> “Earlier today, the Milestone Decision Authority, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William A. LaPlante, approved the Milestone C / Full Rate Production (MSC/FRP) of the F-35 Lightning II aircraft with the signing of an Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM) after a meeting with the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB).”
The language could very well be from some dark humor novel making fun of three letter acronyms. Definitely reminds me parts of Catch-22.
Now I can use BMcBF and you have all the information you need to work out what I'm on about.
I'm pretty sure that "Usage and abusage" encourages that format.
The only slightly controversial aspect of my example is M vs Mc. Mc is already an abbreviation, so should it be repeated intact? For me, Mc is complicated enough as a contraction and abbreviation to warrant deployment in full, as I have done.
sadly, as time goes by, this is becoming less of a norm. people just spit out acronyms because they are so used to, but fail to take a second that someone less familiar might actually be reading it. in previous discussions, this receives some support as "it's targeted a like minded readers" or "they're not professional writers" or "it's just a blog" blah blah.
for tweets, i'm surprised we still you vowels. for longer form posts, it would be nice to still be readable.
I see where you’re coming from. But it’s a fascinating window into the nitty gritty of managing a 20+ year, $1 trillion+ government construction project.
Some of those silly seeming acronyms, like MSC for “milestone C”, probably are included because people who actually work on and around this project have naturally adopted them. I bet there are senior level employees in and outside the government who's whole career has been spent on this one project.
I once worked at the Pentagon, and my co-workers noted that I wasn't really a Pentagon employee until I could string together a sequence of no less than five acronyms back-to-back in a sentence and still have it make sense. My five were "JS J5 GCP VEO IPR."
That long availability is part of why anything aerospace, marine or heavy industry costs an arm and a leg. With dozens of millions of dollars apiece at stake and an expected service time of many decades, the economics make sense.
Wouldn't components get cheaper over the long term? Manufacturing must get better during the years and old tech should not be that secret anymore. 30 years to optimise the manufacturing line to make the same components? What I am missing?
Aerospace programs can have extremely long timelines in the private sector, too. Variants of the Boeing 737 have been produced since 1966. While the recent MAX versions were flawed and Boeing has some real quality issues, you can still get service parts for the original airframe.
The F-35 program was developed with the principle of concurrency in mind. The first aircraft rolled off the production line before the majority of the parts were finalized. Think of it as the first build from your CI/CD pipeline.
The benefits are similar to the reasoning behind setting up CI/CD in software. They are just more significant, as production takes a while to ramp up when it comes to complex hardware.
They've already produced over 1000 of the ~ 2400 they are expected to produce.
As for upgrades.. they're behind schedule.[0] There's Tech Refresh 3, which looks to be improved computers/displays/software, which is needed for Block 4, "which will include new sensors, the ability to carry more long-range precision weapons, more powerful data fusion, increased interoperability with other platforms and advanced electronic warfare capabilities."[1]
a nasty, brutal peer-vs-peer war is going on right now between what is one of the largest militaries in the world (Russia) against a smaller, but heavily supplied by NATO (Ukraine).
most of the fighting, and a whole lot of dying, has been with late-cold-war era tech. The upgraded T-72 tank, and it's successors, the T-80, and T-90, for example, are all far older than 2006.
Cost per flight hour is still much higher than its slightly less capable competitors.
I don't know what the argument is for that. Maybe that sim training will be a larger percentage of training in the future, and therefore operating costs don't matter so much? Take whatever jet has the best capabilities, period?
I think what that misses is that maintenance of real aircraft will atrophy without constant pilot feedback. Of course mechanics can follow the maintenance guidelines, but so much of that, historically, is guided, modified, and improved by experience from wear and tear from actual use.
I guess it depends on how much one values stealth. I'm just an armchair-most-things, but it seems to me that there are many situations stealth doesn't matter as much as effective robot range, turn-around time and ease of logistics.
If rumors are to be believed, without reflectors on, the F-35 should have a radar cross section smaller than a quarter (which is a bit larger than a 1 Euro coin). On top of that, its radar is purported to outrange Russian and Chinese radars by almost 2:1. Just looking at it for air supremacy missions, the thing is basically invisible (to radar), and can launch a missile at an enemy jet before they could even detect it, if it wasn't basically invisible.
I mean, even if it had a larger cross section it could probably pick off Russian fighters before those could do anything in return. But with the stealth it has, it could creep up on them and they wouldn't even know what happened until it was too late.
I'm most interested in what the unit economics here are. Inefficiencies in Western manufacturing are seem like they could be significant since the big threat in the short term seems to be a WWI style blow up by UN security council countries.
The US is basically broke and seems to be struggling industrially. It won't be able to ignore economics if it has to conduct a war against an industrial power.
It’s always amazing to consider what people think about the economy vs how it’s actually doing.
Japan has a Debt to GDP ratio of 255%, relatively few natural resources, and a rapidly aging population, yet it is still doing reasonably well. America by comparison is in a vastly better position economically.
Being a net creator means foreign investors are less interested in investing inside your country than your own population is interested in investing outside of it. In many ways it’s advantageous, but also a sign something negative is going on.
> Japan has a Debt to GDP ratio of 255% ... yet it is still doing reasonably well
and
> Being a net creator ... [is] a sign something negative is going on.
How do you synthasize these? Would the Japanese be economically better off if they just forgave the debts of all the people who owe them money? That seems suspicious to me. As far as I can tell the argument is that the US is doing better than Japan, Japan is different to the US and therefore the US is not broke.
I don't think that is a strong argument. If the US engaged in heavy war spending, they'd have to print like madmen and don't think their economy would cope well. Let alone where they'd get the money to prepare for a conflict without focusing on manufacturing efficiency; it isn't easy to outspend people from this starting position because they seem to be finding the limit of what they can borrow. The people they owe money to aren't going to get it back in real terms either, seems safe to say.
Reasonably well doesn’t mean everything is great, just that the country is continuing to function. Japan’s GDP growth rate (total and per capita) has been terrible for years, but they are a long way from becoming a failed state.
In many ways Japan’s economy actually fits people’s perception of the US economy.
That's a stupid metric, I don't know why they keep bringing it up. Japan is a good debtor and it's probably cheap for them to finance their debts so they could end up paying less for them than a bad debtor would for a debt worth 50% of their GDP.
Money spent on the economy stimulates growth even if it comes from loans.
I'm not an economist but probably I would probably define the ideal amount of debt a country should have is when the amount of economic growth coming from the extra money is equalled by the costs of financing said debt.
Two different international coalitions are now trying to design 6th-generation fighters that will be available for export, but the earliest they could possibly be available is 2035. So, for at least another decade the F-35 will be the only survivable 5th-generation fighter available for purchase in US-aligned countries.
There are still a few other 4th-generation fighters in production, some with modernized systems, but at this point they're only suitable for a limited set of defensive or low-intensity missions. Russia and China supposedly also have operational 5th-generation fighters now but it's unclear whether those actually work, and they can't build enough to even supply their own forces let alone exports.
China has more than 200+ J-20s and growing. The J-31 is there too, but likely in smaller numbers for carriers?
Your point on how effective they really are or not is on point though. Ukraine has shown a lot of Russian wunderwaffe aircraft performing less than spectacularly.
Basically, but also looking like increasingly transient victory through attrition that's going to backfire on US alliance in long term.
TLDR - Convince western bloc to burden share development cost of joint program, burn partners by retaining near exclusive control over deployment and development. See drama that US has control over mission data files, that can only be generated at Eglin AFB, aka non US operators have essentially no sovereign control over their F35s. In the meantime, partners stuck on F35 platform because multi generational gamble commitment killed their own aero industry and there's no alternative short/medium term.
There's a reason almost every non-US F35 operator that can, is developing their own fighter, or partnering up in programs to to develop non US associated fighters (history US joint programs tech sharing drama entirely different shitshow) - actual long term operators of F35 have come to realize getting captured by F35 US/Lockmart SAAS is highly problematic. Borderline treasonous if we're being honest.
US can probably fix this by openning up program, or wait for other programs to fail technically/economically. Seeing how US can barely wrest F35 from Lockheed contracts, and how behind other western programs are, the latter probably more likely.
EDIT: Sorry - The article was about it took 17 YEARS to work out all these bugs...
So - it reminded me of the thought of the 737max bugs that boeing is plagued with right now...
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I'm really curious to know how much of all these billions we are sending out to all these wars will come back to this project?
Also, in a general aviation sense, I think all planes should have a link to their service records.
I think that service records should be required to be made public for ALL large transit modals; sea, air, rail, etc.
A restaurant has to publicly post their health score.
Thoughts
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I just thought of: there should be public data sets from the FAA with all service records for all licensed commercial aircraft - and an llm fine tuned to produce ratings and spot errors.
This I think would be an epic(ly) hard thing to do, however the current Boeing Catastrophuk ESP with the 'suicide' of the Whistleblower would be good leverage to force this law.
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Actually I asked BING to GPTify this thought more succinctly, and got a pretty pretty pretty good response:
For Boeing’s crash data over the last 40 years, I can provide a general overview. However, specific annual data might not be readily available in a single source.
Here’s what I found:
Here is every Boeing Safety event Since 1970 on the NTSB site
Tax money spent on it. Does it effectively make every every taxpayer citizen a shareholder? Shareholders deserve to know project spending and efficiency.
> Shareholders deserve to know project spending and efficiency
One, shareholding is a bad analogy for democracy.
Two, shareholders—and voters in a republic—delegate responsibility, including the responsibility to protect secrets. Our spooks would kill for China or Russia’s air force service records, and for good reason: it lets you exploit patterns and limitations.
Yeah, that came across to me as weird take as well. Like they have a point they really want to make, but just comes across very tone deaf to the actual conversation at hand (if not just missed/ignored).
I was reading service records as what conflicts it had been in, and what it's record was during those conflicts. It took a second that they were conflating this like it was a Boeing passenger plane type of thing. oy vey! There might have been a big whooshing sound as the point flew.
That was the f22. And we blocked international sales in favor of the f35. The death of the f22 should not be mourned, we will get 6th gen research to replace it.
As for the everybody wants it bit, this is very true. Much to the ~~shargrin~~ chagrin of EU military industry. With one of our presidential candidates calling for us pulling out of nato, with us not backing Ukraine, I would expect that the f35 is the last major military product we sell in the EU this way. And for as much as I might not love it, that spending is a large part of our exports and economy.
noun
A keen feeling of mental unease, as of annoyance or embarrassment, caused by failure, disappointment, or a disconcerting event.
"To her chagrin, the party ended just as she arrived."
Vexation; mortification.
If someone invades some Eastern European country we get pulled into a war, even if there’s no indication that it would ever have involved the US otherwise.
Even without the export ban, there was no real international demand for the F-22. The cost was so high that none of our close allies could even remotely afford it, especially after the end of the Cold War and prior to the rise of China as an expansionist global power. Back when F-22 production was terminated in 2009, everyone was cutting (or at least not increasing) military spending. If Japan or Australia had really pushed to buy the F-22 it would have been possible to produce an export model with the more sensitive items stripped out. They didn't want it.
F22's maintenance burden was vastly higher than the F35, which is still quite expensive.
Costs are also somewhat weirdly calculated, by just taking hours flown / cost. Maybe we could fly the jet a lot more for a modest increase in cost, & the numbers would look much better. But we don't fly that much, especially given the teething issues (such as the oxygen supply issues) we've had. There was a really great report I think based on GAO or maybe direct from GAO that covered f35 expenses very closely, comparing across services over time, that really was interesting to see; haven't found the link again though alas.
The F35 is also a far more advanced sensor & communication system, I believe. F22 was a more conventional stealth where the pilots got the mission, got on the air, & kept minimal emissions to the target & hopefully back; the f117 I think had similar characteristics. This isn't nearly as general purpose a role.
> that spending is a large part of our exports and economy.
I'm seeing annual US exports at $2 trillion, with military exports at $56bn, or 2.8%. That is definitely material, but hard to call that "large part of"
I love to admire war machines on "hacker" "news" it is such an important part of our site's culture. Technology is always morally neutral, of course, even (or especially?) if it is explicitly designed to cause death and misery.
The US, and the allies to which it exports F-35s, are overwhelmingly a net force for peace in the world. There’s a reason why the phrase “Pax Americana” is so well-known. You can think of these as war machines, since they’re literally machines made for use in war — but you can also think of them as war prevention machines, causing would-be aggressors to think twice before, like, invading Singapore or some such unpleasantness.
While I take your point, it’s interesting to note that the US seems poised to return an isolationist leader back into power, pulling funding from NATO and likely resuming a hostile attitude to China. There are many authoritarian leaders looking at how Ukraine and Israel are progressing and considering making a move of their own. Especially as supply issues and wavering political support for overseas military interventions are telling signs of weakness in Pax Americana to protect the world, with attendant peril for the global economy
Edit: Just in case it wasn’t obvious, this evolving situation is counter to the hypothesis that improving military capability means ‘world peace’, particularly when there is always asymmetry and misalignment between geopolitical forces
With War Bonds and rationing of certain materials instead of debt financing them through foreign governments.
Sorry, you said won, not pay for. But the point stands. If we were to get into a conflict with China, not sure how the military industrial complex would get funded.
You could have picked a better example to counter the OP. It was the ‘war machines’ of ‘death and misery’ that began and enabled a war of such scale, and it was attrition (specifically Russian attrition) of soldiers and arms that brought it to a close.
if you look through the comments you'll see there's little discussion of the weaponry. The fascinating thing is how huge this project is and how it has become one of the most expensive things ever built.
See this from wikipedia, for example:
The JSF program was expected to cost about $200 billion for acquisition in base-year 2002 dollars when SDD was awarded in 2001.[56][57] As early as 2005, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) had identified major program risks in cost and schedule.[58] The costly delays strained the relationship between the Pentagon and contractors.[59] By 2017, delays and cost overruns had pushed the F-35 program's expected acquisition costs to $406.5 billion, with total lifetime cost (i.e., to 2070) to $1.5 trillion in then-year dollars which also includes operations and maintenance.[60][61][62] The F-35A's unit cost for LRIP Lot 13 was $79.2 million.[63] Delays in development and operational test and evaluation, including integration into the Joint Simulation Environment, pushed full-rate production decision to March 2024, although actual production rate had already approached the full rate by 2020; full rate at the Fort Worth plan is 156 aircraft annually.[64][65]
Much was made of the fact that, once modern western equipment arrives in UK, it will wipe the floor with soviet union relics that serve in the Russian army. Instead, it has hardly made a difference.
The difference in price, even of simple non-mobile artillery pieces, is huge. Because they are so expensive, we cannot field as much equipment, and we've been telling ourselves that our modern equipment is worth multiple unit of the other side. Now I am starting to think we've just been deluding ourselves, and in reality we are just outgunned and the military complex is a huge graft.
In this context, by UK do you mean Ukraine? Because I can't see how the United Kingdom would make sense.
Anyway, assuming it was Ukraine, then, yes, the western equipment made a lot of difference. In the first months of the war it was the Javelins, and the NLAWs. Then it was the HIMARS. Then the anti-air defenses, like the Patriot. All these things absolutely made a difference.
The problem is that there was not more of those. But that was by design. You could say that not in a thousand years would Putin actually use nukes. But I bet you said he would not invade Ukraine until the day he did.
Right now Ukraine is still standing, and Putin did not use nukes. It could be better, but it could be worse, much worse.
Let us not forget: before this war, Russians went on holiday in Odesa. Ukrainians went on holiday in St. Petersburg.
It's not a genocidal war of annihilation. It's not WW2 redux. It's not Holodomor 2.0. I do not think everybody realises how low the stakes of this conflict really are.
That’s a very cavalier way of looking at things. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people have died already, and millions of people live now as refugees. What does it take to make something high stakes in your view?
This was mostly said about tanks, and by few serious commentators. In a static war like this, a tank is a tank pretty much regardless of how fancy it is. NATO does not expect to fight a static war. Partially because it has access to copious amounts of the real force multiplier, air power - vanishingly little of which has been given to Ukraine!
It has made a huge difference. Loss rates and survivability of western hardware in Ukraine are vastly better than the Soviet equipment, and the Ukrainians will say as much.
There are caveats, like: a tank that hits a mine is going to be disabled one way or another, and a disabled tank won't survive too long if it's anywhere near the front.
The problem isn't the quantity of equipment, it's the quantity of munitions. For example, Ukraine has only 30 or so HIMARS units but that's more than enough to fully consume every GMLRS munition we can provide them.
The crux of it is that the weapons have improved very fast (range and energy density and targeting and rate of fire and other functionality all improving very fast) but protective systems like armour are not nearly keeping pace.
It's looking a bit like the struggle between armoured knights and guns. The place where the rubber really meets the road on this, the Big Problem, is surface navy: what's the lifespan of a floating metal castle in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Can someone explain what purpose a manned fighter jet serves in the age of UCAV? I understand with the F35 specifically it’s turned into a jobs programme, but why not turn it unmanned?
Part of the design brief for the F-35 is to be a battlefield C&C for drones in the future. So the pilot would be the controlling authority in the battle space for allowing weapons free, etc.
No idea if that will come true, but it was absolutely one capability briefed. I'm not a project participant, but I was peripheral both during development and early operational stages .
Why? We already have AWACS that essentially serves as C&C for fighter squadrons.
Although, I could see how it might proceed as you suggest. Allow AWACS to direct squadrons into areas of interest and keep the bigger picture in mind while allowing the squadron level pilots to C&C the drones and focus on the details of which targets to engage. All from a nicely air conditioned "cockpit" from Sunnyvale
The UCAVs produced under the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (aka "loyal wingman") program will eventually be controllable from a variety of manned platforms including E-2/E-3/E-7 AWACS aircraft. But in a potential conflict with China they will be forced to hang back out of easy data link range due to the escalating AAM threat.
Remote piloting generally isn't a viable approach for near-peer conflicts. The communication links are too vulnerable, and even when they're working the latency is too high.
AIs aren't good enough to fly it autonomously. That means it would have to be controlled, which means it would have to continuously transmit situational information back to the controller. So goodbye stealth.
1. Development started in 2000, and the first airframe (albeit with non-finalized parts) rolled off in 2006.
2. The pilot can make independent decisions even in the presence of overwhelming communication jamming.
DO you really want nukes on a UAV? The last step in that has always been a human, and I would like that to remain NOT on a connection that can be remotely highjacked (even if a slim margin).
The question is will we get more UCAV in the f35 role. The answer is "maybe". It's not like remote pilots on a carrier are any safer from dying in a peer engagement than if they were in the plane. In fact you may make yourself vulnerable to a decapation strike at that point.
But why dont we have the pilots in, say Arizona. Well latency is a bitch, I'll leave it to Grace Hopper to explain why this is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE2uls6iIEU
I wonder how F-35 compares to J-35 in terms of stealth. From the new generation of fighter jets coming out, looks like all the armaments are being loaded in internal bays.
Interesting that all these designs are starting to converge and look very similar.
Nothing out there from foreign competitors compares to the F-35. And keep in mind that the F-35 isn't nearly as good as the F-22, B-2, or B-21. You'll have to keep your eyes out for the forthcoming 6th Gen fighter (literally, because you really won't see that one on radar).
The language could very well be from some dark humor novel making fun of three letter acronyms. Definitely reminds me parts of Catch-22.
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