
US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets - joering2
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45827795
======
ChuckMcM
Most people reading will recognize that it is a standard procedure to ground
everything until you understand the risk. In this case the risk is a faulty
fuel line, and apparently there is a test that will let you know in the field
if you have it or not so you can return the plane to service immediately if
the test comes up negative.

There is a remarkable amount of disinformation that is spread around about
this plane. My father (who is ex-Air Force) assumes it is because it is so far
beyond what "opposing" forces can field they will do anything to delay its
operation. I don't know where it comes from but I do not that the relative
transparency of the US procurement process makes it easy to talk about
problems which are later addressed and never return. You can compare that to a
more secretive system where all of the kinks are worked out behind the curtain
and the end product is presented ready to fly. It "feels" better from a
marketing sense but I haven't read anything that suggests the Russians or the
Chinese have any fewer issues when they build a bunch of new technology into a
plane, it just gets reported on less.

~~~
kibwen
_> assumes it is because it is so far beyond what "opposing" forces can field
they will do anything to delay its operation_

This doesn't hold water; nation-state propaganda doesn't have any effect on
the funding this program receives. Nobody should have any trouble believing
that an overly-ambitious pie-in-the-sky kitchen-sink project that has been in
development for 30 years might be having a hard time meeting its lofty goals,
or indeed nailing down its goals in the first place.

Consider the Space Shuttle program, and now realize that in four years the
F-35 will have been going on longer than the shuttle program, and that the
F-35 has _already_ cost five times more than the entire shuttle program, and
that the shuttle is also today considered an overall failure (and this opinion
is not ascribed to "opposing forces"). And if the shuttle can be a failure
while achieving more than the F-35, while costing less than the F-35, with a
smaller (though still huge and confused) scope than the F-35, by what possible
metric can the F-35 not be considered a failure?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

~~~
ChuckMcM
> _This doesn 't hold water; nation-state propaganda doesn't have any effect
> on the funding this program receives._

Again, I wasn't offering up my father as an expert (other than having been in
the Air Force, which is weak at best), just sharing his take on the
observation of all the negative articles.

And you don't need to go to the Shuttle, look at the CVN-X program (21st
century aircraft carrier, aka the Ford class) which has EMALS and a bunch of
other next gen tech, lots and lots of press about boondoggle and how nothing
worked, and this thing is a sitting duck in an ancient concept of what war
will be like. The B-2 bomber, similarly maligned as over priced, under
delivered, not worth the money when B-52s can be retrofitted. Or its earlier
sibling the B-1 bomber cancelled then un-cancelled. Or the Seawolf class
submarines, too expensive, not enough justification Etc etc.

So I think the press coverage, especially when it is effective at raising
outrage over social programs, is effective at getting congressional action to
limit the investment in new weapon systems.

Some citations for your perusal

[1] B2 Bomber program cancellation is urged (1989) --
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/05/19/b...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/05/19/b2-bomber-
cancellation-is-urged/)

[2] Seawolf cancelled [1992] --
[https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/910802-cr.htm](https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/910802-cr.htm)

[3] Penny Pinching Submarine Warfare to Death --
[https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/01/opinion/l-penny-
pinching-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/01/opinion/l-penny-pinching-
submarine-warfare-to-death-218792.html)

[4] B1 Bomber flew in 1974 but was cancelled in 1977 --
[https://www.boeing.com/history/products/b-1b-lancer.page](https://www.boeing.com/history/products/b-1b-lancer.page)

~~~
cmroanirgo
Don't forget there are some of us completely against warfare, no matter how it
is being sold to us.

Seeing any report on defective military weaponry warms my heart... Why? Imho,
because the sole purpose of weaponry is to cause harm to others.

Isn't it time we grow up and stop the sabre rattling, and live good, honest
lives that respects the life of others? There was a Jew, 2000 yrs ago who
tried to spread this message... It seems that we're just as deaf as ever
though.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I certainly resonate with your message but I also see a bit of nuance. It
hinges on the question of what others are trying to do to you as well right?
Military weapons exist, and there are people who will use those weapons to
assert control over you (you can the people of Crimea, Syria, Kuwait, Yemen,
Myanmar, etc). So if you are ok with submitting to the whims of anyone who has
weapons, then not having weapons of your own is a viable option. I don't see
that as a very common point of view however.

------
3rdAccount
Does anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from
specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area
decently? I know in theory that there would be savings having one platform,
but making one jet modular for 3 different roles is seeming to be more
difficult than just designing 3 different jets. It can't beat the EuroFighter
in a dog fight and can't match the stealth bomber for ordinance carried
(actually a guess...please correct me if wrong) and can't match the A-10 for
ground support. It just seems like a massive mistake that is now too big to
fail.

~~~
starpilot
Because of the theoretical cost savings, as you mention. The JSF was
aggressively fashioned toward futuristic notions of distance warfare. Missiles
today have phenomenal performance, versus Vietnam era seekers that would fly
into the sun. This might have been premature with the unexpected turn into
asymmetric warfare. Also, any internet discussion on the A-10 (or SR-71, or
Concorde) devolves into uninformed fanboyism, so I won't even go there.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Vietnam era seekers that would fly into the sun_

Hehe. Have a link?

~~~
dingaling
It was first experienced by Taiwanese F-86 pilots during the Quemoy clashes
with China in 1958. Their AIM-9B early-model Sidewinders had unfiltered
seekers that considered the Sun as attractive a target as jet exhaust. Later
models had bandpass filters to prevent that.

The contemporary AIM-4 Falcon missile had a much more sophisticated seeker but
had to be cooled before firing and was useless once the coolant ran out, for
example if the pilot took too long to get a lock.

Modern IR-guided missiles use imaging IR sensors and actually recognise target
shapes.

------
kibwen
Over a trillion dollars over 28 years. There are about 250 million U.S.
taxpayers. That's $150 out of the pocket of every single taxpayer, every year,
_just_ to cover the cost of this one monumentally embarrassing failure. If
you're a U.S. citizen born after 1974, you've been setting fire to this money
annually for your entire adult life. No value has been provided other than as
a government subsidy to military contractors, and if the whole point is just
to transfer wealth to military contractors then we might as well just call it
a subsidy and have them sit on their hands rather than continually embarrass
us with their empirical incompetence. It's hard not to seethe with rage at the
thought of all the better things that this money could have been spent on. I
look forward to wasting my tax dollars on this boondoggle for the rest of my
life.

~~~
bradfa
Sure, some of the money has gone to a small number of rich people, but there's
quite a large number of working class people designing and assembling these
planes. To say that the money has been set on fire or that no value has been
provided seems a bit harsh, much of the money is employing a large number of
skilled people in the USA and in other countries. And it's not just the USA
taxpayers who are paying for this, these planes are sold to a few different
customer countries.

~~~
maxander
All of those skilled workers could have been building something _useful_ ,
however. The waste of their time and skill is indeed burning resources, in an
even _more_ concrete sense than setting money on fire.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _those skilled workers could have been building something useful_

I wouldn't say the F-35 is _useless_. It contains a breathtaking integration
of advanced technologies. There are benefits to that R&D. It's also an
incredibly capable platform–the principle complaint is it's too capable, that
we could have gotten more bang for our bucks with more less-capable planes.

~~~
arcbyte
> I wouldn't say the F-35 is useless.

You're right. After 28 years and $1 trillion it FINALLY delivered a single
bomb in Afghanistan two weeks ago.

Not _totally_ useless.

~~~
kibwen
Made all the more impressive by the fact that the Smithsonian Museum could
very well deliver a bomb in Afghanistan, if only they would dust off a P-51
Mustang, or, say, the Wright Flyer. The Taliban (or whatever today's
antagonist is that we're using to excuse this pointless war) aren't exactly
known for their extensive^W existent air force.

------
netcan
At the turn of the century, the Wright brothers were building their bicycle
planes.

Within 10 years, by the start of WW1 there were triplanes fit for war use. By
the end of the war, Germany had metal planes with a single wing... not all
that different from a modern crop duster.

Amazing what the competitive (and "save our nation") pressure of an industrial
war can do.

Immediately after the great war, helicopters and all sorts of new planes were
invented. By the time WW2 rolled around 20 years later, there were Spitfires &
heavy bombers. Japan had floating airports. The sky became the place where
land, naval and air battles were won or lost.

The pace kept up in the generation after the war. Jet engines. 3 generations
of jet fighters, each outclassing the last. Airliners more or less like modern
ones. The f-15 is still The Cavalary. 747s are not out of place in a modern
airport. 1967 & 1977 respectively.

50 years of peace, 50 years of stagnation.

This is a lesson about people and a lesson about progress.

~~~
derefr
That's one way to explain the last 100 years, sure.

Another way: militaries around the world stumbled upon a new source of low-
hanging fruit (air supremacy), one that could win wars with just the slightest
investment, as long as the enemy had invested less/none. Technological
progress sped up in the space as everyone exploited the low-hanging fruit.
Then, having picked all the low-hanging fruit, further advances in avionics
were now just as expensive as advances in any other domain—so the world's
military spending moved back to a general balance.

This same thing happened for submarines, and for steel-hulled warships before
that. When R&D has higher ROI (i.e. wins more battles for less money) than
simply building more of what you've got, you invest in R&D. When it doesn't,
you don't.

For the latest 50-year period, the low-hanging fruit in military spending has
been satellite technology—i.e., C2 and intelligence superiority. GPS-guided
ICBMs on the one hand; reports from spies delivered over Iridium on the other.
We got the Internet and cell phones from this one, before it slowed down.

But this latest R&D "sprint" _has_ indeed had most of its low-hanging fruit
plucked as well, which is why we've lately seen military R&D spending leak
away from satellites and back into other targets—including avionics R&D!
(Sometimes a mesh-network of jet fighters works better than a satellite
uplink. Expensive, though.)

Not sure what the world's next military R&D focus might be. Cyberwar, maybe,
but that might be point-of-view bias.

~~~
Balgair
I worked with one of the BIG defense contractors for a while. There was this
guy, Willy. Willy was a 'fellow' with the company, an engineer so advanced and
critical to the company that they just let him do whatever he wanted. One of
his PhDs was in chemistry, I think he was about 80 years old back then
(~2010). He did not use email at all. I thought it was crazy at the time, but
man, was WIlly right about that one. If you wanted to see him, you'd have to
go over to him and talk or drop off the memo. He had a phone, but it was the
bar down the street from the campus, as Willy was usually there, watching a
game or working on something.

I remember WIlly telling us about a time, back in the Cold War, when he'd be
given briefcases with empty aluminum bottles inside. They'd tell him to
measure the air inside and tell them if he found anything strange about that
air, chemically speaking. He didn't say if he had discovered anything strange,
though.

WIlly's general expertise was ablative nose-cone chemistry, for re-entry. In
fact, as he told it, his brain was the _entire_ field of ablative nose-cone
chemistry; at least in The West. He never wrote anything down about it, at
least not much. It was all in his head.

This is what Willy had on the company and he had them over a barrel. I came to
find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never written
anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, _at any cost_. They were the only
non-soviets that knew the engineering about so much of what the company did.
That's why Willy could just not do email and have a bar as his phone number
and be a general asshat about things. He was literally untouchable.

In fact, there were a lot of 'fellows' at the company. And it bled them dry
[0].

In my view, that is why so much of the US's defense tech is going 'backwards'.
There just isn't the work force. They called it the 'silver tsunami' [1].
Basically, the US hired for the Cold War and just really never hired again.
That's why drones have been so big in the last few years: no humans on board
means easier reqs to go through so that even undergrads can get the work done.
The same is somewhat true in space and all the other aspects of warfighting.

So it's not just that the low-hanging fruit is already plucked, though I
totally agree with you. It's that there just isn't the workforce anymore. It's
a complicated issue, so it's going to have a lot of things that are 'wrong'
with it and no one aspect is THE problem.

That said, the cyberwar has been going on for a while now. I'd look at CRISPR-
CAS9 and optogenetics as the bleeding edge frontiers to get into.

[0] [https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-
estate/20...](https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/blog/real-
estate/2015/03/lockheed-martin-sells-large-newtown-site-to-pharma.html)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Tsunami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silver_Tsunami)

~~~
derefr
> I came to find out that 'fellows' were just guys that had retired, had never
> written anything down, and then HAD to be re-hired, at any cost.

You'd think that if there's information in someone's head that a defense
contractor can construe as "crucial to the building of the country's war-
fighting competency" (i.e. "we can't build the damn planes/missiles you're
depending on without that guy"), they could, for example:

• Get Congress to subpoena the person's "testimony" for a closed session of
the Intelligence Subcommittee.

• Get the president to Commission the person as a military officer, and then
immediately court-martial them for not doing their duty to the state by
withholding the information.

• Just plain charge the person with treason, same as if they knowingly
sabotaged the planes.

~~~
smnrchrds
Do you believe any of those options would be cheaper (monetarily or
politically) than just paying a couple of engineers more salary?

~~~
derefr
In that approach, eventually the engineer dies of old age, at which point
costs go to infinity.

------
zip1234
Former Air Force here. Standard thing. Not big news.

------
raverbashing
[https://twitter.com/MikeRoach3/status/1015212921071329281](https://twitter.com/MikeRoach3/status/1015212921071329281)

~~~
robotrout
That was a very educational tweet steam. I hadn't heard of 2/3rds of the
issues he raised.

~~~
chris72205
I'd take some of it with a grain of salt. He brought up one point about
peeling paint and requiring special hangars. But outside of the RT article he
linked to, I can't find mention of that elsewhere. I didn't look into all of
his points, but that one struck as me a little ridiculous even for this flying
bucket of crap... which makes me question some of his other tweets in that
stream.

~~~
mrguyorama
>Every time they're flown, they have to be repainted. And because the F-35's
fuel is heat sensitive, EVERY TRUCK THAT CARRIES IT ALSO has to be painted
with a special heat-resistant paint.

I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if the F-35 were to use a different fuel than
standard.

~~~
raverbashing
Ah it seems this is misquoted. Not the best source, but it gives a more
plausible explanation [https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-
warm-...](https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-f-35-cant-run-on-warm-gas-
from-a-fuel-truck-that-sa-1668120726)

Tl;dr: if fuel stays in the sun it gets too hot and the plane won't run

------
signa11
sensationalist headlines at best. grounding is temporary for 24-48 hours due
to crash in sc

~~~
jki275
Pretty standard response -- inspect everything to make sure there aren't any
more of the faulty components (which evidently they've identified, which is a
bit surprising in terms of speed), and then let them fly again. Happens all
the time.

~~~
1001101
This surprised me:

"If suspect fuel tubes are installed, the part will be removed and replaced.
If known good fuel tubes are already installed, then those aircraft will be
returned to flight status."

How do they not know this? What if we were at war?

~~~
jki275
What exactly are you asking?

------
dralley
For 24-48 hours.

------
nkantar
I haven't been paying any specific attention to F-35 news, but I can only ever
recall reading negative press.

I know this particular project has been extra troubled, but is that the norm
for new military vessels/vehicles?

~~~
smacktoward
Yes it is, for American weapons systems at least. And it has been so for many
decades now. It's extremely common for the first version of a new weapons
system to have major (or even disastrous) flaws that only get ironed out in
later revisions at great expense.

Here's one example. Today's median American soldier's primary weapon is the M4
carbine
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine)),
which by all accounts is a solid piece of kit that has acquitted itself well
in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the M4 is the end of a long line of revisions made to an older weapon, the
M16 rifle
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle)),
which first rolled out during the Vietnam War. And the first version of the
M16 was so bad it got a lot of soldiers killed.

See, rifles have a lot of moving parts, which typically means they have to be
well-maintained -- periodically stripped down into parts, and then all the
parts individually cleaned and lubed -- or else they start to malfunction.
Maintaining their weapon was a standard part of a soldier's job; not something
anyone enjoyed doing, but something they did because they didn't want their
rifle to fail on them in combat.

But Colt, the makers of the M16, advertised it as a revolution in small arms
-- a "self-cleaning" rifle that used Space Age materials to remove the need
for all that fussy work. And so, when the Defense Department rolled out the
M16 to the troops in Vietnam, it didn't bother to issue any of the usual
cleaning tools along with them.

Which meant that a lot of soldiers found themselves in an awkward spot when it
turned out that Colt's testing processes for the "self-cleaning" M16 hadn't
really accounted for the rough jungle conditions of Vietnam. M16s started
jamming all over, frequently so seriously that the entire weapon was rendered
useless; and even if the soldiers carrying them had wanted to start cleaning
them to try and prevent those jams, they lacked the tools they'd need to do
so. So soldiers started getting killed, shot down in battle while frantically
struggling to un-jam their bricked rifles.

The situation got so bad that it prompted a Congressional investigation, which
found a host of reliability problems with the M16. Colt went back to work and
created a revised version, the M16A1, which mostly resolved those issues. The
M16A1, notably, was not advertised as self-cleaning. And when it finally
rolled out, it came not only with a set of cleaning tools, but with a comic
book-style manual by the famous comic artist Will Eisner explaining exactly
how to use them (which you can read here:
[http://www.astrotx.com/M-16A1%20Rifle.pdf](http://www.astrotx.com/M-16A1%20Rifle.pdf)).

And then there were even _more_ revisions developed; the M16 remained the
Army's standard rifle through the early 2000s. And then it was replaced by the
M4, which was just a shorter, lighter, even more further developed M16. So
eventually the government was able to throw enough money at a terrible weapon
to turn it into a decent one.

It's a shame so many grunts had to die along the way, of course. But hey, Colt
got paid twice! You know?

~~~
barrow-rider
> And when it finally rolled out, it came not only with a set of cleaning
> tools, but with a comic book-style manual by the famous comic artist Will
> Eisner explaining exactly how to use them (which you can read here:
> [http://www.astrotx.com/M-16A1%20Rifle.pdf](http://www.astrotx.com/M-16A1%20Rifle.pdf)).

That's an amazing piece of technical writing. The chick with the camel toe is
probably a little much and wouldn't fly these days, but I'd love to have
something like this to issue to Jr. Network Engineers.

"Spiderman explains how Spanning Tree works"

------
jostmey
Quote: "The US government's accountability office estimates all costs
associated with the project will amount to one trillion dollars."

What a waste. The money could be better spent, and I'm not referring to
spending money on something better than a weapons system. That money could buy
a lot more gun-power that a buggy fleet of fighter planes that will soon be
soon with the rise of drones.

------
SubiculumCode
I hope they are also assessing the risk posed by hardware supply line hacks,
regardless if the Bloomsberg article is factual. There are other concerns...
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/09/many-u-s-weapons-
system...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/09/many-u-s-weapons-systems-are-
vulnerable-to-cyberattack/)

------
1024core
> The crash in South Carolina involved an F-35B, which is able to land
> vertically and costs around $100m

And earlier it mentions a total cost of the program of 1 trillion dollars. So
we'd have to sell at least 10000 planes to have any hope of recouping the
costs??

~~~
sdinsn
We aren't trying to recoup costs, The program also includes all service and
support, repairs, etc.

------
clircle
Are there any good, dedicated DoD blogs/websites? Most of the stuff I read
about defense comes from more general news sites.

~~~
JBReefer
War is Boring

------
OverLoadGenius
Probably the biggest engineering project fiasco of modern times.

The money invested in this F-35 project could probably solve the homeless
problem.

------
DJBunnies
If only it were permanent.

~~~
sololipsist
Why? Air superiority is important for power projection.

Edit:

So I'm getting a comments here that are much lower-quality than I expect from
this place.

Geopolitics is not like interpersonal relationships. There is _nobody_
governing governments. It's a free-for-all, literally the state of nature. In
societies it seems like "Might makes right" is a dated concept, but you have
to remember that's _within the frame of a governed society_. Geopolitically
we're literally in a kill-or-be-killed mode.

There is no game-theoretical solution to geopolitics except to be able to
defend yourself with deadly force. _At a minimum_ you must be able to inflict
enough damage on other geopolitical entities to disincentivize them from
projecting their power within your borders. A better solution is to have as
much be able to inflict so much damage other geopolitical entities can't do
this to you so that you _have the choice_ to deploy that power wisely, as
opposed to not having the opportunity to deploy it wisely.

The military dominance of the US post-WW2 has unambiguously been a stabilizing
force on the world. I understand that doesn't guarantee it will continue to be
so, but that isn't an argument against game-theoretical geopolitical
realities.

We can't let the fact that we're inside a governed society make us forget what
it's like outside a governed society. Acting like geopolitical dynamics are
like social dynamics is profoundly stupid.

~~~
cryoshon
yeah, that's the kissinger line of thought. "realism". except it doesn't hold
up to reality, at least not in the modern or even the premodern era.

iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in the
world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't
anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them. they're
what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have some
minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard.

the answer is that nobody cares to. just as you don't bother taking a free
cupcake at a catered event because you're not hungry, the world's governments
do not necessarily increase their own power on the international stage with
perfect game-theory play.

so, "air superiority is important for power projection", sure. if you were
playing perfect game-theory and optimizing your country's power to the very
limit of what is theoretically possible, you'd always buy the best air
superiority solution. except we don't really see anyone else doing that.
russia doesn't, and china doesn't. why? the answer is that they are sated with
their current solution, even if it isn't the maximum possible solution.
they're not interested in exerting the effort that it would take to build
something like the f-35 because they recognize that it wouldn't improve their
state's power enough that it would enable them to do anything new, nor is
doing anything new such a big concern given that their main security issues
are internal rather than external.

true geopolitical "realism" is realizing that the idea of 100% pervasive and
cynical power maximization is an artifact of the american mind. countries are
far more benign than kissinger ever expected.

~~~
sololipsist
> iceland has no military, and no real political or economic significance in
> the world. it has no genuine allies to whom it is worthwhile. why doesn't
> anyone/everyone invade them? nobody would risk a major war over them.
> they're what could amount to a strategically useful port. they might have
> some minerals or something. it wouldn't even be hard.

> the answer is that nobody cares to.

This is an over-simplification of truly mind-boggling caliber.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
This is an incredibly unpersuasive response. You don't like the post? Fine.
But _correct it_ rather than just dissing it.

~~~
sololipsist
Some things don't deserve a response. In that cases it's perfectly acceptable
to note this and move on with your life.

If you correct every brain-dead thing people tell you on the internet, either
never say anything remotely controversial so you don't get ill-informed but
confident replies, you spend all day correcting people, or you literally just
started saying things on the internet to tell me how to live my life.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> Some things don't deserve a response.

But you responded anyway. You just didn't respond with anything useful. So
what you did, essentially, was waste 10,000 people's time by having them look
at your non-response "response".

~~~
sololipsist
okay mom ::rolls eyes::

