
The F-35 Is a $1.4 Trillion National Disaster - ahmadss
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-f-35-is-a-terrible-fighter-bomber-and-attacker-and-unfit-for-aircraft-carriers-c6e36763574b
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869679](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869679)

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everyone
Alternatively, it could be viewed as one of the most successful US military
projects ever. It has funneled X* amount of tax money to the military-
industrial complex. Siphoning that money seems to have been the US militaries
primary function for several decades.

*Some giant number

~~~
everyone
Actually, building a ridiculous plane is a much better way of achieving this
than bombing innocent people.

~~~
s3m4j
Why do you reduce the choices between "building useless piece of hardware" and
"bombing innocent people" ? There are lots of choices here. Just a sample :
less tax or invest more in health and education.

~~~
everyone
The military industrial complex in the US is a self-perpetuating system that
just so happens to have the influence and lobbying power to get the funding.

It would have been great if some harmless or even beneficial industry had
developed in this way, but that is not the case unfortunately. The US also has
a burgeoning prison-industrial complex which also, unfortunately, results in
bad consequences for innocent people.

You can see these self-perpetuating systems all over the place in modern
civilization. The mechanism by which they grow is the same one which causes
management in large corporations to grow exponentially. The bureaucracy will
grow to fill the resources available. In the case of these self-perpetuating
systems, they can grow in lobbying power and influence and increase their
available resources, which allows them to expand and gain even more lobbying
power and influence, and so on. The core business could be military, or making
fake vomit, it doesnt matter.

ps. 'self-perpetuating system' is just a term I use to talk about these
things. Maybe theres a widely accepted term I dont know. Also all this is just
a product of my own reading and ruminations.

~~~
s3m4j
I also searched for something like "self-perpetuating system/bureaucracy" but
didn't find an accepted term.

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rgbrenner
The cost is incredibly high... but as I'm reading the article, it sounds like
most of these issues would apply to any fighter we build _with these
capabilities_. How much of this is just the cost of building these new
capabilities?

The capabilities described sound useful. And some of what we learn from it can
be applied in the future to new planes. So is it a good idea to simply back
off from the advanced software, and build a dumber plane just to save money?
The f16 is 40 years old.. we're going to have these new planes around for a
long time.

~~~
yogthos
The whole concept of manned jet fighters is laughably obsolete today. If you
were designing an actual modern weapon it would be a mostly autonomous drone.
Basically think of a rocket with a lot more intelligence in it. These things
would be much lighter since they wouldn't need to carry a pilot, would be able
to handle Gs that would turn humans into a paste, and react to changes in the
environment in microseconds. There would be no competition between that and
canned meat flying around. Note that Russia is moving precisely in that
direction with their modern arsenal
[https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-
ever-w...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/03/best-bad-idea-ever-why-
putins-nuclear-powered-missile-is-possible-and-awful/)

~~~
johannes1234321
Especially for air to ground attack this is true. Not having a human takes
away lot's safety margin needs.

The question there is the impact. If you just risk some thing and money it
lowers the barrier for going into action, as the risk of having to handing a
flag to a pilot's family goes away.

However a such plane also has other roles. On domestic protection a key task
of alarm squadrons is to take visual contact to pilots of civilian planes who
lost radio contact. Also for surveillance/intelligence roles a human on board
can have a better overview and decide where to go.

~~~
yogthos
This approach will work for air to air as well as air to ground. You have a
rocket powered drone platform that can launch micro-drones to attack targets.
It could carry thousands of them and dispatch them to destroy pretty much
anything around it in a matter of seconds.

Same thing goes for surveillance. Have a supersonic carrier drone fly over the
target area, release thousands of small drones to photograph the shit out of
it in every spectrum and then relay that back to command.

~~~
johannes1234321
Cluster bombs are outlawed in many countries (not in the US, though) as it's
too likely to hit civilians.

Also the more advanced those micro drones are, the more expensive is the
deployment and the more interest an opponent has in collecting unexploded
devices for reverse engineering them.

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dingaling
$1.4 trillion is a scary number to throw around but it's a lifetime cost. Add
up the total life cost of all the F-16s and F/A-18s that it will be replacing
for comparison.

I'm no fan of the F-35 but it is what we've got for the next 50 years so let's
stop sniping and start fixing.

~~~
riazrizvi
And most of the complaints boil down to unfinished software and systems. So
it’s not that the F35 is ineffective but that there is still more work to do.
Happens almost every time a massive new engineering project is undertaken.

~~~
thebooktocome
> So it’s not that the F35 is ineffective but that there is still more work to
> do.

A full third of the article is about how the F-35 is inferior to the A-10 for
the specific application of close air support. The last part of the article is
about how the F-35C is poorly designed for maintenance on aircraft carriers.

I don't see how either situation can be resolved with new software.

~~~
forapurpose
> the F-35 is inferior to the A-10 for the specific application of close air
> support

The A-10 is defenseless against modern air defense systems; it wouldn't get
within 100 miles of the battlefield against a sophisticated enemy; it would be
merely a flying coffin for the pilot.

Against unsophisticated enemies, such as ISIL, a drone could do the job, based
on what I understand. The F-35 could too, though it's an expensive option.

~~~
Latteland
And of course it turns out we use A10s frequently right now, so it's fantastic
that we have them. We need more. They are cheap. We need a variety of
different airplanes for different scenarios.

~~~
forapurpose
> we use A10s frequently right now, so it's fantastic that we have them

We use them _because_ we have them. Lots of people use high-carbon emissions
cars and planes, and Facebook, but I'm not sure it's fantastic that we have
them.

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farseer
1.4 trillion has not been spent yet! Only a fraction so far. Unless we fall
for the sunk cost fallacy, there is still plenty of time to cut our losses.

~~~
dev_dull
And do what? Create a new $1T bungled project?

~~~
SllX
Reviving F-22 production for air superiority (and export to key allies like
Japan) and starting a new program for a modern close-air support fighter might
be a good start.

I don't think the F-35 is a bad plane and does what it was designed to do very
well, but it isn't the best tool for all the roles it is expected to fill.

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bmiranda
Although there are teething issues, for US allies the unit the F-35 is
attractive due to a unit cost which is lower than any of its competitors (such
as the Eurofighter Typhoon).

For domestic use, the F-35B STOVL jet used by the Marines is a dramatic
improvement in range and capabilities over the Harrier.

The F-35A/C are less of an improvement, but I would by no means call them a
failure. It's easy to criticize a program due to cost overruns and
mismanagement, but that doesn't mean the end result is bad. At the very least
it's a sunk cost now, so we'll just have to deal with it.

~~~
colordrops
I don't even know how to respond to your comment without sounding flippant. 10
billion dollars for a questionable program would upset me, let alone 1.4
trillion. It's blindingly obvious that this is a result of graft.

No one has made a clear case that the US is in any sort of danger if we don't
upgrade our planes.

Imagine if that 1.4 trillion went towards fighting global warming, cancer, or
lack of health care. It's sick.

~~~
SllX
The United States has a role in the world. Leaving aside subjective thoughts
on whether we should fill that role, or continue to fill that role, if we
vacate that role then somebody _will_ fill that role instead.

The most obvious and likely right now would be the PLA if the United States
were to vacate that role tomorrow. Or more likely, it would go unfilled for
almost a decade before the PLA takes it.

Personally speaking, I would rather the US continue to fill the role it
currently has than see it vacated and filled by a group like the PLA, and in
order to do that, the United States has to maintain technological and military
superiority over its competition which _means_ continuing to research, develop
and procure new fighters, carriers, destroyers, submarines, and maintain the
US nuclear arsenal. Or to put this another way, the world isn't standing
still, so why would America?

~~~
colordrops
It seems I mixed multiple issues together. I can't claim that I understand
geopolitics enough to suggest that we should stop all military spending. I was
mainly suggesting that for such a huge expenditure a clear case for it should
be made to the public. The other issue I'm getting at is that there's no way
the F35 should cost as much as it does. For instance if Musk for some reason
was tasked with designing and building the next generation of aircraft I'm
sure it could be done for at least an order of magnitude less than the F35.
The money is mostly lining the pockets of sociopaths and massive intentionally
inefficient bureaucracies.

~~~
SllX
If Musk wanted to bid on future US Military contracts I am sure he would be
able to, but since he doesn't seem to be in the business of constructing
fighters for the Air Force I think we can safely leave him out of this
discussion.

The F-35 is a complex weapons and sensors platform, tasked, perhaps
overtasked, for many different capabilities and mission-types. I think you can
make a compelling argument that it may have been cheaper to divide those into
separate proposals and take separate bids for more specialized fighters, but
then you would have been stuck justifying each and every one of those to
Congress rather than the F-35.

Not developing _any_ sixth generation fighters when the competition _is_ , was
not an option though. I'm not happy, as a member of the public and US taxpayer
with precisely how the F-35 turned out, nor am I happy that F-22 production
was shut down by the Obama administration with the F-35 expected to fill its
role instead.

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wpdev_63
Hilariously we spent all that money on R&D and then the chinese hacked the
pentagon to stole the designs and made their copy plane for the fraction of
the price. It says alot about the military industrial complex.

We'll be at war with them soon enough so hopefully these will perform when the
time comes.

~~~
doikor
> We'll be at war with them soon enough

Actual real live shooting war between China and USA is going to be a nuclear
war so the performance of the planes in that scenario will be kinda useless.

China has ballistic missiles with the range to hit any location of their
choosing on main land USA and the tech to fit nuclear war heads onto those
missiles.

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stillsut
The F-35 is a weapons system designed to continue the US's ability to easily
win a conventional war against a high 2nd tier state power in their own
territory. What this might look like is the total rout in 1991 of Iraq, which
had the fifth largest army in the world, and advanced surface-to-air defenses,
defeated in large part by stealth technology. This fighter is basically
stating to these threats: _you are not going to be able to defeat or stalemate
us at our own game._

I know this isn't a popular sentiment around here but consider the difference
in outcome between the 1990 invasion of Kuwait vs the 2013 invasion of Crimea:
only in the one where we had absolute military superiority did the US - or
"the UN" if you prefer - actually get a say in how it turned out.

Who does this entail today? The big two are clearly North Korea and Iran.
Stretching it, I'd add Taiwan, Ukraine and the Eastern bloc, India on the
China border, Philippines, and Venezuela becoming some type of Cuba situation.
Then there are proxy wars between major powers like Syria, which will likely
continue to occur in the middle east and Africa for several decades. Even if
we don't enter these fights, we'll be able to give our allies this plane. (Or
maybe they'll turn down the most advanced plane ever built because the pilot
helmet has issues in high humidity situations /sarc.)

This isn't going to neutralize the other two main powers, it will continue to
be an imperfect - maybe even useless - weapon against their anti-ship and
surface-to-air capabilities. It can't defeat the 3rd world and it can't defeat
a superpower. The question is: is the price worth what it can do (which is
defeat 2nd tier powers / proxy adversaries for the next ~25 years)? Or is
there something which can do that better?

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SteveNuts
In theory, a unified platform for all three air support roles is a good idea,
but I think it's becoming apparent that airframes are too complex of systems
to make universal.

I really hope they can overcome the issues because overall it should help with
logistics and cost over the long term.

~~~
alkonaut
Yes excellent idea to have a carrier and land based shared airframe, like the
hornet did. But sharing it also with STOVL?? At what point did they pause to
think “wow this will either make it 2/3 almost completely separate planes, or
give it a lot of compromises in efficiency for the other roles, or add
billions to the cost, or all of the above”?

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bitL
Maybe it's a disaster in the sense of Windows Vista being a disaster - without
it there wouldn't have been Windows 7? So even if the current version is
underwhelming, the production chain is set up and the next version will have
all quirks ironed out...

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neom
The problem I have with the article is that it doesn't actually ever talk
about if the ideas are good or not. It points out that the MVP of the ideas
need a lot of work, and talks at length of why they don't work. For example,
he spends a lot of time talking about how maintenance on the F35 isn't the
same as the F18, so people who maintain the engines will have to change how
they work, and new types of people will have to be added. Most interesting
part of the article for me was learning about passive detecting.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERA_passive_sensor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERA_passive_sensor)

~~~
digi_owl
Interesting, though i believe the doctrine is that stealth aircrafts rely on a
data link from a AWACS to guild them to the target, and only turn on their own
radar when within weapon range, then only for as long as is required to
confirm target and launch the missile (who invariably has its own radar these
days).

Not to say that there are a myriad of assumptions that go into making an
stealth aircraft, as was demonstrated when apparently an F-117 was downed by a
modified SAM site.

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Jerry2
After reading this, I came across this article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17479508)

I was genuinely shocked when I read some of these points. I still have hard
time believing things like survivability after the ejection and the need to
repaint after every flight.

~~~
joering2
I actually did the same and upvote both articles.

Here is THAT line:

 _OVER A TRILLION DOLLARS. If the plane tries to TURN, it can crash._

~~~
WJW
This is true of all planes.

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Waterluvian
I'm thinking about the Eisenhower interstate system and maybe Americans just
have to figure out how to make crumbling infrastructure a national security
terror. There's clearly money. Let the military complex have it to build
bridges instead of bombers.

I'm also reminded by the amazing technology in the US carriers. They're
floating disaster response bases. Again, find ways to funnel military money
into repurposable technologies. It's palatable and it has value beyond killing
power.

------
flanker
One size does not fit all, it would be a silver bullet, whenever F35 replaces
legacy fighters. Maybe by that time the who theatre of war would change with
swarms of drones.

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gesman
>> The F-35 is being sold to the American people ...

Can we get a refund?

------
_bxg1
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy)

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anovikov
Thing is, any replacement will take 20-25 years to develop if started today,
so better just build more of these and hope to win by numbers.

~~~
maxerickson
Could order and receive Advanced Super Hornet a lot faster than that. Might
not deserve the label "replacement", but it provides at least some of the same
capabilities.

~~~
anovikov
U.S. has a shitload of 4gen planes, more than needed. They aren't an answer to
anything.

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trocadero
The article waves away the stealth benefits but that's the number one issue.
If a low radar signature is important then everything else is irrelevant. And
I think it is. It doesn't matter if a F-16 can out dog fight a F-35 because
that's not how the engagement will play out. The F-35 will shoot down an F-16
before the F-16 knows it's there.

------
badrabbit
The "elephant in the room" is the grand bet western nations (led by the US)
are making by investing in advanced and sophisticated weapons.

Historically, you did need good weapons and vehicles/horses/planes but there
has always been a balancing effect caused by how much of them you have, how
many troops can operate them and how well defended they are.

Aircraft carriers are a good example,they compliment existing capability by
acting as floating military bases that can take the battle to the enemy's
homeland. But that's the thing,they compliment,they don't replace.

Even if the F35 delivered as promised,is it better to have 10 F35 , 50 F18 or
even better -- 1000+ armed drones?

They're making Navy boats smarter and more powerful as well,requiring fewer
sailors. I am not against smarter technology and advanced capabilities. But it
just doesn't seem wise to replace man count and existing capabilities when the
new tech hasn't been battle tested against a worthy adversary.

I wouldn't want to rely on a few powerful counter measures,but rather a large
number of "good enough" defensive and offensive technology.

But that's why I called it "the elephant in the room",this could work and
actually counter-act other future super powers. Or history would repeat itself
and the opponents will win with sheer troop count and "good enough" weaponry.

The US spends 20% of gdp on the military,yet it is quite obvious the greatest
threat is internal strife and divisions typically exasperated by economical
divisions. Not to mention, severe lack of physhical fitness for military-age
men and women. Military leaders already consider this a national security
threat. I have a feeling this might be one of the reasons they're relying on
technology so much. They don't think they can mobilize and train enough
soldiers in the event of yet another world war. It would be much easier to
have them operate drones and wear head gear with HUD (just like in the games)
that costs a fortune. They might just be playing to the nation's strength. But
still,maybe if they spent 10% instead of 20% in defense (even russia and china
don't spend close to 10%) ,and use that 10% for internal socio-economic
stability and just maybe enact mandatory military service,that might be wiser
than relying fully on technology that hasn't been battle tested against the
intended scenario and adversary.

Will economic strength and advanced weaponry be enough? Maybe,but many empires
with all that and more have fallen for various reasons. Economy aside,the
cancerous defense-contractor industry that is the cause behind why so much of
the GDP goes into defense is one of chief internal security threats. The whole
industry is structured around politics so that politicians in specific
districts approve spending in exchange for jobs+economy in their district.
Many articles and blogs on that specific issue(e.g.:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-
tra...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-tragedy-of-
the-american-military/383516/))

------
knuththetruth
It’s good to remember these kinds of corrupt disasters whenever someone says
we can’t afford to pay for things like universal healthcare and free public
universities in the US.

~~~
adventured
Universal healthcare would cost approximately $4 trillion per year at today's
per capita spending figures. You might get that down to $3.5 trillion if you
hammer down costs in the system big time and ration care as all socialized
systems do.

The F35 will cost $20-$25 billion per year averaged.

Several of the most liberal states in the US - including California, New York
and Vermont - have all looked at doing universal healthcare. They all run away
immediately when the cost estimates come back.

~~~
maxerickson
I wonder what an investment of $20 billion a year in training additional
doctors (and NPs and so on) would do to medical costs.

~~~
salawat
Not much. You're at the mercy of a capped number of practitioners getting
sanctioned into practice a year. This creates artificial scarcity.

Also, you still have the blatant consolidation of the medical industry into a
gigantic monolithic hybrid of pharma, hospital, insurer, and artificially
scarce doctor.

The solution is not to pump more doctors into a system geared to extract
multiple industries worth of profit. Instead, it should be investing in
increasing the capability of individuals to provide and manage their own
medical care.

This means more accessible diagnostics tools, fewer barriers to entry in
getting access to good medical literature. Investing in teaching people how to
do research, and make medically relevant observations, or to at least be able
to tell when "First Aid" stops, and more advanced facilities are needed. When
"First Aid" can encompass using a small, affordable X-ray device cheap and
easy enough to safely use in a residential home, THEN you start seeing
healthcare costs plummet.

Same goes with Pharma. We have an exceedingly low capability to create
environments conducive to productive research per capita. The brain power that
can crank on these types of things are artificially limited by the inability
of many who may have the interest and time to get access to facilities to make
meaningful observations and potential discoveries.

Come up with acceptable test analogs. Document, enumerate, and simulate as
much as possible so someone can pick up a protein, shove it into a tissue and
see what interactions may happen.

Make the information accessible, and start working on boiling it down into
learnable paths where a person can get the 80%, but still drill down into the
more specialized.

Cheaper, more prolific research and education is the key. NOT letting the
market sit on top the misery of the hurt and dying and demanding the toll be
paid. Empower first. Optimize last.

~~~
maxerickson
I meant sensibly invested, so removing the caps would be part of the
investment.

I figure if you move from a tight doctor market to a looser doctor market, it
becomes more likely that people are working for themselves and competing for
patients and so on.

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trophycase
1.4 trillion is an absolute joke. Invest that in infrastructure or energy
security and I am absolutely certain that you would obtain an order of
magnitude better ROI than whatever sort of benefit (protective, preemptive,
deterrent, or otherwise) you are getting from these planes.

This is truly an unfathomable amount of money that I feel it's hard to
understate.

Edit: I'll admit the helmet cam seemed pretty cool but 600k feels like a lot.

~~~
colordrops
s/understate/overstate/

