DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

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Mothra
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DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:15 pm

The F-35 is a trillion-dollar lemon, according to Pierre Sprey, co-designer of the F-16:



Can't find a transcript of it anywhere, but the long and short of it is around 7:16. According to Sprey, the F-35 isn't effective at any of the numerous roles, because they all interfere with each other. It can't maneuver because it has short wings, because it needs short wings for VTOL. It can only hold two bombs, because it needs to be able to dogfight. It isn't stealthy because it's large, and overfull, and burns fuel at an incredible rate.

The actual point of the plane is to spend money.

A little surprising and encouraging to see John McCain speaking out about the folly of the Military Industrial Complex:

“This is, of course, totally unacceptable. It is the kind of cronyism that should make us all vigilant against, as President Eisenhower warned us over 50 years ago, the military-industrial complex," McCain said in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday.


I doubt that's going to go anywhere, but it's nice to hope the GOP would actually help strengthen our military rather than continue funneling a quarter of our budget into a program with no return.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Classic » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:31 pm

Is...
Is it weird that I'm always happy seeing people frankly complain about ridiculous engineering requirements?

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Blossom » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:37 pm

Ultimately, it's not as though those programs are wasting money. That's a lot of contractor and engineering jobs, there. Military contracting is the biggest socialist program they ever snuck past conservatism.
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:04 pm

Our Conservative government has an incredibly mad hard-on for those jets, even though they're quite obviously ill-suited to our needs and are probably a disastrous purchase which will see massive cost overruns. The purchasing program is in limbo right now (we have not firmly committed to a next-generation fighter to replace our current fleet), because it's become a ridiculous multi-year embarrassment, but reading between the lines it's clear that those are the jets the current government still wants.

Reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaalllllly hoping that purchase gets killed for good, because my god is it ever an expensive waste.
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Classic » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:07 pm

TA wrote:Ultimately, it's not as though those programs are wasting money. That's a lot of contractor and engineering jobs, there. Military contracting is the biggest socialist program they ever snuck past conservatism.


Except if it were a different socialist make-work style program, it could develop infrastructure or at least delay the decay of the infrastructure we've already invested in.

I don't think anybody is actually complaining about socialist programs. People are just complaining about who they are targeting and how directly and effectively.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:10 pm

Well, the recurring theme of modern US socialist spending is that it has to cost twice as much as socialist spending elsewhere and be only half as effective, because you have to go through this ridiculous rigamarole of pretending it's not actually socialist spending (see: the way health care has gradually crept up on Single Payer without actually getting there)
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Blossom » Tue Jun 17, 2014 7:02 pm

Classic wrote:
TA wrote:Ultimately, it's not as though those programs are wasting money. That's a lot of contractor and engineering jobs, there. Military contracting is the biggest socialist program they ever snuck past conservatism.


Except if it were a different socialist make-work style program, it could develop infrastructure or at least delay the decay of the infrastructure we've already invested in.

I don't think anybody is actually complaining about socialist programs. People are just complaining about who they are targeting and how directly and effectively.


Well, yeah, it could be spent far better. But be leery when you see someone, especially McCain, railing against an ineffective government program as though the money were just being set on fire or something. He's probably a lot more angry that the government has that money and is spending that money on hiring people at all, what it's actually being spent on is incidental.
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby TedBelmont » Tue Jun 17, 2014 8:05 pm

David Axe did a pretty great rundown on the F-35, the hows and whys of its creation, its flaws(pretty much everything, but mainly the VTOL), and the alternatives. Bonus: a Chinese Knockoff Version that's better than the original.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Mon Jun 23, 2014 9:20 am

Some decent commentary on PoeTV about the F-35, in particular, this bit on drone warfare:

Lurchi wrote:Is there any practical reason drones can't do everything manned fighters can and more?

Urist wrote:For killing civilians or so called militants? Drones are fine.

Going up against a developed country? A drone would be lucky to take off let alone bomb anything unless it is fully autonomous and can be expected to operate without any direction from the ground.

They have all the same problems GCI systems had back in the 50s-70s but far worse. Expect them to get jammed and even worse taken over and used against you. That and the pilot is a pretty small part of the package when carrying 10000+ pounds of ordnance in an airframe built for high speed flight, though a very expensive part.

Missiles are basically suicide drones stripped of any pretext of surviving their mission anyways, no heavy landing gear or fuel needed for the return trip.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jun 23, 2014 9:25 am

So is this how real, functioning, AI gets made? See, pilotless fighters have far higher theoretical performance ceilings, so if combat air supremacy awaits the first country with a true fully autonomous computer-controlled aircraft...
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:08 am

TedBelmont wrote:David Axe did a pretty great rundown on the F-35, the hows and whys of its creation, its flaws(pretty much everything, but mainly the VTOL), and the alternatives. Bonus: a Chinese Knockoff Version that's better than the original.

Which, rumor has it, was designed using elements from the F-35 schematics the Chinese government cyber-stole from Lockheed Martin between 2009 and 2011.

Mongrel wrote:So is this how real, functioning, AI gets made? See, pilotless fighters have far higher theoretical performance ceilings, so if combat air supremacy awaits the first country with a true fully autonomous computer-controlled aircraft...

Judgement Day aside, I have to believe that's where things are heading. Which would mean that would eventually warfare would boil down to whoever had the most industrial production power to pump these drones out, in which case we'd get completely destroyed by the Chinese.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby MarsDragon » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:19 am

Mongrel wrote:So is this how real, functioning, AI gets made? See, pilotless fighters have far higher theoretical performance ceilings, so if combat air supremacy awaits the first country with a true fully autonomous computer-controlled aircraft...


I'm pretty sure this is the plot of Macross Plus.

Which means all we need is to make sure we never invent full pop star AI.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:29 am

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Büge » Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:01 am

work it harder, make it better
do it faster, makes us stronger
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mongrel » Mon Jun 23, 2014 11:20 am

Mothra wrote:
TedBelmont wrote:David Axe did a pretty great rundown on the F-35, the hows and whys of its creation, its flaws(pretty much everything, but mainly the VTOL), and the alternatives. Bonus: a Chinese Knockoff Version that's better than the original.

Which, rumor has it, was designed using elements from the F-35 schematics the Chinese government cyber-stole from Lockheed Martin between 2009 and 2011.


The better joke would be if the F35 was a giant unworkable trojan horse that fails horribly under real combat conditions and was intended to be stolen by the Chinese.

The US however is not that clever. Nor do they have that much of a sense of humour. Both of those would require British levels of deviousness.
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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby TedBelmont » Mon Jun 23, 2014 8:07 pm

Ironically, the Chinese knockoff version actually performs pretty well, mostly because they removed the VTOL fan and all of the bullshit it requires(whether intentionally or because they couldn't get it to work, who knows).

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Mon Jun 23, 2014 8:13 pm

Yeah, it supposedly straight-up outperforms the F-22.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Sun Jul 06, 2014 3:33 pm

Back end of an F-35 catches on fire during a takeoff at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Pilot managed to land it and get out.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:28 pm

Pentagon grounds the F-35 one week before its first international flight in London, citing the fact that they still haven't been given a reason for the fire at Eglin Air Force Base:

Defense Tech wrote:Pentagon officials were ready to unveil the F-35 in its first ever international performance as the headline aircraft at the Farnborough Airshow that runs July 14–20. It’s hard to see how the aircraft will make it now that it is grounded exactly one week prior to the show’s start.

U.S. officials had hoped to drum up international support for the F-35 at the show, but the grounding will lead to only more questions from allied military leaders. Those same leaders have already questioned whether the Joint Strike Fighter, which has been plagued with cost overruns and test delays, is worth the massive investment.

The U.S. needs international support for the F-35 to cut down on its cost. Otherwise, the most expensive defense acquistion program in U.S. history only gets pricier and likely cuts down on the number of aircraft the U.S. can afford at a time when military budgets are already shrinking.


In other news, the Navy is building a UUV drone that looks and moves like a tuna:

Defense Tech wrote:Image

The so-called “bio-memetic” undersea vehicle is currently being developed as part of the Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell, or CRIC – a special unit set up by CNO Adm. Jonathan Greenert in 2012 to explore the feasibility of rapidly turning around commercially available technologies for Naval military use.

“It mimics a fish. It looks like a fish. We call it robo-tuna, affectionately, but it is a UUV (unmanned undersea vehicle). It does not have a propeller or a jet. It actually swims by flipping its tail around,” said Capt. Jim Loper, concepts and innovation department head, Navy Warfare Development Command, Norfolk.

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Re: DE-FENSE! (CHA CHA CHA)

Postby Mothra » Tue Jan 06, 2015 9:03 pm

The F-35 can’t fire its gun until 2019.

Even though the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is supposed to join frontline U.S. Marine Corps fighter squadrons next year and Air Force units in 2016, the jet’s software does not yet have the ability to shoot its 25mm cannon. But even when the jet will be able to shoot its gun, the F-35 barely carries enough ammunition to make the weapon useful.

“There will be no gun until [the Joint Strike Fighter’s Block] 3F [software], there is no software to support it now or for the next four-ish years,” said one Air Force official affiliated with the F-35 program. “Block 3F is slated for release in 2019, but who knows how much that will slip?”

...

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