
The Jet that Ate the Pentagon - Zarkonnen
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/26/the_jet_that_ate_the_pentagon
======
chris_wot
You know something - I just tried to load this website as the article looks
interesting. But it was taking _forever_ to load. So I downloaded YSlow to
find out what on earth was causing the problem, and the site has:

* 41 external javascript files

* 22 external CSS files

* Totals to 2106.9K of files, of which 1151.4K are javascript files, and 598.9K in images. It took 204 HTTP requests to get this page to load.

* has about 37 different DNS lookups to get access to all the files

One of the websites that host external javascript files took over 9 seconds to
load approximately 350K.

On top of this, I've never seen so much analytics and tracking on any website
- ever!

Seriously, someone needs to have a good look at the way that this site is
constructed. Such a massive bandwidth hog - and noticably slow!

~~~
showerst
I'm actually the guy responsible for this site (Web Director at FP).

The reason for all of this is that it's a kitchen-sink Drupal install, plus
every ad industry service in history.

We've been working to cut all of this down, but I haven't been on the job for
very long =P. A fair number of the images aren't even properly minimized!
You'll see it improve soon though =).

~~~
chris_wot
Nice - welcome aboard :-)

------
spodek
Visiting Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for the first time, their Vietnam
War museums reminded me of the consequence of a tactical advantage (like air
superiority) in the context of a failed strategy (like invading without a good
reason).

 _You lose wars_.

The life and business on the streets there reminded me what happens when you
don't invade for no reasons.

 _Capitalism flourishes_.

At least from what you see on the street level, capitalism is doing better
there than in the bailout-laden U.S.

Did I oversimplify? Of course. But until the U.S. shows some strategic
intelligence like "don't invade countries without a reason" its tactical
choices will always fail too.

By the way, they call it the American War there.

~~~
philwelch
The US was an ally of South Vietnam at their government's invitation, and
never did actually invade North Vietnam. If they did, maybe the war would have
gone differently.

~~~
smacktoward
_> The US was an ally of South Vietnam at their government's invitation_

Oh come on. South Vietnam was an American client state from the word go.
American advisors helped run Ngo Dinh Diem's campaign in the 1955 referendum
that set up the South Vietnamese government. When Diem didn't turn out to be
the man the U.S. government had hoped he would, American money helped finance
the 1963 coup that killed him.

 _> and never did actually invade North Vietnam_

No, we just bombed the holy hell out of them: see Operation Rolling Thunder
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rolling_Thunder>) and Operation
Linebacker II (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Linebacker_II>) for
examples.

~~~
philwelch
And North Vietnam was a Soviet client state from the word go, that's how the
Cold War worked.

There was still no invasion of Vietnam. The entire operation was hamstrung by
politically imposed restrictions.

~~~
jbooth
I can't believe you're not downvoted to oblivion. Your oringal response was as
close to incorrect as you can be while still being factual (we installed a new
regime when the old regime stopped liking us), and you response with "the
soviets did it too"?

"We weren't any worse than the soviets" is not a moral defense, and given that
we couldn't hold south vietnam against insurgency, you'd need a hell of a case
to support the idea that we could have held north vietnam.

I mean, given that we were dropping napalm and agent orange, what kind of
"politically imposed restrictions" would you say held us back from winning?

~~~
philwelch
In military terms, the US _did_ hold South Vietnam against insurgency. The
problem is that the source of support for that insurgency was in North
Vietnam, and it was impossible for US ground troops to advance there and
eliminate that support.

The war effort was also politically micromanaged--for instance, every
airstrike had to be individually approved by the White House. This led to
delays and, frankly, interference in military affairs from incompetent
politicians.

Fighting a counterinsurgent war on the defensive is never strategically sound;
one is always better served by being on the move and taking the initiative.
This was politically impossible in Vietnam, which is why it took so long.

Now, perhaps there were valid political reasons not to invade north Vietnam.
In that case, the answer is not to get involved at all. You either do the job
right or you don't do it at all. In either case, the mistake _wasn't_ that the
US invaded Vietnam without a good reason--there was no invasion, and there was
a good reason. The mistake was that the US didn't fully commit to the
objective, and that the White House didn't let the military do their job.

~~~
jbooth
Well, I'm not a military scholar but I'm pretty sure everybody who is
disagrees with you here. The battle was entirely political, and armchair
general troop movement stuff is completely beside the point.

Here's the fact: Nobody wanted us there. South vietnamese were informing on
the US and killing our troops. You think having a few airstrikes being more
effective would have made a difference for that? Like if we just killed enough
of the bad guys, the rest of them would have given up?

That's not the way asymmetrical warfare works. Every guy you kill has brothers
and cousins who want to avenge him. Losing the political battle is losing the
war. That's why we won in Iraq (Al Qaeda in Iraq were flown-in nihilists who
alienated the population), and that's why we're losing in Afghanistan (the
Taliban are a local movement with a local base).

You're seriously saying that had we invaded North Vietnam and bombed more
stuff, it would have been fine? Like we could cut the supply of an army that
was living off the land? Looks like we would've just been occupying twice as
much ground with the same number of troops, unless you're advocating killing
every last man, woman and child in the country.

~~~
philwelch
The Viet Cong was broken by their failure in the Tet Offensive. But they would
have been broken much sooner if their source of support in the north was
eliminated.

And no military can be effective when it's micromanaged from the White House.

~~~
jbooth
Given that we were fleeing our embassy by helicopter in 1973, I find it hard
to believe that the VC were quote "broken" in 1968.

If you're living off the land, conducting guerilla warfare, you can't be
broken. "Broken" is for standing armies. Guerillas just leave the field of
battle and then bomb your patrols when you try to occupy.

~~~
philwelch
It's easy to lose a war after you withdraw all your troops from the country.
In any case, guerrillas can't and don't hold territory--it was the North
Vietnamese regulars who overran Saigon in _1975_.

------
rollypolly

      F-35 lacks the F-16's agility in the air-to-air mode and
      the F-15E's range and payload in the bombing mode, and it
      can't even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude
      close air support for troops engaged in combat.
    

"jack of all trades, master of none". :(

~~~
D_Alex
You sound like my wife... she says I lack the good looks of Hugh Jackman and
athletic abilities of Michael Phelps, and I can't even compare to Bill Gates
in the amount of money I bring in.

Not defending the F-35 though. My main issue with it is that I can't see that
it is needed at all.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"My main issue with it is that I can't see that it is needed at all."_

I don't usually find myself defending defense spending... but war-related
technology is something you don't know you need, until you do, by which time
it's too late to procure it.

If the US is going to continue its M.O. of attacking countries whose military
air presence can be counted on two hands, and consists mostly of old Soviet
cast-offs, then sure, the current level of tech is more than sufficient.
Overkill, even. I don't think there has been a _single_ loss of U.S. military
aircraft to enemy action since... Kosovo?

I think a main impetus of this particular project is because both Russia and
China are rapidly developing their own 5th-generation fighters, and while a
head-to-head with China doesn't seem entirely likely, it's certainly less
farfetched than the idea was 20 years ago.

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not defending this particular boondoggle of a
project, but the need for a 5th-generation fighter is entirely understandable.

On the plus side, it doesn't look like other countries' 5th-gen fighter
projects are doing much better... The Chinese project has faced delay after
delay after delay, and the Russians too.

~~~
brlewis
Do we really need to outspend China by almost 5x?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

Isn't the more likely scenario that China overtakes us economically, not
militarily?

~~~
philwelch
The US is never going to fight China because both countries have nuclear
weapons. That tends to put a damper on things. As a Chinese general reportedly
put it back in the 90's, "You care a lot more about Los Angeles than you do
about Taipei."

Even if you did compare the two, the US is a richer country (so it costs
comparatively more to train and outfit the same number of men to the same
amount) with a stronger cultural valuation of human life and a stronger
cultural and political desire for short-term victories. If the Chinese got
into a prolonged military conflict, not only would they be less sensitive to
heavy losses, but if it took more than a couple years, no one would be
worrying about reelection the way American politicians would. China is content
with simply being able to win; the US needs to immediately overwhelm the enemy
while suffering minimal friendly losses, or else the war will be lost
politically if not militarily.

That's why we _have_ things like the F-22 and F-35; in combat exercises small
numbers of F-22's can singlehandedly wipe out entire wings of enemy aircraft
without the enemy getting as much as a missile lock on the F-22. The US is in
a weird spot--if [one telegenic fighter jock gets shot
down](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_OGrady>), it becomes national news
for a week!

------
staunch
I just assume they're funneling huge portions of that money into secret
projects. How else do they get their hands on a spare $100 billion without
anyone noticing?

Better to seem incompetent than reveal you've got a warp drive/time
machine/transporter project.

I know it's kind of an optimistic view, but it does make me feel better.

------
toemetoch
Have a look at all the bells and whistles that pop out for vertical take off:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm7_PPE-8nk>

Those are all intricate mechanisms that need to withstand severe levels of
stress.

~~~
philwelch
That's what happens when you have a reasonable idea, i.e. let's replace the
F-16 and F/A-18, and all of a sudden someone says "hey, the Harrier is getting
old too" and you realize the politicians aren't going to pay for _two_ new
planes at once, especially not after how much they've already spent on the
F-22 and B-2, so you just throw all the requirements together, so by the time
it lands on the desk of an actual engineer who realizes what a hash of things
you've made, it's too late to change course.

------
api
The clusterfuck of competing requirements reminds me almost exactly of the
space shuttle, a similar disaster that barely worked.

The shuttle could have been really awesome had its requirements only been set
by NASA. Instead they had the NRO and other agencies jumping in there with
space-irrelevant stuff that never even got used.

~~~
lonnyk
Please elaborate on what was added by whom and not used?

~~~
sgt101
For the Shuttle the big unused and underused capabilities were "retrieval to
cargo bay and return to earth" and "launch to polar orbit".

I believe that this was imposed on the program by the US Airforce due to the
need to collect spy satellites for service and put large payloads into polar
orbit.

I think that the polar orbit requirement was never used, and had a very
significant impact.

~~~
roberte3
The first polar orbit was supposed to be Discovery, about six months after the
challenger disaster.

One of the things that was to enable the polar orbit was a new set of solid
rocket boosters, the 'Filament-wound' models that had a lighter weight outer
case, and more propellent.

The book Riding Rockets was written by an astronaut who was in the middle of
prep on that discovery mission when Challenger happened, and has a few details
on the proposed polar orbit launch.

------
dantillberg
This is kind of an unfortunate title for those of us that still remember 9/11.

------
bcl
Software isn't the only thing that suffers from feature creep (or bloat). The
V-22 Osprey has similar problems, driven by their attempt to meet the
requirements of all the branches of service.

------
jakeonthemove
I really like the F-22 - they should've kept building it and maybe modified it
for different purposes. The F16 are also pretty capable.

The only way the F35 will pay for itself is if it can turn into a space
fighter :-D - otherwise, with all those components onboard, it will cost even
more to maintain it over the next several decades.

Heck, in a real war, I'd rather take something simpler that is easy to build
and cheaper to repair - Russia seems to have it right with the SU/MIG 3X,
which are just perfected 2X designs...

------
RyanMcGreal
This story will also have strong significance for Canadians, whose government
is currently in the throes of a controversy over how much we're planning to
spend to buy a fleet of F35s.

------
ck2
They'll never admit that war is an outdated business model.

But the military industrial complex needs to be slowly starved to death.

~~~
jbattle
The business model isn't fighting the war, it's selling stuff prior to prepare
for a war that may or may not happen.

