F 35 Sink Hole

[Keith&Co.]

Why couldn't the US get by with just a National Guard and Coast Guard?

If they tried, Congress would insist they couldn't possibly keep the coastlines secure without aircraft carriers and Trident subs. Maybe not with 24 missile tubes, but at least ten.

And the National Guard needs nuclear capability for the last ditch defense. No matter how much they or the DOE protest the choice....

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Billions for the military and Congress doesn't bat an eye, but try to get funding for domestic infrastructure, education or any social programs and it's like pulling teeth. It's maintain The Empire at all costs and to hell with domestic welfare -- austerity and a police-surveillance state.

Why couldn't the US get by with just a National Guard and Coast Guard?

Because the Coast Guard and the National Guard can't gallop around the world solving everyone else's problems at gunpoint. We're the self-proclaimed world police, everyone's depending on us to impose order!

Sure, we suck at it. Sure, they secretly dread our becoming involved in regional conflicts. Sure, we are slowly becoming the laughing stock of the entire world with our repeated military blunders and general incompetence. And sure, military dominance has long since ceased to be a surrogate for political/economic regional hegemony. But an empire exists primarily to perpetuate itself, and it's worked for us in the past, so goddammit we're gonna keep on doing what we do until it kills us.

 

[barbos]

They say F35 lost to F16 because it was not using final version of software and the whole goal was not to show how great F35 was but to study it. And it is not supposed to be invisible just less visible, especially to onboard radars jet-fighters use. In any case if shit hits the fan and China starts the war with US, F35s will be protected by F22s

But yeah, that's lot of money, but there is a lot of aeronautical engineers who need jobs and you can't expect them to work on cure for cancer.

 

[SimpleDon]

They say F35 lost to F16 because it was not using final version of software and the whole goal was not to show how great F35 was but to study it. And it is not supposed to be invisible just less visible, especially to onboard radars jet-fighters use. In any case if shit hits the fan and China starts the war with US, F35s will be protected by F22s

Yes, the test wasn't a test of the F-16 against the F-35's maneuverability but a test of the F-35's maneuverability software. So much of the plane's flight characteristics are in its software that they have to first get it flying, then to fly like a known aircraft, the F-16, before you can start to optimize its characteristics. It is a slower process but in the end it will be much more flexible and cheaper to modify the plane by changing the software. It is what allows them to build aircraft while they are still designing and testing the software.

The F-35 isn't intended to be an air superiority fighter. It is primarily intended to be a tactical strike/ground attack bomber.

But yeah, that's lot of money, but there is a lot of aeronautical engineers who need jobs and you can't expect them to work on cure for cancer.

If we want engineers able to design high performance aircraft you have to have high performance aircraft to design. And yes, aeronautical engineers don't transfer easily into other endeavors.

The press smells blood in the water and is just repeating the very same attacks that they used against the F-22, the B-2, the F-14 and 15 and virtually every advanced plane and other military procurement since the 1960's. Remember the bad press that the M-1A Abrams main battle tank got before it was fully operational? That the tank was too vulnerable to modern munitions that can be carried by a single soldier and that whole idea of tank warfare was obsolete and that the tank was too hard to maintain?

It is as if journalists have a checklist that they go through entitled 'How to trash a military weapons procurement program.'

• Cost overruns, check.
• Too long in development, check.
• Obsolete even before production, check.
• No better than what it replaces, check.
• The only reason why it is being built is politics, check.
• There won't be a role for it on the battlefield, check.
• It doesn't meet any of its promised capabilities, check.
• Allies or potential enemies are building a better one in half of the time for one quarter the cost, check.
• The competing designs that lost out were all better, check.
• The military who are suppose to fight with it don't like it, check.
• It is too hard to maintain, check.
• It is too complicated for the modern sailor/soldier/pilot, check.
• The only reason why the program is continuing is politics, check.

And yet when they mature and are put into the field with the American military the combination of man or woman and machine are vastly superior to anyone else's.

I can accept arguments that we don't need to have 14 aircraft carrier task forces or 18 missile submarines or 10 army divisions anymore, but as long as we have people willing to fight and to die for us we still should be providing them with the best possible equipment.

 

[Tigers!]

Almost wish for a relatively simple and cheap Spitfire or P-51

 

[bilby]

Almost wish for a relatively simple and cheap Spitfire or P-51

Or the world's greatest ever interceptor - the English Electric Lightning, which was basically just two massive Rolls Royce Avon jets strapped together, with a stubby notched delta wing, and a cockpit. Fastest climb rate of any aircraft of it's time - Zero to 36,000ft in three minutes, 0.78 thrust/weight ratio, 31,000lbf of thrust on afterburner. (Please do not ask about effective combat range - it was intended for airfield protection, so it had enough fuel to get up, shoot down the enemy, and get home - leaving the MiG pilots swinging from their parachutes and thinking 'WTF was THAT?').

Simple. Cheap. Fast. What more do people want from a fighter?

 

[Deepak]

They say F35 lost to F16 because it was not using final version of software and the whole goal was not to show how great F35 was but to study it. And it is not supposed to be invisible just less visible, especially to onboard radars jet-fighters use. In any case if shit hits the fan and China starts the war with US, F35s will be protected by F22s

But yeah, that's lot of money, but there is a lot of aeronautical engineers who need jobs and you can't expect them to work on cure for cancer.

Hopefully it doesn't rain during that war

 

[bigfield]

Almost wish for a relatively simple and cheap Spitfire or P-51

Or the world's greatest ever interceptor - the English Electric Lightning, which was basically just two massive Rolls Royce Avon jets strapped together, with a stubby notched delta wing, and a cockpit. Fastest climb rate of any aircraft of it's time - Zero to 36,000ft in three minutes, 0.78 thrust/weight ratio, 31,000lbf of thrust on afterburner. (Please do not ask about effective combat range - it was intended for airfield protection, so it had enough fuel to get up, shoot down the enemy, and get home - leaving the MiG pilots swinging from their parachutes and thinking 'WTF was THAT?').

Simple. Cheap. Fast. What more do people want from a fighter?

With one of these,

and a ton of these,

a P-35 lightning would probably do OK.

 

[dismal]

Almost wish for a relatively simple and cheap Spitfire or P-51

But let's not forget, economic sink holes are good for the economy.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Or the world's greatest ever interceptor - the English Electric Lightning, which was basically just two massive Rolls Royce Avon jets strapped together, with a stubby notched delta wing, and a cockpit. Fastest climb rate of any aircraft of it's time - Zero to 36,000ft in three minutes, 0.78 thrust/weight ratio, 31,000lbf of thrust on afterburner. (Please do not ask about effective combat range - it was intended for airfield protection, so it had enough fuel to get up, shoot down the enemy, and get home - leaving the MiG pilots swinging from their parachutes and thinking 'WTF was THAT?').

Simple. Cheap. Fast. What more do people want from a fighter?

With one of these,

and a ton of these,

a P-35 lightning would probably do OK.

I think you mean the P-38 Lightning.

And yes, it actually would.

That's really the most annoying thing about the F-35. It's not that it's a flawed design that takes forever to develop and costs a trillion dollars to design and field. It's that it doesn't actually do anything that its predecessors couldn't do with a simple firmware upgrade.

 

[Tigers!]

Almost wish for a relatively simple and cheap Spitfire or P-51

Simple. Cheap. Fast. What more do people want from a fighter?

Lethality, my dear fellow, Lethality.

 

[bleubird]

Almost wish for a relatively simple and cheap Spitfire or P-51

But let's not forget, economic sink holes are good for the economy.

Whose economy?

 

[bleubird]

Insane to spend hundreds of billions to defend a nation that is falling a part.The enemy is us.Rebuilding the infrastructure would create far more jobs than more high tech weapons.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Rebuilding the infrastructure would create far more jobs than more high tech weapons.

If only they gave out medals for building bridges. And if only there was some way to make building a school seem like you were conquering something...

 

[dismal]

But let's not forget, economic sink holes are good for the economy.

Whose economy?

Whose economy does it not help?

If paying people to dig holes and fill them back in leads to economic prosperity surely paying people to design and build super high tech jet fighters leads to more?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Whose economy?

Whose economy does it not help?

If paying people to dig holes and fill them back in leads to economic prosperity surely paying people to design and build super high tech jet fighters leads to more?

Well, not if that money is better spent elsewhere. If you have people digging holes and filling them in instead of digging holes and putting new sewer lines in then you're wasting money, even if the former activity does generate some economic activity. The latter one also does this and you get value for the money spent.

It's the same with jet fighters. If you're spending money to build unecessary ones when you could be spending that money to build bridges instead, you're not getting value for your money and government funds would be better directed elsewhere.

 

[dismal]

Whose economy does it not help?

If paying people to dig holes and fill them back in leads to economic prosperity surely paying people to design and build super high tech jet fighters leads to more?

Well, not if that money is better spent elsewhere. If you have people digging holes and filling them in instead of digging holes and putting new sewer lines in then you're wasting money, even if the former activity does generate some economic activity. The latter one also does this and you get value for the money spent.

It's the same with jet fighters. If you're spending money to build unecessary ones when you could be spending that money to build bridges instead, you're not getting value for your money and government funds would be better directed elsewhere.

I don't think you're going to get massive tech breakthroughs like velcro and tang building sewers.

But anyway, why not just do both?

And if this is what you can get thru congress this is what you do because spending money on sinkholes grows the economy.

 

[bigfield]

Well, not if that money is better spent elsewhere. If you have people digging holes and filling them in instead of digging holes and putting new sewer lines in then you're wasting money, even if the former activity does generate some economic activity. The latter one also does this and you get value for the money spent.

It's the same with jet fighters. If you're spending money to build unecessary ones when you could be spending that money to build bridges instead, you're not getting value for your money and government funds would be better directed elsewhere.

I don't think you're going to get massive tech breakthroughs like velcro and tang building sewers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink)

Sales of Tang were poor until NASA used it onJohn Glenn's Mercury flight,^[3] and subsequentGemini missions. Since then, it was closely associated with the U.S. manned spaceflightprogram, leading to the misconception that Tang was invented for the space program.^[4][5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro

The original patented hook and loop fastener was invented in 1948 by theSwisselectrical engineerGeorge de Mestral, who patented it in 1955 and subsequently refined and developed its practical manufacture until its commercial introduction in the late 1950s.De Mestral developed a fastener that consisted of two components: a lineal fabric strip with tiny hooks that could "mate" with another fabric strip with smaller loops, attaching temporarily, until pulled apart.^[1] Initially made ofcotton, which proved impractical,^[2] the fastener was eventually constructed with nylon and polyester.^[3]
De Mestral gave the name Velcro, a portmanteau of the French wordsvelours ("velvet"), and crochet ("hook"),^[4][5] to his invention.

Couldn't have done that without the military?

 

[dismal]

Couldn't have done that without the military?

You speak in realities while I indulge in legends.

If one can justify sinking money into the space program based on tang and velcro -- and people do -- one can certainly imagine similar wonders spiraling outward from investment in super high tech jet fighters.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, not if that money is better spent elsewhere. If you have people digging holes and filling them in instead of digging holes and putting new sewer lines in then you're wasting money, even if the former activity does generate some economic activity. The latter one also does this and you get value for the money spent.

It's the same with jet fighters. If you're spending money to build unecessary ones when you could be spending that money to build bridges instead, you're not getting value for your money and government funds would be better directed elsewhere.

I don't think you're going to get massive tech breakthroughs like velcro and tang building sewers.

But anyway, why not just do both?

And if this is what you can get thru congress this is what you do because spending money on sinkholes grows the economy.

Alrighty then ...