
The Lockheed Martin F-35: one of the most colossal pieces of shit ever created - ant6n
https://twitter.com/MikeRoach3/status/1015212921071329281
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dogma1138
Considering that the only nation to use it in combat so far is Israel and they
seem to like it and despite theirs being heavily modified I would err on the
side of caution swallowing these gloomy statements whole.

The same thing was said about the F16 in it’s early days. And in fact it was
the IAF that proved that it was suited for both long distance combat sorties
and old school bomb sights bombing runs when they used it to take out Osirak
nuclear reactor in Iraq which proved many F16 critics at the time wrong.

The truth is that these days no replacement for a fighter jet would that much
superior to what it’s replacing not because it’s poorly designed but because
what it’s replacing has had 40 years worth of improvements.

Current block 70 F16s have nearly nothing in common with the original fighting
falcon there likely isn’t a single part that is even interchangeable between
them.

That said the F16 unlike the F35 doesn’t have another 40 years it’s air frame
has already been stretched (literarily) beyond its limits so we do need a new
platform regardless of its growing pains.

And for people criticizing the F35 over its low order numbers well they are
low compared to the F16 but the F16 has been in service for 40 years and
introduced during essentially the largest arms race the world has ever seen
aka the Cold War.

P.S. On a tangent since when did Twitter outside of rare current events became
a source worthy of an HN post?

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jarfil
Is that true though?
[https://twitter.com/Kaitain_FL/status/1015442373793468416?s=...](https://twitter.com/Kaitain_FL/status/1015442373793468416?s=19)

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simonblack
It's no use your weapons having a 20:1 kill ratio if they're so expensive that
the enemy finds it better/cheaper/easier/faster to throw 21 'good enough'
weapons at them.

The US is falling into the German WW2 trap of having the 'best technological'
weapons that are so expensive that only a few can be built. In WW2 both the US
and the Soviets swamped the Germans with huge numbers of 'good enough'
weapons. Sometimes on the East Front the Germans had a handful of extremely
good Tiger tanks which had no hope at all against hundreds of T34s. And the
same thing happened in Normandy against the Shermans.

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steve19
Maybe we have reached peak-fighter-plane? If it can cost so much to develop
the next gen, maybe we are better off spending half of that developing better
surface to air missiles and the other half buying older gen planes.

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ryanmercer
You can say that about nearly every government-contractor designed hardware
(or service _cough_ the healthcare site _cough_ ).

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richmarr
Not every piece of procured hardware is a massive compromise, designed to
replace many types of previous model with wildly varying purposes.

It's supposed to replace the A10 as a close air support craft, at the same
time as taking primary responsibility for air superiority. These are wildly
different sets of requirements, so different that even doing custom models of
the same airframe isn't enough to fix it. The air superiority models are
hindered by the fact that the airframe was designed to support vertical lift
fans to support the VTOL use case that the Marines wanted.

It's a collossal shitshow. I'd keep my nose out of it as a US problem, but the
UK government has committed to buying these.

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ryanmercer
>Not every piece of procured hardware is a massive compromise,

No but most, if not all, government projects of hardware like this usually
have all sorts of cost inflation due to the fact they use
companies/contractors that have made it their business to extract every last
cent out of taxpayers. It's why companies like SpaceX are important for the
future of space travel, they're offering considerably cheaper alternatives to
old-school government contractors because they aren't billing you 100$ for a
1$ widget, they're billing you 11$ for a 6$ widget.

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asdsa5325
> government projects of hardware like this usually have all sorts of cost
> inflation due to the fact they use companies/contractors that have made it
> their business to extract every last cent out of taxpayers

Clearly you are not familiar with the government contractor world. It's
actually the opposite. Government contracts are regularly audited and
contractor's profit margins are tightly capped.

The major money leakage is when the government buys products from companies
where the majority of revenues _are not_ from government contracting. Those
companies don't have to follow the same laws about profit margins.

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ryanmercer
Then explain how the private space industry is doing things for considerably
cheaper companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

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asdsa5325
Lockheed and Boeing are very much involved in space. They just don't build
rockets like SpaceX, because they take lower risk projects to avoid being
propped up by investors.

FYI, one of the biggest space companies is Orbital ATK (now owned by NG).

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erentz
Thing is it’s parts are not all shit. Just as a whole it’s shit. They tried
making a Swiss Army knife using advanced, not yet ready or tested technology.

They should kill the project, and write it off as a huge R&D project. Take all
the advances in technology that have come out of the project as wins. Continue
working on those technologies more with more experimental projects until
they’re ready for use.

Meanwhile use what we got for strike fighters and air support roles since
they’re still more than sufficient. Build more F22s to fill out air
superiority since that program seems to have delivered well.

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eugeniub
Your alternative idea is to build MORE military jets?

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erentz
If we are determined to have an obscenely huge military waging wars around the
world then yes: killing the F35, use what already works well while the tech
matures is the smart move.

But if you want to wave a wand and grant me the power I’d cut the military
budget 10% per year until it is down to $350b in present day dollars. That’s
still 50% larger than the EU and many multiples larger than all our “enemies”.

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donttrusthim
I've never seen a denser pile of misinformation in my entire life.

1.5 trillion includes the maintenance cost distributed over half a century or
longer. If the air force, marines or navy decide to order less planes then
that cost will go down significantly. [1]

"Beast mode" doesn't exist? What kind of trash are you talking about? The F-35
can obviously mount weapons externally at the cost of losing stealth (bombers
don't need stealth so this is not a problem). [1] [2]

The ejection mechanism on any fighter jet is dangerous to the pilot and only
used a last resort to avoid death.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-
fighter/exclusiv...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-
fighter/exclusive-u-s-sees-lifetime-cost-of-f-35-fighter-at-1-45-trillion-
idUSBRE82S03L20120329) [2]
[http://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/1246350/external-
pylon...](http://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/1246350/external-pylon-
training-increases-f-35a-weapons-payload-capability/) [3]
[https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/16/f-35-weapons-
suite](https://theaviationist.com/2015/01/16/f-35-weapons-suite)

