
F-35: What The Pilots Say - ChuckMcM
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/f-35-faces-most-critical-test-180971734/
======
hyeonwho4
This seems like a PR piece. Too positive, a lot of discussions of pilot's
smiles. Given the very high program costs and the need by Lockheed Martin to
convince US allies to buy the plane despite the high price tag, I think HN
readers would be well served by skepticism.

To put it another way, it the F35 was really as good as the F22, as the
article seems to claim, then it would not be available for export.

~~~
thunderbird120
The cost per unit has actually come down below modern variants of older
generation fighters. Boeing has been trying to get the air force to buy some
new F-15Xs over the next few years, this has been controversial to say the
least because they would cost more per plane than F-35s while being unable to
operate in contested airspace. An ex Boeing CEO as secretary of defense has
not eased the controversy to say the least.

~~~
seldonnn
You can load one of those puppies up with 22 air to air missiles, have a
forward F-35 pass along target information, and light them up from the F-15.
One team. F-15 is a missile truck that can go Mach 2.2.

Ask because it goes Mach 2.2 it is probably the only fighter vehicle that can
launch a hypersonic glide weapon, at least from what the early generation is
likely to look like.

~~~
rurounijones
It is a bit disengenuous to imply that an F-15 is a "missile truck" that can
go mach 2+.

There is no way it will be going anywhere near mach 2 with double rails
carrying AIM-120s, let alone 20 of the missiles in total.

~~~
twic
In an engagement with an S-400, bits of it will probably end up going at mach
2+.

~~~
hongseleco
Not unless you have EA-18Gs and EC-130s raising the noise floor along with
lots of disposable drones cluttering the fire control RADAR. And more missile
truck F-16s, F-18s, and F-15s carrying AGM-88s to supress/destroy the RADARs
and MALDs to add more clutter and become seductive targets.

------
carnagii
> to penetrate sophisticated enemy air defenses and find and disable
> threats—requires what the fifth-generation jet offers: stealth and a
> stunning array of passive and active sensors

> U.S. forces first took these capabilities into combat last September, when
> Marine F-35Bs struck the Taliban in Afghanistan

against disorganized rebel forces less well armed than the average suburban
American, with no air force and no surface to air missiles. and the U.S. still
can't win that war.

~~~
jazzyjackson
I was trying to find an article I read years ago, about how unsuited the
supersonic fighter jets are for air support of ground operations. The main
contentions were:

1\. Modern jets need long runways (aircraft carrier slingshot notwithstanding)
so anytime troops were calling in air support, a supersonic f16 would fly for
an hour, have enough fuel for a couple of bombing runs before having to fly
back to the closest large airport, compared to what the troops really wanted,
a super tucano turboprop, which can take off from the dirt airstrips available
anywhere in the country.

2\. Modern jets, with their stunning array of passive and active sensors,
encourage an eyes-off approach to dropping bombs : pilots can only trust their
data, they are not close enough to the ground to recognize who's friendly and
who's not.

Alluded in my sibling comment, A10 warthogs would have been perfect for these
missions -- I don't know where the unwillingness to fund them comes from.
Googling now reveals that Super Tucano turboprops are now being delivered to
the afghan airfoce, since that's what you actually need to fight small arms
battles in the remote regions of the country.

Closest thing I found was 2015, detailing why modern technology doesn't win
the war, 'low and slow' can be a better game plan:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8qxzyv/low-and-
sl...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8qxzyv/low-and-slow)

~~~
krustchinsky
The idea that low cost STOL aircraft will suddenly solve the CAS conundrum is
a Reddit-baked solution void of any actual data or understanding. I'm a
military aviator and the public more than anything needs to understand that as
with most things in this world, it simply isn't as simple as you make it out
to be.

The data from the war in Afghanistan paints a pretty good picture of
capability versus perception. The vast majority of the responses to troops-in-
contact came in the form of precision munitions from F-16s or F-15s. What the
"troops" want is not a good variable in understanding what the best method of
providing CAS is. Everyone wants the A-10, it's sexy. The reality on the
ground is that even in a low threat environment such as Afghanistan the A-10
doesn't nearly do the job as good as an F-16 for a number of reasons which I
won't get into in a public forum.

The Airforce vision of CAS is precision munitions from both manned and un-
manned platforms that present very little risk to both the operators of the
platform and the infrastructure that support them. It would be a significant
de-evolution of our capability as a military to continue to operate the A-10
purley on nostalgia and public perception of its' capabilities. I don't expect
the public at large to look at this situation with nuisance or data, but let's
use common sense if anything. The reason why the Afghan Airforce is operating
A-29s and armed C-208Bs has much more to do with cost and sustainability than
it does to do with effectiveness. In fact you can find multiple articles of
Afghan brass complaining about how what we are giving them isn't particularly
well suited to the mission they are expected to sustain. A couple of tool
boxes and spare PT6 parts will keep that fleet flying for a couple of years. I
don't see them really providing a meaningful impact on the battlefield
however.

Being close to the ground is the Army's mission and they do it really well.
Adding a couple gunned turboprops won't change anything on the ground today or
tomorrow. We are training and developing doctrine for a near-peer threat.
We've been focused on COIN too long, and developing budgets and technology for
yesterday's conflicts is exactly what set us back in the early days of the
GWOT. So consider for a moment that the F-35, despite it's many setbacks and
runaway budget might actually do the CAS mission quite well. I'll take the
laser guided 500LB bomb over a spray of Hyrda rockets when some asshole starts
throwing IDF my way. By the time we procure, field, and properly employ
something like the A-29 it's basically going to be limited to a low threat
environment scout attack role. Hey doesn't the Army do that??!!

So I told you what this soldier wants, and what the Airforce is doing.
Hopefully that's good enough.

~~~
SteveCoast
I'm struggling to find analogies here.

Everyone, you need to drive the Ford 35 Mustang. It's not the fastest car but
it's pretty fast. If you strap a trailer on the back then sure it now loses
all it's maneuverability but it's now a truck, right? So we don't need trucks
any more.

Since it's invisible you don't need any combat capability, unless you load it
out with 8 pylons and now it's not invisible any more, so now it does need to
outfly the enemy. But it can't because it needs to carry all this load.

It needs to take off and land vertically which means it needs a small cross
section but it needs to be able to have a high wing load to turn so it needs a
large cross section.

It needs to do close air support but it can't get close. It needs to be slow
but it also needs to be fast.

It needs to be a bomber and have long range, but needs to be a fighter and
have high performance (or energy maneuverability).

It's what Boyd warned everyone about during the last generation, you need to
avoid mutli role aircraft as they're not good at anything.

~~~
dubyah
>It's what Boyd warned everyone about during the last generation, you need to
avoid mutli role aircraft as they're not good at anything.

Like the F-16 or the F-15E? Hillaker said he'd have designed the F-16
differently(more akin to the F-16XL) if he had known it was going to be multi-
role.

~~~
SteveCoast
Right. It wasn't supposed to be multi-role, the original was a beautiful thing
to behold before they started hanging all kinds of crap off of it.

~~~
dubyah
Like radar?

Eh, if it went into production as they had envisioned, it would have been
built only to F-104 kind of numbers. By compromising a little on the air to
air aspect, they gained enormously in the air to ground aspect and overall
utility. Most of the sorties have been air to ground for a good awhile now.

------
bunderbunder
This seems to me a bit like a kid begging their parents for a Neo Geo. The
parents don't want to, of course, because it's horribly expensive, and not
_that_ useful, and their kid already has a Super Nintendo and a Turbografx 16,
and doesn't actually need any more video game systems, and probably shouldn't
even be playing so many video games in the first place. And the kid's mode of
argument is to just keep reminding them, increasingly loudly, how _awesome_
the Neo Geo is.

Obviously, it's not a perfect analogy. One difference is that, in this case,
everyone involved is a grown-up.

~~~
mrweasel
That's my criticism of the F-35 as well. I don't know anything about fighter
planes, but as a taxpayer it just seems way to expensive.

Denmark is buying 27 F-35. That not nearly enough to do anything meaningful
against an enemy like Russia. Buying a plane, like the SAAB JAS 39 Gripen,
would have allowed the Danish Airforce to do basically the same operations,
for much much less money. The Danish airforce isn't going to intercept Russian
fighters. The missions are patrol and bombings for NATO.

For a country like the US, sure, maybe the F-35 is something they need for the
type of missions they fly. I just can see any country do anything with 27
planes. 27 is less planes than an aircraft carrier has.

~~~
stanfordkid
I do worry that there is opportunity for massive "disruption" for fighter jets
in precisely the Clayton Christensen / Innovator's dilemma sense.

The innovation shouldn't be around stealth and maneuverability, but rather
production cost/rate and AI automation. It is _really_ hard to train a fighter
pilot, this means you have very few of them, and the one with the best jet
wins.

In the new world of AI the jets themselves are trivial, it's the AI that
matters and the VOLUME you can produce them at. In this case someone like
China is way better positioned -- just steal the IP for the physical airframe
(or develop one that is just good enough) then innovate on the assembly line
and AI aspects.

The AI fighter jet problem feels much easier than the self driving car
problem.

~~~
jandrese
This kind of overlooks that the cost of the aircraft isn't entirely in the
original production and (possible) training of pilots. They also require a
large ground team burning several man-hours for every hour that they are in
the air. The problem with the mass AI fighter drone scenario is that the
logistics chain and maintenance costs kill you.

~~~
rbanffy
Except that the drones themselves can be much simpler than the fighters they
replace - there is no meatware inside, no life support or safety equipment
that needs to be maintained and checked. With enough intelligence built in,
the drone can land with a very detailed list of items that need maintenance
because of performance anomalies.

Plus, the AI can be augmented by a human on the ground.

~~~
jandrese
That life support stuff has to be replaced by automation, so "much simpler" is
probably stretching it. Plus you're talking about adding in a bunch of sensors
and software which is even more complexity (IE things that will break or go
wrong). The exploding complexity problem is a pernicious one.

~~~
rbanffy
If the sensors and computers that manage the control surfaces of any modern
fighter fail, the plane crashes anyway, so they still need to be there. Not
having to route everything to the cockpit can simplify design and improve
ruggedness.

A lot of the resistance against this comes from the fact robots don't get
medals.

------
victor106
$406 billion!!!

Just imagine how many humans you can bring out of poverty with that kind of
money? I understand the world we live in but if you spend one tenth the amount
they spent on this educating/helping the very people this plane would be
eventually targeted at, I think it would cause more of an impact.

I was reading a book by Steven Pinker and in it he lays out the case for how
modern society has essentially made war illegal.

And in Sapiens the author (Yuval Harari) makes the case that modern society is
no longer based on static wealth that can be conquered and consumed like Gold,
Silver etc., Its made of human skill and mind that create wealth that does not
exist. So say China occupies the US it sure can take all the wealth that is
static but it cannot force people to use their minds to create a Google or an
Apple or FB(i know..i know..)..

If you believe the above you have to ask yourself:- "So then what is the
benefit of spending so much money?"

~~~
ilaksh
I think unfortunately people are living in a fairy tale if they think like
that.

Resources like fossil fuels and raw materials are critical for the real
function of economies. Global wealth inequality between countries can be
extreme and quite obviously reflects resource distribution inequality.

Its the same as all of history. Usually one or a few powers dominate the
earth. The US has the most most wealth and resource control globally by far.
This is not because the US has Facebook or because "war is illegal" (LOL). Its
because the US and proxies/allies have the most massive and dominant military
ever seen and use that actively to maintain the advantages.

I can understand how people do not realize this since the media does a very
good job of distributing propaganda about the numerous wars, suggesting that
each military action is isolated and motivated by some mythical moral cause.

~~~
novaRom
>> I think unfortunately people are living in a fairy tale if they think like
that.

Everything humans create is subjective reality. Shared fictions are commonly
held beliefs in fictional entities. For example, belief in the power of money
is a shared fiction.

>> Usually one or a few powers dominate the earth

Depends on how you measure "dominate"? What time period? Do they have more
wealth than others at time period dT? Do they think they have more power to
direct the wheel of the history at that time dT? History teaches all
civilizations fail soon or late.

------
dmoy
It should probably be highlighted at the top of the article that three of
those pilots are employees of lockmart.

~~~
nabla9
And none of the pilots are in the position to give fair assessment. You are
not allowed to give fair assessment for a fighter even you are retired.

------
ambicapter
> For tests in departure resistance, we truly had to trick the system. We
> would disengage all the self-protect mechanisms to put it into an out-of-
> control regime. And then we would allow the controller to wake up. It would
> recognize the situation it was in, and then it would get itself out of the
> situation. Absolutely fascinating. It will null all of the pitch rates, yaw
> rates, and roll rates to the extent that you can get it out the attitude
> that you’ve got it into.

> When it comes to true departure resistance, we allowed the system to be 100
> percent engaged, and we would [fly like] a very badly trained pilot. So
> everything that I have been taught not to do as a pilot since the age
> of—crikey, when did I first start flying? Maybe 13—I was being asked to do.

I would love to read about the people who code these sort of controls systems.

~~~
cushychicken
Those test conditions are absurd. I would never want to be in a position where
firmware _I_ wrote had to cold boot, detect position, and correct the plant at
10,000 feet/5Gs!

~~~
golergka
That really puts previous reports about bugs in F-35 software under different
perspective. Of course they spent so much time to debug this, the requirements
seem to basically be a fully autonomous and capable auto-pilot!

------
etaioinshrdlu
We should keep our minds open to the possibility that this isn't the worst
plane ever made.

I think the real crime is the ridiculous cost, and putting all our eggs in the
F35 basket.

------
nabla9
All pilots, retired or not, have tight limits to what they can say about new
fighter early in the production.

The end result is just PR piece. It's OK to enjoy military porn from glossy
magazines, but HN should not be place for it. It has no information.

~~~
degenerate
> It's OK to enjoy military porn from glossy magazines

Even when I do this, it's for the kid in me. Show me big guns, fast jets, and
give me some astounding numbers. This article has none of that!

~~~
rbanffy
The unit price is a quite astounding number ;-)

------
ChuckMcM
This article was in the latest issue of Air & Space. There have been a number
of articles that have ridiculed the F35 as a waste of time and money, but it
is interesting to hear what the pilots think about the plane now that they are
flying them.

~~~
Someone
Are you sure this is what the pilots think?

For me, the overall message is so flattering for the airplane that it sounds
more as the result of lots of press training or at least as pilots being very
careful in what they say because publicly critiquing this airplane is not good
for one’s career prospects.

~~~
Macross8299
Seems entirely possible that the F-35 has grown into a solid piece of
engineering and is great to fly from a pilot's perspective without that
necessarily invalidating cost-related and overrun-related criticisms of the
project.

~~~
rhizome
If it had grown into a solid piece of engineering we would be hearing about it
from all angles and seeing it at every airshow. There is nothing the military
would rather do than demonstrate that this zillion-dollar albatross is not
only still alive, but it's also not developmentally disabled.

------
ben7799
These guys are test pilots and engineers who have thousands and thousands of
hours of flight time and have actually flown the F-35.

They can't possibly know what they're talking about, so this must just be a PR
piece to cover up how horrible this aircraft is.

It would be so much more credible if they just interviewed a non-pilot/non-
engineer tech journalist who can tell us the truth.

/sarcasm

~~~
ungerik
True, but when have you heard a test pilot criticising his employer while
still having an active career?

------
icanhackit
The most interesting (fun?) one to read for me was Squadron Leader Andy
Edgell, Royal Air Force.

> _“Yeah, Test, you didn’t put the right rudder in.” I said, “Yeah, I know. I
> couldn’t lift my leg up.”_

> [...]

> _Legalized hooliganism! All in the pursuit of data and good test points, of
> course._

> [...]

> _I did, for a moment, stare through the windows of the bridge. And you think
> to yourself, “This is a view that no one really gets.”_

------
kreitje
They have their demo team debut this weekend in FL.

[https://airandspaceshow.com/f-35-demo/](https://airandspaceshow.com/f-35-demo/)

~~~
SteveNuts
I saw the F-35 takeoff and a couple of maneuvers at an airshow in 2017, do you
know what the difference between that demonstration and the one in FL will be?

~~~
alanbernstein
The article says "North American debut".

~~~
SteveNuts
Right, but it's already flown at at least one North American airshow (since
I've seen it fly), so this must be different in some way than the ones that
have already been flying. So I'm curious what will be different.

~~~
Sebguer
Difference between doing fly-by and basic maneuvers, and a full-on all-
performance show by effectively a stunt team, as best I can tell.

This news article supports that:
[https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2018/12/28/f-35-ligh...](https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/2018/12/28/f-35-lightning-
ii-demo-team-make-north-american-debut-melbourne-air-space-show/2434258002/)

~~~
SteveNuts
Awesome! I saw the F-35 in Duluth MN and it was the most impressive takeoff
I've ever seen, so I'd be really excited to see it again now. Thanks for the
info.

~~~
Sebguer
Yeah, I'm kind of bummed because I'll be at Sun n' Fun, which is one of the
largest air shows... and only like an hour away from Melbourne, but apparently
the F-35 isn't visiting.

Hard to justify a drive to Melbourne to JUST watch an F-35.

------
fetbaffe
The thing with fighter aircraft is that you don't need the latest and the
greatest at production day, what you need is a extendable platform for the
future & and good training platform for the pilots. These platforms need to
live for about 40 years with constant updates & training (F-16 introduced in
1978).

F-35 is neither.

Because of design decision of marrying three different military branches
requirements (air force, navy, marines) with three different fighter roles
(intercept, ground support, reconnaissance) a lot of the extendability is
already gone.

Cost of flying F-35 is one of the highest yet for a fighter aircraft (except
maybe for F-22), this means that the pilots will not get sufficient training.
Sure, with modern on the ground simulation you can get quite far, but you need
the real deal, especially when training in formation & against real
adversaries, like other countries.

Which fighter aircraft will win the dogfight? The one in the air with a
skilled pilot and not the empty one on the ground for maintenance.

And of course, future development of highly advanced UAV:s & future radar &
missile technology will make the case for expensive fighter aircraft even
tougher.

------
antiviral
Let's say all the claims in this article are correct.

What happens when one gets shot down (as it inevitably will), and the enemy
reverse-engineers the stealth tech to either copy or find weaknesses in its
capabilities?

If they can reverse-engineer faster than we can improve our stealth tech,
which seems reasonable, whatever claimed advantages this plane has will be
temporary.

Or is there another way of looking at this?

~~~
CapricornNoble
They don't even need to shoot it down. The Chinese already stole the designs,
evaluated them, and have been working on their own less-risky copy for years.
They have a proven ability to copy and adapt weapon systems at a faster rate
than anyone gives them credit for.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_FC-31](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenyang_FC-31)

The J-31 is basically a twin-engine F-35, minus the sensor fusion
capabilities. The Chinese are still very poor at making fighter jet engines,
so they went with 2 smaller engines probably for redundancy and because they
can't build one gigantic reliable engine anyway. The jet is probably still
underpowered.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Do you think it will save costs if the united states moved F-35 manufacturing
to China? Quality will be lower but Apple was able to do it with the iPhone
without compromising quality.

~~~
CapricornNoble
Sure it would "save costs".....until we get in a shooting war with China and
they stop sending us spare parts. Or given concerns about backdoors in Huawei
gear, you can be damned sure they would put hardware-level backdoors in
fighter jet control systems. So the cost-benefit analysis needs to take into
account the degradation of your security posture that comes from having your
greatest adversary supplying your equipment.

~~~
crimsonalucard
If we get into a shooting war with China then we can switch to Russia. Last
resort is north Korea. Although North Korea is really poor with the equivalent
infrastructure changes that happened in China we can build it up to a nuclear
super power and North Korea can supply the needed parts for F-35 at a really
cheap price.

------
dpifke
Chuck Yaeger still thinks the F-35 is a waste of money:

[https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/111111144983590912...](https://twitter.com/GenChuckYeager/status/1111111449835909120)

------
Jerry2
Many of those pilots are literally paid to love it.

------
theNJR
There’s plenty of reason to be critical of the F-35, but wow I loved reading
this article.

The two things that really stood out to me:

1\. The F-35s top feature is situational awareness, essentially the way in
which it processes and displays information to a pilot. Information is
becoming a critical piece of war, and the advances made here will trickle down
to us civilians in the years to come. Imagine what their HUDs are capable of?
Add to that its ability to essentially fly itself, I have to imagine there are
some features of autonomy that will be useful to us down the line.

2\. Speaking of information, from a metatextual perspective, this article is
also a great application of the human domain of warfare (1) this article
itself being a weapon. The anti-F35 articles used to concern me from this
perspective, but I wonder if even those were part of a larger information
campaign (The enemy thinks the jet is bad, thus under estimating it).

The first 2019 Redflag was just a few weeks ago, I wish I would have made the
drive out to the desert to watch.

1)[https://mailchi.mp/digitalfuture/dff4-316401](https://mailchi.mp/digitalfuture/dff4-316401)
(scroll down to the animated gif of a machine gun)

------
mcguire
" _You are telling the airplane to go up or down, speed up or slow down, go
left or right. And the computers figure out what’s the best way to do that,
and they’re going to move the flight controls to do it. And the interesting
thing is, they may not do it the same way twice. So let’s say the airplane
gets damaged, and one of the flight controls is no longer available. A legacy
airplane would still try to use that surface because it doesn’t know any
better. The F-35 digital flight control systems will say, “That surface isn’t
doing much for me anymore, so I’m going to have to compensate by using some
other things. Maybe I’ll have to move them a little bit more to get the same
effect because the pilot still wants to turn left.”_ "

Anyone have the details on how it does that?

A while back, I read a report about an experimental aircraft that would
attempt to determine the effectiveness of its control surfaces by moving all
of them in a short period of time. The impression I got was that it would have
a few seconds of rough flight, after which it would return to flying normally
even if it had lost the use of a major control surface.

------
zrav
Meanwhile, the F-35's fully mission capable rate remains miserable.
[https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2019/03/f-35-far-from-
rea...](https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2019/03/f-35-far-from-ready-to-
face-current-or-future-threats/)

------
impostir
The f-35 is a great example of the practically pathological need for the US
military to appear to ne the most technologically advanced military in the
world. To be clear, it is, but finally China is making significant
improvements. This cold-war hold-over means that instead of making a boring
solution for an actual problem, the US made a trillion dollar jack of all
trades. The f-35 is worse at each of the individual task than the specialized
frames it is supposed to replace. I can't find the link, but I remember an
article where f-16 s won every mock dogfight with f-35s.

~~~
BatFastard
I think horses beat the f-35 in jousts. Dogfights are WWII style of fighting.
Modern fighting is done from 50 miles away with missiles, where the f-35 had
significant advantages. I still think the plane is an example of design by
committee.

------
autokad
its hard to take the opinions of the pilots that fly them with complete
confidence. they have a vested interest, their career is over if the f35 is
over.

On the low end, the f35 costs about as much as 5 f16s, which also have twice
the range over an f35. the f35 is the bf109 of the modern era.

military brass keeps wanting all purpose aircraft, and 100 years of military
aircraft experience has shown that never works.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Pilots can switch planes like programmers can switch programming languages so
"protecting career" is unlikely.

"Obeying my boss" is what is most likely happening here. I get the sense that
they are literally instructed not to give bad PR about the plane. Or even
worse, this entire article is scripted.

~~~
rbanffy
> Pilots can switch planes like programmers can switch programming languages
> so "protecting career" is unlikely.

Except that military pilots have one single possible employer.

~~~
crimsonalucard
What military pilots can't change to civilian pilots when they leave the
military?

------
thisistrashair
The Smithsonian Institution is administered by the US federal government. The
grain of salt you should take with this is mountain-sized. Even if it weren't
direct propaganda (which it likely is), these pilots would be ill-advised to
say anything bad about the F-35 in a government-run publication.

------
theNJR
The first interview mentions the Paris air show as a critical public
demonstration. You can watch it here
[https://youtu.be/93NdwZAeXhI](https://youtu.be/93NdwZAeXhI)

~~~
theNJR
Oh, and more impressive to me is the footage out of the Jedi Transition:
[https://youtu.be/d9HqVXGRJL0](https://youtu.be/d9HqVXGRJL0)

For those who don’t know, about 3.5 hours from Los Angeles you can go see a
ton of amazing jet fighters coming back or going to training exercises.
There’s no way to know when you’ll see something, or what you’ll see, but the
area is a scene of jet geeks. I keep meaning to go (Should have gone after the
recent Redflag).

------
mensetmanusman
The iPhone would be more expensive then this aircraft if we only built 100.
Just shows the value of scale.

There should be an alternative military group that tries to leverage the
existing supply chain to build robust defensive weapons.

The spacex approach.

------
ec109685
This is so unfortunate in the modern age, with the globe hyper connected, we
still need these planes to go to possibly war against other civilized
countries.

------
vertline3
Plane seems like a really good fit for it's role. Would be pretty cool to meet
the engineers that designed it.

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RantyDave
Ten years from now all the cellphones/radars/powerlines/whatever in the US are
going to go dead and the Iranian government will start making demands. Your
fancy airplane will not help one bit. The military are always fighting the
_last_ war :(

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bparsons
Amazing that employees of Lockheed say nice things about the F-35.

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blueboo
A staggering, epic waste of talent, money, and time. Its advocates have harmed
the US and its future prospects.

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a3n
That'll sell some planes.

