I find the 'hero' photo fascinating, of the aircraft lined up quite closely under construction. The closeness, the apparent temporary nature of the equipment nearby, the lack of there being a 'line'. Then it struck me perhaps the planes are stationary, while the 'line' moves around them. Can anyone shed any light?
Most aircraft are not built on assembly lines. They're moved to a station where a lot of sub assembly work is done and then moved to a different station. All the assembly work is done by hand. You can see that these planes are all at various stages of construction but some have their elevators and others don't. My guess is you're looking at the area where all the control surfaces are being installed. Probably all elements of flight control are installed here including the wiring harnesses, hydraulics etc.
The only aircraft I know of that was assembled on a moving "line" was the 777. It was a major innovation with that aircraft but not duplicated. Still it wasn't an assembly line in the sense of an automotive assembly line. Rather the aircraft were rolled along through the building very slowly as they were assembled.
You know it's failed when they're looking for F-16 extensions and "clean sheet" designs for another "low". Upgrades to the F/A-18 and A-10 would suffice and make the F-35, F-16, AV-8B, and EA-6B redundant for far less money. And why buy 351 dedicated trainers (T-7's) for $25M/each when F-16's could be stripped down for the same role for effectively free? (Sorry Marines, V/STOL is a dumb requirement that's too expensive, and the Osprey is a deadly POS.)
The DoD exists first to feed MIC pork projects and maximize the number of subcontractors, and "defense" second.
Depends on whether you think the free market should push all engineering talent towards ad tech in SV, or if it is worth maintaining a home grown high tech defense industry.
Recall that the iPhone would cost over a billion dollars if they only made 100 of them.
I don't understand your point, can you clarify? There is nothing free about the defense market. A few extremely large and politically wired contractors are cozy with politicians and senior defense procurement officials. So we get F-35s and Independence-class littoral ships. A $1Bb iPhone would at least work.
