
Pentagon: Trillion-Dollar Jet on Brink of Budgetary Disaster - yahelc
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/f35-budget-disaster/
======
ck2
We could have been landing on mars for what that cost to develop.

Meanwhile the enemy is low budget suicidal terrorists that this or the TSA
can't stop.

~~~
javert
Actually, the way to fight terrorism is to destroy states that condone it
and/or look the other way, as well as any major terrorist infrastructure
therein (e.g. schools, training camps, stockpiles).

And the _right_ way to do _that_ , is by painting a bright "thou shalt not
cross" line in the sand, and then enforcing it (if necessary) with
overwhelming airborne superiority.

As opposed to a massive ground invasion and occupation, which has clearly been
shown to be self-sacrificial and counterproductive.

\-----

To respond in one place to the most common responses I'm getting:

It's fairly obvious in day-to-day life that and military history that (1) you
don't appease or tolerate bullies; (2) you don't try to "reason" with the
enemy. What I'm saying is a straightforward application of this, and what
you're all saying is a straightforward denial of it.

~~~
moxiemk1
What?

The way to fight terrorism is to provide an environment where people not want
to be terrorists. Terrorism requires no state sponsored infrastructure.
Bombing places to hell doesn't stop the spread of hopelessness, of
desperation, of taking comfort in extremism.

Note: Using the "anti-establishment guerrilla fighters" definition of
terrorism, not "causing terror". That's a whole other bag of bagels.

~~~
javert
_The way to fight terrorism is to provide an environment where people not want
to be terrorists._

That's a strategy of altruism and failure.

~~~
ldargin
The Arab Spring has probably done more to fight terrorism than any war.

~~~
ryanhuff
Don't you think its a bit early for such a claim? Who knows where Libya and
Egypt will be in 5-10 years from now?

------
RockyMcNuts
Hope it doesn't cut off the oxygen to the pilot when it detects a leak, or
possibly at random times, like the F-22

[http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent-
oxy...](http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/22-raptors-suffer-apparent-oxygen-
problems/story?id=15357696#.T2tN-GJSTDk)

"Though they acknowledged the oxygen failure, Air Force investigators said the
crash was Haney's fault for being too distracted by not being able to breathe
and failing to either reduce altitude and take off his oxygen mask or to
activate the emergency backup oxygen system."

~~~
swasheck
Really? Who faults someone else for being distracted by an inability to
breathe? I know that they're trained for high-stress situations but when it's
the fault of the equipment in the first place, own up to it.

~~~
ajross
It's not a finding of legal fault. It's a statement about whether or not
things need to change in the aircraft design. The oxygen system (presumably,
obviously I didn't design it) isn't inherently redundant. If it fails (because
Stuff Always Breaks) there are existing procedures the pilots are presumably
trained on. The article lists two: an emergency backup (probably a second tank
in the cockpit?) and the old standby of "dive to lower altitudes so you don't
need oxygen, dummy". The finding was that these options would have been
sufficient if they were used, so the design of the aircraft isn't deficient.

Obviously the software bug should still be fixed, and probably pilot training
needs to be updated.

------
josefresco
While the per-unit cost of an F-35 is quite high now (they've only built 60+)
the comparative cost to the F-22 which was seen as expensive and too exotic
will be lower in the long term.

While budget overruns are painful, the idea behind standardizing our fighter
jets between the forces, thereby reducing costs is a wise move.

I always thought of the F-22 as a hand-built race car, while these F-35 are
Porsche's that can be mass produced, are just as "fast" and will be more
reliable due to the standardization.

Also deploying cheap drones are only possible when you dominate the skies with
these expensive, complex, man-powered jets.

~~~
onemoreact
The thing about drones is you can build them cheaply enough that it cost the
enemy more to shoot them down than it costs to build more of them. Instead the
military has decided to simply make fighter planes that don't need pilots but
that's a separate issue.

~~~
ahelwer
Source? I'm not sure you could get a drone up and running for smaller than a
multiple of the price of a surface-to-air missile.

~~~
onemoreact
Edit: I don't work with such things, but posting the first version of this
felt unwise so I cut a few things.

Stinger's cost ~38k and are not guaranteed to work so multiply that by the
probability of failure.

You can buy drone control system can cost below 1,500$ ex:
<http://www.micropilot.com/products-mp1028g.htm>, granted there are good
reasons to buy / build something far more expensive but we are looking at low
cost baseline. After that it's a question of range and payload for 10,000$ you
can get an RC jet that can do 200 mph and carry a camcorder for surveillance.
Call it 15k for a fairly respectable surveillance aircraft. As to being able
to fight back just add a spike.

PS: Now figure out what you can do with say 10 billion$ aka 600,000 of these
things. Worse yet that's just an opening, they are cheap enough that you have
plenty of budget for other things.

------
MattRogish
I'm really looking forward to the "Mythical Man-Month"-type book that comes
out of this disaster. But since it's the government and likely "Top Secret",
we'll learn absolutely nothing from this. $1T and no "lessons learned". Our
(USA) tax dollars at work, folks.

~~~
nateberkopec
The US Air Force design program is laughably bad - it would be more so if it
wasn't our tax dollars being pissed away.

The same thing happened in the past to the B-1 and B-2 bomber projects, which
cost $200m and $700m per unit respectively. Massive scope creep leads to huge
unit cost inflation, followed by a reduction in number of units ordered to
keep total cost below the Congressional mandate for the project. The low
number of total units ordered leads to an increase in maintenance cost per
unit, which eventually leads to shortening the plane's lifespan (too expensive
to maintain, each airframe receives double the hours it was intended to
endure).

Compare the F22 (at 150m) to the F16 (at 10m). Aside from the stealth
capability, this jet is not 10x better than the F16.

~~~
_djo_
While I agree with your overall point, the cost of a new F-16 these days is
more like 40-60 million USD, not 10 million.

The cheapest 'good' 4th-generation fighter is the Saab Gripen, which was
designed in a single country to intentionally-limited specs, but even those
cost 30 million USD a pop for the standard C & D models and even more for the
NG units under development.

To some extent modern fighter aircraft are inherently expensive as a result of
all the technology that has to be crammed inside them. They're multi-role
networked flying systems these days.

In essence that's part of what has derailed the F-35. Technological advances
have allowed for the extensive use of software to create capabilities that
just could not have existed before now, such as the ability to see 'through'
the plane, an extremely high level of sensor fusion and integrated systems,
etc. But massive software projects are inherently risky and can fail massively
if not managed very carefully. They've been doing things with software in the
F-35 that have never been done before in this context, which only increased
the risk.

Also do not underestimate the costs of redesigns following the theft of F-35
design information by China from both Lockheed-Martin and Pentagon computers.
I doubt that's the sole cause of the cost overruns, but it definitely hasn't
helped.

------
jsvaughan
Obviously lines of code is a poor metric, but wikipedia
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code>) would suggest it is not
as complicated as:

Linux kernel 2.6.35 13.5 million lines of code

Windows Server 2003 50 MLOC

Mac OS X 10.4 86 MLOC

Debian 5.0 324 MLOC

<EDIT>

And alternatively:

"if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, it probably contains close
to 100 million lines of software code":

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-
car-r...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-
code)

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Yes, but this code is low-level, life-threatening on crash, hard real-time,
etc.

------
izend
Could the F35 choice of C++ be the problem or heavy use of OOP?

It appears they have struggling with the complexity of their software
implementation. It might just be their requirements but I wonder if it is
similar to Ericsson's massive failure with their AXE-N project. No one knows
exactly why that software project became too complex but it has been
speculated that:

"One particular problem area identified is the system's software , especially
for using extreme attention to object orientation (which at the time was the
golden hammer ) in both computer programs as databases , [8] which can be
difficult to combine with parallel programming, and that they chose to develop
and make use of largely new, completely untested methods."

Ericsson attempted to heavily use OOP for the AXE-N, might that be the cause
of the failure? The failure spawned the Erlang (functional language, with
strict evaluation, single assignment) project which went on to be a massive
success in their next product.

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fsv.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAXE-N&act=url)

------
redsymbol
The reference to one trillion dollars in the headline is accurate, but lacks
context that makes it a bit sensationalist. The article elaborates the cost as
"an estimated $1 trillion to develop, purchase and support through 2050". Or
about $25 billion a year. Whether that's pricey or a bargain depends on how
many aircraft are purchased and supported; TFA states that the "Air Force,
Navy and Marine Corps are counting on buying as many as 2,500 F-35s", which
would be $10 million per craft per year for the next four decades.

This is not to say the thing isn't an overpriced, failing project. If the
GAO's analysis and predictions cited in the article are correct, it sounds
pretty bad. In particular, it's hard to imagine that four decades from now,
the US armed forces would want to still be using early 21st-century aircraft.

~~~
olalonde
You are omitting the time value of money which can make a huge difference in
such a large time frame. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money>

------
bradleyjg
What realistic scanario has the following characteristic:

We are fighting against an enemy for which fourth generation fight planes are
inadequate and said enemy does not have nuclear armed ICBMs?

Meanwhile the Air Force is bent on taking out of service the one type of
aircraft that is most useful to actual, likely war-fighting - the CAS planes.
The AC-130 was originally designed in the 60s and troops still cheer when it
arrives over the battlefield.

The boys that run the fighter jet mafia consider such "bus driving" planes
beneath them, so we instead of upgrading the A, C and perhaps B lines we have
to spend hundreds of billions of dollars buying the kind of F line toys they
prefer to play with.

------
learc83
I was following the (at the time) YF-22 and the proposed JSF when I was a kid.
I'm now 28. These things take so long to build and there are so many hands in
the pot that they can't help, but be ridiculously complex.

Talk about changing requirements during development. Imagine working on a
software project that took 20 years to develop.

Add that to the fact that any large military project has to be spread out over
as many congressional districts to keep as many congressman happy as possible.

------
rubyrescue
what is the primary language for fighter jet software?

~~~
narag
It seems to be Java: _“Software providing essential JSF capability has grown
in size and complexity, and is taking longer to complete than expected,”_

Just kidding. Don't stone me.

~~~
Androsynth
It's all relative. As hackers, you can't even imagine what its like to code
for the govt (I used to work for navair). Even the most corporate java
programmer would find the govt program ugly and overly-complex.

~~~
narag
Oh, I've worked for the military sector, with those huge NATO specification
books. Also with JSF, the Java thing that happens to share TLA, but in another
job. Honestly, I'm not sure which one was worse.

------
dhughes
Here is Canada our government is insisting they are going to buy some F-35
jets.

People have complained other than its complexity the single engine is bad if
you are over the Arctic and the engine fails, most modern Canadian jets have
dual engines.

~~~
javert
_People have complained other than its complexity the single engine is bad if
you are over the Arctic and the engine fails, most modern Canadian jets have
dual engines._

I wonder if the F-35 has a particularly reliable engine.

~~~
dhughes
I'm not sure but if it's a vertical take-off and land (VTOL) it must be pretty
durable.

Found this gem on Wikipedia under Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

Canada had previous experience with a high-accident rate with the single-
engine Lockheed CF-104 Starfighter with many accidents related to engine
failures. Defence Minister Peter MacKay, when asked what would happen if the
F-35’s single engine fails in the Far North, stated "It won’t"

------
codesuela
Looks like the F-35 is the SAP of fighter jets

------
dexcs
FYI: The eurofighter has about 1.2 million LoC (but they use other languages
too) and is written in the same programming language (Ada). They have about
500 coders working on it. Impressive..

------
spoiledtechie
I hate when companies under bid projects and then the public wonders why its
so much over budget.

Government contractors do this all the time. They underbid, and then 1 year
later, ask the government for more cash because they are soo far in and know
the government will do it.

Government contract work is sooo lucrative too. Most of that initial
investment into Lockhead probably just went to pay salaries of the higher ups
and did no actual work.

Sorry for Ranting.

------
hluska
I have never quite understood why so many powers (the United States, Canada,
Japan, etc) have lined up to try and buy F-35s. Every plausible enemy our
countries could square off against have extremely old technology (or no
technology to speak of). In fact, I would be prepared to argue that slightly
updated F-15s are superior to anything that any plausible enemy could attack
us with.

Am I wrong? If so, help me understand why!!

~~~
arjn
I concur. IMO all the US needs to do is upgrade/update its F-15, F-16 and
F/A-18 fleet to stay ahead of potential enemies for several years.

------
hsmyers
While certainly not cheap, the B2 was brought in under time and under budget.
I also think we got our monies worth out of it in the several wars it has been
used in. Source; the project manager. Disclaimer: he's my brother---we are
both a little biased :)

------
read_wharf
Kill it. We don't have the money. All those alternatives that other countries
are looking at are alternatives for us (US) as well.

~~~
holograham
some basic math...1 trillion over 40 years is about 25 billion a year....US
budget in 2012 was 3.796 trillion FOR THE YEAR....so that is 0.6% of the
budget. I think we can all agree that it is certainly militarily advantageous
to have air superiority keeping in mind that it is mainly for the wars we dont
fight and will never fight rather than our current conflicts.

Also these articles fail to mention the planes that will be retired over the
next 40 years that the JSF will replace. Lots of costs savings that arent
included.

Military superiority is supported by practical every political base including
libertarians. Large, complex aircraft cost a ton to produce. Is there waste?
Sure but some of the waste is due to our own democratic political system. Easy
to cast all blame on greedy govt contractors.

~~~
read_wharf
We could replace those planes with cheaper alternatives.

The total program cost may be a small part of the budget, but our economy
would do better if we spent that money on things we can use, not things that
sit in a hangar and suck up money.

------
edge17
Brink? How is this not a budgetary disaster already?

What 'technology' costed a trillion dollars to develop? Certainly not going to
the moon.

