You kind of wonder

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11 years 3 months

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You kind of wonder if aircraft companies that build planes for the military intensionally start out with a flawed plane like the F-35. It is not rocket science to think that they know after Billion have been sunk into the project, the gov wont want to drop it. Then the A/C companies can make further billions by improving it to make it squadron ready.

IMO they could make an excellent airplane from the get go if they wanted to. I offer as an example the F-8 Crusader. It was great from the beginning and needed little development to make it squadron ready.

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11 years 10 months

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There's a BIG difference between the F-35 and the F-8. First of all, it was designed as a gunfighter with the missiles coming later on. The F-35 is a net-centric multirole aircraft that basically has to fit every combat role in the USAF, USMC, USN and allies. The computer systems alone on the F-35 probably defy belief. I don't think LM went into the project determined to fail, but came across all of the problems of fitting a square peg into a round hole. Not sure we can compare both aircraft here...

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18 years 10 months

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You kind of wonder if aircraft companies that build planes for the military intensionally start out with a flawed plane like the F-35. It is not rocket science to think that they know after Billion have been sunk into the project, the gov wont want to drop it. Then the A/C companies can make further billions by improving it to make it squadron ready.

IMO they could make an excellent airplane from the get go if they wanted to. I offer as an example the F-8 Crusader. It was great from the beginning and needed little development to make it squadron ready.

This really is insulting to the incredibly intelligent gifted and talented Engineers who design these aircraft and weapon systems, do you honestly think people who strive to achieve the best will go against their natural mindset to do something that could ultimately cost life and limb?

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15 years 2 months

Posts: 2,619

You kind of wonder if aircraft companies that build planes for the military intensionally start out with a flawed plane like the F-35. It is not rocket science to think that they know after Billion have been sunk into the project, the gov wont want to drop it. Then the A/C companies can make further billions by improving it to make it squadron ready.

IMO they could make an excellent airplane from the get go if they wanted to. I offer as an example the F-8 Crusader. It was great from the beginning and needed little development to make it squadron ready.

I figure F-35 is a complex system that can have both VTOL and STOL version...and go supersonic in stealth manner..that is 10 fold more difficulty than a F-8.

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17 years 10 months

Posts: 784

I figure F-35 is a complex system that can have both VTOL and STOL version...and go supersonic in stealth manner..that is 10 fold more difficulty than a F-8.

What is apparent is that instead of focusing on one airframe to come to a conclusion, how about you look at the entire military machine and see just how many projects run over budget, don't deliver the product as specified, how many "upgrades" it needs before it enters service.

Blind freddy can see that these days more and more projects are ballooning out and delivering a rubbish product to the military.
Its about maximizing profit and keeping the contract going for as long as possible.
And you honestly believe this isn't the case then you I have a stealth fighter to sell you at a cheap cost.
(oh and don't tell me contract clauses are always in the governments favour, because they aren't)

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15 years 4 months

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This really is insulting to the incredibly intelligent gifted and talented Engineers who design these aircraft and weapon systems, do you honestly think people who strive to achieve the best will go against their natural mindset to do something that could ultimately cost life and limb?

Possibly. Or possibly more aimed at the programme managers and profit squeezers. Likewise if the customer is too naive, optimistic or has prioritised other things over a cost effective solution then the engineer's professional opinions get lost in the noise.

To take another example, Nimrod MR4 engineers say you cannot just ad new wings, each airframe is essentially unique. (And that is engineers in MOD PE and in BAe) but their professional views overruled.

Planned Obsolescence is not a new thing. Detroit 1920s I believe when it was first formalised. Mercedes Benz later in the century realising that there was no point building a car which lasts forever, you do not get to sell many spare parts (income stream 1 crippled) and you do not sell enough replacement cars (income stream 2 crippled).

Where defence procurement makes the issue worse is when we offer a private sector monopoly. Why on earth would the company gifted the monopoly NOT look to add chargeable follow on work?

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24 years 2 months

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It only took 37 months from start to first flight for F-117. And another 2 years of flight test to get to IOC.

But F-117 did not follow the Pentagon's acquisition process
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11 years 3 months

Posts: 162

Maybe if the F-35 wasnt intened to be the do all, end all, do everything, be all things to all people it wouldnt be such a POS as it is so far. It plainly shows that there should be two classes of aircraft, fighters, and attack planes. If you had the two classes of plane, one as an ASF and one as an attack plane, they could be simplified for that role.

For support of my argument, I offer the F-111 designed under the self proclaimed genius MacNamara. As a fighter it was to be great for both the Air Force and the Navy. It was a total turkey. Only when it was turned into a medium bomber did it become useful. Why didnt the Pentagon learn from this stupid idea of making one design a do all design. Additionally----------when we had the F8U and the A4D, they were great at their separate roles.

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15 years 5 months

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Well but two classes of plane, fighter (F-22) and attack (F-35) is exactly what US did, and F-35 will be a good attack a/c.
The issue is for the allies

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19 years

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I agree. It might have been a bit much asking one airframe do do all those things, but LM seems to be on the right track to getting it to work.

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18 years 10 months

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This really is insulting to the incredibly intelligent gifted and talented Engineers who design these aircraft and weapon systems, do you honestly think people who strive to achieve the best will go against their natural mindset to do something that could ultimately cost life and limb?

Yes

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14 years 3 months

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first year in engineering school from a buddy of mine:

"learn to make things less than perfect, you'll sell plenty of upgrades and patches that way..."

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24 years 2 months

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"Better" is the enemy of "good enough".

Designers strive to better the requirements levied against them with some small margin to compenstate for issues which may arise. They also get hammered by their boss if they dramatically exceed performance requirements because performance costs money.

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11 years 3 months

Posts: 162

Yes the F8U was a gun fighter. It was designed just before the arm chair know it alls in the Pentagon decided that guns were useless. How many reports have we all read about fighter pilots in Nam cursing those fools that they had no guns. These pilots said if only I had a gun the Mig right in front of me would have been shot down. Finally they hung external guns under the F4s but that only slowed them down and added unnessary weight.

Yes we have the F-22 and the kind of the F-35, but just you wait, some idiot will want to add bomb shackels under the f-22. The problem still remains that the more complicated a machine (an airplane) is the more prone to failure it is! Notice how the simple light weight MIG-21s gave the F4s hell. Notice how the anvil simple AK47s works when american rifles jam. Or Zeros out classed american fighters in WWII.

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12 years 3 months

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The Zero was a technological marvel when it came out. Don't get wrong on it. It outclassed the US manufactured plane by being superior technologically.

Prob was that to reach that point, Japanese Engineers had put themselves in a blind alley.

What I am saying is nothing new and would still constitute some kind of lessons nowadays that some still fails to understand.

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18 years 3 months

Posts: 5,267

Yes the F8U was a gun fighter. It was designed just before the arm chair know it alls in the Pentagon decided that guns were useless. How many reports have we all read about fighter pilots in Nam cursing those fools that they had no guns. These pilots said if only I had a gun the Mig right in front of me would have been shot down. Finally they hung external guns under the F4s but that only slowed them down and added unnessary weight.

Yes we have the F-22 and the kind of the F-35, but just you wait, some idiot will want to add bomb shackels under the f-22. The problem still remains that the more complicated a machine (an airplane) is the more prone to failure it is! Notice how the simple light weight MIG-21s gave the F4s hell. Notice how the anvil simple AK47s works when american rifles jam. Or Zeros out classed american fighters in WWII.

Have a look at the statistics for air to air kills between US fighter jets and Vietnamese during the Vietnam war, the vast majority of kills made by US jets were with missiles not canons. The F-8 got most of its kills with the AIM-9 Sidewinder rather then it notoriously unreliable Colt 20mm cannon. The F-4 got most of its kills with missiles rather then cannons:

Missile kills: 82
Cannon kills: 16.5

The F-4 got the most kills with the AIM-7 Sparrow, a missile often derided for its performance in the Vietnam war. Based upon the Vietnam war the conclusion is clear, missiles were decisively superior to guns in combat.

The current M4 is a very different beast to the original M16 fielded in Vietnam, it is by in large reliable and accurate now. Like any rifle keep it clean and it will shoot well, it should also be noted the AK is not without its problems.

The Zero might well of outclassed American fighters early in the Second World War albeit partially down to poor US tactics and Japan having a very experience pilot cadre by the end of the war it was utterly outclassed by the new generation of allied fighters being fielded in the Pacific region.

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A bit off topic, but with regards to the comments on the Zero I agree. It's not often mentioned, and indeed much of the credit goes to designs such as the Hellcat, Corsair, and Mustang, but once the proper tactics were put into place much more common early war fighters, now available in improved variants, namely the F4F Wildcat and P-40 Warhawk, were able to compete with the Zero and gain favorable results.

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12 years 3 months

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A bit off topic, but with regards to the comments on the Zero I agree. It's not often mentioned, and indeed much of the credit goes to designs such as the Hellcat, Corsair, and Mustang, but once the proper tactics were put into place much more common early war fighters, now available in improved variants, namely the F4F Wildcat and P-40 Warhawk, were able to compete with the Zero and gain favorable results.

Ppl fails to understand that what made the Zero what it was is its light weight and superior aerodynamics (at the time).

In UK and US for example, to have the same mass ratio, ppl were designing short fighter with a lot of drag induced by the the bottle neck effect of the short rear fuselage.

With nearly (from my memory and ultra simplified) 1000kg less in mass for the same power, the Zero was streamlined and got a 360° vision canopy. However it was built with ultra light material, no protection (this is fairly well known) and nearly 1000 parts more engineered in a sophisticated material.

That nbr of parts made the cost and ease of production the Achilles heel of the Japanese. The Italian had exactly the same prob but with even a lower level of tech with their Macchi's.

Of course, the overall result didn't come only from the above. But on an engineering point of view, that's what mattered teh most.