
The Little “Fighter” That Couldn’t: Moral Hazard and the F-35 - sergeant3
http://www.jqpublicblog.com/the-little-fighter-that-couldnt-moral-hazard-and-the-f-35/
======
feedjoelpie
The author mentions "perverse" incentives in Congress, but what he doesn't
mention (because it's a very politically difficult subject) is the perverse
incentives afforded military officers. When you have a system in which it's so
common as to be expected that the officers who influence your purchasing will
in a couple years retire into a job with the private contractor from whom
you're purchasing, you have a recipe for bias. Even from really standup people
who don't recognize their own vulnerability to influence. It's just such a
common thing to work in the private sector for the same office as you did when
you were enlisted that nobody blinks an eye. Because it's often really good to
still have those people around.

But at the same time, I think that's a pretty untenable situation. The
military needs to do something to balance the career mobility of their
officers with the ethical hazards of the current system. Without some rules to
prevent the scenarios that have the most potential for abuse, the situation is
not unlike the flow of Congress members into lobbying. Except we don't elect
military officers.

It's a tough balance. Part of the promise of the military's recruiting is that
you'll advance your career. They should fulfill that promise. At the same
time, they need to make sure that the ways in which they fulfill that promise
don't incentivize poor judgment on behalf of the public interest.

~~~
Tloewald
The basic perversity is building a gigantic military in peacetime because the
arms companies have enormous lobbying power. Everything else flows from and is
secondary to that.

~~~
philwelch
Gigantic? [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/us/politics/pentagon-
plans...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/us/politics/pentagon-plans-to-
shrink-army-to-pre-world-war-ii-level.html?_r=0)

Have you considered the gigantic military requirements that are placed on the
United States? By treaty alone, the US is required to defend almost all of
Europe, Japan, and South Korea. These are not easy requirements to disentangle
from; if Japan alone were allowed and required to rearm, it could lead to an
arms race that would destabilize all of East Asia and either stall or undo the
tremendous economic gains that have been achieved in that region. If it wasn't
for US obligations towards NATO, most of Eastern Europe would suffer the same
fate that Ukraine is facing from Russia. If it wasn't for the US Navy
enforcing freedom of navigation
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_navigation#United_St...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_navigation#United_States_.22Freedom_of_Navigation.22_program)),
tinpot dictators could shut down international trade by making and enforcing
illegal claims on international waters.

Maintaining the Pax Americana is a hard, unappreciated task.

~~~
Silhouette
_Have you considered the gigantic military requirements that are placed on the
United States?_

Placed by whom, exactly? It's not as if the US took on those treaty
commitments involuntarily or expecting no benefits in return, and it's not as
if the rest of the world would not adapt if the US reduced its military
commitments over time.

For example, you talk about the US being required by treaty to defend almost
all of Europe, but Europe already has collective defence agreements that are
becoming stronger over time, over a million active military service personnel,
thousands of aircraft, thousands of heavy armoured vehicles, hundreds of
ships, special forces to rival any in the world, and two independent nuclear
powers. There is exactly one sovereign state on earth that could single-
handedly give the combined forces of Europe a serious fight today, and the
consequences for all concerned would be so devastating that such a conflict is
almost inconceivable.

There is a reasonable school of thought that argues the world would be a much
safer place if the number of military superpowers in it was zero, and that as
the only old-school military superpower remaining, the US is therefore a
negative factor on global stability and peaceful relations.

Given the recent track record of the US, both acting as an aggressor under
often dubious conditions and failing to act as a defender when weaker nations
faced aggression by others, there seems little no moral high ground for the US
to take here, nor any general mandate to act as the world's policeman. The
alarming frequency with which the US military and its political leadership
presume to take such positions anyway brings me back to the previous point
about the world being better off in the long run with no military superpowers
at all.

~~~
philwelch
The last time the US followed an isolationist foreign policy, the Europeans
got themselves into two world wars in a row. It's true that Europe has a
continent-wide mutual defense agreement now. What you didn't mention is that
it's called NATO and the US is the backbone of it. That's part of how it
works. Otherwise you don't get the combined forces of Europe, you get
indifference at best and European war at worst.

Look at East Asia. South Korea can't afford to defend itself from the North
and hope to maintain their standard of living, Japan is barred by their own
constitution from rearming (and if they did, that would start a regional arms
race), and Taiwan would have no hope of maintaining their self-determination
by themselves.

I will be the first to say that the U.S. has followed an unnecessarily
aggressive foreign policy. But a very large part of how the world works
depends upon the American military, and if it just went away, we would all be
poorer and less safe for it.

~~~
Silhouette
Your information appears to be a generation out of date. The EU in particular
have been working on collective defence agreements independent of NATO for
quite some time.

While it's true that if current US foreign policy went away overnight it would
probably make certain other parts of the world less stable for a while, such
rapid change couldn't actually happen as a practical matter of international
diplomacy and even basic logistical issues. This isn't a logical reason not to
move in a slower and more controlled way towards a more balanced position
where power and responsibility are more widely distributed.

It also seems fair to observe that the US has _caused_ a lot of instability in
recent years with its aggressive foreign policies. A large part of how the
world works may indeed depend on the American military as you say, but it
isn't always in a good way.

~~~
adventured
During the 70 year US superpower reign, there have been zero major wars
between history's powerful nations (Germany, China, Japan, Italy, Spain,
Britain, France, India, Russia); there have been no major wars in Latin
America (eg Brazil invading and destroying Colombia); and there have been no
more world war equivalents. The worst we've seen have been very small scale,
eg between India and China.

That's not a coincidence, it's a benefit provided by the US military's
overwhelming superiority.

The US military has also taken an extreme share of the burden of keeping
global trade / shipping lanes open and safe for operation - and it has done an
extraordinary job at it.

The USSR wasn't going to just stop mid way through Germany, and Russia was
obviously not going to just stop at Georgia. Who is going to act as a big
enough deterrent to them? The same countries that prevented genocide in
Europe's backyard in Kosovo? No, only the US is a powerful enough threat to
Russia to keep them from going on a non-stop annexation spree.

~~~
Silhouette
_That 's not a coincidence, it's a benefit provided by the US military's
overwhelming superiority._

Do you really think the British and the French haven't been re-enacting
Waterloo lately because the United States asked us to play nicely?

Here are some other factually correct statements, using your definition of
'powerful nation':

"In the 70 years since the formation of the United Nations, there have been
zero major wars between history's powerful nations."

"In the seven decades since they lost the Second World War, Germany has had
zero major wars with nations that defeated them."

"Since the formation of the EEC, there have been zero major wars between its
member states."

"In more than six decades since becoming a nuclear power, the UK has had zero
major wars with other powerful nations."

Obviously numerous variations on these themes are also true.

 _The US military has also taken an extreme share of the burden of keeping
global trade / shipping lanes open and safe for operation - and it has done an
extraordinary job at it._

Are you sure?

[https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-u-s-navy-does-
not-p...](https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-u-s-navy-does-not-protect-
cargo-shipping/)

 _No, only the US is a powerful enough threat to Russia to keep them from
going on a non-stop annexation spree._

Apparently, not even the US is a powerful enough threat to Russia to keep them
from going on a non-stop annexation spree.

------
tokenrove
It's duplicitous of me to bring this up given all the other problems with this
plane, but since it's a favorite topic of argument here, let's not forget the
F-35's software is mostly developed in C++, and had been, in the past, touted
as a triumph of C++ over Ada.

~~~
nabla9
JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER AIR VEHICLE C++ CODING STANDARDS

[http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf](http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-
rules.pdf)

Those who don't want to use Ada are doomed to reimplement it with coding
standards.

~~~
protomyth
It makes me think slapping a C-style skin on Ada (ala VB.Net <=> C#) would
make for a killer language.

------
gnoway
It is just inconceivable that we have a multi-decade program to develop a new
fighter to fill all these roles, and what we've produced is either equivalent
to or worse than the incumbent in all cases, is not safe to fly in combat
situations, and is more expensive to boot. I mean we've seen this sort of
thing happen on a smaller scale before, but versions of this plane are
supposed to replace, like, everything in multiple mission classes across
multiple services. Again, just inconceivable.

This article didn't present anything that we haven't seen before, though, and
the excerpts from the unnamed pilot set off the 'totally out of context'
alarms in my head when reading them. Maybe it's because I'm not involved with
fighter planes in any capacity; for example, I found myself thinking that
maybe the pilot is not supposed to actually be looking behind them in this
plane vs. using video on their HUD or something, and that explains why the
helmet and seat are not optimized for head movement.

~~~
Shalomm
Just a friendly reminder why governments and large corporations can't develop
shit:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA)

~~~
venomsnake
Totally agree with you
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11)

~~~
Shalomm
Nice rebuttal. The Apollo program was also delivered on time (JFK's "before
this decade is out" deadline). I'd also add the Manhattan Project to this
list.

I wonder: why can the government execute Apollo and Manhattan projects, but
botches such simple projects as the Bradley APC carrier?

~~~
venomsnake
In both cases it was do or die. Right now is do or ... meh.

~~~
Retra
I wouldn't be wholly surprised if the entire point of the F35 is to make money
off of it. Either by selling it to foreign countries, or by exploiting the
large influx of tax money.

If that was your goal, it is win-win, no matter if the project fails.

And that's where I'd peg the fundamental problem.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree. F-35 seems to be developed to make money and redistribute political
power. The atomic bomb was developed to make an atomic bomb. See the _subtle_
difference in these two sentences?

And it works with so many companies today as well. That's why I'm a big fan of
Tesla and SpaceX - because they build electric cars so that there are electric
cars. They build rockets so that humans can go to Mars. Many other companies
in these sectors are the toilet-paper type: they develop electric cars to make
money on people buying them. They develop rockets to make money on companies
buying launch services. It's the difference of having money as an instrumental
vs. terminal goal.

------
pdq
For anyone wanting to see the background of these "design by committee"
government projects, watch The Pentagon Wars [1]. It's a comedic insight as to
how groups design a product that's too late, too large, too expensive, too
hard to build, and possibly doesn't work. The story is based on the Bradley
Fighting Vehicle [2].

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144550/)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle)

------
joncp
I've never understood how any engineer would think that a plane could be built
to fulfill all of the demands from all military branches.

My guess is that they don't, but they get to play with cool tech. And hey, the
money is flowing so why not try?

~~~
ghaff
The F35 program has been pretty much a disaster. But, that said, the concept
of departing from a model in which every service branch and every allied
country to which we sell military hardware has largely unique equipment for
every mission isn't inherently a bad one. But we've apparently discovered
that, among other problems with the program, it's harder to come up with a
viable common design than many apparently thought.

~~~
philwelch
The bulk of the requirements for the F-35 are perfectly reasonable; a
stealthier replacement for the F-16 and F/A-18, which essentially perform the
same role but the Air Force chose one and the Navy chose the other. If you
could get a next generation light fighter-bomber to replace both, and make it
stealthy enough to replace the F-117 at the same time, that would be the
perfectly reasonable aircraft. As it stands, the Navy already hedged their
bets with the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, which has been a complete success.

The only thing that did in the Joint Strike Fighter was the requirement to
develop a STOVL close-air-support platform for the Marine Corps, to replace
the Harrier. That should have been a separate project. STOVL and conventional
aircraft have entirely different aerodynamic requirements, and there's no real
requirement for a stealth close-air-support platform because it's not like the
enemy isn't going to notice the slowly hovering jet plane that's strafing them
and shooting missiles at them. But it's so hard to get Congress to fund any
replacement aircraft at all that everyone decided to go ahead and put all
their hopes and dreams and lobbying efforts behind a single plane.

~~~
hackuser
> it's not like the enemy isn't going to notice the slowly hovering jet plane
> that's strafing them and shooting missiles at them

I thought the STOVL was designed to enable take off and landing without
airfields and aircraft carriers. Are you sure the intent is that it will hover
over the battlefield while attacking? Current planes seem to hit targets fine
while flying at a much safer hundreds of miles/hour.

~~~
acveilleux
It's not going to hover, that would be insane (in fuel use if nothing else)
but the USMC wants/needs a close air support platform. A jet that will fly
sufficiently low and slow to attack ground targets effectively. Even when the
friendly troops are only a few hundred meters away.

That's intrinsically different from the Air Force and Navy whose planes will
spend their time closer to 30k feet then 3k feet.

Flight at low altitudes and speed requires fundamentally different
characteristics then flight at high altitude and comparatively high speed.

~~~
engi_nerd
> It's not going to hover, that would be insane (in fuel use if nothing else)

Really nerdy aside: it would also be insane with regards to hot gas ingestion.
There would be a very high likelihood that the engine would take in the
missile exhaust if launches happened in the semi-jet-borne or jet-borne
regions.

------
ArkyBeagle
Surprisingly, one of the best examples of the use of public choice economics
is the BBC comedy series "Yes, Minister."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes_Minister)

~~~
sukilot
Yes Minister had a confidential consultant who fed the writers real stories
from parliament negotiations.

------
spiritplumber
The F-35 is not a fighter, it's a diplomacy/pork program that happens to have
the side effect of making something that (barely) flies.

~~~
feedjoelpie
The tragic comedy of the whole thing is that, while there's always some pork-
slinging going on, at the outset of the program, the whole idea of a _Joint_
Strike Fighter program was cost savings. On the surface, it was a competent
economic thought: Build a bunch of variations on the same jet to achieve
better overall economy across all military branches.

I really believe the people making that decision thought they would succeed.
But since the premise proved incorrect, it looks like program continues to run
entirely on a combination of addictions: Escalation of commitment and pork
politics.

------
WalterBright
When the F-4 Phantom was developed, it was decided that air-to-air missiles
had obsoleted guns. No guns were put in the F-4. Fast forward to aerial combat
in Vietnam, and mechanics were jury-rigging bolt-on machine gun pods under the
wings.

I fear we're making the same mistake again.

~~~
ghostberry
When the F-4 Phantom was developed, missiles were extremely unreliable, only
around one in ten hit the target they were launched against, and they could
only be launched in a fairly limited circumstances.

Around 1975-1985, technology advanced and new generation of missiles entered
service. They became reliable, and they could be launched successfully from a
wider ranger of circumstances.

Around 1995-2005, technology advanced even more, and an even more capable
generation of missiles entered service. As well as being reliable, they're now
smart enough and have good enough sensors to be immune to decoys, and they're
agile enough that no aircraft on earth can out turn them. Some can even be
launched against targets which aren't even in front of the launching aircraft.

Guns are obsolete.

~~~
jleyank
Unless, of course, you're interested in strafing what's on the ground. If you
carry 8 missiles, you have 8 shots. Assuming you can get a lock on what's on
the ground. If you have 10-30s of 20mm or larger, you can do wonders on, say,
a convoy of trucks.

While we used to have different planes for different tasks, the staggering
costs of current/future models is killing off such things. And as there's no
external threat today (for the US military), the enemies are themselves - the
different services. Nobody in the Air Force really wants to support those in
the mud. But they won't give them fixed wing aircraft (A-10) so they can
support themselves.

~~~
hackuser
> Unless, of course, you're interested in strafing what's on the ground

My (very limited) understanding is this: Against far inferior enemies such as
ISIS and the Taliban, strafing works fine. But against peer enemies, such as
the Russians, we'll never get close enough to strafe. Also, guided munitions
are so much more accurate than unguided ones (such as bullets) that the number
of hits is comparable. What we could do with hundreds (thousands?) of unguided
munitions before, we now can do with 1-2 guided ones fired from a thousand
miles away.

We lack the resources to develop and buy everything we want; we can't afford
it and the sequester enforced by the GOP makes it even worse. If we invest in
tools to defeat ISIS, we'll get crushed by peer enemies. We need to invest in
beating our peers; we will defeat ISIS regardless (at least on the
battlefield), even if the tools aren't optimal for the task.

~~~
jleyank
"If we invest in tools to defeat ISIS, we'll get crushed by peer enemies"

As I see it, the only peer enemies of the US are Russia and China. As both of
these countries are nuclear powers, war between any of them risks terrible
escalation. FWIW, the A-10 was designed to fight Soviet tanks in Europe, and I
doubt the top armour of tanks has thickened that much since then. And there's
lots of APC's and other semi-hard targets that would be killed just fine.

Better 10-100 A-10's than 5-10 F-35's. For pretty much any conflict without
nuclear overtones the loiter time, inherent survivability and weapon delivery
systems on the "old, boring" A-10 is the way to go.

~~~
hackuser
> the A-10 was designed to fight Soviet tanks in Europe, and I doubt the top
> armour of tanks has thickened that much since then. And there's lots of
> APC's and other semi-hard targets that would be killed just fine.

From what I understand, the A-10 was designed for that role as it was
envisioned in the 1970s, 40 years ago. The air defenses have greatly improved
since then and planes like the A-10 won't get near the battlefield.

~~~
mcguire
In Europe, perhaps. In Syria?

~~~
tim333
They took out about 900 mostly Russian made tanks in Gulf War 1. Plus over
3000 other targets. Four A-10s were lost, shot down by surface to air missiles
of the large, non man portable variety. A-10s are effective if you can remove
the serious air defences first. Syria apparently has a lot of serious air
defences which could be taken out but it would be a major effort.

------
heyalexchoi
For anyone interested in learning more, the book 'Boyd' provides a lot of
useful background information on

\- why the F-35 is a total disaster \- the Pentagon's intrinsic inability to
make reasonable decisions

In a nutshell, this guy Boyd pioneered modern fighter jet design (and
important general strategic theorems as well), but spent his career fighting
crony-bureaucrats to get any of it adopted by the U.S. military

[http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-
Changed/dp/0316...](http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-
Changed/dp/0316796883)

------
wazoox
Just the logical following of the F22 disaster: a plane so expensive that they
won't ever dare endanger it in real operations... because $1 billion apiece!

~~~
adventured
$356 million or so (still an absurd sum, just not $1b absurd)

"... the Defense Department shut down production last year after spending
$67.3 billion on just 188 planes"

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-advanced-fighter-
woes-...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-advanced-fighter-
woes-20130616-dto-htmlstory.html)

~~~
dlgeek
Which includes the entire program development cost - if they'd continued
production, the per-plane cost would have of course been lower.

------
transfire
What should have been.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=boeing+joint+strike+fighter&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=boeing+joint+strike+fighter&safe=off&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=S7sNVb-
KPMa1ggT4rIDgBQ&ved=0CDUQsAQ&biw=1050&bih=1523)

~~~
acdha
Why? It's easy to look at rosy predictions but is there any reason to think
that this project would have avoided the same systemic problems which have
been endemic for the F-35? A quick glance at the Wikipedia page shows several
questionable elements of the design, all of which seem to be due to the same
problem of requiring one design to fill too many roles.

~~~
transfire
Actually there is. Boeing's design was forward thinking, e.g. using carbon
fiber before anyone else --now common place. They also figured out a way to
use the main engine to provide vertical take-off and landing, instead of
having a separate engine, which would have made a big difference in cost. I
watched an excellent documentary on the whole project long ago, and it was
clear that Boeing design was superior, but they got shafted b/c, as other have
pointed out, it wasn't about the best product, it was about defense contractor
dollars.

~~~
acdha
My main reason for posting was that your original comment would have been much
stronger had it included any of the arguments you made here.

That said, I would reiterate that it's not clear that all of the possible
advantages would have actually been delivered in the production aircraft.
Wikipedia summarizes the problem engi_nerd mentioned as “eight months into
construction of the prototypes, the JSF's maneuverability and payload
requirements were refined at the request of the Navy and Boeing's delta wing
design fell short of the new targets”. That's the kind of thing which makes
software projects fail and software is a LOT easier to change than a high-
performance aircraft design.

It's very easy to believe that this wouldn't have been the only such change
and that the Boeing project would have ended in the same muddle because the
project is simply badly managed. Accepting so many different missions as
requirements for a single design seems like something which would doom
anything constructed near our our current technology levels. It really sounds
like it'd have been cheaper and more successful had the Marines’ VTOL
requirement been a separate design since that's frequently mentioned as the
reason for the many compromises for engine safety, performance, stealth, etc.

> but they got shafted b/c, as other have pointed out, it wasn't about the
> best product, it was about defense contractor dollars.

Definitely contractor dollars but also high-paying jobs in legislators’
districts. From the sounds of it, the “political engineering” process has been
a lot more successful than anything else on the project:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/f-35s-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/f-35s-ability-to-evade-budget-cuts-illustrates-challenge-of-paring-
defense-spending/2013/03/09/42a6085a-8776-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html)

~~~
engi_nerd
Boeing would have spent much engineering effort on mitigation of the hot gas
ingestion in mode 4 problems. It's impossible to know now how difficult or
easy that issue would have been to resolve. The lesson that I take away from
this is: STOVL is not easy. LM, Rolls Royce, and Pratt&Whitney have had their
hands full with the LiftFan.

------
bigdubs
I am still shocked the Navy is ok with a single engine fighter.

~~~
dingaling
They flew single-engined jets in the 1950s and early 1960s when engines were
horrifically unreliable ( most notoriously the F3H Demon with the shocking J71
).

And that didn't deter then from doing it again later with the A-7, A-4 and
F-8.

~~~
philwelch
And then they learned from that lesson and today they operate the F/A-18,
which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most successful naval
aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-role mission.

~~~
hackuser
> the F/A-18, which, if you count all of its variants, is one of the most
> successful naval aircraft of all time despite having a very ambitious multi-
> role mission.

How is it "successful"? Has one ever been in a real fight? Almost all of our
airplanes are untested (which is a good thing).

~~~
philwelch
Yes, several.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F/A-18_Hornet#United_States)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F/A-18E/F_Super_Hornet#O...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F/A-18E/F_Super_Hornet#Operational_history)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler#Operation...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_EA-18G_Growler#Operational_history)

~~~
hackuser
Thanks. Doesn't that seems like a tiny sample, and aren't those far inferior
foes?

~~~
acveilleux
It's as well tested in combat as any of the other fighters still flying.
Pending a US-Russia or US-China war, that's all that's ever going to happen.

~~~
philwelch
Not like anyone's anxious to pull the P-51 or Spitfire out of mothballs,
certainly.

While the Hornet doesn't have a huge combat record, it has a long flight
record and a long record of carrier operations and has excelled at both with
less maintenance burden than its predecessors.

~~~
engi_nerd
I know many older maintainers who started out on the aircraft types that the
F-18 replaced, and then worked on the F-18. They all say that the F-18 really
was a game changer. Older aircraft had frustrating issues like panels from one
aircraft not fitting onto another because those older aircraft were much more
hand-made and manufactured to lower tolerances. F-18s leverage digital data
buses much more, greatly reducing the messes of point-to-point wiring and
patch panels that older aircraft types used, making the F-18 easier to
maintain, modify, and expand.

------
hackuser
It's a little surprising that an angry rant by someone without any established
expertise is given so much credibility here; I think it just echos popular
memes. I don't have any expertise myself, but let me share what I've read from
experts providing serious analysis:

1) Every large, complex program has similar technical teething problems. If
you look back at the beginnings of today's well-established systems, including
other planes, you'll see similar histories and criticism (though it was less
magnified by the echo chamber of the Internet). The existence of all these
bugs and problems means nothing, good or bad; they are part of every major
project.

This should not surprise HN readers: Imagine an extraordinarily complex
project, filled with newly invented technology, with a 20 year development
cycle (and using waterfall methodology AFAIK). Add to that the extraordinary
pressure on performance and capbilities (i.e., developers can't be
conservative): If the project's perf isn't fast/powerful/etc enough then
people die, such as the operator or the thousands to millions of others whom
we can't protect, and nations might fall. You would expect a very large number
of bugs; it's kind of amazing that such projects ever ship!

Perhaps they should use other methodologies to reduce these problems but with
fighter planes, due to the cost of building them and of failed experiments
(i.e., dead pilots), you can't 'move fast and break things'. Also, you never
really can test the system until you fight an actual war against a peer enemy.

\---

2) The public's conception of figher planes is very outdated. They imagine
dogfights in the sky, which might be as outdated as ships shooting banks of
cannons at each other (this is my impression based on limited reading of
people who know).

For example, a study I read by leading military strategists [1] looked at
actual fighter-to-fighter encounters. The last time we saw many of them was in
Vietnam (think of it: we haven't had an arial shooting war in 40 years,
covering generations of (thankfully) unutilized planes and pilots). In Vietnam
80% of encounters were over _before the loser had time to defend themselves_ ,
because they were not aware of the attacker.

You can see then why the F-35's design might focus on situational awareness,
including: Sensors; building a network where each plane is essentially a node,
so all planes all see the entire network's sensor data as well as sharing with
ground systems (imagine making a data network reliable in that environment);
and the pilot's UI: In prior planes pilots had to read and interpret (6? 12?
more?) sensors, each on different interfaces, all while flying and fighting.
The F-35's IT systems unify the data on one interface, and the computer does
much of the analysis (e.g., object A1 moving at X rate with Y vector and Z
characteristics is probably a bird, object A2 is a friendly plane, A3 is a
civilian plane, ... and object A53 is an enemy missile).

Also, electronic warfare has become far more important, with hints of F-35's
even hacking into enemy systems. To an extent, warfare has become a battle of
networks shooting electronic attacks over an air gap.

\---

Again, none of this means that the F-35 will work out well, but most of the
public discussion is misguided.

[1] [http://csbaonline.org/publications/2007/03/six-decades-of-
gu...](http://csbaonline.org/publications/2007/03/six-decades-of-guided-
munitions-and-battle-networks-progress-and-prospects/)

~~~
engi_nerd
Those that know can't share what they know, they must rely on information
already made public that by necessity does not tell the whole story. It's
frustrating, but it's part of the nature of this work.

------
douche
With the concept of strategic bombing being a moot point, replaced by unmanned
guided missiles and our moral unwillingness to strike at population centers,
the only real purpose of the Air Force is close-air-support. Even air
superiority is, really, an adjunct to that role, in that it protects the
troops on the ground against enemy ground-attack aircraft and provides cover
for our ground attack aircraft.

Seeing, arguably, the most effective warplane of the last fifty years scrapped
for an overpriced, ineffective boondoggle is sickening.

~~~
gnoway
What I don't understand is why the various services care so much about what
the other services do or don't do. Why does the AF insist on managing the A-10
when they clearly do not and never have wanted it? The Army wants it, let them
have it. We're obviously not _that_ concerned with duplication or waste given
how much money we've spent on this and the F-22 for, apparently, no gain.

~~~
chernevik
The services guard their missions jealously. They don't want competition
within their various roles -- those roles are their justifications for budget,
status and involvement.

There are good reasons for specialization, of course. But the institutional
politics can't be ignored.

I've heard that the Marines actually have really good air support, because
they have their own planes and the generals make damn sure those pilots put
the bombs where the grunts need them. I doubt the Air Force likes that. But
the Marines are part of the Navy, and the folks running the Navy aren't
interested in ground combat. They've already got an air role, on the carriers,
and a strategic bombing role, in the missile subs, so they aren't likely to
encroach much on the Air Force. Since the Navy puts a cap on how far the
Marines' mission would grow, the other services can live with the Marines
mixing things up a bit.

It also helps that the Marines have a PR operation unlike anything anywhere on
the planet.

And they might be a natural home for the A-10, right? But you can't fly an
A-10 off a carrier.

~~~
spiritplumber
So get rid of the USAF / fold it back into the Army, this way the Navy has an
air wing, and the Army has an air wing. Large sky battles are unlikely to
happen ever again... the USAF was designed to deal with those, right around
when they had become obsolete. Hooray for Parkinson's laws.

The A-10 is a magnificent brute of a plane and does exactly the job it was
designed to do, very well... so of course they want to mothball it.

I wonder how hard it would be to make it carrierable, or how hard it would be
to string a bunch of barges together to make a floating airfield for it (and
use a standard carrier for mechanical support).

~~~
krapht
The A10's minigun is ineffective at killing modern main-battle tanks, so I
wouldn't say it's a raging sucess. In addition, it would certainly be blown up
immediately if it came within shooting distance of a tank by any number of
man-portable anti-air missiles.

What it can do is provide reasonable close air support against Toyota pickups
and infantry, but replacement parts for the plane or the molds to create them
don't exist. The A10's titanium airframe will soon need wholesale replacement
as it reaches its fatigue limit, so the entire plane would need to be
remanufactured.

A drone-based replacement would be far more cost efficient. I don't see why
mothballing the A10 is a poor decision.

~~~
protomyth
"I don't see why mothballing the A10 is a poor decision"

Because we do not have any aircraft that can stay on station above our troops
stuck out in the middle of nowhere and keep them safe by shooting for multiple
hours. Every other aircraft (drone include) is a drop-a-few-and-leave. That is
not good enough.

Where have we faced modern main-battle tanks?

We should remove close air support from the Air Force's mission and give it
back to the Army.

~~~
Symmetry
I thought the AC-130 was pretty good at that. It's even worse at not getting
shot down of course but could provide fire support for just as long and over a
wider area.

~~~
protomyth
I haven't heard of an AC-130 doing it, but the folks that I talk to mention
the A-10 often. More of a sharp shooter thing instead of an area effect thing.

------
Mikeb85
I'm pretty sure the only thing the F-35 will ever shoot down is nations'
budgets....

The thing is a dog - a flying compromise, that's not even particularly
stealthy because it needs to carry external weapons since the internal weapons
bay is barely large enough to fit someone's groceries, never mind a reasonable
payload for any actual combat sortie...

------
WhitneyLand
What's the biggest practical limitation to switching to unmanned drone
fighters?

~~~
tomjen3
Lag and poor visibility.

Drones work on slow ground attack convoys and buildings where they can fly
around for a time but they are controlled via satelites so there is a couple
of seconds of lag between when the image is recorded and the orders are
received by the drone.

In a dog fight, which is really what you have to build a fighter plane for,
that kind of lag means you lose every time. Add to that that drones are too
slow, have no agility and little to no armour and they are going to be
completely useless even against obsolete planes - SAA (Assad) show down one a
few days ago.

The US has stealth drones, but that is only useful till you are discovered. If
you are going faster than the speed of sound that is one thing, but these
drones are not.

~~~
vacri
Dogfights are a thing of the past. Fighters don't joust at close distances
anymore. I did a small part of my degree at a defence research place in the
mid-90s. I remember someone showing me an experiment on how best to present
range information about other planes to a fighter pilot, in terms of physical
appearance. What was curious was the names for the ranges: 'safe', 'lethal',
and 'very lethal'. 'Very lethal' was still several kilometers, and I asked
about the guns and dogfighting - and got 'that doesn't happen anymore'.

More significant issues are speed, weather, and payload size. If you need
fighter cover now, you don't want to hear "but it's raining". And speed is
needed to increase operational range and response time.

------
kev009
The air force as a whole is a large scam committed on the taxpayer. What an
irrelevant organization for the 21st century. Misappropriations like this are
responsible for increased casualties in current military engagements.

~~~
josephagoss
Why is the air force irrelevant?

------
bitwize
Good old F-35 -- the Littoral Combat Ship of the air.

This is what happens when you have nothing to do with your military equipment
besides fill contractor coffers.

------
aceperry
Implementing new tech. Makes the rollout of Obamacare look good.

------
electic
The United States will probably land men and women on Mars before this jet is
fully operational.

