
The Pentagon is battling the clock to fix serious, unreported F-35 problems - smacktoward
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-pentagon-is-battling-the-clock-to-fix-serious-unreported-f-35-problems/
======
cantrevealname
> _The 13 deficiencies include: The F-35’s logistics system currently has no
> way for foreign F-35 operators to keep their secret data from being sent to
> the United States._

I marvel at how foreign buyers of something as complex as stealth aircraft can
have any confidence that the system is not riddled with back doors, remote
control capability, "phoning home", surveillance, and kill switches. How would
you prove to a foreign buyer that your F-35 would not:

\- upload all your secret flight data to a tire pressure monitor every time a
maintenance worker checks the tires with the special gauge he has to use,
which then retransmits the data when the gauge is put back in the hanger,
without needing any cooperation from the maintenance worker

\- cause all your F-35s to fall out of sky _everywhere in the world_ when the
GPS satellites transmit an extra 64-bit coded message that cause fuel
actuators to shut off

\- put your F-35 under remote control when a coded microwave message is
transmitted directly to the plane during combat or a close encounter

Even children's toys and home appliances are routinely discovered to be
phoning home and doing sneaky unexpected things. I'm going to hazard a guess
that all large weapons systems are compromised —— perhaps by more than one
nation simultaneously since parts and expertise come from hundreds of
contractors and many different countries. I'm not aware of any revelations of
weapon-system backdoors yet, but we might hear about some of them in the
_aftermath_ of the next major war.

~~~
smacktoward
The thing is that nobody just buys a weapon in isolation. You buy into a
weapons _system_ , which includes not just the weapon itself but a whole
universe of concerns that surround it: logistical concerns like spare parts,
fuel and ammunition, operational concerns like tactical doctrines that work
well with the weapon, and so forth. Without that stuff, the weapon by itself
is pretty close to useless.

All of which means that it's more or less impossible to buy a weapon from a
foreign power without opening yourself up wide to that power. You have to let
their military advisors onto your bases, to train your troops on the doctrines
that go with the weapon. You have to let their logistical specialists into
your inventory systems, so they can hook you into the pipelines through which
the spare parts and ammo flow. Any of these people could be using their access
to snoop on you or worse, but there's not much you can do about that because
without them all you've bought is a $100 million paperweight.

If you're the buyer, yes, that absolutely sucks. But, unless you're willing to
spend vast amounts of money you don't have to build up your own domestic
military-industrial complex, you don't have a lot of alternatives. You either
buy into one of the existing ecosystems (American, Russian, European or
Chinese), or get curb-stomped by a neighbor who did. Once you're bought into
one of those ecosystems you're effectively at the mercy of the state that
operates it, of course, but hey, you do what you've gotta do. As the saying
goes, the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.

~~~
luch
Yep, nobody buy F-35 planes because it's a superior airplane (it's not)
countries buy it in order to have better diplomatic relationships with the
USA.

It's pretty telling to see Germany refusing to buy F-35 or Hungary buying ones
in order to piss off Sweden.

~~~
greedo
Can you name a fighter being sold today that's superior to an F-35A? And
quantify how you determine that it's superior?

~~~
VladimirIvanov
The F-22 would win in 1vs1 combat

~~~
throwaway2048
The F-22 is not sold to other nations, or even being manufactured at this
point.

------
scanny
Isn't this sort of thing expected through the process of developing cutting
edge hardware and software?

I can't imagine there are many airframes that are pushing the technological
boundaries as the F-35, aren't bleeding edge products prone to difficult
development?

I don't see how this wont be worth it in the long run in terms of getting
ahead in an arms race as a superpower.

It seems as though this is probably the hardest thing to get industry insight
into given the secret nature of it all.

~~~
jdietrich
_> Isn't this sort of thing expected through the process of developing cutting
edge hardware and software?_

To a great extent, that's the fundamental problem with the F-35 program - it's
a technological showcase first and a useful weapons system second. It has been
designed and commissioned by people who believe that "most advanced"
necessarily means "best" and who are indifferent to the actual tactical and
strategic requirements.

The Army and Marines have been crying out for years for a suitable replacement
for the ageing A-10. It's the finest close support aircraft ever made, it has
a legendary reputation among infantrymen who served in Afghanistan and Iraq,
but the USAF are still planning on retiring it in favour of the F-35, an
aircraft that is simply incapable of performing the same role. Even if the
F-35 were inarguably an excellent aircraft, it's the wrong aircraft for a
vitally important job.

The F-35 helmet is a $400,000 showcase of AR technology, capable of providing
unprecedented levels of data to a pilot. It's also really bad at being a
helmet - it's so heavy that it could literally break the neck of smaller
pilots during ejection and so bulky that it limits visibility. Test pilots
have mixed views on the usefulness of the AR cameras, but they all want the
ability to look over their shoulder. It's _maybe possibly_ better at doing a
thing that nobody asked for, but it's demonstrably worse at being a helmet.

Servicemen don't want cutting-edge innovation - they want weapons systems that
work reliably in the field and provide useful combat capabilities. That's what
you need to keep in mind when you hear the DoD hype the F-35. We know it's a
hell of a lot less reliable than existing US aircraft and competing foreign
aircraft. We know that the one-airframe-to-rule-them-all model is deeply
flawed and leaves serious gaps in the combat capability of the US military.
What does the F-35 actually offer in the field that couldn't be provided by a
cheaper, simpler, more reliable weapons system? I've yet to hear a good answer
to that question.

~~~
j9461701
>It has been designed and commissioned by people who believe that "most
advanced" necessarily means "best" and who are indifferent to the actual
tactical and strategic requirements.

They said the _exact_ same thing about the F-15. And the F-18. Both of which
went on to spectacular success - the F-15 in particular has never once been
bested in air to air combat, while claiming 105 enemy kills (including
MiG-29s). It's able to do that due to its big sexy radar and complicated
electronics and all the other techno-gadgets that people like Pierre Sprey
decried every step of the way because he still thinks we live in 1967.

On the ground, there is less room for innovation. Guns are a mature
technology. The primary concern in 2019 are things like reliability and cost,
because the difference between an AK47 and an M16 is not that big. They both
shoot bullets, they both are capable of full-auto, they both are light. To the
soldier holding them, big difference of course - but from the 10,000 mile
perspective they're basically doing the same job in the same way. It doesn't
make much difference if I'm a general planning strategies whether my rifleman
are holding M4s or M16s or AK47s.

Air combat is different, technology is still radically changing things every
generation. And if you're caught a generation behind it's hard to make a fight
of it. We have jet engines, and our enemies don't. We have solid state
avionics, our enemies don't. We have AESA radar, our enemies don't. And now?
We have all those advanced technologies in the F-35, like production line
stealth, that no other peer enemy yet has deployed on the field. Certainly
technology is not everything, you also need training, tactics, support
systems. But it is undeniably a massive advantage, and one that's worth a
little teething to get.

>The Army and Marines have been crying out for years for a suitable
replacement for the ageing A-10. It's the finest close support aircraft ever
made, it has a legendary reputation among infantrymen who served in
Afghanistan and Iraq, but the USAF are still planning on retiring it in favour
of the F-35, an aircraft that is simply incapable of performing the same role.
Even if the F-35 were inarguably an excellent aircraft, it's the wrong
aircraft for a vitally important job.

The A-10 is a really awful CAS platform. It's ungodly slow and so takes
forever to get on station, the cannon is horrendously inaccurate, it's got a
low mission capability rating and the entire concept of its design (low-flying
ruggedness) was rendered obsolete with the invention of the manpad. I mean
this is the platform that flew the least number of CAS missions of any capable
airframe in Iraq 2, yet had the _highest number of friendly fire incidents_ in
absolute terms. If you're curious how, the cannon. All the other platforms are
using fancy sensors and PGMs, while the A-10 is often going on gun runs with
the Mk-1 human eye. The A-10's only two numerical advantages are loiter time
and cost per flight hour, but drones exist now so it doesn't even have those
unique positives anymore.

The fact that soldiers love the A-10 is meaningless - sailors loved
battleships too, even after they were turned into big metal deathtraps by
airplanes. The troops just really like giant cannons, even when they're not
actually useful anymore.

>Servicemen don't want cutting-edge innovation - they want weapons systems
that work reliably in the field and provide useful combat capabilities.

Soviet jets could handle pebbles being blown into their air in takes. They
could handle smacking down onto the tarmarc at a velocity that would cripple
any modern American jet. They could be nearly shaken apart, but were just
built so robustly they'd still make it home. Comparatively American jets were
fragile prima donnas who needed huge amounts of maintenance and could only be
flown on the most pristine of air fields.

But once they were in the air? USAF planes showed exactly why all that TLC
were more than worth it. I'd rather be sitting in an F-15 than any Soviet
fighter ever put in the sky. At the risk of repeating myself, the ground
pounder ideology of "rugged, reliable, lowest-possible-tech" is suicide in the
air. In the air, technology advantages still play a huge role and so suffering
a low mission capability rating is quite possibly worth it if you get a
massive return on power (within reason of course).

~~~
hindsightbias
> They said the exact same thing about the F-15.

Er, citation required. I dont remember those kinds of complaints. F-16, sure,
and theyd be right.

> And the F-18

Well, that depends on if you mean the F, or the A part. Many thought the F-14
was a way better fighter and had better legs. For attack, we ended up with an
a/c with less range and payload capability. Which just makes it more
acceptable to replace it with something with even less range. All of which
reduces the strike bubble of a carrier group.

~~~
jki275
No one has ever thought the F14 was a better fighter than the F18. The F14 was
an interceptor designed for long range fleet defense, not air to air combat.

The JSF has longer legs than both as I recall.

------
aswanson
I worked in defense contracting early in my career. White-collar welfare.
Disgusting level of waste.

~~~
vegetablepotpie
I work at a defense contractor. One of the guys in my row of cubicles has his
wall plastered with political cartoons mocking welfare, social programs and
anyone who thinks the government has a role to play in reducing poverty.

Every-time I pass this gentleman's desk, I see him playing solitaire on this
computer. Defense contractors are adult daycare.

~~~
gonational
Think of the irony here.

Government is the one funding this guy’s adventures in Solitaire. What makes
you think Government can do anything efficiently, let alone reduce poverty?

~~~
vegetablepotpie
I am not lost on the irony. The military industrial complex has irony with
layers of richness, second to none. The idea that private enterprise leads to
greater efficiency can be thoroughly discredited by anyone who has stepped
foot into an industry that manages rent-seeking.

~~~
gonational
Adam Smith had a thing to say about rent-seeking.

Trying to use rent-seeking to discredit free market economics is about as
disingenuous as using movie piracy to discredit the Internet.

------
nwrk
>a so-called "green-glow" night vision

Go to 28:30 (actual flight helmet recording)
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B30EHgj_ikFIOTlEeGh6UHFPOTQ...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B30EHgj_ikFIOTlEeGh6UHFPOTQ/view)

”Use the force, Luke.”

~~~
retSava
Better link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faxuDFHJ3NY&t=28m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faxuDFHJ3NY&t=28m30s)

(the google drive never loaded for me)

------
rlt
What are the chances all of the negative press the F-35 has gotten is
disinformation designed to mislead adversaries?

~~~
colechristensen
Most of it is fanboys or anti-fanboys.

You'd think people in software would be more familiar with having defects in
your product not meaning doom or incompetence.

~~~
zipwitch
I hardly think the Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation
counts as an "anti-fanboy". And their reviews of F-35 progress of been the
bureaucratic equivalent of damning.

Full report here:
[https://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2018/pdf/dod/2018f35j...](https://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY2018/pdf/dod/2018f35jsf.pdf)

Article summarizing it here: [https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/dote-
delivers-ano...](https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/dote-delivers-
another-scathing-report-on-f-35-progr-455483/)

------
segmondy
Has there every been a USA military aircraft built in the last 20 yrs that
didn't have damning reports, tons of waste and over budget issues?

~~~
gonational
The F-35 has been in development for 27 of those last 20 years.

------
Causality1
Cost+ needs to die. Contractors should be forced to either meet their original
bid or go bankrupt trying.

~~~
burfog
Disaster possibility 1 is that nobody bids on the project. It is too risky.

Disaster possibility 2 is that the original bid is met... but one critical
feature is left out of the contract (overlooked) and is thus not in the
result.

Disaster possibility 3 is that the company does go bankrupt. Uh, oops, we
needed that company. Now we can't get parts for other products. This could be
fixed via a huge bailout.

------
eloff
This is a terrible project for many reasons. The insane cost, a plane trying
to be everything but master of none, and the whole concept of human piloted
planes is so antiquated.

Air craft carriers are obsolete, the same way the carrier made the battleship
obsolete in the second World War, but nations were slow to realize it.
Missiles make the carrier obsolete today. If you look at China's fast missile
boats, they know this already. However it's quite handy still for projecting
air power against much weaker foes - which to be fair is what the USA does
today.

Human planes are just silly though. Make drones, work on improving the ability
to control then accurately remotely. They can out fly and out manoeuvre
piloted planes at a fraction of the cost without risking the pilot's lives.

~~~
GVIrish
The big risk I see with drones is that with aggressive jamming and cyber
attacks your drone fleet could ostensibly be crippled. But as you said a drone
could easily turn harder than any manned aircraft could, loiter/patrol for far
longer, and have a much smaller radar cross section since it wouldn't have to
accommodate a cockpit. Sooner or later unmanned combat aircraft will dominate.

I also agree that the aircraft carrier will be supplanted at some point
because of sophisticated anti ship missiles. But, if carriers can launch
drones from much greater distances it will allow carriers to extend their
usefulness for quite some time.

~~~
eloff
I think lots of smaller done carriers make way more sense than supercarriers
when all it takes is one missile to sink them. Drones don't have the same
runway requirements.

Jamming remotely piloted drones is a good point. A backup autonomous system
can help there. But I don't understand enough about how easy it is to jam
signals designed to work through jamming would be.

~~~
tlear
Backup autonomous system is how Iranians(not Russians or Chinese..) managed to
take over and land completely in tact top of the line US drone. Autonomous
fool proof weapon system that are actually given freedom to kill things are
VERY far away.

I think looking at Russian commitment to EW is one of the possibilities of
next step. Imagine war with no gps, barely functional coms etc. Basically go
back 40+ years that is war vs adversary with good EW.

Now the counter is killing EW platforms as they necessarily emit.. so emit
less or communicate less to not get fixed and pounded into the ground etc.

Manned platforms are not going anywhere any time soon. Humans are just too
clever and adaptable

------
robin_reala
“The F-35’s logistics system currently has no way for foreign F-35 operators
to keep their secret data from being sent to the United States.”

Wow.

~~~
supergirl
countries that buy f35 don't really have secrets from the US anyway

~~~
picklepete
I hope you’re joking.

~~~
fluffything
The US won't sell F35 to non-friendly countries, and friendly-countries are
already in bed with the US intelligence-wise, where the US typically allow the
other countries to use their intelligence-gathering systems, in exchange for
the US to get access to the information they gather.

That ends up meaning that all intelligence that other countries intelligence-
agencies end up collecting are available to the US.

~~~
alkonaut
I'm sure Norway and the US are friendly and exchange lots of information
within NATO, but if Norway wants to tell the US how their F-35 moves between
various caves for service I'm sure they want to do so in a high level
intelligence exchange type of way, and not because some Lockheed logistics
system automatically phones home about Norwegain F-35 locations.

------
S_A_P
Its funny how I hear that a lot of UFO activity is really just "secret defense
projects" that are not available yet, like there is some skunk works out there
that is building stuff that is light years ahead of the state of the art.
Meanwhile when we look at what the defense department is _actually_ doing,
they are building a plane that is trying to be all things to all people that
defies the laws of physics with the expected results.

------
gravy
Reminds me of [https://youtu.be/4xJBvKJht78](https://youtu.be/4xJBvKJht78)
(The F-18: Just how good is it? (1980))

~~~
onepointsixC
Just to add to your video there is this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkrtxDdaWuM)
(F-16, Sale of the Century).

------
stevenjohns
I'm really of the belief, based purely on imagination, that a lot of the
spending and research went into being able to make the F-35 autonomous with a
switch.

Drone warfare really is the next step and having full jets that appear to be
piloted but are actually completely autonomous would put the US ahead by
decades.

~~~
tlb
Starting with a manned aircraft is a terrible way to build an unmanned one. A
good fraction of the weight is there to provide life support and safety for
the pilot. The canopy is a huge compromise between aerodynamics and
visibility. And for manned aircraft, it's worth spending 10x more to get a
slightly lower failure rate, because pilots are so valuable. For unmanned
aircraft, the reliability calculations are all different.

~~~
stevenjohns
But it gives access to thousands of hours of training data for that particular
aircraft across a range of different situations, and it allows you to test
that ML model in real situations.

Moving to something lighter or more aerodynamic becomes a lot easier after
that. If you look at the Boeing Airpower/Loyal Wingman UAV, it looks like its
based on this concept quite closely.

~~~
DuskStar
That doesn't seem to be the route the XQ-58 is going, though. [0] It's an
attritable stealthy missile/bomb truck - and at a projected unit cost of $2-3
million, they'd be cheaper than some US air-to-air missiles.

0:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratos_XQ-58_Valkyrie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratos_XQ-58_Valkyrie)

------
KONAir
F-35 project is infinitely more valuable as its contuined production provides
A LOT of employment and contracts. I sincerely don't expect the project ever
end or deliver anything worthwhile.

------
p1esk
What is the main problem with developing a remotely controlled fighter jet? Is
it signal jamming? If so, why not make it autonomous? After all, we are
actively developing self driving cars...

~~~
johngalt
The optimal design for a 'jet fighter without a pilot' rapidly converges on a
missile.

~~~
DuskStar
Does it though? I suppose it heavily depends on your definition of "fighter",
but cranked-kite and flying wing designs have been the go-to for subsonic
stealth jets and UCAVs. Under a "something that is intended to kill other
planes" definition a subsonic stealth air-to-air platform with good sensors
might qualify as a fighter, but many people seem to think "fast,
hypermaneuverable" are requirements too. Confusing the goal with the method,
IMO.

Another major design constraint difference between "unmanned fighter" and
"cruise missile" would be the deployment and reusability goals. Cruise
missiles tend to need to fit in launch tubes or under wings, while presumably
an unmanned fighter would not be so constrained (and thus be able to use
larger wings). And while cruise missiles are _very_ single use, the sensors on
an unmanned fighter may make it too expensive to discard that way.

------
OliverJones
It's a counterfactual speculation now, but what would have happened if there
were two airplane projects, one designed for vertical takeoff and landing, and
another for more general use?

What if airplanes had to be cranked out at a rate like the WWII Merchant
Marine Liberty Ships: 2,700 of them from 1941-1945? (There's a restored one,
SS Jeremiah O'Brien, at pier 45 in San Francisco.)

Are these machines so complex now that it necessarily must take a generation
to develop a new one?

------
Dirlewanger
If there was ever a contender for the most complex _thing_ humanity has ever
made, I think DoD bureaucracy is a strong favorite.

------
SEJeff
Counterpoint:
[http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/June%202019/L...](http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/June%202019/Lockheed-
Reported-Deficiencies-in-F-35-Already-Fixed-or-Being-Resolved.aspx)

------
yc-kraln
Could this be related to the fatal crash of the F-35 in Japan?

------
gkanai
Japan recently lost one of their first F35s and the pilot. One wonders whether
one of these problems was the cause of the loss of the airplane and the pilot,
not pilot error.

~~~
greedo
The most recent report shows that the pilot lost spatial awareness.

------
simonblack
Brewster Buffalo II.

Sounds good on paper, disaster in practice.

------
floriferous
Why do so many people on hackernews appear to really know their stuff when it
comes to aeronautics?

Between the F-35, the ethiopian crash, and plenty other related topics, I’m
amazed at the quantity and quality of the comments.

I would expect this topic to be kind of niche, and not attract >100 comments
everytime!

~~~
divbyzer0
Perhaps the perceived shortcomings appear to be obvious to even the non-
aeronautically trained?

I recall the MCAS issue being discussed here well before governments grounded
the 737max. The FAA being one of the last to ground.

The F-35 issues appear to share those common in engineering. Over promising,
over spending and not able to deliver on those promises, because no solution
can satisfy all wants/requirements.

In my explicitly unqualified view, the F-35 tries to be everything to all
services, yet my limited understanding on aeronautics is (similar to marine
engineering); is the best designs are those that focus on a specific task.

~~~
pas
To alter the picture a bit and complicate a lot more:

it's of course possible to make a new jet fighter/bomber/thing that satisfies
all of the requirements. The issue is cost and time.

The F35 is a classic mega-R&D project. Like going to the Moon, fusion, self-
driving cars, XUV litography [or the whole process/node change from 10nm to 7
or 5nm]. Costs are enormous, lifetime TCO is also very high. It's so complex
and funding is so far from infinite, that it is and will be never "done".

We know these. Just as you can always tweak a nuclear reactor or atomic bomb
design, just as you can always make better microchips, you can always make
better jets.

It's also very similar to the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) - the
goal/design is pretty straightforward, just the engineering way to get there,
is not. It calls for "tech" that's simply does not exist, and calls for
systems integration of that tech on a level that simply cannot be adequately
estimated/planned.

Fusion, the JWST and the F-35 have different principal constraints (the JWST
seems the simplest, it is simply cost constrained - every part of the
R&D/assembly/verification process seems so underfunded that all the other
parts/participants have to wait for each other - and downtime is not cheap
either, specialists can't just go and have a gig while they wait for
others/testing/manufacturing; the F-35 is probably very bureaucratically
constrained, a bit like ITER [the big international fusion project] - everyone
has a small part in it, so there's is lots and lots and even more back and
forth between everybody, problems are discovered, tweaking needs discussions,
discussions with many parties are a nightmare, everything needs paperwork,
because it's public money after all, etc.)

This does not make the F35 "bad", but of course begs the question of spending
efficacy. Was there really no better way to spend all this money and achieve
very similar goals? There probably was.

But. Usually these projects are a success even if the end result is useless.
Because they fund R&D in many places.

For example a good overview of how mega-R&D translates into tangible
innovations is the W7X brochure:
[https://www.ipp.mpg.de/987655/w7x_and_industry_en.pdf](https://www.ipp.mpg.de/987655/w7x_and_industry_en.pdf)
(Germany spent a few hundred millions euros, and most of that went to small
shops iterating on their tech - which of course helps Germany remain
competitive on the global markets).

------
m0zg
Timing is impeccable: Trump is about to sell a bunch of F-35's to Poland, so
let's hit them with a "cluster of damning reports" to sour the deal.

If you read the actual article, you'll see that most problems are either fixed
already or aren't as severe the headline would make you believe. But nobody
really reads the articles.

~~~
josefresco
In your scenario, who is behind the "cluster of damning reports"? Liberals?
Poland? Russia? China? Defense contractor competitors? I agree with the second
part of your comment.

~~~
m0zg
Could be anyone. Could even be several parties simultaneously feeding
information to the media. The only unlikely party is the competitors, since
it's not in their interest (in this case) to shit on Lockheed.

------
Analemma_
One point five trillion dollars.

------
AndyMcConachie
War, war never changes ...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBDrv1PY-
uU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBDrv1PY-uU)

------
Havoc
>controlled flight into terrain

Uhm what? Presumably no pilot will fly into terrain if in control.

That whole thing just reads like a nightmare project

~~~
manicdee
Controlled flight into terrain can cover incidents such as flying in limited
visibility using instruments where the instruments aren’t wrong, the pilot is
conscious and in control, but gets task focussed or misinterprets a signal and
takes deliberate action that ends up in an unplanned lithobraking event.

Flying limited visibility or with horizon obscured is a typical scenario for
controlled flight into ground. Some pilots will also feel less confident with
a particular implementation of the artificial horizon.

Then there are transition states between particular instrument assisted flight
modes (“autopilot”) and manual flight modes, as well as assisted flight modes
where the pilot and the computers disagree on the appropriate course of action
(similar to, say, automatic trim of horizontal stabiliser in aircraft with
engines slung under the wing). The pilot might switch modes and assume control
over pitch and yaw but the computer was handing over control of throttle. So
the pilot ends up fighting the computer for control rather than actually
flying the aircraft.

Labelling it “pilot error” can cause investigators to stop looking for the
root cause. “Controlled flight into ground” leads to the question “why would
an otherwise competent pilot do what this pilot did?”

------
blunte
For the trillion(s) that have gone into this fighter, one could wonder if
there were other better uses of that money.

Even if defense is a necessary evil, it should be obvious by now that
electronic (cyber - forgive me) warfare is the future of military.

Why attack with physical weapons when you can literally shut down the power to
an entire country? Or jam its communications en masse. Or cripple its
transportation infrastructure.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
There is no "future of warfare" in terms of just being one thing.

When guns came out, they said it would be the end of warfare. Instead of
spending years training archers, you could pull farmers from the fields, put
together huge armies almost overnight. When machine guns came out, it was the
end of warfare. How could massed formations fight against so many rounds going
downrange at the same time?

This continued on with aircraft, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, missiles,
and so forth. Nuclear weapons are especially interesting because instead of
eliminating war, it looks like they eliminated _formal_ war, pushing all that
conflict down into police actions and non-state actors.

All those other things stuck around. What became really tough is that you had
to integrate all of those other things together so that you use that right
tools in the right way, almost like putting together a symphony. Cyber is the
same way. What we're seeing now -- and I'm a firm believer we are currently in
a cyber war -- are a lot of different actors seeing how hard they can push
things. It's a war without any conventions about what "fighting fair" means.
Bad place for us to be.

I think the F-35 has been a giant disaster, but that's part of a different
discussion about military priorities versus strategic planning.

~~~
blunte
But I think you need to take a step back and ask what the point of a military
is.

If the point were actually about defending one's country, then there are
surely more effective ways to spend the money.

By all appearances, the modern military is just a convoluted way to funnel
public money into the pockets of a few contractors and corporations (whose
investors and shareholders win). It's an immensely inefficient way to skim
money from the general population.

One might say the modern military is more precise, suggesting that we care
about avoiding civilian casualties. However, the US drone use blows that
theory.

If the goal were to defend a country from terrorists (modern invaders), then
we would be concerned with right wing extremism which is responsible for more
deaths than foreign "terrorists".

Lastly, if we were just concerned with human lives and longer lifespans, we
would be putting most of our money into combating heart disease.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
>>But I think you need to take a step back and ask what the point of a
military is.

I completely agree. I think at the heart of the United States is a terrible
vagueness and corrupt idea of why we have a military.

They to call it the War Department. While that certainly doesn't sound very
nice, it cut to the direct point in having a military: fighting a war. That
made it a lot easier to reason about.

So what's a war? A war is when people are doing something you don't like and
you want them to stop. You have tried talking and reasoning with them and that
didn't work. So you have to figure out other ways of making them stop fighting
you.

That's it. You don't need guns, tanks, or even explosives. If you can make
those other people over there stop fighting you, they surrender, you win.

At some point, probably around the time of WWI, mission creep started taking
us into all kinds of places that either wasn't a war or we didn't like
admitting was a war. So we started changing the language, setting up all sorts
of units and programs that were only tangentially-related to war, and so
forth. I read at some point when Bush was president we had military operations
in over 80 countries.

Now most of those operations were peaceful: medic clinics, training, and so
forth. You could argue that they were strategically fighting a war -- happy,
trained people tend to be happier. But that sure looks like social programs,
diplomacy, and police action than war. Don't get me wrong: these may be great
things to do. My point is that if you stretch the language so far, then pretty
much any damned thing you want to can be considered part of the military. Or a
war, for that matter.

Based on this, and the ton of inertia and corruption that's been associated
with war fighting since forever, I really don't think we can expect the
Department of Defense to act in a sane manner. My gut tells me that we built
the F-35 because we thought that's what we were supposed to do: come up with
new, expensive tech that's better than the other guys.

We're going to need to get back to funding DoD to fight wars: real, live, in-
person conflicts where the other guys need to be convinced to stop fighting
us. That's going to take a ton of re-organization and strategic planning that
I don't see happening any time soon. (Also, agreed with your statement about
tunneling money to contractors, and defending the country. We've come a long,
terrible way from the idea of a citizen soldier defending his home.)

------
madengr
“Lockheed Martin plans to implement a software fix for the flight control
system.”

Now where have we heard that before. Software patches to fix inherently
unstable hardware. Move fast and break shit.

~~~
colechristensen
F-35 and _all_ fighter jets all use and must use by design synthetic
stability, without computer control the airframe would be impossible to pilot.
You need this aerodynamic instability to be maneuverable. If you don't have it
turning is very slow. Flight characteristics are very much dependent on
software. It isn't a glitch or a "move fast break shit" but a fundamental
design feature of fast maneuverable planes.

~~~
madengr
How does an F-14 and others of the same vintage fly? Isn't that all hydraulic
servos? Not trying to be an ass, just curious.

~~~
NegativeLatency
The last couple generations of fighters have moved away from airframes that
are passively stable (imagine a car or something that requires no control to
remain upright).

Newer designs are only stable when their attitude is constantly monitored and
adjusted by control software. (To continue the metaphor, imagine a Segway or a
pogo stick, more agile than a car)

The benefit you get from giving up passive stability is increased
maneuverability in the case of fighters.

~~~
quickthrower2
Nice analogies! Thanks.

------
wpasc
If the military-industrial voting complex (defense companies geographically
spreading manufacturing operations over key swing congressional districts), I
believe more can be done than most think. I believe their key influence is
what props up US military spending that the pentagon does NOT want [1].

[1]: [https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-
tell...](https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-
congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html)

~~~
stupidcar
Lots of countries burn money on labor and goods they don't need, they just
call it "socialism" instead of "defence". The US might be better off of they
acknowledged that the fruits of this particular labor weren't going anywhere
real.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
> Lots of countries burn money on labor and goods they don't need, they just
> call it "socialism" instead of "defence"

Got any examples?

~~~
Nition
I wouldn't know anything about this except that there was one excellent
example on Hacker News the other day, about whaling in Soviet Russia:
[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/on...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/one-
of-the-greatest-environmental-crimes-of-the-20th-century.html)

