| decisions we do.)
|
| - risk tolerance shrank. Especially in war time there was a
| high tolerance for risk if the payoff was big enough. These
| days our risk tolerance is basically zero. I once had to get
| an admiral to sign off on a risk hazard assessment with an
| estimated likelihood of ~1e-18 (you're more likely to win the
| powerball jackpot _twice_ ). There was a cap that might pop
| off an item at high speed during flight, and if it hit
| someone they would probably miss a day of work. By the
| likelihood/consequence framework for risk management, that
| meant it required an admiral's signature. You can't move fast
| in an environment like that.
|
| - complexity increased. Old schools systems like a WW2 jeep
| were designed and prototyped in 40 days because they were
| incredibly simple and made liberal use of COTS parts. There's
| an argument to be made that maybe we don't need such complex
| systems to meet requirements, but I don't think anyone is
| arguing that we should be replacing all the F-35 fleet with a
| WW2-style aircraft. (Although there _have_ been proposals to
| build super-simple aircraft for CAS missions, etc.)
| Koshkin wrote:
| I am not sure about "incredibly simple" in general though.
| Look at how insanely sophisticated the P-51D fighter was,
| for example. But sure, something in engineering as we see
| it today, and around it, has been lost.
| greedo wrote:
| Or the B-29. That was arguably one of the most
| sophisticated (and expensive) aircraft of the war.
| wycy wrote:
| > - risk tolerance shrank.
|
| There's a lot of truth here and it plays out in even more
| ways than that. I look back through documentation of legacy
| systems and see so many things designed based on
| "engineering judgement". Sizing for that bearing?
| Engineering judgement. Thickness of other minor structure?
| Engineering judgement.
|
| Now, the load on every little thing requires a 50 page
| engineering calculation report with figures, charts, and
| tables, that takes 3 months to prepare and another month to
| get reviewed by everyone. The littlest things now take
| forever.
| cgearhart wrote:
| A month for review? Where is this _glorious Valhalla_?!
| Navy flight certification checklist is a 2-3 column full
| page of densely packed names for the approval authority
| on all the different systems. It may take a month to
| circulate your proposal to those folks just to get a
| final list of the subset who will need to ultimately sign
| off. We had cases where item X was used on USAF aircraft
| Y, but it could not be used on Navy aircraft Z (which was
| the same airframe) without literally tens of millions of
| dollars in testing. Not because the loads on the
| platforms were substantially different, but because the
| test standards between USAF and USN were different and
| the approval authorities wouldn't sign off otherwise.
| (See also: zero risk tolerance.)
| morei wrote:
| There's a lot of things changed since the era of
| 'engineering judgement'.
|
| In the 50s and 60s when 'engineering judgement' was
| common, it was a signal to a skilled machinist that "You
| have more experience with the material, so use your best
| guess because I don't know what the right answer is".
|
| Things have changed a lot!
|
| 1. Material quality is much higher. Which is to say that
| batch-to-batch variance is vastly reduced. This means
| that it's worth investing the effort in detailed
| understanding of the material because that material is
| more predictable. Which led to ...
|
| 2. We understand a _LOT_ more about material science. Our
| knowledge of materials is vastly higher, so things that
| used to be 'best guess' are now 'do this because it will
| reliably work'. e.g. Spallation and galling used to be
| poorly understood issues that were worked around based on
| personal experience and guesswork. Now we understand them
| very well, and any competent manufacturer will clearly
| explain exactly how to (eg) install their bearing in a
| way that prevents such issues.
|
| 3. Expertise shifted. The 'machinist' is no longer a
| 20-year experienced highly trained person, but a CNC
| operator, who probably won't be within eye-sight of the
| running machine. So the practice of 'increase the RPM
| until it chatters slightly then back off' doesn't cut it
| any more. The answer needs to be known up-front to go
| into the G-code, not 'feel'. This has led to the obvious
| cycle where more responsibility moved to the engineering
| end, which increased the demand for exact knowledge,
| which reduced the requirements on machinists, which led
| to lower skill, which further moved responsibility to
| engineering.
|
| So I totally get pining for the era of 'engineering
| judgement', but it died for a reason and it's not really
| likely to come back!
| wycy wrote:
| I would've thought your first 2 items there would help
| increase the use of engineering judgement by reducing
| pitfalls previous generations encountered. Your third
| item is definitely a significant factor.
|
| It's not so much that I yearn for the era of engineering
| judgement so much as I yearn for refocusing on work
| that's important. Not every little decision needs to
| written up in professional report, circulated around
| through multiple drafts, signed off by 4-5 people,
| briefed out in slide deck form, then never read again.
| TylerE wrote:
| The F-35 broke the most important of Kelly Johnson's rules.
|
| 15. Never do business with the (damned) Navy!
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| > Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs
| on Japan in 1945. No chance we could do something like that in
| this toxic environment of today.
|
| I think that I am misunderstanding this paragraph. You mean the
| speed at which a new inventions was put into production, right?
|
| It could be my English failing me but putting it through a
| translator did not help.
| tdeck wrote:
| As a native English speaker I had the same reaction (i.e.
| "WTF what a disturbing sentiment!")
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Of course, I don't mean killing hundreds of thousands of
| people was good, but it did end WWII, and presumably saved
| lives that would have been lost via a land invasion (US +
| USSR)
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| This is far from how I learned it. I am not saying either
| of us is right, just noticing how interesting it is that
| historical facts taught differently completely change a
| person's perception.
|
| We will probably never learn the truth as none of us were
| there.
|
| I have always been told that Japan was already ready to
| surrender and that dropping the bombs was simply the first
| step into the cold war -- a bombing to show strength to the
| USSR.
|
| "The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The
| atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military
| point of view, in the defeat of Japan." - Fleet Admiral
| Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific
| Fleet
|
| "The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
| was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The
| Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender
| because of the effective sea blockade and the successful
| bombing with conventional weapons" - Fleet Admiral William
| D. Leahy, President Truman's Chief of Staff
|
| "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ... It
| was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had this
| toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it." -
| Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr., 1946
|
| Etc.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment ...
| It was a mistake to ever drop it ... [the scientists] had
| this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped
| it.
|
| That is a shockingly flippant quote that shows a lack of
| critical analysis. Disappointing.
|
| There was a political message in bombing Japan that
| communicated to Russia (and supported China). There was
| utility for the US. The Japanese were both divided and
| weighing on who to surrender to. The Japanese Imperial
| Army were notoriously staunch in their bushido teachings
| and with a lack of cohesion at the highest ranks, some
| would undoubtedly continue to follow orders. eg There
| were tens of thousands ready to repel an American land
| invasion in Kyushu* It had the desired effect in
| practical Japanese military planning.
|
| * https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/world-war-
| ii-th...
| the_af wrote:
| > _There was a political message in bombing Japan that
| communicated to Russia (and supported China). There was
| utility for the US._
|
| Agreed, outside the US this is a common understanding. If
| you've visited the Hiroshima museum in Japan, you'll note
| that's also the stated position of the museum: the
| purpose of the bombings was not so much to defeat Japan,
| but to show Russia what the US was technically capable of
| and willing to pull off (I can't remember the exact
| words, but this is the gist of the museum's position).
| I'm not saying the museum is impartial on this topic, of
| course -- that's just an example, and there are many
| outside Japan too.
|
| However, I've noticed that in online discussions with
| people from the US, they often don't acknowledge this.
| Perhaps because as a strategy it was long-term and cold-
| blooded. So they focus on how Japan was a genocidal
| empire, how the average citizen blindly followed the
| Emperor and would fight to the death, how the atomic
| bombs helped prevent more bloodshed, etc.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The common view in the US is distorted because as the
| cold war developed people were shown a lot of propaganda
| lionizing the US's victory and distracting from things
| like the firebombing. When you talk to more serious
| people in the US there's awareness of the point you're
| making, you just won't find it in Hollywood's movie
| version of things anytime soon.
|
| A similar issue is how Band of Brothers, an otherwise
| excellent show, re-enforced the idea that D Day happened
| to stop the holocaust. Those who've read a bit more
| history however know it was to stop the soviets from
| marching all the way to Portugal, and that the US and
| allies declined to take even simple measures like bombing
| the railway lines to the death camps to fight the
| holocaust. In particular the treatment of holocaust
| survivors like a game of hot potato afterwards makes
| clear what the priorities actually were.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| This book tells a different tale, but the author is
| American:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bo
| mb
|
| Great book nonetheless.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I researched this for a while some years ago. I'm no
| professional historian, but I did find some key points
| that are accurate to the best of my knowledge:
|
| The key debate within Japanese leadership was what
| conditions of surrender to accept. They'd known for some
| time they were going to lose, but hoped to drag out an
| invasion of Japan enough to get better concessions, keep
| the Emperor in power etc.
|
| The nuclear bombings ended up not playing a huge role in
| their decision making. At the time all the major cities
| in Japan had been firebombed except Kyoto. The fission
| bomb technology was shocking, but ultimately it meant
| they did with one bomb what had already been happening
| via thousands. When the US firebombed Tokyo it killed
| over 100,000 people in a single night, mostly women,
| elderly men, and children. McNamara has said he believes
| he'd have been convicted of war crimes for that had the
| US not emerged the winner.
|
| Russia steamrolling through Manchuria in just under 30
| days, utterly routing the Japanese forces there weighed
| heavily on the minds of Japan's leadership. Once Russia
| declared war and was clearly committed to being part of
| the invasion of Japan, they realized they most likely
| would not be able to extract concessions by further
| resistance.
|
| It's a bit more complex than all that, and there is a
| debate among historians on details of these points, but I
| believe it's reasonably accurate. The simple narrative
| that it saved US lives is a way of avoiding looking at
| just how ugly things got.
| the_af wrote:
| > _This is far from how I learned it_
|
| I'm also not from the US, and I was similarly surprised
| when I found their position on this piece of history
| differs with how it's learned in pretty much the rest of
| the world.
|
| Speak to someone outside the US about the nuking of
| Hiroshima and Nagasaki: most, if not all, will say it was
| a terrible thing, almost a war crime. In some (Western!)
| countries the consensus is that it was a crime, but
| because it was perpetrated by the victor, it went
| unpunished. We outside of the US are also aware of the
| dissenters who spoke against the bombing, how it wasn't
| necessary, etc.
|
| Speak about the same with someone from the US: more
| likely than not, they'll admit it was a terrible thing,
| but emphasize it was necessary to win the war, how the
| Japanese were fanatical and weren't going to surrender
| without heavy bloodshed, etc.
|
| If anything, it's an interesting exploration of national
| perceptions...
| mywittyname wrote:
| Americans are finally accepting the truth around Nagasaki
| and Hiroshima. Especially now that so many documents
| around the war on declassified.
|
| But from the American perspective: it's easy to buy into
| the false narrative that the nuclear bombs "saved lives."
| We've all been raised with this notion that American is
| Inherently Good and that anything Bad America did was for
| the Greater Good.
|
| The Post-911 world has made it more socially acceptable
| to say that the country isn't inherently good (well,
| maybe the Post-GFC world). We are allowed to acknowledge
| the atrocities perpetrated in the past and have more open
| and honest discussions about it.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| It may have been a war crime, not sure about that, it was
| never officially a war crime, so it is what it is. My
| understanding is basically the following:
|
| Right before the bombs were dropped, the US was in a
| situation where they were trying to end WW2 and they did
| not want the Soviets to invade Japan (which they did
| anyways). Before Trinity, the US was bombing the hell of
| out of Japan already. ~100K Japanese died in Toyko in a
| single night [2], and other cities were being bombed
| also. The US was also under the impression (because of a
| few previous land invasions) that the Japanese were
| fighting to the death. There were mass suicides of 1000s
| because the Japanese wanted to die instead of get
| captured [1]. (The emperor did not agree to the Potsdam
| Declaration after until the 2nd bomb was dropped) The US
| was planning to invade but then Trinity worked and we of
| course didnt.
|
| I'm from the US, and I did not learn anything I am saying
| in school, I read it on my own accord. It may be wrong,
| but if it is wrong, tell me why it is wrong so I can
| learn what is right.
|
| Basically, if you are not from the US, what scenario do
| the education systems think would have played out if
| Truman didnt ok the bombs? Also, given the US avoided the
| land invasion, how did that not save lives (US lives, but
| lives nonetheless)?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Cliff [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
| drewvolpe wrote:
| NASA just successfully sent a helicopter to Mars. We developed
| two very effective vaccines using mRNA technology in a few
| months and had it through FDA trials in under a year. CAR T
| cell therapies (3 FDA approved and more coming) are changing
| how we treat cancer. There's amazing technology all around you.
| paganel wrote:
| We as a species were sending stuff to Mars and to Venus
| (which imho is a lot more interesting than Mars) back in the
| '70s and '80s, not that much novelty in recent events (even
| though I must admit the helicopter gimmick was interesting,
| until the novelty very quickly worn off, that is).
|
| > had it through FDA trials in under a year.
|
| That was by political decision, at least that is my
| understanding.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Life sciences is about the only area of science that has
| promising new technology coming out of it. Almost every other
| area is incremental.
|
| Nuclear reactor design: mostly already considered by the Navy
| in the 50s and 60s.
|
| Space Exploration: Space shuttle was reusable too. Rockets
| that could land were demonstrated in the 90s IIRC (admittedly
| SpaceX improved on this quite a bit).
|
| Electric/Renewable Powered Aircraft: Soviet Union had a
| hydrogen powered airliner.
|
| I'm not saying the new stuff isn't impressive. It is and
| those small improvements add up to a lot, but it's not
| revolutionary in the way a jet engine or a nuclear reactor
| was.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| That is a very strange sentiment about the bombs.
| bborud wrote:
| I might be mistaken, but I thought I'd seen the Skunkworks logo
| being used when talking about the F-35. Which is kind of
| pissing on the legacy of Skunkworks as Skunkworks effectively
| stopped existing in the 1970s.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| The phone in my hand is a miracle of cool shit technology. And
| a large fraction of the population of the world owns one.
|
| We take the miraculous for granted when it's frequent, sigh
| about the things we don't have, and declare its all terrible.
| bhupy wrote:
| A lot of it enabled by Defense projects too! (Internet, GPS)
|
| I don't have a fully formed opinion around how I feel about
| defense spending, but it's definitely complicated.
| nickik wrote:
| Thiel is wrong. What is happening in batteries is insane.
| SpaceX is doing amazing things in space and many smaller
| companies are doing great things too. Starlink itself is
| revolutionary, Starship is arguably even more so.
|
| And btw the advancements in batteries and EV is exactly what is
| needed actually do flying cars, if that is even a good idea in
| the first place.
|
| Government programs are often massively badly managed,
| politically captured, this is not new. But it doesn't mean
| nobody is inventing anything new anymore.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think your points are certainly common ones, but
| unfortunately they rely on three major misunderstandings.
|
| The first is that all the "cool shit" we built in the first
| half of the century was the _low-hanging fruit_ of new
| scientific understandings and materials.
|
| It's not that we were smarter, it's nothing to do with
| toxicity, it's just that we exhausted most of what you can
| easily do with nuclear, steel, engines, etc.
|
| The second misunderstanding is that we're not still building
| amazing things. Being able to access Wikipedia or Google
| through speech recognition, or talk to anyone in the world from
| a cheap videophone in your pocket, is _astonishing_.
|
| And the third is that flying cars somehow respresent the
| future. But flying car enthusiasts only focus on the "cool"
| aspect of it, rather than nuts-and-bolts issues like how they
| could be fuel efficient, how an average driver will avoid fatal
| crashes, if we really want urban skies filled with visual,
| noise and emissions pollution, etc. Flying cars _exist_. But
| they don 't make any economic or practical sense to use.
|
| If you think we're still not accomplishing astonishing things
| today, you're not paying attention. Did you notice, for
| example, how multiple companies put together COVID vaccines in
| record time? How is that not amazing?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Flying cars marry terrible airplanes with terrible cars. I'm
| not sure what would cause that general rule to be broken, but
| the demands of crash safety for cars add a lot of weight and
| weight is the killer negative metric for aircraft.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Covid-19 has a vaccine less than a year into the first death in
| The US, that's pretty nuts
| woeirua wrote:
| Not just a vaccine. A 95% effective vaccine. That's never
| happened before in such a short time frame. The high efficacy
| vaccines that most of us have been injected with took
| _decades_ to develop.
| heymijo wrote:
| Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) [0]. You might have missed
| this news.
|
| It's a modern remix to the Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich days of
| developing legendary aircraft at Lockheed's Skunkworks that you
| lamented the loss of.
|
| People in the know confirm it's legit and shocking, in a good
| way. Especially compared to the failures of the F-35 and even
| the F-22's development.
|
| [0] https://www.airforcemag.com/article/ropers-ngad-bombshell/
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Building the hardware is easy, it's the systems and software
| that will kill it, just like the F-35.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I had not seen this, thanks.
| silexia wrote:
| Until we break new military developments away from the
| political process of congress people funneling projects to
| big companies in their districts regardless of competence we
| will continue to see failure after failure in every area.
|
| We saw many advances during world War I and world War II
| because instead of rewarding companies with contracts that
| voted for politicians, all everyone cared about was defeating
| the enemy.
|
| My suggestion is that the military should put out specs for
| what it wants and then put out big cash prizes for getting it
| done similar to what was done with the Covid vaccine. Say a
| $1 billion prize for a modern tank design. And then a fixed
| price for each one delivered thereafter.
| tiahura wrote:
| Roper is awesome. There's a video of him describing the role
| of K8s in the next-gen process.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| We are doomed.
| jboog wrote:
| Big if true but I'm super skeptical.
|
| First of all how many years have we been hearing about how
| we'll have fully autonomous vehicles just around the corner?
| At least a decade.
|
| How many years have we been hearing that human-like AI is
| just around the corner? At least since the 60's.
|
| I'm skeptical (although optimistic) about massive tech
| breakthroughs in general. Even more so when it comes to
| military tech since so many in the mil. industrial complex
| stand to benefit from the trillions that the DoD sloughs off
| every few years for the next big thing.
|
| Not an aviator but spent almost a decade in the military. You
| used to hear all the time about the latest and greatest tech
| that was going to change the way we fight.
|
| At least in my nearly 10 years nothing really changed in any
| substantial way. incremental improvements, sure but no
| massive breakthroughs like are continually trumpeted in
| popular press.
|
| I hope you're right though!
| colechristensen wrote:
| We won't have general human-comparable AI or autonomous
| driving (or we will briefly until a few tragic things
| happen and people come to their senses). Enthusiasts think
| we will, but people underestimate what real intelligence
| requires and confuse it with training complex statistical
| models.
|
| They call it AI, but the "intelligence" there is just a
| name.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| No matter when it happens, I think that when General AI
| shows up most of us will be shocked and surprised.
|
| General AI showing up will be kind of like the discovery of
| quantum mechanics and the nuclear bomb. No matter how much
| speculative fiction we write about it, we won't be able to
| predict ahead of time how transformative it will be on
| society once it actually exists.
| mellavora wrote:
| not even drones?
| RapidFire wrote:
| We already have flying cars; they are called helicopters. I'm
| not sure you want to live in a neighborhood that has people
| commuting by helicopters; it would be very noisy.
|
| Want an example of crazy cool shit we just accomplished? Covid
| vaccine. Creating a vaccine/testing in less than a year and now
| distributing it at such a massive scale will likely go down in
| history as an event akin to the Manhattan Project.
| federona wrote:
| Thiel and his ilk are the reason we can't build cool shit
| anymore. Look at PayPal, horrible outdated interface that is
| still a kluge with old functionality glued to new functionality
| because it's just too big to be too concerned, and horrible
| customer service too. There is so much corruption and
| profiteering due to monopolization of various industries that
| this sort of behavior happens, Thiel is the guy who walks away
| with all his money before shit from his philosophy hits the
| fan; society being the bag man. Look at Trump who Thiel
| supported or his general idea of a monopoly. Monopolies are
| bad, competition and distribution is good. Thiel does not know
| what he's talking about. The rich can capture all the value,
| but what happens after that, they continue to capture all the
| value and don't have to improve or innovate to continue to
| exist, you can't hold them up to anything because what are you
| going to do you are locked in.
|
| Do things 10x better he says, and then you will have so much
| network effect that you can do things 10x worse and people
| still have a hard time getting rid of you.
| aphextron wrote:
| We're just fat, lazy, entitled, and lacking all motivation at
| this point. In the 20th century we went from dropping grenades
| out of cloth covered biplanes to shooting radar guided nuclear
| missiles from supersonic jet fighters in 20 years because our
| survival was at stake. Global hegemony has a predictable way of
| softening societies that is empirically observable throughout
| human history. Compare the pace of change and development in
| the US to what is happening in China now, and you can see where
| the global locus of innovation has shifted.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Yep, is it Fahrenheit 451 or another Ray Bradbury story where
| the planes zip around the globe to start and end a war within
| a couple minutes, without anyone really realizing or caring?
| dustingetz wrote:
| What's the source for the Thiel quote about "we just can't
| build cool shit anymore"?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs
| on Japan in 1945. No chance we could do something like that in
| this toxic environment of today.
|
| The first thing that springs to mind is the fact that the
| covid-19 vaccine was imagined, developed and started to be
| synthesized over the course of a single weekend.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The first thing that springs to mind is the fact that the
| covid-19 vaccine was imagined, developed and started to be
| synthesized over the course of a single weekend.
|
| Piggy-backing off the efforts of mRNA vaccines for the past
| decade or two, and existing efforts for personalized cancer
| immuno-oncology vaccines.
|
| There ain't no chance you figure out the lipid nanoparticle
| magic in a weekend.
|
| (Indeed, it's not really figured out: what we have is
| inadequate for mRNA drugs, which are the holy grail... but
| the shortcomings were realized to be useful for vaccines ~a
| decade ago).
| RobLach wrote:
| The F-35 program is spread across hundreds of vendors with
| representatives grabbing a piece for their constituents. I
| wouldn't be suprised if different diameter o-rings are coming
| from different suppliers.
|
| This is a strategic approach that both jacks up the price and
| gives you plenty of powerful allies who will fight to keep the
| program afloat.
|
| They could very put such an aircraft together at half the cost
| and time if cost and time were targets for the people deciding
| to fund this.
| solarhoma wrote:
| What's going on with all the Reddit level comments below your
| post?
|
| I think you bring up great points. This could be a case of low
| hanging fruit being picked. We are at the point where
| everything being added is just bells and whistles since the
| foundation has already been built.
| choxi wrote:
| That's what I was thinking, I wonder to what extent this is a
| symptom of stagnation in physics.
| solarhoma wrote:
| Maybe it's just the calm before the storm.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Not sure, I accidentally started a flamewar! I wouldnt
| consider the atomic bomb low hanging fruit either, it took
| many different breakthroughs in nuclear physics and
| structural engineering to procure the isotopes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Fission was discovered in 1938/1939 and we dropped two bombs
| on Japan in 1945. > No chance we could do something like that
| in this toxic environment of today.
|
| Excellent!
| Krasnol wrote:
| But isn't the main reason for that "decline" that things get
| complicated while all those easy and fast things have already
| been invented?
| balls187 wrote:
| I test drove a Tesla.
|
| Imo, it is cool shit.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I know Peter Thiel is not popular here, but his conversations
| about technological progress seem to be spot on: we just cant
| build cool shit anymore.
|
| As opposed to the other PayPal dude that is building
| spacecraft. It's more about what Peter Thiel can't do.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Nah, we build cool shit all the time. We just rolled out a
| whole new vaccine technology across the world in under a year.
| You never really wanted a flying car, and AI-driven tech is
| everywhere but you just don't call it AI any more.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| I wonder if this has to do with the overall decline of
| manufacturing in the US. Supply chains have been moving out of
| the US so iteration will be slower and more costly. Fewer
| talents would like to go to manufacturing. Fewer university
| professors are researching traditional mechanics now, for
| example, but more on "cutting-edge" stuff like nanometer
| materials. We also get fewer and fewer highly trained workers
| on lathing, welding, milling and etc over the years. As a
| result, it gets more expensive and more risky to build
| something as complex as F35.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No, its the acquisition process and administrative overhead.
|
| If you give smart people with a good idea a lot of resources
| to chase it while insulating them from people who want to
| measure/validate/manage/mandate, you often get good results
| and sometimes get complete failures.
|
| It is a problem of middle management interfering with the
| development process, red tape, trying to do everything at
| once, and requirements that constantly change.
|
| I read a headline and article like that and my immediate
| reaction is the military leader probably wants to make a name
| for himself spearheading a new plane - ambition on the part
| of customers in military acquisition is a real problem. (why
| are navy ships so big? because navy captains wouldn't feel as
| important with more, smaller ships)
|
| The problems have little to do with the end-stage production
| manufacturing, and a lot to do with the engineering R&D.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| We want nuclear propulsion, not more boring jet engines. we
| can't have jets, so why should we care if the Army has better
| ones then 15 years ago.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Nuclear propulsion in an aircraft? Isn't that going to spray
| radioactive matter everywhere?
| titzer wrote:
| Clear requirements, small teams, small budgets, custom-built,
| no over-thinking, absolutely must work, chop a path through the
| jungle with a machete.
|
| We do everything opposite these days: no thinking about
| requirements, huge teams, no budget, off-the-shelf everything,
| over-think everything, OK with failure (because golden
| parachutes, team churn, and "blameless" culture), and wait 5
| months for the bulldozers to get shipped here.
| tlogan wrote:
| I want just to add that Peter Thiel is one of the reason why we
| cannot have / invent 'cool stuff'. But he is also not wrong
| about what he saying: I'm just saying that it is not so simple.
| centimeter wrote:
| How do you blame Thiel for bureaucratic bloat in the US
| government? NASA, the canonical example of a formerly
| productive organization becoming hopelessly turgid, was
| dysfunctional by the time he was a teenager.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Thiel believes that rent seeking monopolies are desirable
| and necessary to enable innovation. He's plainly wrong
| about that as a mater of economic science. Lockhead's use
| of regulatory capture to extract as much money as possible
| is directly in line with how Thiel thinks business should
| be done.
| tern wrote:
| Rent seeking monopolies are the only organizational forms
| that have generated fundamental military-industrial
| innovation, historically speaking.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I don't think Thiel thinks this. I think Thiel's argument
| about monopolies is that good businesses act like
| monopolies because they have no competition, i.e. it's
| better to be Tesla[0] than to be starting a fast food
| franchise. I don't agree with Thiel on this, I think
| you're more likely to get rich in an area where there is
| already demand, but Thiel is more focused on people that
| pioneer new industries.
|
| [0]: Yeah, I know there are other EV manufacturers, Tesla
| is really not competing with them at this stage and never
| really was.
| mywittyname wrote:
| You're giving NASA way, way, way too much credit. The
| organization was a clusterfuck from the very beginning. The
| only reason they managed to get anything done is because
| top brass quickly figured out that they are primarily a
| presidential vanity project.
|
| There are some great interviews from the 70s on YouTube
| with some of the first high ranking officials within NASA
| speaking rather candidly about how terrible it was there.
| Everyone hated them: Congress, Military Brass, the American
| public.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| We found multiple vaccines for Covid in less than 1 year.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Broad statements like Thiel's shouldn't be taken too literally.
| I don't think the main point is the broad statement about the
| trends themselves.
|
| The main point is the classification: Flying Cars vs 140
| Characters or Bits vs Atoms. FB is worth almost $1trn. No real
| technical achievements or advancement. If fb didn't exist,
| something else would be the friendster. Tesla, Apple, MSFT,
| Google, etc. are closer to the flying cars end of that spectral
| dichotomy. We could debate where.
|
| Thiel attracts antagonists in the same way like leftists do.
| Paypal, Palantir, his capital allocation theories & such are
| not very performant on his own flying cars VS 140 characters
| test. It's a hazard of being an idealist. The traditional
| question a leftist authors get (chomsky, etc) is about selling
| his books on amazon.
|
| But yes. There certainly is a lot of failure in western
| economies, especially in the "public-private" realm. These
| aren't constructive failures, and this sort of stuff is deeply
| limiting. You know, cutting edge aerospace engineering is
| risky. Let's take easier examples. Why can't we procure
| buildings or do basic infrastructure without scandals and
| runaway costs?
|
| Ancient civilizations managed to build incredible aqueduct
| systems, public buildings, etc. We've regressed.
| 015a wrote:
| > Ancient civilizations managed to build incredible aqueduct
| systems, public buildings, etc. We've regressed.
|
| This feels like an extreme take.
|
| (Most) Every city in America has a functional clean water
| delivery network. Every city has electricity. Most cities
| have sewage. Most cities have very nice paved roads.
|
| This is billions of miles of pipes, wires, roads, bridges,
| dams... Billions. And you're comparing what the US, and
| actually most economies, have accomplished in this domain to
| a handful of ancient roman aqueducts made of stone,
| transporting barely potable water, and saying that modern
| society has regressed? That's wild.
|
| The public library in my city of ~800,000 people is twice the
| size of the Parthenon. Hell, there's a LITERAL 1:1 Parthenon
| replica in Nashville TN, which they basically built for the
| hell of it as a showcase for a fair. Across the street from
| me, they just finished up construction on a (I dare say,
| beautiful and modern) 32 story apartment building; a building
| like that would be the singular crown jewel of an ancient
| civilization, more advanced and useful than anything Rome
| ever built, and its not even remotely the only one in my 3rd
| tier US city, let alone worldwide.
|
| Sure, the Pyramids of Giza are impressive. 455 feet tall,
| probably took a lifetime to build. You know who has a bigger
| pyramid? Fucking North Korea; the Ryugyong Hotel, 1082 feet
| tall, constructed in 1992. The Luxor Pyramid in Las Vegas is
| 350 feet tall, and its part of a fucking casino. The Memphis
| Pyramid in Tennessee, 321 feet tall, and its a BASS PRO SHOP.
| The pride-and-joy of Ancient Egypt, the effort of an entire
| civilization for decades, is nearly replicated in the US, and
| we use it to sell bait and tackle for fishing.
|
| Is that regression? No. Its progression. We've gotten so good
| at putting buildings up and laying infrastructure that people
| are no longer impressed by any of it. Its easy to look at a
| Roman aqueduct as a massive feat of engineering; no one sees
| the miles upon miles of pipes below an average city that
| enable you to turn on a faucet and _always_ have water
| (anomalous events aside like bad storms or the Flint crisis).
|
| And now, squarely in the 21st century: No one sees the
| thousands of servers it takes to power google.com. No one
| sees the billions of miles of tiered fiber criss-crossing the
| country. No one sees the ten million dollar cooling systems,
| and the billions of person-hours that went into making it
| possible for you to search for "boobs" and receive back 1.4
| billion fully indexed and browseable results. People ignore
| the 3.8 million pixels used to display those results on your
| screen. They disregard the 13.2 billion transistors in their
| graphics card, capable of 12 trillion floating point
| operations per second, and that any human in the country can
| order a laptop that has all of this and have it delivered to
| their doorstep in 48 hours. Even more impressively; most
| people can afford it.
|
| The problem isn't that we've regressed. The problem is that
| we've lost appreciation for where we have progressed. Sure, a
| lot of it is by private corporations; but a lot of it isn't.
| And if that's what it takes to actually drive humanity
| forward, maybe that's the path we need to take.
| throwanem wrote:
| Nitpick because I used to live there: the Memphis Pyramid,
| aside from being a miserable goddamned eyesore, is actually
| an arena. I think if anything that would make it more
| legible to a lot of ancient cultures, which also took sport
| seriously and invested heavily in their own venues for it.
| Bass Pro Shops just pays upkeep to put their logo on it,
| just like with every other stadium in the country - Camden
| Yards here in Baltimore has gone through probably five or
| six such sponsors in the two decades I've lived here.
|
| (It's not even a miserable goddamned eyesore on account of
| being monumental! If they'd faced it in basalt or nitrided
| steel, it could be an amazing excrescence of the _Blade
| Runner_ aesthetic into reality, and I 'd love it. But, in a
| literally blinding display of architectural tastelessness,
| they had to go and make it _reflective_...)
| 015a wrote:
| I believe the Memphis Pyramid used to be a basketball
| arena, but that was shut down a few years back, and now
| it just serves as a Bass Pro Shop storefront.
| throwanem wrote:
| Oh wow, OK. Wikipedia:
|
| > In 2015, the Pyramid re-opened as a Bass Pro Shops
| "megastore", which includes shopping, a hotel,
| restaurants, a bowling alley, and an archery range, with
| an outdoor observation deck adjacent to its apex.
|
| I was going to make a Laser Moon joke [1], but then I
| read further down in the same article and saw that the
| Pyramid does in fact now also have laser tag, and I just
| don't know how to top that.
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9dUG3_KNA
| greedo wrote:
| I'm no fan of FB, but to dismiss the value of a platform
| where you can reach 5B users is a mistake.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| SpaceX is an interesting exception. They innovate really fast,
| their pace resembles that of the positive examples you mention.
| Schweigi wrote:
| Their advantage is that they are very mission driven and
| don't really have to answer to anyone. I think its one of the
| key ingredients why Elon's companies & adventures are so
| successful. A company or organization which is pulled in
| different directions because of politics or financial
| influence is always at a disadvantage.
| injidup wrote:
| But SpaceX can can develop a tin can fast because it is not
| expected to have martians shooting at it. Imagine planning to
| go to Mars but your tin can had to be stealthy, manoeuvrable
| and armed to the teeth. You'd get Ripley's drop ship!
| grecy wrote:
| Agree 100% Literally all the "experts" said it was impossible
| to land the booster, and now it's almost routine.
|
| Nobody else in the industry can achieve what SpaceX have done
| successfully 40 times.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Experts from EASA didn't say it was impossible, but rather
| not economicaly feasible. And with SpaceX not publishing
| any financials we have no way to tell which side is right.
| grecy wrote:
| Are you really suggesting that throwing away a booster
| worth many tens of millions of dollars is more
| economically feasible than reusing it?
|
| Elon makes it pretty clear in this tweet it's _very_
| financially sound to bring back a booster
|
| "Payload reduction due to reusability of booster &
| fairing is <40% for F9 & recovery & refurb is <10%, so
| you're roughly even with 2 flights, definitely ahead with
| 3"
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295883862380294144?l
| ang...
| raphaelj wrote:
| A payload reduction of 30-40% is huge. And even if refurb
| and recovery is less than 10%, you still loose the 2nd
| stage at every lunch (18% of the rocket by weight). You
| then have to include the extra development costs and
| additional risk of failure.
|
| I highly doubt they hit break-even with only two
| launches, the math just doesn't add up.
|
| If reusing rocket was so profitable, there is a high
| chance someone else would have done it before. Landing a
| rocket isn't totally new tech. NASA did it on the moon
| 50y ago.
| shazmosushi wrote:
| After the massively incorrect analysis by popular
| YouTuber Thunderf00t, I made a video analyzing SpaceX's
| reusability https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36o4UrS9OS4
| It's 8 minutes but I recommend watching at 2 times speed.
|
| The latest numbers are that the marginal cost of relaunch
| is $15 million, with $10 million of that the second
| stage. Refurbishment cost is 27 days with a $1 million
| refurbishment cost (not $250,000 as I mistakenly said in
| the video, see description). The net effect is the cost
| of marginal cost of reflight is approximately 25% but the
| payload reduction is 30%, which leads to a break even
| point of 3 launches. After 10 flights, the cost to orbit
| per kilogram is halved. SpaceX has demonstrated 8 flights
| of a single booster.
|
| Note, these are all using SpaceX's own numbers (but so
| was the payload reduction and original reuse cost
| figures). It depends on recovering the $6 million fairing
| (which does not happen every mission). All numbers are
| sourced from an Aviation Week May 2020 podcast that I
| linked to. Yes, the cost numbers are from SpaceX but the
| only public refurbishment cost analogue we have is their
| 27 day turnaround time.
|
| SpaceX are currently operating at a sixth of the rest of
| the industry and use their cost advantage to launch 60
| Starlink satellites at their $15 million marginal cost.
|
| The traditional military-industrial complex with cost-
| plus accounting is "subcontractors all the way down", and
| the incentives weren't aligned to make an industry
| dominating rocket until arguably the 1990s commercial
| satellite boom (eg, the original Iridium constellation).
| Until 2008, there hadn't ever been a privately funded
| rocket reach orbit ever. Until SpaceX. Prior rockets we
| designed, owned and approved by the US government under
| World War 2-era cost-plus accounting arrangements.
| hef19898 wrote:
| There were mutiple reason, citing from top of my head as
| I don't find he old paper anymore. Reasons were:
|
| - Reliability and insurance costs - limited number of
| launches - refurbishment costs of boosters ompared to new
| ones - heavier and more expensive boosters to make them
| reusable
|
| This paper was way before SpaceX tried that. And whther
| or not reusable boosters are really a financial success
| is impossible to tell without published financials from
| SpaceX. The paper alsosaid, that reusable boosters become
| interessting with a high number of commercial launches,
| something they didn't see to happen. And that part alone
| makes Starlink so interessting, because it is basically
| SpaceX increasing its own number of launches.
| greedo wrote:
| If you're seriously arguing that F9 reuse is not a
| financial success, then you're not paying attention.
| Flight insurers "like" the F9 since it has proven itself
| reliable. Otherwise you're arguing that SpaceX is either
| a welfare queen, or a ponzi scheme.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I am citing an old paper from EASA. Again, how the true
| financials are is impossible to tell without SpaceX
| finances. Which we don't have. Except for really old
| leaks. And even with these numbers, we would have to
| account for Starlink launches.
| greedo wrote:
| Spacex couldn't afford to launch Starlink if F9 wasn't
| dirt cheap. So either it's cheap or some financial
| strategy is hiding money? EASA has underestimated SpaceX
| from day one.
| elorant wrote:
| Well we built two mRNA vaccines in less than a year. I'd call
| that pretty fucking awesome.
| kube-system wrote:
| Technically the vaccine (at least the moderna one) was built
| in 48 hours. They had it prepared before they even had a
| sample of the virus. Chinese researchers uploaded the genetic
| sequence to the net and that was all moderna needed to build
| the vaccine. It was trials/testing/approval that took the
| rest of the time. Truly some mind-blowing stuff.
| greedo wrote:
| I would put up designing an mRNA vaccine in less than a year to
| show that we can make technological progress when the desire is
| present.
| jksmith wrote:
| Well your single customer is your paycheck and your deal with
| the devil. If you triple the price of what you really think it
| will take because the gov will be inflating dollar supply by
| double digits every year and you're working a 10 year project,
| then the gov may go for a different/multiple contractors. So
| you have to just milk the project for as long as you can beyond
| 10 years and hope you can dollar/cost over time for the best
| profit. Lockheed should offer a store of value price and a
| dollar price. Otherwise, this is the new standard for long-term
| gov contracts. Lockheed can't lay their legendary game down
| when dealing with this kind of client. Is what it is.
| konjin wrote:
| Since your customer also will bail you out when you fail
| what's the point in even trying? It's a lot more profitable
| to bill like your planes work, but to provide planes made out
| of cardboard.
|
| Until you start executing companies (or CEOs) for
| incompetence you will keep getting the same results.
| jksmith wrote:
| Yeah, but that's a pots and kettles issue. We are
| commenting from our mountain about a business that has
| dropped into the gutter. None of the parties will change.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| They have to rip the government off to stave off inflation?
| How's inflation been looking, oh, these past 40 years or so?
| jksmith wrote:
| Hah, and throw in this dimension: Don't need F35's
| patrolling the Persian Gulf, because the need for oil is
| disappearing. Can't fuel those planes with petrodollars,
| just burning paper. This is not good.
| konjin wrote:
| I'm sure that the 50th time in the last 20 years I've heard
| we will have hyper inflation will be the time it happens.
| Any day now the house of cards build will fall and gold
| will be the only currency worth anything.
| jetrink wrote:
| > Now, read about Skunkworks - they were able to build the SR71
| (without supercomputers) in less than half that time and for a
| fraction of the cost.
|
| Not to mention the F-16 itself, which the F-35 was meant to
| replace:
|
| 1972: RFP for prototypes
|
| 1974: Maiden flight of the first prototype
|
| 1975: Production begins
|
| 1980: The aircraft officially enters service
| hef19898 wrote:
| The F-117 as well. A marvelous plane, and development
| program.
| coldcode wrote:
| The F16 was designed and built originally by General
| Dynamics, Lockheed bought it much later. I worked on it early
| in my career at GD.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Any interesting stories you can share from that time? I'd
| love to hear more.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Lockheed is synonymous with Skunk Works ... the F-35 was a
| Lockheed project. I can guarantee a lot of the engineers who
| worked on those legendary aircraft also participated in the
| JSF.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Organizations change. I heard recently at Skunk Works the
| engineers were told by some bureaucrats that they couldn't
| change the skunk logo (they had a modified version for some
| project). It's like how Boeing used to be a great
| engineering organization and now isn't.
|
| The sad thing is when a downturn happens those bureaucrats
| saying you can't change the logo will probably keep their
| jobs while the engineers who could probably be making
| pretty cool stuff if they had better leadership will be out
| of work.
| labcomputer wrote:
| F-16 was a joint Northrop and General Dynamics project.
| Manufacturing rights were only sold to Lockheed in the
| 90's.
| asah wrote:
| COVID vaccine had entered the chat. 6 months vs 4-10+ years
| previously, and 4+ vaccines at once.
| wwww4all wrote:
| Look at current society. Who wants to spend decades studying
| STEM and working for average salary these days?
|
| Tik Tok stars and Twitch bros and ethots are making multi
| million dollars playing games.
|
| This country can't build a functioning high speed rail system,
| that other countries built 30 years ago. How can we build an
| airplane now?
|
| Public school teachers and teachers unions are opposed to
| opening schools. They never cared about kids and education.
|
| US is at bread and circuses stage of decline. Time to accept
| reality and deal with it appropriately.
| mmaunder wrote:
| For more detail on how effective Skunkworks was, read Kelly
| Johnson's book. It was recommended to me by a buddy at JPL and
| it's a wonderful view into how they did things on time and
| below budget on projects like the SR71.
|
| Not an affiliate link: https://www.amazon.com/Kelly-More-Than-
| Share-All/dp/08747449...
| dharmab wrote:
| I love the problem solving stories. My favorite is the one
| about transporting the prototype from Washington to Nevada on
| a very wide trailer- which involved sawing signposts apart
| and bribing a bus driver...
| jc01480 wrote:
| Given a compelling need for innovation we could potentially do
| that. But today's innovation is about social equities. Billions
| will be pumped into that for the next decade until - heaven
| forbid- there's a new need for tools to perform catastrophic
| things.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| You misunderstand the purpose the F35- it is a jobs and pork
| program first and foremost, like SLS. It has the side benefit
| of keeping people trained to build this sort of thing, so
| SpaceX can hire them.
|
| We can build cool shit, but our government and most companies
| don't optimize for that.
| tdubhro1 wrote:
| Exactly, the US defence industry is a politically acceptable
| version of a welfare state
| 3nf wrote:
| I have always assumed this and the $500 toilet seats are just
| making room for black projects. There were no publicly
| visible budgets for the U2/F117 projects.
| [deleted]
| fallous wrote:
| I had a friend who, many years ago, got a military contract
| to manufacture an item. I jokingly asked him if he was
| competing with $1200 hammers and $500 toilet seats and his
| response was "if you had any idea how much paperwork and
| red tape is involved in doing anything with the government
| you'd say that the $500 toilet seat was under-priced and
| the contractor probably lost money on every one."
| spiritplumber wrote:
| that's my experience too.
|
| Basically it's the same PITA when it comes to getting
| things countersigned, approved etc. for spending $200 in
| parts as it is for spending $2000 in parts. So might as
| well order in bulk.
| treeman79 wrote:
| My dad was involved in military aircraft purchasing.
|
| It was very tricky to avoid getting in trouble.
|
| Putting stuff out to bid was the main thing he managed.
| When possible he just went with previous winners as it
| cut down the paperwork needed.
|
| Lot of times someone would come in really low on the bid,
| he knew the people and that it would be crap product. So
| lots of work to get higher bids approved.
|
| Also apparently if you get a ride in the company
| limousine, the drivers have tons of juicy gossip.
| temp667 wrote:
| In some places the cost to do a govt deal can be many
| multiplates easily (and totally justified) normal cost.
|
| The hammer is not actually $1,200. The paperwork can
| easily be.
|
| Do you have McBride Principles stuff done and documented?
| Have you trained your staff on McBride principles if they
| might purchase supplies, documented it and maintained
| proper documentation (this is about something in Northern
| Ireland which has very little to do with buying snacks
| for a kids program). Repeat x100. Where I am the
| ethnicity / race / national origin stuff is huge, and the
| different agencies don't have a common set of labels. So
| you are stuck asking everyone very personal questions
| even they don't understand. I mean, for ethnicity you are
| one thing, for race there is another set of labels, so
| you have to ask them the same race question 4 times under
| each random set of labels that are being used, for
| national origin another set etc.
|
| The actual quality of your hammer? Never tested. The
| details on the paperwork - lots of folks looking and
| nitpicking. Some of this just starts as a resolution at
| some level, that gets added on and added on over and
| over. So some politician will say McBride principles are
| great. 2 years later a contract analyst or internal
| auditor asks, how are we documenting / demonstrating
| compliance with this requirement. They then push their
| vendors to train staff involved in purchasing on the
| principles. Then they want documentation of that
| training. Each one in isolation is a small waste, but at
| scale it's a monumental waste.
|
| What's even funnier, stuff stays forever. There are
| requirements in contracts to hand out old IRS forms (W-5)
| for Advance EITC - that program is long gone, but you
| still have to hand out the forms - and tell staff that if
| they fill them out and submit them nothing will happen.
| Sure builds staff faith in govt efficiency.
|
| You can't even argue this stuff, I used to try and it's a
| brick wall.
|
| I can't stand it, but if you can push paper and have some
| political pull it's a gravy train, because cost / quality
| is so low on the basis of selection list. This tends to
| attract the wrong type of company (ie, scammers get a lot
| further than they should, and companies delivering good
| product don't).
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is a fun talking point, but the reality is more complex.
| The fact that jobs and multi-state payouts are _leveraged_ to
| ensure programs have political staying power does not mean
| that the whole shebang is just a corporate / political
| handout.
|
| It just seems to be what people say when these programs
| _fail_ , but I don't hear this said about programs that have
| succeeded.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > This is a fun talking point, but the reality is more
| complex
|
| Not for this project.
| zdragnar wrote:
| More than that, thr SR-71 was purpose-built. That means fewer
| hands on thr steering wheel, and fewer compromises to achieve
| multiple missions.
|
| The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the
| base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and
| missions. That means more voices demanding priority of
| features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of
| polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many first-of-its-
| kind features for a variety of ancillary tasks.
|
| No real surprise that it didn't work out.
| chaoticmass wrote:
| I am always reminded of this scene HBO movie The Pentagon
| wars when I read about the F-35.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The F-35, by comparison, was a platform vehicle, with the
| base suited to adapting to a variety of capabilities and
| missions. That means more voices demanding priority of
| features, more expensive engineering to get a variety of
| polygon pegs into the same round hole, and many first-of-
| its-kind features for a variety of ancillary tasks.
|
| > No real surprise that it didn't work out.
|
| For a humorous presentation of this, watch the movie
| _Pentagon Wars_ :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
| VectorLock wrote:
| Exactly this. Hyper specialized boundary pushing things are
| easy compared to general purpose good for everything
| projects.
| dbreunig wrote:
| Our vaccine effort is a perfect example of this. We got
| heroic, efficient results in developing vaccines because
| the requirements were so clear.
|
| Distribution is much, much harder!
| ghaff wrote:
| The basic concept isn't even a terrible one. It was a
| reaction to the _many_ functionally-overlapping aircraft
| that the various service branches were having designed
| and built. But it seems clear at this point that the F-35
| tried to be too general purpose.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| AND, the problem with F-35, as stated directly in the
| article, was not that we CANNOT build cool things, its that
| we didn't need something too fancy, and it became too fancy
| through add-ins that were not slated as requirements.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> More than that, thr SR-71 was purpose-built.
|
| Not really. The SR-71 was the final plane of an extended
| program called OXCART which created the A-12. The program
| was nominally to replace the U2, but even oxcart was within
| a large aircraft design plan. There was even a interceptor
| (YF-12) that was meant for shooting down Valkyrie-class
| mach3+ bombers. These aircraft were very similar to the 71,
| so similar that most people seeing them might not spot any
| difference. Any assessment of the 71's development costs is
| therefore very difficult.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YF-12
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12
|
| "YF-12C: Fictitious designation for an SR-71 provided to
| NASA for flight testing. The YF-12 designation was used to
| keep SR-71 information out of the public domain."
| [deleted]
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah it was "design by (military) committee" turned to 11
|
| I'm surprised it got off the drawing boards
| stefan_ wrote:
| And you still get the military benefits from that. Like the
| value of Starlink for military operations is huge.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Yes, a while back I was interested "where does billions we
| spend on national defense actually go" and I came to the
| conclusion that the DoD is really just a giant jobs program.
|
| Ultimately I think the reason we don't have things like
| flying cars is that the private sector gets stuck in local
| maxima (such as getting people to click ads) and in the
| public sector it's very hard to have focused time-blocked
| short term goals.
| bun_at_work wrote:
| This isn't entirely true. The US subsidizes military costs
| for all of our allies. It costs a lot, and a huge amount of
| funds go to that.
|
| There are parts that are like jobs programs, and the
| contractors intentionally drive up costs as part of their
| business model, but there are also real expenses to
| maintaining stability across the parts of the world where
| our military operates.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The foreign military aid is _also_ a jobs program.
|
| It gives money to US manufacturers by giving money to
| other countries that they have to use to buy US products.
| KDJohnBrown wrote:
| The justification for foreign aid to Israel is always
| pretty much "but it's OK because most of it comes back to
| us via arms sales". Essentially billions of dollars of
| American taxpayer wealth transferred to defense
| contractors laundered through the IDF.
| agsamek wrote:
| Read more about petro-dollar scheme. Basically US
| provides military services to oil producers in exchange
| for global tax. This is only possible if US is able to
| retain their military position. So every dollar you think
| is being subsidized to allied countries is in fact paid
| back with lots of premium from all countries - both
| allies and enemies.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| You do know the US is now the world's #1 oil producer
| (and food producer).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>> The US subsidizes military costs for all of our
| allies.
|
| Speaking as one of those allies... not really. Often
| times US allies spend money they really don't want to in
| order to keep the US happy. Canada and the UK probably
| wouldn't have invaded Afghanistan if not for their
| obligations as US allies. That certainly wasn't cheap.
| Canada is soon to replace its fighter fleet. Will it buy
| to cheaper Saab Grippen? Or will it feel obligated to buy
| the 35, a US program that Canada has paid into (aka
| subsidized) for many years without actually receiving any
| aircraft?
| [deleted]
| johnzim wrote:
| This argument would be more persuasive if more countries
| actually met their recommended NATO spend. In reality it
| doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
|
| Take for instance Germany. The federal republic increased
| their spend to $63.8b last year but that's still a
| shortfall of ~$27b relative to what a 2% spend would be.
|
| Aggressive estimates (above official estimates) of the
| UK's (a similar sized ally) spending on Afghanistan in
| 2011m put the total figure at $26b for 10 years.
|
| The cumulative shortfall in NATO contributions for
| Germany over that period is more than 10 times greater
| than the entire invasion and continued operations in
| Afghanistan during that period.
|
| (edit: grammar and dollar signs)
| wongarsu wrote:
| The "recommended NATO spend" is just another way the US
| is costing its allies money. Sure, in 2019 Germany only
| spent $50bn (1.3% of GDP). But if the hypothetical enemy
| is Russia with a military budget of $65bn, then what's
| the point of spending $80bn? Especially if you are in a
| treaty that ensures you don't have to defend yourself
| alone.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| And that argument would be more persuasive if so much
| NATO spend wasn't funnelled back to the US in both direct
| and indirect ways.
|
| The UK has Trident and was supposed to be buying F-35s. A
| number of UK military and civilian aerospace projects
| were either cancelled (various examples) or crippled
| commercially (Concorde) because of US interference.
|
| The Afghanistan and Iraq misadventures are still causing
| significant political costs across Europe. Meanwhile the
| US has failed to protect the EU against some obvious and
| immediate threats, including political interference.
| (Although to be fair it hasn't even protected itself -
| which is a different problem.)
|
| In any case - the US really isn't a credible victim of
| exploitation in any of this.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Note that I did not mention germany, rather the US and
| canada, while the OP said "all of our allies". No two
| countries are ever the same. And NATO /= USA. There are
| lots of other organizations which would quality a country
| as an "ally" of the US other than NATO. Canada and the UK
| are linked to the US through numerous other organizations
| (eg NORAD).
| johnzim wrote:
| Canada's defence spend last year was $22.2b
|
| As they only met 1.31% of their 2% spend (which would be
| $37.5b) the shortfall is ~$15.3b annually.
|
| Still sounds like a bargain.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Why do you think Germany is looking at the F/A-18 to
| replace parts of their aging Tornado fleet?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Because the Eurofighter can't carry the nuclear bombs
| that the US has stationed in Germany, and Germany wants
| to be the one providing the pilots and aircraft that
| deliver them.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Also the Eurofighter has no decent and built jamming
| setup compared to the EA-18
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's White Collar Welfare. As long as your semi-
| intelligent, college educated, and socially connected, you
| can easily get a DoD-related job.
|
| Also, we don't have flying cars because that would be
| ridiculously impractical. They would be essentially
| helicopters, which would drink gas and be exponentially
| more deadly to operate.
|
| There are lots of scientist and inventors around inventing
| cool new stuff. And there's plenty of research dollars
| available to anyone with a Ph.D and some grant writing
| abilities. It's absolutely possible to make a good career
| out of being an inventor and getting a government to flip
| the bill on it.
|
| The issue is that we've reach the point in society where
| technological progress in incremental. Instead of three
| guys inventing a revolutionary device like the transistor,
| we have thousands of people working on making marginal
| improvements to battery chemistry.
|
| Every industry is like that now. Something like four guys
| entirely designed the original small block Chevy motor, but
| today, GM has like 400 people designing just fuel system
| components for the ancestor of that engine. Innovation, it
| seems, is O(n^2).
| Martin_Beck wrote:
| This is studied by economists! "Growth is slowing down at
| the same time as we're spending ever more money on
| research and development. So what that tells us is it's
| just taking more and more dollars of R&D to increase
| growth, or to increase output, to keep growth at a
| reasonable rate. And the only way to tie these together
| is it's just getting harder and harder to find new
| ideas."
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/no-new-ideas/
| mattkrause wrote:
| > And there's plenty of research dollars available to
| anyone with a Ph.D and some grant writing abilities
|
| Do tell.
|
| NIH paylines (i.e., the percentage of grants funded) are
| in the teens, with some institutes at/near single digits.
| NSF is a bit better, but the awards are much smaller. I
| don't think DARPA, CDMRP, (etc) have explicit Paylines,
| but the programs are very competitive as well.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I keep seeing people say this. Maybe flying cars just don't
| make sense? Wheels work really well when your engine dies.
| Have you seen people drive in 2d space? You want to add a z
| axis? What's the efficiency of a small plane? Surely not
| better than a Prius.
|
| Edit: I looked it up and a Cessna gets ~15 mpg.
| heelix wrote:
| The maths are about right for MPG. Time is what you
| (might) save. I'll get around that at cruise - 135kts or
| 155mph @ ~ 10gal/hour. Better fuel usage if you slow down
| a bit. Tempted to say if you slowed down to max Prius
| speeds on the autoban, the C182 might be more fuel
| efficient. I'm sure it gets 50mpg at 75mph, but doubt it
| gets that at 109mph.
| bhupy wrote:
| > Maybe flying cars just don't make sense?
|
| I think it's just a placeholder metaphor to represent
| <hypothetical futuristic "thing" that increases our
| quality of life as a society>
| bee_rider wrote:
| But also, the fact that it was impractical is itself a
| metaphor -- it turns out many of the things they thought
| would be cool and futuristic were actually impractical
| when you get to the details.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The reason you don't get flying cars, is the very same,
| you cant make a lot of other technology. People will want
| to invent the flying car parking house. And they kind of
| did - on the 11 of September 2001. You can not hand
| technology over a certain level to a infantile (nicer
| sound then retarded) species. Its that simple.
|
| Its already madness to allow wealthy citizens into space.
| Tesla and Amazon are one freight flight to space, filled
| with tungsten rods, away from becoming there own nation -
| with non-nuclear deterrence. That somebody - whoever it
| is, out there is getting humankinds tech progress to a
| grinding halt, is a blessing in disguise. We actually do
| not even get a honest discussion about the risks on this
| path.
|
| Problem is though, we always scienced our way out of our
| problems with our volatile nature. Tap some energy here,
| create some fertilizer there, oversupply solves the
| problems we do not want to solve. Exponential supply for
| exponential unchecked demand.
|
| Enter social tech- in theory we could limit ourselves,
| could curb our demands, could become starving monks in
| the desert, hypnotized by coloured lights playing across
| enchanted stones. This seems to be the road we need to
| take, for the other road to be traverse-able.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Its already madness to allow wealthy citizens into
| space.
|
| ??
|
| > filled with tungsten rods, away from becoming there own
| nation - with non-nuclear deterrence.
|
| In WW1, they tried dropping flechettes onto troops.
| Didn't work.
|
| As for becoming a nation, that's hardly going to work
| without the launch/recovery site being part of that
| nation.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"...This seems to be the road we need to take..."
|
| We who? You are more than welcome to starve in a desert.
| Just do not count on any companionship.
| Guthur wrote:
| Ok, you head on out to the desert, we'll be right behind
| you... promise.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I do not get it- why is exponential powerful tech, such a
| serious matter if somebody wants a nuke (Iran, North-
| Korea) or even just proliferate per-existing ones,
| considered a serious issue. But once a entity with clear
| interests in venturing outside the sphere of law
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Breakup) and
| the monetary/organizational power to acquire such tech,
| ventures towards something similar classifiable, such a
| threat is a joking matter?
|
| Also if you stream a movie tonight, like millions others,
| who just have a roof, food and a flickering screen that
| sand in the dessert might be very fine integrated - and
| already have gotten everywhere. So nobody is asking you
| or me, might as well discuss the scenarios.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| OK, SpaceX applies to launch an orbital bombardment
| cannon and launch approval is denied. That was a good
| day, next.
|
| OK, SpaceX ignores the denial and launches anyway. Elon
| Musk threatens to destroy Washington DC to gain
| independence for ... some territory somewhere. Unclear
| where, or why he'd want that since he already has
| enormous wealth and influence and doesn't need to run his
| own military to keep it. The United States arrests Elon
| Musk and seizes all of SpaceX with overwhelming military
| might. The end.
|
| Is that really as threatening as North Korea developing
| nuclear weapons?
| Roboprog wrote:
| I think you meant to say "tungsten rods", rather than
| titanium. the composition of the drop weapons doesn't
| change the gist though.
|
| Titanium is used in airframes for its strength to weight
| ratio (it's not very dense). Tungsten is used in weapons
| for its high hardness _and_ density.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I stand corrected.
| christoph wrote:
| The average person does virtually no regular maintenance
| / checking of their car, even basics like tyre pressures
| and oil levels not being checked regularly, happy to
| leave as much as they possibly can for an annual check at
| the garage. There's a shocking amount of people also
| happy to drive around ignoring warning lights flashing.
|
| Imagine that scenario with tons of metal that could fall
| out of the sky when something fails.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > Imagine that scenario with tons of metal that could
| fall out of the sky when something fails.
|
| Hmm, this has different meaning with last weekends
| context of an engine cover hitting a yard.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > There's a shocking amount of people also happy to drive
| around ignoring warning lights flashing.
|
| ...or can't afford the basic maintenance
| wcarron wrote:
| In other words, can't afford to own/operate a car.
|
| Note, that's not a put down on said people. I think it's
| a shame such situations exist. But, if you can't afford
| to pay for insurance/gas/maintenance, then you can't
| afford the vehicle.
|
| But, regarding flying cars: I absolutely do not want more
| people operating airborne spinny death machines capable
| of destroying considering we've already established many
| people don't/can't perform basic maintenance on a much
| simpler and safer mode of transportation. It wouldn't go
| well.
| jeltz wrote:
| While I generally agree I do not think they meant it
| literally in this case.
| mountainb wrote:
| You ever fly over a mountain? It saves a lot of time.
| africanboy wrote:
| I can drive from Como to Lugano in Switzerland in 30
| minutes.
|
| I guess the Alps are not a big issue.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Top Gear did a race from Italy to the UK. Clarkson
| driving a Bugatti Veyron, Hammond and May flying in a
| Cessna 182. They couldn't fly over the mountains, and May
| wasn't qualified to fly at night. It didn't save a lot of
| time.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoK4QYwixDc
|
| Not sure which bits you could cut with a flying car - the
| safety checks, air traffic control involvement, runways,
| refuelling stop, qualifications/licenses, but it would
| have to be a lot to make a large difference.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Developed countries tend to build tunnels for lengthy
| mountain routes for which there is serious demand, so
| there is less a case for flying cars here.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I would look at flying cars are a metaphor, not as a
| literal thing people are opining over.
| afarrell wrote:
| Indeed. In a conversation about being insufficiently
| thoughtful in deciding what you really want to build,
| flying cars are an excellent metaphor.
| WalterBright wrote:
| We already have flying cars. They're called helicopters.
| They're very expensive to operate, mainly because of the
| very high maintenance costs. Those high costs are due to
| the fundamental problem that helicopters cannot survive
| losing a blade.
| generalizations wrote:
| I think that's the benefit gained from the very rich,
| whether 18th century lords or modern billionaires - they
| can get us out of those local maxima. I'm thinking of
| people like Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir humphrey davies, and
| Elon musk.
| notional wrote:
| It's more than just a jobs program too. It's a reelection
| plan for senators/house members.
|
| Look at what states and districts get these big DoD contracts
| and then look at what committees the congressmen/women are
| sitting on.
|
| They approve plans that benefit them then direct the funds
| right into their districts so they can campaign on it.
|
| I mean it's not the worst form of corruption but it's pretty
| shitty when you realize how our infrastructure and defense is
| designed around congressional districts instead of what is
| best for our country.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's not an accident that you'll find some manufacturer in
| the F-35's supply chain in basically every US state.
| chmod600 wrote:
| That's what "pork" means.
| Groxx wrote:
| Just to expand on this a bit: "pork" as in "pork barrel":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel
| nerdponx wrote:
| But imagine if we put people to work building useful stuff
| instead of useless stuff. Power grid infrastructure, new
| bridges, new rail lines, etc.
| freeopinion wrote:
| Grid infrastructure and rail lines jump to my mind often
| in these discussions.
|
| I am reminded how we got existing rail line through much
| of the U.S. 19th century land acquisition for private
| parties who built that infrastructure is easy to spin as
| a travesty. In many cases it was blatant corruption. And
| the legacy lasts to this day. All of that land and
| infrastructure is still privately owned.
|
| Fast forward to today. Is it right that the government
| should build infrastructure to compete with existing
| private businesses? Should they build and operate grocery
| stores? Automakers? ISPs? Textile factories?
|
| There used to be some idea that the government should not
| compete with private industry. That idea is much murkier
| more recently.
|
| But if you want to build public infrastructure to compete
| with the likes of Union Pacific, shouldn't you start by
| nationalizing the likes of Union Pacific?
|
| See also USPS for more interesting examples of public vs
| private enterprise. Imagine that the USPS contracted
| local delivery and long-haul transfer. Imagine that a
| local mom and pop could bid on a local contract.
| Newspaper delivery bicycle contractors everywhere could
| double their money for little additional effort. Or
| FedEx/UPS/Amazon might really sharpen their pencils and
| win those contracts.
| brazzy wrote:
| That would be communism, and we can't have that.
|
| The reason why the USA uses the military as a jobs
| program is that it's the only thing that gets bipartisan
| support.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Communism does an even worse job of allocating resources.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Communism had a great many failings, but they did
| allocate a lot of money to infrastructure and science.
|
| But what real communism did isn't even relevant here, I'm
| pretty sure GP is talking about imaginary communism in
| the sense that anything that is good for the general
| population is somehow called communism in US politics.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've never heard anyone call free markets communism.
| NortySpock wrote:
| I presume the parent poster is referring to things like
| housing cost assistance (called Section 8 in the US),
| Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and
| Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,
| Infants, and Children (WIC), social security,
| Medicare/Medicaid government assisted health coverage
| programs, disability financial assistance programs and
| other socioeconomic-hardship assistance programs.
|
| Not to mention funding schools, universities, or
| government research grants.
|
| That's among the things that get called communism or
| socialism here in the US.
| flukus wrote:
| Emission trading schemes get called communist plots quite
| regularly.
| kqvamxurcagg wrote:
| Defence equipment isn't useless. In the event of war it
| becomes essential. Spending has to continue on these
| programmes in peacetime to retain capability.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| War with Canada or Mexico?
| bumby wrote:
| Why do you think the current prioritization exists?
|
| The cynic in me thinks it has to do with power projection
| and the economy.
|
| The less cynical part of me wonders if it's related to a
| cognitive bias that over-weights threats from rival
| "tribes" and the need to ensure stability
| smileysteve wrote:
| Fear of terrorists sells better than fear of ice storms.
|
| Especially for the states (and representatives) that the
| ice storm is 100 year. Dams fail, and when they fail,
| they don't affect the people that didn't want to live
| near a dam.
| bumby wrote:
| So is it the "randomness" of terrorism that causes us to
| overweight the risk?
|
| It seems like we're just really bad at thinking clearly
| about low probability / high severity risks
| edoceo wrote:
| Boring! How am I supposed to get reelected and campaign
| contributions without cool dream pictures? Infrastructure
| is just something you say, Pork is what you do.
| mgreenleaf wrote:
| I think this is really insightful. Misallocation of
| resources is what eventually brings down economies. There
| are lots of bright people around, but corruption can
| drain a lot of talent.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Perhaps the problem is that the government has too much
| of a role in allocating resources in our economy as it
| stands. Maybe the military-industrial complex had some
| cool things for the first couple decades of its
| existence, but as the decades went on, it became a rusty,
| slower version of its old self as bureaucratic creep and
| complacency set in. Now it seems hard to disrupt that,
| like what tends to happen in the non-monopolized private
| sector.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Lots of us would love to believe this, and yet what does
| the unrestrained private sector churn out? Ad networks,
| app addiction, gig economy, throwaway culture, urban
| sprawl, climate apathy... hardly a winner.
|
| SpaceX is everyone's favourite private sector success
| story, but they're basically just a younger, leaner
| version of Lockheed-- surviving off of NASA and doing
| what they're contracted to do.
|
| I don't think the private sector is ever going to do
| ambitious things like build rail infrastructure all on
| its own, nor is the current PPP model necessarily the way
| either, but maybe there is some option out there to get
| things done which looks like the bakeoff that NASA held
| with CRS.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that military budget has to
| keep going up ("support the troops", create jobs and
| satisfy lobbyists) but there is no good goal to work
| towards. Great things happened in the 1940s to 70s
| because there were clear enemies and clear steps to take
| to gain and keep superiority. Today the US has a military
| budget three times bigger than that of the next largest
| spender, and everything necessary to fulfill the current
| challenges already exists and is in operation. So you
| spend the rest to prepare for the future, but with no
| external pressure to do so fast or efficiently.
| asimjalis wrote:
| How can we create new incentives to discourage this
| behavior and to encourage infrastructure projects that
| provide jobs as well as create superlinear value?
| Analemma_ wrote:
| We did: pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011 (the
| F-35 dates from way before that). But as it turns out,
| the cure was almost as bad as the disease. Getting rid of
| pork has accelerated hyper-partisanship and dysfunctional
| gridlock, because without it there's no incentive to ever
| try to reach a deal with the other side instead of
| digging in on no-compromise radicalism to please your
| base.
| throwanem wrote:
| > pork spending was mostly outlawed in 2011
|
| Is there a longer discussion of this that you can link
| somewhere? I remember the phrase as a derogatory
| commonplace in adults' political discussion when I was a
| child, but the concept seems to have drifted out of the
| discourse since, and having now had my attention drawn to
| its absence I'd be interested to find out more about why.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There's definitely still pork. I mean, look at how many
| pet projects were included in Covid relief funding. Pork
| is the idea of stuffing an unrelated project to benefit
| your local district or state (and thus, the politician's
| reelection chances) into a bigger bill that is unrelated
| to that expense. Like the most famous one was the Alaskan
| "bridge to nowhere" that would have cost $400 million:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I don't think it is possible to discourage federal
| contracts being awarded to the benefit of a particular
| state. If a state is home to a company with the expertise
| to complete a project the contract can't just be awarded
| to a another state that doesn't.
|
| The best we could do is change the way contract funding
| is performed. Cost-plus pricing without an upper bound is
| a huge issue. This type of contract encourages bidders to
| bid low on cost and make up for it with project
| extensions.
|
| Of course cost-plus is preferred by bidders as they can
| guarantee a minimum of profit since cost is already
| covered. However, fixed price contracts are better from
| the perspective of the government spending. The spend is
| known up front. It is up to the bidders to determine if
| they can make a profit or not.
|
| Ideally the government shouldn't care if the bidder is
| making a profit. It is their duty to spend public funds
| frugally. Cost-plus makes it impossible to reign in
| contract spending without terminating the contract.
| president wrote:
| The interesting thing is that it seems to be an unfixable
| and systemic problem. You could have someone come in and
| try to clean it up but then they'd face the backlash of the
| entire system that has been built on and benefited from the
| corruption.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > We can build cool shit, but our government and most
| companies don't optimize for that.
|
| ARPA was always kind of a jobs program, but nonetheless it
| created the internet at the same time as NASA was putting a
| man on the moon, the government was successfully building the
| interstate highways and Bell Labs was Bell Labs instead of
| whatever it is now.
|
| Today we get the F-35 and the Big Dig and whatever other
| money furnace du jour that consumes more resources than the
| space race but has yet to put a single human on Mars or make
| fusion work or cure cancer or whatever else things it could
| have done but hasn't.
|
| Something's different.
| kube-system wrote:
| Fun fact, the DoD is the largest employer on the entire
| planet. 2.91 million total employees.
| sintaxi wrote:
| Last I heard it's at 3.2 Million.
| bumby wrote:
| That doesn't count the nearly 400k employed by the Dept. of
| Veterans Affairs
| hinkley wrote:
| Also the Air Force admitting it is a failure proves nothing,
| since the reason it's a mess is because the US Govt were
| trying to make one airframe for many customers, weren't they?
| One customer, even one collaborator, being upset doesn't mean
| the program has admitted anything.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> We can build cool shit, but our government and most
| companies don't optimize for that.
|
| I don't think they know how. They want cool shit too. Imagine
| a pork project that also produces cool shit - they would love
| that.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| And it isn't just a domestic jobs program. Countries that
| agreed to buy the F35 were rewarded with subcontract work.
| There are at least a dozen partner countries.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| it was money wasted that could have been spent on a lot of
| other more useful things.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Socialists want to delegate vast managerial and allocation task
| to a handful of bureaucrats in the govt. This is a great
| example of why that doesnt work aside from the corruption and
| oppression. At least we get a reminder out of this mess.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Except you haven't had a socialist government so you can't
| really blame socialists for the problems you have.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Do you understand what a microcosm/example is? Or do you
| just like to be a pain in the ass?
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| On the other hand, we just managed to create an effective
| vaccine against a novel virus in something like 48 hours (and
| another 8 months to get it FDA approved but still!)
|
| In general I don't think that we've forgotten how to build cool
| shit. It's just that in a lot ways we don't have the incentive
| to do so anymore. When we DO have the incentive (like with
| COVID) we are capable of feats of engineering an innovation
| that are amazing. More to the point, the incentives now seem to
| work against rapid innovation. We tend to think of
| infrastructure projects and defense projects as jobs programs
| so nobody wants it to be done quickly.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > The Air Force a generation ago launched development of an
| affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of Cold War-
| vintage F-16s
|
| If that was the goal, then the moment the price tag on the F-35
| was set, failure was admitted.
|
| According to this:
| https://www.investors.com/research/f35-fighter/
|
| the price of an F-35 is about 80 Million USD.
|
| An F-16 goes for 30 Million USD:
| https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/08/24/lockheed-martin-sc...
|
| Although it seems you can buy it used for 8.5 Million USD?? :
| https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/news/the-latest/2020/07/24/...
| riku_iki wrote:
| > An F-16 goes for 30 Million USD
|
| The first number in the article is Taiwan purchases 66 F-16 for
| 8 billions, which gives it 121 mln price tag.
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| Other than F-35, what are the US going to field on its carriers?
| Super-hornets until 2050?
| woeirua wrote:
| This is just another sign that the US defense establishment has
| opened its eyes to the reality that the US could lose a war of
| attrition against a major power. We have focused too much on high
| tech weaponry, and we're now vulnerable to being overwhelmed by
| large numbers of low tech enemies. It doesn't matter if your
| fighters have a kill ratio of 10:1 if your enemy can replace
| those 10 fighters faster than each one of yours that you lose.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| There are numerous problems with such logic:
|
| Just because you can replace those 10 fighters faster doesn't
| mean you can replace the pilots with equivalently good ones as
| quickly.
|
| Great power wars in the modern era will have some of the most
| decisive action happen far sooner than you can get into
| production capacity battles. At which point one side will lob
| several hypersonic missiles into the shipyards, factories, and
| fabs of their opponents and the ability to replace lost
| platforms will have been neutralized.
| woeirua wrote:
| You don't need to replace 10 excellent pilots with 10 good
| pilots to win a war of attrition. You just need 10 pilots
| that can fly, lock a missile and fire. Because if you're
| losing 10 planes to every 1 that you're killing the life
| expectancy of any pilot is going to be really low period.
|
| Counterpoints: 1 - Most critical infrastructure is located
| far inland away from areas that are vulnerable to cruise
| missiles and the like. 2 - Hypersonic missiles are mostly
| vaporware still today. Uncertain if people would even use
| them, as there's a significant risk of escalation to a full
| nuclear exchange. 3 - Critical infrastructure can be built
| faster today than it ever could be in the past. Most
| countries have stockpiles of critical strategic goods with
| the understanding that they would be able to stand up their
| own factories before those stockpiles were depleted.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| >You don't need to replace 10 excellent pilots with 10 good
| pilots to win a war of attrition. You just need 10 pilots
| that can fly, lock a missile and fire.
|
| That's not how it works. The F35 will detect those pilots
| far sooner than they will detect it and shoot them down
| before they even see them. Combine a battle space with
| dozens of MALD decoys flying around drawing shots, those
| poor pilots would have never had a chance because the F-35
| pilots would never give their enemy the chance to shoot at
| them in the first place.
|
| > Most critical infrastructure is located far inland away
| from areas that are vulnerable to cruise missiles and the
| like
|
| I can't find the map now, but just about all of China is
| within reach of US cruise missiles launched from bombers if
| the need would arise.
|
| > Critical infrastructure can be built faster today than it
| ever could be in the past
|
| You're not going to build a Fab overnight. If you knock out
| a radar factory, that's going to be offline for months.
| Same thing with a turbine factory.
|
| What I don't think you also appreciate is that of all
| planes to try to claim that someone could win a production
| race against, the F35 is a very poor target. There are
| already produced at rates of ~130 per year and expected to
| rise to 180. There is no existing line that is
| manufacturing aircraft that comes close. Not only is US Air
| power technologically superior but they have the numbers.
| jopsen wrote:
| > Great power wars in the modern era will...
|
| We have no clue what will happen... best ideas are pure
| speculation.
|
| IMO, it's very likely that any conflict would be limited to a
| conflict area like how they did in the Falklands war.
|
| Even if there is no formal agreement, both sides might want
| to limit a conflict zone.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And afford to replace them. Just take the UH-1, one engine
| helicopter of the Vietnam era. One engine, because a second one
| was considerd waste given the short service live of these birds
| in Vietnam. And now we have 100 million dollar jets...
| juancn wrote:
| Why not just drop the manned fighters and develop drones instead?
| angry_octet wrote:
| You need to command them from close by, because anything else
| will be jammed. It needs to be an integrated concept with
| manned fighters, AEW&C, strike, etc.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Like the European FCAS.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Yes but FCAS will take forever, repeating the mistakes of
| JSF by coupling everything in a giant program. The Chinese
| will have it by the end of the decade.
| hef19898 wrote:
| FCAS will be a combination of the F-35, Eurofighter and
| A-400M. I'd put money on at least 15 years of delay.
|
| The Australians and Boeing have a fighter companion drone
| in the air already now. I didn#t follow that to closely,
| so. I also think that the manned component of FCAS, the
| fighter, might be ready earlier. And that fighter is
| everyting the French want from the program.
| bluedino wrote:
| That wouldn't make them that much cheaper.
|
| Today's drones are sitting ducks and they've just started to
| outfit them with air to air missiles.
| digi59404 wrote:
| "The F-35 has failed" is a strong statement that depends on what
| your definition of success is. Did it fail because it couldn't
| replace the F-16? Did it fail because it's expensive and bloated?
|
| Do those things even matter?
|
| I'm not defending the F-35 but anyone deeply and intimately
| familiar with the platform knows and understands that it is a
| Ferrari. You don't bring your Acura TSX to a Formula 1 race track
| to win a race. Just like you don't bring your Ferrari to the farm
| to haul material (not anymore anyways).
|
| The F-35 may be a Ferrari; but the thing about Ferraris is that
| their technology trickles down. Now we have electric cars with
| carbon fiber shells. The same is true for the F-35. The
| technology inside it has and will lead to the resurrection and
| long standing use of older planes like the B1 and U2. Where the
| airframe is solid but the tech and stealth is not. It will also
| lead to revolutionary new planes which are cheaper to make and
| build.
|
| Through the F35s use of distributed computing and treating
| hardware components and their software as services, we're not
| going to be doomed to the same fate as the F16 where we can't
| find hardware. Instead, we'll have more component oriented
| aircraft systems where each aircraft is no bespoke and can use
| from a menu of technologies.
|
| So did the F35 fail because we spent too much? Depends on how
| much it saves us later.
|
| Did it fail because it didn't replace the F16? What if it makes
| the F16 viable again? Did it still fail?
|
| Some may see this as a slippery slope. What matters is the
| objective outcome that comes from this project. Not the success
| criteria some folks have perpetuated or thrust upon the project.
| johnklos wrote:
| Trickle down, whether it's in the economy or here, is bullshit.
|
| Spending a trillion dollars on a program may lead to some good
| coming out of it, but it's about as disingenuous as saying that
| spending $3000 on a shitty computer that crashes all the time
| is OK because the cat got a box out of the deal. Yes, it's
| technically true, but completely unrelated.
| [deleted]
| ahelwer wrote:
| This reads word-for-word like an email from a PM to management
| talking about how their project that imploded embarrassingly
| has so many intangible future benefits that really, it's a huge
| success when you think about it.
| s0rce wrote:
| Exactly, unless those were the upfront deliverables of the
| projects, its a failure. Sure, not all the effort was 100%
| completely wasted but the goal didn't get achieved.
| digi59404 wrote:
| No - I doubt any PM would write what I said. What I said is
| more a IC in tech saying
|
| "Sure, what the PM asked for an laid out was X. But really,
| in the middle we found out the architecture didn't work as
| expected. So we pivoted and in doing so found more success
| using Y's Suggested Architecture"
|
| Innovation and Tech is messy. More often than not, Your
| definition of success changes as time goes on as you get
| further into a project that's groundbreaking.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as you
| get further into a project that's groundbreaking.
|
| If you fail to meet your original goal _because you are not
| capable of doing it_ , and then you change your goal to
| accommodate this reality, it doesn't change the fact that
| you failed in your original goal.
|
| If my goal is to go to Mars and I only make it to the moon
| because it turns our Mars is just too far away, even though
| I did something revolutionary, amazing, and extraordinary,
| it does not change the fact that I failed in my original
| goal.
|
| I don't even consider this to be semantics. It's people
| trying to justify to themselves that there is no failure.
| You've literally failed by your own definition of what
| success is. Changing the definition of success doesn't
| change reality.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I disagree that this is justification of failure. If
| anything, it's the opposite.
|
| We failed in our goal. We also learned and developed
| things of real value while pursuing that goal.
|
| This is salvaging what can be salvaged to make headway in
| an adjacent goal. That said...
|
| > Your definition of success changes as time goes on as
| you get further into a project that's groundbreaking.
|
| Sometimes the goal is, itself, a failure. It was born of
| not fully understanding the problem at hand. When the
| goal is stupid, but that is only discoverable by pursing
| that goal (ie "intent"), then redefining success is the
| _right thing to do_.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > We failed in our goal.
|
| Simply by admitting this, you've already contradicted the
| person I was responding to.
|
| His entire scribe is "what is failure? have we really
| failed? no" instead of "yeah we failed, but we can learn
| from it"
|
| Failure is fine. Failure is expected. Failure is the best
| way to learn an iterate.
|
| But then don't say "well we always got what we wanted out
| of it anyway, which was to learn" when your goal was "to
| build the ultimate fighter jet at this budget in this
| timeline"
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I didn't get the same thing out of the comment you were
| responding to...but I otherwise agree with you entirely:
|
| > Failure is fine. Failure is expected. Failure is the
| best way to learn an iterate.
|
| and
|
| > don't say "well we always got what we wanted out of it
| anyway, which was to learn" when your goal was "to build
| the ultimate fighter jet at this budget in this timeline"
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > I didn't get the same thing out of the comment you were
| responding to
|
| This is my fault, as I was mostly paraphrasing what he
| said in other comments. So that's just lazy commenting on
| my part, and probably I deserve downvotes for it.
| peeters wrote:
| The Ferrari metaphor is revisionist at best. The F-35 program
| wasn't created to build a Ferrari, it was designed to build the
| best, cheapest commuter car possible using economies of scale
| and shared cost. That the only role _left_ for it is as a
| Ferrari (after the design was butchered by stakeholders) is a
| testament to how far it fell from its goals, not a success
| story.
| aqme28 wrote:
| It doesn't seem to me like the Ferrari analogy works. The
| Ferrari excels at a narrow use to the detriment of other
| potential uses.
|
| The F-35 however was made to do everything, but excels at
| seemingly none of them.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| >So did the F35 fail because we spent too much? Depends on how
| much it saves us later.
|
| It might not be a lot. The concept of flying Corvettes is
| strong, culturally and industrially, but it might be on the
| verge of becoming like cavalry with the advent of drone swarms.
| kcb wrote:
| Drone swarms that can counter fighter jets is a concept that
| makes no sense. At best you can make something like a guided
| missile that can loiter. But I can't really see much benefit
| to that. It would still require the same the avionics and
| performance as a guided missile. Not to mention stealth
| aircraft counter the concept even further.
| danjac wrote:
| > But I can't really see much benefit to that
|
| Look at the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to see how
| much UAVs are a game-changer:
|
| https://www.csis.org/analysis/air-and-missile-war-nagorno-
| ka...
| kcb wrote:
| But how do you translate that into hitting something
| going Mach 1 at 40k feet? A UAV capable of attacking a
| jet can exist. My point is that it would need to be a
| fully capable aircraft not something that can be produced
| cheaply and deployed in swarms. There's a lot of space in
| the sky.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They can be produced cheaply because all of the life
| support, human facing controls, and armoring aren't
| included. This reduces weight which shrinks the airframe
| and reduces operational costs significantly.
| angry_octet wrote:
| The drone swarm concept is irrelevant to the high and
| fast fight, but very relevant to infantry and armour. Of
| course HN is getting it confused. '3D printed jets!' they
| cry.
|
| However smart jets will be a thing, as evidenced by the
| Boeing Loyal Wingman program (awful name). The
| uninhabited jet will push further into the engagement
| envelope, pull higher Gs, risk SAM lock-on to take out
| the SAM, fly in the dust like Tornados used to. And it
| will get task guidance from the X band data link from a
| human piloted jet. But that UAV will likely be as
| expensive as a regular jet (more including development
| cost of AI tech, retrofitting remote control into other
| jets).
|
| Swarms of loitering munitions make sense in countering
| mobile SAM sites, as the Syrians/Russians (in Syria) and
| Emiratis(in Libya) are finding out -- so many Pantsir-S
| (SA-22) point defence systems destroyed by Turkish
| drones. So how long before S-400 systems (long range
| AAAD) get eaten?
| nvoid wrote:
| Makes you wonder, is there a time for an unmanned jet?
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| At some point these jets must be at ground, not ? A swarm
| of UAVs can do a lot of damage on these situation.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Hence counter-swarm swarms. Either single use, fired from
| a canister, or with their own little runways, flying low
| level CAP and ready launch at any time, unsleeping
| vigilance. Plus a bunch of CIWS (C-RAM), which are very
| effective despite scaring the fuck out of you as they
| tear open a portal to hell.
|
| https://youtu.be/AcTXYtB9Lfs
| onepointsixC wrote:
| How do you get those UAV's there? The combat radius of a
| F-35A (without drop tanks or refueling) is 1000km's. If
| this UAV is going to travel 1000km's then it's going to
| be quite big, expensive, and likely easy pickings for
| defending F-35's. If it's carried by something then that
| something too would be an easy target and would probably
| need to be escorted by something which would fight said
| fighter jets.
|
| It's just really not that simple.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Indeed.. There was another article today about how onboard
| systems saved 2 fighter pilots that passed out.
|
| I was wondering even then, why do we still put pilots in
| these things? They'll fare better on their own and will have
| less performance constraints.
|
| I think part of it is the military adolation of the fighter
| pilot. Probably not the only reason though, a hacked swarm of
| armed drones is a frightening prospect.
| evgen wrote:
| You put a pilot in there because we are nowhere near giving
| an autonomous drone command authority on a kill. The pilot
| is also smarter than any UAV and has situational awareness
| that even a drone ground control station lacks. Oh yeah,
| and that F-35 can be commanding portions of that swarm of
| armed drones.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, it failed to replace the F-16, for starters. And the
| A-10. It failed in becoming the NATO / Western end-all jet. It
| is expensive, there aren't that many. The stealth capabilities
| are lacking by modern standards. Maintenaince if expensive and
| the combat aircraft equivalent of an iPhone.
|
| Compare that to the cold war fighters. High numbers, used by
| the majority of US allies and even comparable cheap. Desiged to
| be usable under cold war circumstances. And modernized to this
| very day.
|
| The biggest issue I see, also with stuff like the FCAS (French
| and German Eurofghter / Rafale replacement) is cost. Just
| imagine you loose, say, 50 of them in a war against Russia or
| China. How many you can reasonably replace? At that price tag?
| All other enemies, you hardly loose legacy fighters against
| those. And that is not even taking training into account.
|
| Well, the B-52 is still flying. Maybe it will reach 100 years
| of service.
| thu2111 wrote:
| The point of the F-35 is to be so technologically superior
| that you do _not_ get into a war of attrition where you are
| bleeding planes at the same rate as your enemy. If that was
| the case it would mean none of the technology upgrades
| actually gave an advantage, which would be strange given
| their fundamental nature.
|
| What really matters is how many F-16s or cold war era
| aircraft an F-35 could take out before being shot down. There
| is a discussion of such numbers below.
| hef19898 wrote:
| And that fact has, more or less, been answered. And even
| the to-be-delveloped aircraft are expected to fight in
| enviroments in which they more often loose against air
| defence and have equal odds against same gen fighters with
| slight adavtages against fighters one gen behind. The
| latter largely depends on Command-and Control. And on
| radar. Basically, stand-off attacks only work against
| between stealth and non-stealth fighters. Between stealth
| ighters, it's up close again.
|
| Radar already now can tag, reliably, the F-35. And will tag
| next gen stealth jets. The same radar already now can trace
| 100s of contacts per installation, making saturation
| difficult. Air combat really is getting expensive... The
| problem steath jets have , is that you need only a handfull
| of ground based radars. Which can be develeoped and
| deployed fatser than new stealth jets. Stealth, so, is
| loosing its usefullness over the service life of a model.
| And that service life will be _long_.
|
| Stealth will still be needed to not be at a disadvantage
| against other stealth jets, so. Unfortunately for the F-35,
| it is the fisrt of these fighters.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| How has it failed to replace the F-16? It is objectively
| superior to the F-16 in just about every performance
| parameter. It costs less than 4.5 Gen peers like the
| Eurofighter and Rafale, while having more build at a total of
| 600 thus far with over 100 more built per year now.
|
| As for losing them, yes it would be bad, but it's the most
| survivable jet being produced today. Recent conflicts have
| shown just how lopsided a conflict is if you have a
| technological edge over your adversaries.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Survivability is not a given. They successfully tagged
| F-35s at various occossions with ground based radar. There
| are also account sof F-22s loosing dog fights against
| Rafales and Eurofghters. And the F-22 is the better dog
| fighter compared to the F-35. And there are still thousands
| of F-16s to be retired for F-35s, seemingly not going to
| happen if the Air Force is axing F-35 procurement.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Air Force isn't axing procurement. Just because it has
| been tagged under ideal conditions on various occasions
| doesn't mean that it's survivability isn't vastly better
| than it's non stealthy alternatives.
|
| Yes F-22's have lost dog fights, that's why their K:D's
| ratios aren't infinite. I really don't understand what
| your point is though, because the F-22 has lost a dog
| fight it's overwhelming win rate no longer is relevant?
|
| And sure the F-22 is a better dog fighter but it doesn't
| have active production line and the costs of restarting
| production are exorbitantly expensive.
| hef19898 wrote:
| My pint is that all air forces agree, to a certain
| extent, that stealth alone is not enough to over come
| modern air defence. It is even not sufficient to beat
| other somewhat stealthy fighters. And the F-35 isn't even
| that stealthy to begin with. The examples are to show
| that the F-35 is alread now, at the very beginning of its
| service life, hte real risk of being not as surviveable
| as thought.
| Arnt wrote:
| Allow me to restate your comment more briefly: "The F-35
| depends on your definition of success. It has not achieved the
| goals in its original funding application, but some of its
| traits might inspire future traits in future other things that
| might turn out to be good and worth the money we've spent so
| far, so therefore it's not right to call it a failure yet."
|
| That's not a friendly restatement, no. "Might" does not make
| right.
| digi59404 wrote:
| That's mis-categorizing my statement. There is no "might".
| The innovation that's occurred in the F-35 program has
| already produced fruit in many other airframes and the US Air
| Force has already "re-written the playbook" on what it means
| to have a new airframe and what revitalizing an old airframe
| is.
|
| It's not about whether it may or may not - It has, that's a
| definitive statement.
| paulie_a wrote:
| The US air force didnt need a new airframe
| nradov wrote:
| The old airframes were not survivable in a contested
| environment, and there was no practical way to make them
| survivable. That's still true today.
| lumost wrote:
| This may be a statement that the U.S militaries post-ww2
| doctrine of air superiority is no longer viable. Large
| Battleships once had to face a similar reality that it
| was impossible to make them survivable if the enemy had
| air superiority.
|
| Drones are cheap, good missiles are 1/100th the price of
| an F-35. It's possible that aircraft will no longer be
| able to enter contested space without significant risks
| just as it was pre-ww2 where it was impractical to
| achieve air superiority or to destroy anti-aircraft
| placements.
|
| Considering the extreme investment of the US into
| aircraft as a means of projecting power and winning wars
| against conventional militaries, there is a chance that
| an opponent with a much smaller military budget could
| "win" in a conventional fight - making the multi-trillion
| dollar aircraft projects pointless.
| ericd wrote:
| What replaces it? Loitering missile drones + a big
| expansion of satellite imagery?
| fl0wenol wrote:
| Absolutely.
| hadlock wrote:
| A tomahawk cruise missile isn't too far off from a one-
| shot fighter jet when it comes to attacking fixed, or
| very slow-moving targets. They also don't need a human
| pilot, which cost an extraordinary amount of money to
| train, way more than their salary.
|
| China has already developed what is effectively an ICBM
| designed to sink/punch through warships from above.
| nradov wrote:
| In any major future conflict our satellites will be the
| first casualties. They won't be available for overhead
| imagery, communications, or navigation. So remote piloted
| drones will be useless. Loitering missiles will be
| important but only work against a limited set of targets.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Contested is the point. Contested by other jets, I'd say
| no. All other air forces with modern fighters are still
| using Gen 4 fighters at best. The true threat comes from
| anti-aircraft weapons. To the point developers of FCAS
| are worried about man-held missiles. These missiles can
| take down legacy as well as 5th gen fighters. That's also
| why saturation is a thing, overwhelming the enmy with
| numbers. At 100 mil a piece, that startegy might be a tad
| expensve with the F-35. Hence drones. Whether rones work
| or not has to be seen.
|
| my bestguess is, that n a conventional conflict between
| industrilized states the air campaigns will be over after
| the first three major engangements or so. Because by then
| replacing the losses would ruin everyone.
| greedo wrote:
| China has two Gen5 fighters in serial production right
| now. And show me a manpad that can take down a Gen 5
| fighter at 30K feet. No manpad is energetic enough to do
| so.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Who said at 30k feet? At low levels, that's what people
| are planning for, yes.
| greedo wrote:
| Most flights aren't conducted at low levels, unless
| you're fighting 3rd world insurgents. And again, which
| manpads are you claiming can down a Gen 5 aircraft?
| Arnt wrote:
| It sounded more as if waffling about possible future
| results than a description concrete present results. The
| F-35 has cost $4e11 so far, says a random site on the web.
| What are the results of its innovation, the results that
| _definitely and already have_ occurred and arguably are
| worth $4e11?
| AdamN wrote:
| [upvote for reference to Ferrari tractors :-)]
| rjsw wrote:
| Lamborghini started out making tractors.
| antattack wrote:
| It's a fail because we are moving into unmanned fighting
| vehicles. Something that F-35 program has failed to foresee.
|
| Basically F-35 is the fighter of tomorrow fighting threats of
| yesterday.
| evgen wrote:
| The F-35 program did not fail to foresee the rise of unmanned
| vehicles, they built and adapted the aircraft and avionics
| around this concept. The F-35 cockpit, avionics, and helmet
| are designed to allow an F-35 pilot to command a fleet of
| drones performing roles ranging from scouting and EW to SEAD
| and direct attack.
| antattack wrote:
| Human flying and directing drones to do some tasks is such
| a 20th century thinking. For one, human pilot in F-35
| directing drones would be the weakest link.
|
| Why would you want to send a human pilot to face drone(s)
| that does not care for it's survival, can pull more Gs,
| calculate trajectory and make decisions faster?
| thu2111 wrote:
| This comes up in every HN thread about fighter jets.
|
| Modern fighter aircraft are mobile missile launchers.
| They are judged primarily by whether they can get close
| enough to where they need to go without being detected,
| detect what they need to, and then launch good enough
| missiles. The missile is effectively the drone. Modern
| missiles are basically self-piloting autonomous drone
| rockets. In that regard the F-35 is fine, and automating
| the pilot is not necessarily a win because the AI isn't
| going to be doing ultra-high G dogfight turns anyway. The
| humans job is to react to unexpected situations and
| figure out something smart in situations where remote
| control isn't reliable or desirable (e.g. due to risk of
| detection).
| antattack wrote:
| I think it boils down to this: F-35, compared to unmanned
| aircraft, does not cost less than 6 million dollars a
| piece and it exposes American life to enemy fire.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| But that's not what this article says. They're claiming the
| air force requesting a new manned fighter is evidence it
| failed.
|
| Meanwhile the F-35 is explicitly designed to control swarms
| of unmanned drones.
| Retric wrote:
| The F-35 failed because fighter jet airframes aren't
| particularly relevant anymore. You can stick the same sensor
| systems and missiles on just about anything.
|
| Improved stealth etc is useful, but F-35's are only slightly
| better than 40+ year old jets. Thus hardly worth the price vs
| cheaply manufacturing a minor update of an older design.
|
| Or as the saying goes "quantity has a quality all it's own."
| greedo wrote:
| Yeah, that's what the Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians and
| Iraqis thought in their various fights against Israel through
| the years. Yet somehow, the Israeli quality came out on top
| every single time.
|
| Stating the F-35s are "only slightly better than 40+ year old
| jets shows a stunning lack of knowledge.
| GcVmvNhBsU wrote:
| Curious what your background is to make those statements. My
| experience from Red Flag and other exercises is that the 5th
| gens (22 & 35) have a much better K/D and survivability. When
| you expend all of your stand off weapons or need to get a B-2
| deep into a contested airspace, including against SAMs, you
| need a 35 going in to do sanitization. No F-16 is fighting
| off both SAMs and a huge ass wave of J-10s or any J-20s while
| protecting a bomber.
|
| Now is that 35 worth the price? If our policy continues to
| insist for preparing against an impossible push peer
| adversary landmasses, then maybe. Personally I don't see
| those pushes happening, but that's more due to the tyranny of
| distance and having like 10 minutes of play time before
| needing to refuel.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Is this really realistic though? I'm curious about your
| professional perspective.
|
| My impression of the present/near future of air combat is a
| stealthy fighter with AMRAAMs in front, radar off, and a
| quarterback aircraft in back out of missile range, with the
| radar on. The front fighter fires and turns around, and the
| missile gets mid-course updates from the quarterback
| aircraft. When the AMRAAMs are depleted, you leave. It
| seems like if you get into Sidewinder range and you're
| outnumbered, you're going to have a torrent of medium range
| missiles coming at you from all sides.
|
| It's not clear to me how well newer radars can track the
| B-2, but it's hard for me to see how fighters could really
| protect it. I'd expect that in a conflict with China, if
| they can track the B-2, that the B-2 would be withheld
| until the fighter threat was neutralized.
| Retric wrote:
| I have some background wargaming for the DoD. As to Red
| Flag numbers generally reported, it was setup to heavily
| favor F-35's. Amusingly at one point they further boosted
| the K/D ratio after the fact from 15:1 to 20:1.
|
| Actual air war looks very different, with a significant
| focus on cruse missiles early on etc. But again, comparing
| the F35 with outdated equipment is missing the point.
| greedo wrote:
| Yet you're the one comparing the F-35 to 40+ year old
| aircraft that would get smoked in combat by the F-35.
| Retric wrote:
| No. Modern sensors, communications systems, missiles, etc
| are absolutely crucial on a modern battlefield.
|
| Further, the F16's people are talking about very much
| needed a replacement. The newest was built in 2005 and
| while it's a solid multi-role, all weather, air-to-air
| and air-to-ground fighter the design is showing it's age.
|
| But, the F35 isn't simply a modernized F16 now it does
| stealth, STOVL, etc. So you need to consider what it
| could have been not compare it to what's being replaced.
|
| PS: I very much believe stealth aircraft are needed, but
| the same F35's are eventually facing the sensors of
| 2050+. That's the context where it starts to look very
| questionable.
| hctaw wrote:
| The race car/pickup truck analogy is useful here. The F35
| failed because they tried to make a vehicle that could be both
| a race car and a pickup truck, and wound up making one that is
| more expensive and worse at both jobs than building two
| different vehicles. Or just using existing fleets of vehicles.
|
| Although personally I think that in the event the US military
| needs to scramble a bunch of F35s to serve as in legitimate air
| to air combat we'll have bigger problems than a costly jobs
| program not producing something useful.
| sorokod wrote:
| Even if it is a Ferrari, are squadrons of Ferraris is what
| needed to fight wars?
| digi59404 wrote:
| Sometimes you need a Ferrari. Sometimes you need a bunch of
| hooligans with bullets in a converted tractor.
|
| But being caught without either, when you need one isn't a
| good place to be in.
| lmm wrote:
| Building a handful of an experimental, envelope-pushing
| design is reasonable. Mass-producing hundreds of a mainline
| fighter is reasonable. Combining both in the same aircraft,
| and ramping up production before you've validated the
| design, always seemed crazy to me.
| sorokod wrote:
| Not one Ferrari but many. Sticking to the analogy, in what
| circumstances do you need many Ferraris?
| decafninja wrote:
| Peer state war where everyone has Ferraris? Or at least
| fleets of Benzes, so you want to one up them with fleets
| of Ferraris.
|
| Even without getting into a shooting war, you could argue
| your Ferraris will terrify the Benzes from even coming
| out to play, thus avoiding war. Not to mention the
| Toyotas and the Volkswagens.
|
| That said, I know some people will argue a peer state war
| between superpowers (say, US, Russia, China, etc.) will
| inevitably escalate to nuclear. I don't claim to know
| enough to say how valid that is.
|
| Also, at full production, the US is supposed to have a
| ridiculously overwhelming large zerg fleet of F-35s (more
| than 2000 between the branches, according to wikipedia).
| That totally eclipses anything planned by Russia or China
| for their own 5th gen fighters.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Define many?
|
| When your operational area is most of the planet, you
| obviously need more than one! I could describe 25 as
| "squadrons" but that wouldn't be too many.
| jboog wrote:
| ~1.7 Trillion dollars so we can have a bleeding-edge Ferrari
| while our "enemies" in the PRC and Russia are still driving
| around in Yugo 45s
|
| So many people seem to still buy into the Cold War mindset that
| we just need the latest bleeding edge platforms or the Soviets
| are going to invade and we'll all be reading Trotsky.
|
| The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians and
| China it's comical to claim another 1.7 trillion dollars for a
| "ferrari" is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars.
|
| China can't even field a blue-water navy yet. I guess they're
| only about a century behind the US there lol
| paganel wrote:
| > The US and NATO militaries are so far ahead of the Russians
| and China it's comical to claim another 1.7 trillion dollars
| for a "ferrari" is a prudent use of taxpayer dollars.
|
| Russia and China don't need a Yugo to out-speed the US's
| Ferrari, they have ICBMs and the Russians have nuclear subs
| that work well enough.
|
| And the US's Ferrari did a really, really poor job in the
| off-road terrains of the Middle East, with Iraq at best a
| draw (and a huge loss for the local population, but who cares
| about that?) and a definite defeat in Afghanistan.
| jboog wrote:
| I'm talking about the conventional fight.
|
| Once you get into nukes it's another ballgame.
|
| How does the F35 or its cool successor prevent MAD?
|
| Iraq and Afgh were counterinsurgency fights. Any China or
| Russian fight will not be the same.
|
| And the US absolutely crushed the Iraqi military within a
| matter of days in both Desert Storm and OIF. The problem
| was the "nation building" COIN fight.
| meowkit wrote:
| "By learning from our mistakes we have successfully failed."
|
| The vibe I'm getting from this thread haha.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _Not the success criteria some folks have perpetuated or
| thrust upon the project._
|
| This isn't an art project where interpretation is in the eye of
| the beholder. This is a taxpayer-funded set of contracts; the
| success criteria are defined as part of said contracts, they're
| not "thrust upon" the project by "some folks".
|
| Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative
| project, whether it were a success or a failure. They'd just be
| more generally beneficial due to more extensive application in
| a successful project (and probably more cheaply usable by other
| areas of industry). Either way they would exist in either
| scenario: if their existence is what defines success, then
| failure is impossible.
| guardiangod wrote:
| >Your trickle down benefits would come from any innovative
| project, whether it were a success or a failure.
|
| Take the $3e11, convert them to physical banknotes, burn all
| $3e11 bills in Texas last week for warmth, and according to
| the grandparent the program would still be a success because
| the money ultimately provided utility to people!
|
| >Grandparent: What matters is the objective outcome that
| comes from this project.
|
| No one froze to death! We gained _something_ from the
| program! Operation successful! /s
| bluGill wrote:
| In industry when you realize a project is going to fail it is
| common to pack it with a bunch of marginally related things
| that you want in your project but cannot afford. Then when
| they complete what you want you take it for no cost. It makes
| your project look better on the bottom line (ROI or whatever
| metric accountants use to judge), and the other project
| eventually is written off.
|
| Would the company be better off just paying for the things
| they want in each project and accepting a lower ROI is an
| open question. I just watch the game, not make the rules.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Is the project a fail for Lockheed Martin?
|
| Didn't they get paid a bunch of money for it?
|
| Don't they get paid again each time there's a rev?
| dtx1 wrote:
| So, they did a bradley
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
| onepointsixC wrote:
| That movie and the book it's based on are both wildly
| inaccurate and biased.
| dtx1 wrote:
| You don't say! I would have thought this is a historic drama
| about the military industrial complex if you hadn't warned
| me!
| ansible wrote:
| So The F-35 costs too much.
|
| In other industries, you would look for ways to cost-down the
| product. We often keep the same basic structure or components,
| but figure out less expensive ways to accomplish the same goals.
| Often, the revised product can be more durable and reliable too.
|
| It is a shame that the incentives in weapons system development /
| purchase don't seem to help with this at all. It seems all the
| incentive is to make the product more and more expensive, and
| requiring more service.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Are fighter jets a necessity when we have drones? Other
| commenters bemoan the lack of technological progress in fighter
| jets, but a drone is capable of maneuvers that humans cannot
| survive, and the use of drones also limits the loss of pilot
| lives.
|
| Investing money in drones over fighter jets seems like the cost
| effective move here. Flying the jet yourself is definitely cooler
| than doing it by remote control, but I don't think it will make
| much sense in warfare in 20 years time. We have to skate to where
| the puck is going.
| nickff wrote:
| Drones aren't as cheap as you might think when you actually
| tally the total system cost, including ground systems; and the
| UAVs still have significant issues operating in various mixed
| airspaces. Take a look at the costing for General Atomics
| Predator and Northrop Grumman Global Hawk systems, as well as
| the issues the Germans have had with the latter.
| tyingq wrote:
| Given the type of both recent and predicted conflicts that the US
| has been involved with, it's not 100% clear to me that the US
| needs yet another aircraft. That is, fighting in proxy wars or
| fighting in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria don't need
| anything new. And fighting a sophisticated enemy would probably
| ramp up to nuclear deterrents and diplomacy anyway...fighters
| wouldn't make a notable difference in that kind of war.
|
| Won't happen, but it seems like they should just buy fighters
| from allies where the F-35 isn't a good fit.
| ProAm wrote:
| You're not thinking about the other wars we want to fight after
| the wars we are currently fighting now.
| tyingq wrote:
| Sorry...what countries?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| China, so we can defend Taiwan _without_ having to go
| nuclear to do it. Russia, over the rest of the Ukraine.
| Perhaps Iran, if we have to stop their nuclear program by
| force, or some other contingency.
| jboog wrote:
| China can't even field a blue water Navy and their Air
| Force is about 20-30 years behind the US and its allies.
|
| We don't need an F-35 or another 2 Trillion dollar
| procurement process to sink literally anything China
| wants to put in the water.
| tyingq wrote:
| I just don't see the US fighting China or Russia in a
| direct, conventional weapons conflict. How does it not
| escalate?
| onepointsixC wrote:
| It doesn't escalated because neither Moscow nor DC are
| willing to go nuclear over Tallinn while Beijing is
| overwhelmingly inferior in their nuclear capability
| compared to either.
| tyingq wrote:
| I don't know that we have a good historical example to
| confirm that. I remain skeptical that we could have
| direct fighting between American and Russian/Chinese
| soldiers/aircraft/etc and somehow keep that in a box. The
| Cuban missile crisis was insanely tense, and no real
| shots were exchanged.
| ProAm wrote:
| Doesn't matter if its direct or another proxy war, its
| still war.
| tyingq wrote:
| Proxy wars are easier to avoid escalation. I suspect
| that's one of the main reasons for them.
| arka2147483647 wrote:
| One could argue that is the precicely the problem.
|
| If there is no specific credible enemy to fight, there are no
| strict reguirements that MUST be met, so one makes the plane do
| everething, because you dont really know what you need.
| daed wrote:
| This is not a new phenomenon:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA
| dtx1 wrote:
| I thought about this immediately. Uncanny how similar the
| situation is
| JabavuAdams wrote:
| There's a claim in the article that it's too difficult to update
| the software on the F16s. Could someone (ideally with military
| aircraft software experience) comment on this? I don't understand
| -- I would think that software would be the easiest (but not
| necessarily cheapest) thing to upgrade. Computers have only
| gotten smaller and faster.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I can't comment from the perspective of the F16 specifically,
| but from experience working on upgrade efforts of military and
| IC ground processing systems, the challenge is the legacy
| systems are very tightly coupled to the hardware. They make
| strong assumptions about register size and number, bus
| bandwidth, filesystem block size, all kinds of things that
| software developers rarely think about any more, but things
| that mean the software is only going to run on the hardware
| it's currently running on, and when the hardware vendor hasn't
| even sold that product for over a decade, I've seen government
| programs literally scrounge eBay to find replacement parts. So
| upgrading the software isn't just a matter of installing an
| upgrade. It's a total from the ground up rewrite and also
| requires new hardware.
| bdavis__ wrote:
| New F16's have new CPU's and millions of lines of new code.
| The mission processors have been updated many times over the
| years. And new radars and sensors and weapons. And data link.
| The airframe is old and non-stealthy. It also carries a
| limited amount of bombs / missiles.
| uncoder0 wrote:
| Worked around F16's and F22's when I was in and can attest
| that this is the source of the issue for upgrades. Everything
| in the software is so tightly coupled to the hardware that
| updating the F16's would be a monumental effort. The
| difference between a 4th and 5th generation air frame are
| night and day in terms of software capabilities. Hell, even
| the different between 5th generation jets can be massive on
| the software side such as the gap between F22 vs F35 the
| later being far more advanced on the software side.
| zmix wrote:
| Computers in the 80's lacked HAL. But they, typically, got
| it in the 90's. I wonder, why the F35 is missing it. Or is
| this different?
| tandr wrote:
| Please forgive my ignorance of military processes involved.
|
| Could that be addressed by old software trick of
| modularising components - software and hardware-alike - and
| rely on some extensive semi-open protocols to connect
| these? I think car manufacturers have faced that at some
| time in the past, even inside single manufacturer (not sure
| if they have solved it completely). Sounds like they need
| Ada-like project, but for hardware side.
| bluGill wrote:
| Maybe, but it isn't easy. Often the code is written
| around the performance of the hardware in question. Thus
| you still have to rewrite all the software before any new
| hardware can be used. Or write an emulator that is cycle
| perfect to hard real time standards. Neither is cheap or
| easy.
|
| I know of companies (I can't talk about which) that spent
| a few billion dollars trying to replace old hardware,
| only to abandon the track taken and have to start over.
| All the while the stores of the obsolete and no longer
| made CPU are getting smaller and smaller. All this for a
| controller that marketing doesn't see any reason to add
| more features so they can't even justify some off the
| cost as new features.
| tablespoon wrote:
| Full disclosure: I don't work in defense, but I've read
| Wikipedia.
|
| >>> I can't comment from the perspective of the F16
| specifically, but from experience working on upgrade
| efforts of military and IC ground processing systems, the
| challenge is the legacy systems are very tightly coupled
| to the hardware. They make strong assumptions about
| register size and number, bus bandwidth, filesystem block
| size, all kinds of things...
|
| >> Worked around F16's and F22's when I was in and can
| attest that this is the source of the issue for upgrades.
| Everything in the software is so tightly coupled to the
| hardware that updating the F16's would be a monumental
| effort.
|
| > Could that be addressed by old software trick of
| modularising components - software and hardware-alike -
| and rely on some extensive semi-open protocols to connect
| these?
|
| I think the military has already done that to a degree,
| see:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-1553 (serial data
| bus)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-1750A (16-bit ISA)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_16 (tactical radio
| communication)
|
| It sounds like there are two issues: 1) protocols and
| standards themselves can become obsolete, so it's like
| updating Apple II DOS to read a ZFS array (or a modern
| Mac to work with 5 1/4 floppy drives).
| tandr wrote:
| Thank you. I guess it is a good start. But, as a solution
| - develop new protocols and standards, and declare that
| military does not buy _anything_ that does not
| interoperate on these standards, no matter how advanced
| your shit is?
| cwwc wrote:
| does this make them inherently safer from a 'hack'?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I don't think so.. Probably less safe as software in the
| 80s was definitely built with less of a focus on digital
| security. Back in those days telnet was considered secure
| :)
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Also, I've read they want more room for avionics hw (with
| cooling and enough amps) in hatch areas, which is designed
| into new models.
|
| Planes today are thought of as computer platforms as much as
| weapons platforms, though one would think Moore's law would
| solve the space/volume problem.
| bob_morton_1987 wrote:
| "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program!
| Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!"
|
| -- Dick Jones, Robocop.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| F-35 is perhaps one of the ultimate "scope creep" stories, though
| a lot of military vehicles have the same problems (tanks come to
| mind). Every big wig wants some bell or whistle for their use
| case baked in.
| uniqueid wrote:
| Pierre Sprey has been trashing the F35 persuasively for years
| https://youtu.be/N1Z_DuF87Sc
| qzw wrote:
| Is it better for the prospect of peace if the U.S. and its
| adversaries all have large fleets of cheap warplanes or small
| fleets of expensive ones? I would argue that the F-35 is not only
| very expensive for the U.S., but has actually increased the cost
| of fielding fighter jets (as well as air defense systems) for the
| entire world. And therefore it has made it more expensive to
| fight a war for _every_ country. Now ask yourself would you
| rather live in a world where the cost of wars is lower or higher?
| mathgorges wrote:
| This is an interesting point, but I'm not sure I follow.
|
| I get how the F-35 has raised the cost of air war for the NATO
| countries which have bought into the F-35 program.
|
| But how has the F-35 program raised the cost of air war for
| other countries?
| rcv wrote:
| Maybe the fighter mafia will finally get their way after all. For
| anyone interested in some behind the scenes of how fighters get
| developed I recommend the book "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who
| Changed the Art of War."
| hyko wrote:
| The test of a combat aircraft is in combat. Nobody will give a
| fuck what the programme cost or that it couldn't do X if it gives
| you a decisive advantage in war.
|
| It's fashionable to hate on the F-35, but let's face it: if the
| allies have to establish air superiority somewhere in the world,
| they will be using F-35s to do so, and I'm not aware that anyone
| has the platform to stop them.
| jbob2000 wrote:
| Empires fall from within. Yes, nobody will stop the US with
| military, and nobody would try because that's not how you win.
| You don't need a big military to crush the fragile supply chain
| that a plane like this demands.
| hyko wrote:
| I don't really understand this line of reasoning; it's not
| like the person bearing the most rudimentary weapons is at an
| advantage? What's the plan, lose in aerial combat but win in
| a fist fight?
|
| Who says it has a fragile supply chain anyway? It certainly
| has a complex one, but then so do things like nuclear weapons
| and nobody is clamouring to abandon them on that basis.
| Protecting that chain and the logistics around it is a staple
| of military operations. It's not like someone is going to
| surprise them by going after supply chains.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| My question would be: if you buy N drones for price of one
| F-35, do you get better military value for your money or not?
|
| At the very least, N drones can't be destroyed at once (unless
| stored really carelessly) and can be individually specialized
| in a way that provides wider spectrum of capabilities.
|
| A massive bonus: pilotless aircraft can perform manoeuvres
| unsurvivable for humans, and the ability to maneuver was always
| a strong point in the air.
| hyko wrote:
| Quantity does have a quality all of its own...
|
| It's obviously possible to imagine a scenario where you have
| a massive number of drones, the question would be whether you
| could channel that into tactics that would give you an
| advantage. Numeric superiority is sometimes useful, and
| sometimes a liability.
|
| The F-35 currently has a massive advantage over cutting edge
| drones - a MK I brain in control of the airframe that cannot
| be jammed. Its electronic warfare capabilities could create
| havoc for the drone swarm and deny the enemy remote sensing
| etc.
|
| Until there's actual conflict though, it's pretty much like
| asking whether Mike Tyson or Bruce Lee would win in a fight
| :)
| spiritplumber wrote:
| General Zevo was right...
| hef19898 wrote:
| These drones themselves are rather expensive, and you need
| large numbers of them. Also, smaller drones would tend to be
| expendable one-use things. But sill that's what most concepts
| call for today. These concepts do need refinement, so,
| especially on the cost side. An for continued use in a
| conventional conflict.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| When I go looking for a source I see a lot of "may be" and
| "soon will" but I've heard one capability of the F-35 is to
| command drones without connection to base stations, since
| radio relays can become (lets say) unreliable in open war.
| There are also offensive capabilities against enemy drones,
| remember when Iran landed a US drone by hacking it? Whose to
| say that any drones in the vicinity of an F-35 aren't
| captured mid-flight and turned against their own team?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid.
| ..
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The radio troubles that you mention is probably the main
| reason why the US military is so interested in Starlink.
| Few potential opponents have the capability to destroy
| Starlink, or even jam it thoroughly.
| greedo wrote:
| Starlink has nothing to do with C3I. And it can easily be
| jammed, as any frequency can.
| beckingz wrote:
| This is just an attempt to get funding for aircraft that will be
| bad.
|
| Any new aircraft they develop to be cheaper will suffer the same
| scope and budget creep that the F-35 did.
|
| We won't send pilots out in planes that are known to have low
| survivability, so when the new aircraft is insufficiently
| stealthy/fast/survivable, more money will be spent to make it
| even worse than the F-35.
| leoc wrote:
| There's at least one proposal to get around this by adopting a
| foreign design like the Saab Gripen:
| http://www.stairwaypress.com/bookstore/american-gripen/ . The
| US could rename it the Freedom Chimera and manufacture it under
| license in Kentucky to manage the politics.
| greedo wrote:
| I have a bridge I'd like to sell you...
|
| The Gripen is a fine aircraft, but introducing a foreign made
| aircraft into the USAF doesn't happen very often. I can only
| think of two examples, the Canberra bomber (B-57) and the
| Dauphin helicopter the Coast Guard bought in the 1980's.
|
| Plus new-build F-16s would be better at most roles than the
| Gripen.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Probably the issue is that during wartime (and I think the Cold
| War counts) the object of a weapons program is to defend one's
| country, whereas in the absence of any major foe the object of a
| weapons program is to spend money. From that standpoint the
| program was a spectacular success.
| thrill wrote:
| And the counterpoint is that spending money correctly is what
| prevents wartime with major foes.
| salawat wrote:
| I disagree, if anything, it just escalates the resulting
| conflict when it inevitably goes hot again.
|
| Conflict never stops, it just becomes indiscernable from
| diplomacy.
| bluGill wrote:
| Fine in theory. In practice you know only in hindsight if you
| spent the money incorrectly. If you spend your money
| correctly that looks just like spending your money
| incorrectly and getting lucky in hindsight.
|
| So we end up with a lot of politics where people say "I'm
| right, because [insert some factor that may or may not be
| relevant]", and then argue about who is right.
| post_break wrote:
| I dunno Lockheed Martin managed to put out a banger so it's not a
| total loss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF7x0ZIFeVc We at
| least got this instead of paying teachers more, or healthcare.
| sam_goody wrote:
| On the other hand (also posted today):
| https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/02/24/israeli...
|
| So, Israel flies lots of pilot hours and seems to think that the
| plane is a good deal.
|
| The F-35 failed in its original goal of being lightweight, but is
| perhaps fine in the new goal of being a modern fancy fighter that
| dominate the sky. In which case, it has pivoted to become a
| success.
|
| To extend their analogy, if you live near the Autobahn you would
| use your Ferrari daily?
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Interestingly enough Wikipedia says that the request for
| proposals for the F16 happened in January 1972 and the first
| completed fighter was accepted in January 1979. That's 7 years,
| without the use of computers.
| cwwc wrote:
| similar to the AR-15 platform -- it was proto'd, built, and
| adopted FAST. But in the decades following ... the US has
| floundered while troops use a 70 year old rifle (albeit with
| scopes and rails)
| madhadron wrote:
| The F-16 is as very interesting case and it's worth reading
| about it. It was intentionally built to be a single role
| aircraft and the people who wanted an effective airplane in
| that role effectively bypassed most of the politics that would
| have diluted it. So, yes, the F-16 is one of the great success
| stories of fighter plane development.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| The funny thing though is that the F-16 evolved into a multi-
| role fighter and became quite good at it :)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have an interesting old book (which is falling apart,
| sadly) about the F-16 and it's an interesting comparison with
| the main competitor at the time, the YF-17, which ultimately
| became the basis on which the F/A-18 was developed. Both very
| successful designs.
| madhadron wrote:
| Title and author? Sounds really interesting.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I'll have to disagree there. It's regarded as successful
| because it was all that was available. Pierre Sprey, John
| Boyd and Harry Hillaker envisioned a light weight, day only,
| radarless aircraft with no bomb hard points.
|
| Yet the single-role F-16 was morphed into a bomb truck and
| was considered successful by block 70 or whatever in the late
| eighties. Hillaker said "if I had realized at the time that
| the airplane would have been used as a multimission,
| primarily an air-to-surface airplane as it is used now, I
| would have designed it differently".
|
| So as a square in a round hole, it was made to work but it
| wasn't brilliant foresight or (early) development.
|
| http://www.codeonemagazine.com/article.html?item_id=37
| greedo wrote:
| And it's arguable that the original vision for the LWF was
| mistaken. Its goal was to be able to counter the Warsaw
| Pact airforces, airframe for airframe in a quantitative
| battle. But the Soviets were in the process of introducing
| the Fulcrum that would have outclassed such a simple
| fighter. A radar-less aircraft would have relied upon GCI,
| which the Soviets would have been quite successful in
| jamming/spoofing.
| CivBase wrote:
| > This is our 'high end' [fighter], we want to make sure we don't
| use it all for the low-end fight.
|
| What exactly is a "low-end fight" when it comes to the USAF?
|
| Seems to me like the real problem is the F-35 was built to be a
| do-it-all plane when it would make far more sense to have a more
| varied fleet of more cost-effective, purpose-built aircraft.
| mongol wrote:
| I know nothing about this, but could it not be things such as
| patrolling? Lots of hours in the air with little expectation of
| combat, but with readiness if need arises?
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Low end fight is where we use drones and Super Tucanos (A29)
| and play "Aces over Afghanistan" (or wherever-Stan we go next).
|
| Purpose built aircraft are indeed better, and flexible cheap
| and reliable aircraft like Tucanos are the ideal solution for
| many scenarios.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I do remember these discussions around FCAS, the French-
| German F-22 if you want. The concept called for a Gen 5+
| stealth jet and supporting drones. The jet itself should also
| be a strike bomber. And then the official concept papers say,
| that these jets in engangement with comparable craft, will
| end up in close dog fights. Because both sides see each other
| rather late. In these dog fights, a dedicated air superiority
| jet will beat a multi-role strike bomber. They also want to
| have the strike bomber capabiliy covered by the drones. I was
| basically laughed at when I asked why the manned FCAS element
| would be anything else than a specialized dog fighter.
| exar0815 wrote:
| Low end is Air to dirt against shepherds with rusty
| Kalashnikovs. The best plane for that is the A-10.
| Interestingly, exactly the plane the Army grunt and brass loves
| and the Air Force Brass wants to get it killed ASAP.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| The best plane for that isn't a plane, but a helicopter which
| has better loitering time. Combine that with the range and
| speed of the Future Vertical Lift program proposals and there
| is no need for the A-10 in the future.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano#U...
| twic wrote:
| It's a light attack / armed reconnaissance aircraft:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_Attack/Armed_Reconnaissa...
|
| The Tucano several other comments have mentioned was a strong
| contender. The Scorpion also looked pretty great, and went from
| concept to first flight in just over two years:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textron_AirLand_Scorpion
|
| I don't know why it was disqualified.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I guess along the way, the _activity_ of designing and building
| the plane became more important than the _outcome_ /
| functionality of the plane itself.
|
| You see it all the time in projects. People look busy and seem
| like they're building things, so some progress must be happening.
| Or is it?
|
| Blink an eye, and in a couple years you unwittingly accumulated a
| platform that served to fulfill every random team's desire to
| load on requirements, systems, electronics, sensors ("go find out
| what people want!"), with very few people making the
| countervailing decision to trade off / cut things for an overall
| desired outcome ("what do they actually demonstrate -- not say --
| they _need_? ").
|
| Well, they didn't have to pay for it, so there was no harm in
| giving their requirements. And if the actual willing payor
| (Congress) had little incentive (or technical chops) to be
| ruthless about costs or actual useful output, well then there's
| few checks on that happening. Until some top level general says,
| "why aren't these hugely expensive planes being used like we
| thought they would be?" Too late.
|
| I guess it kept people employed in the meantime. How can you cut
| 10% of the workforce in Huntsville when the representative sits
| on the Armed Services committee? (I don't know that, but just for
| example...) Which, sometimes, is a national goal in itself for
| strategic purposes.
|
| It might be good though, to have a more deliberate plan about
| these kinds of things, if that's the goal.
| janderson3 wrote:
| > How can you cut 10% of the workforce in Huntsville when the
| representative sits on the Armed Services committee? (I don't
| know that, but just for example...)
|
| Close. Alabama Senator Shelby is the Chairman of the Committee
| on Appropriations and the Chairman of its Defense Subcommittee.
|
| Edit: My apologies. Was the chairman. See nobody's comment
| below.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| He is not running for re-election again.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Close. Alabama Senator Shelby is the Chairman of the
| Committee on Appropriations and the Chairman of its Defense
| Subcommittee
|
| Nitpick here. Senator Shelby _was_ the chairman of those
| committees, now he 's the ranking member[0][1].
|
| That said, he _was_ the chairman for many years.
|
| [0] https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/
|
| [1]
| https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/subcommittees/defense
| StLCylone wrote:
| "the activity of designing and building the plane became more
| important than the outcome / functionality of the plane
| itself."
|
| Yes. After a while was it about building the plane or keeping
| the aerospace industry employed and engaged? The design tried
| to do everything for everyone and fulfill every Colonel's dream
| feature and mission. Its the ultimate story of feature creep.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Youhave to maintian the industrial base, so. To maintain the
| stuff for the next decades and replace any losses. Hard
| during peace time. In preparation of a war of attritition
| against an equal oponent close to impossible. How do you
| maintain the necessary base to produce hundreds of jets,
| F-35s or whatever Gen 5, once all have been delivered? That
| aspect alone is critical for the success of such a weapon
| system. It doesn't help to have a couple of hundred Gen 6
| fighters if you cannot replace them in a war against someone
| who _can_ replace his gen 4 /4+ jets.
| ldbooth wrote:
| Like the smartphone phenomenon. They need to sell you
| something, so they sell you on useless features. And it
| works!
|
| My flip phone is in the mail. They got me regressing too.
| QuesnayJr wrote:
| I think the original requirements were unreasonable. They
| wanted a single plane that could support the Air Force, the
| Navy, and the Marines. This was too hard, so they compromised
| on a platform that could be adapted to multiple uses, but even
| that was a bad idea.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Don't forget all the international partners. One major force
| behind the VTAL version were the British who wanted a new
| Harrier.
| andi999 wrote:
| A platform is always a bad idea.
| drcode wrote:
| I have the same problem with my personal projects. I have one
| project I've been in a "groove" on for several months, and now
| that it is close to complete I'm having an existential crisis,
| wondering what the point of the project was in the first place.
| totalZero wrote:
| The article doesn't substantiate the headline. It's like saying
| that the navy admits that battleships have failed because of the
| development of LCS.
| some_random wrote:
| What a complete load of BS. The program was expensive, but as
| soon as someone tells you that $100m for brand new fighter is
| expensive, you know that they're either lying or don't know what
| they're talking about.
|
| Edit: None of you, including me, have enough understanding of
| this topic to even begin to discuss it in a serious manner. Have
| you ever heard some technically illiterate family members debate
| Apple vs Microsoft vs Dell computers? That's what you all sound
| like right now.
| drewvolpe wrote:
| Why start with a clean slate and develop a new plane? If the F-16
| is still working, why not start with its design and upgrade the
| avionics and software?
| hef19898 wrote:
| One reason would be the age of the airframes. Technically, why
| not? But at a certain point you will need to compleely rebuild
| the airframes, like completely down to the last bolt and rivet.
| Only to still have an old airframe, in some sense. So new
| aircraft it is. And developing new enngines, avionics and
| software to put them into a new, and most likely modernized
| airframe, is frightingly close to a completly new aircraft
| design. And will give people the oppertunity to add features as
| well. And of course, because common sense doens't play a role
| in military development and procuremt for anything more complex
| than a Hummvee. Looking at the proposed Humvee replacements
| so...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They must have A/B tested the title to see what gets the most
| smug confirmation bias clicks (title is clearly not intended to
| optimize for outrage clicks so what else could it be).
|
| The whole article is about the history of the program, why it
| costs so much and what the options are going forward. If you
| squint you can make it seem like failure but the article does not
| make that claim.
| jwond wrote:
| > If you squint really hard you can make it seem like failure
| but the article does not make that claim.
|
| It does actually. Here are a couple of excerpts from the
| article that explicitly refer to it as a failure:
|
| > Brown's comments are a tacit admission that the F-35 has
| failed.
|
| > ...
|
| > But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35's
| very concept.
| noitanigami wrote:
| The F-35 failed from a certain institutional perspective by
| becoming a real plane. It is no longer a magic money pot where
| you could park your pet projects for funding.
|
| As an actual fighter-plane, it is fine.
| sep_field wrote:
| United States deserves to die. Fuck capitalist imperialism. The
| plane served its purpose in transferring wealth from the
| AmeriKKKan taxpayer to the pockets of the defense contractors.
| AmeriKKKan capitalism at its finest. You all got what you
| deserved.
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