Or an example of how we don't learn from history, for the same exact thing happened with the '60s TFX, except the F-35 substitutes S/VTOL for air superiority. 5 models of it were planned, two for the Navy, all but what ended up as the F-111 were canceled, and we resumed building focused planes like the F-14 through F-16, and the A-10 I think. Read the relevant section in Possony, Pournelle, and Kane's classic The Strategy of Technology https://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/Strat.html for lots more details.

ADDED: And I've now recalled that there was stiff criticism of the F-111 as it starting flying and was fielded in the hot war of Vietnam. By and large the bugs were worked out, and e.g. surviving pilots were convinced that they should not turn off the terrain following radar and auto pilot system so they wouldn't follow their predecessors in immediately flying it into a hill. Which didn't happen with the following similar in that way B-1, come to think of it.

That I remember mostly from contemporaneous reports, the frequently poor prosecution of the Vietnam war was a big issue in the heartland.

McNamara was the genius pushing the F-111. Also the genius behind the Ford Edsel. When he came to visit the base one time, one of the NCOs who was near retirement had an Edsel painted in the camo pattern specified for the F-111. It was parked within clear view so that McNamara could see it when he disembarked from his plane. He was pretty steamed.

That's about what airmen thought of the F-111 and McNamara at the time.

Ah, per Wikipedia the F-111 was employed, but I can see why it wasn't covered in book, it was ideally employed as a low level terrain following penetrator, so it would not be a part of the big daytime flocks of birds that the NVA were be able to follow and vector their Migs to for one pass attacks. So not relevant to a book focused on air combat per se.

Heh, love the anecdote about the Edsel. The Official Story, on Wikipedia at least, is that he saved Ford not by pushing it, but by killing it, but I have my doubts, everything he touched after that turned to shit, including his disastrous tenure at the World Bank where he destroyed untold agricultural systems in the Third World....

Adapted as a fighter bomber, the F-100 was supplanted by the Mach two class F-105 Thunderchief for strike missions over North Vietnam. The F-100 flew extensively over South Vietnam as the air force's primary close air support jet until being replaced by the more efficient subsonic LTV A-7 Corsair II.

And this was mentioned in passing in Clashes.

Of course we learn from history. The thing you have to understand is that everything is working as intended. F-35, and programs like it, are a way to use public money to create private sector jobs. They aren't meant to be efficient or even effective means to develop and manufacture military hardware.

You can see a direct analogy of this in the space sector, where SpaceX came along and severely disrupted the incumbents by doing things efficiently.

There are certainly cases where the government soaks up funding, gives it to a company, for absolutely no other reason that we can tell other than to just funnel money along into their little corner of the country (and thus their constituents).

But I have a really hard time believing that is the case here.

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=kje_BAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA12&ots=...

After Apollo, that became many times more what it was for.

It /is/ a pretty good wealth distribution program, though. If you count dollars distributed, not number of recipients.

Yep. Just like the aircraft: tries to do too many things, ends up sucking at all of them.

Boeing was angry that Airbus got cheap credi backed by or from the government, Airbus was angry because Boeing got all the military money from the government.

Spoiler: they're a bad idea.

McDonnell-Douglas significantly upgraded the YF-17 mission systems and cockpit avionics for the F/A-18A/B and it was more advanced than the F-16A version at the time.

The F-117A basically used the same mission avionics and engines as the F/A-18 which was a few years ahead in development.

Having inter-service commonality in major systems and components sometimes a better option than a joint aircraft program. The USAF is upgrading the F-15C (& some export customers) with AN/APG-82 radar, which is basically a larger AESA "antenna" on a AN/APG-79 radar from a Super Hornet.

In particularly, they patched together their prototype in a way which all hackers will appreciate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ5gmZ74YBY

Here's Jon Beesley, the pilot who did first flight in the F-35, along with quite a bit of the early air worthiness work. He is discussing the weight reduction efforts associated with what was called SWAT, STOVL Weight ATtack.

Originally the three F-35 variants were supposed to have about 75% of their structures as either common (identical) or "cousin" (largely the same but with some minor differences) parts. In other words, the F-35 was supposed to be modular. Unfortunately, this made all three variants overweight. This matters most for the F-35B, where extra airframe weight directly reduces bring-back weight and cuts into the performance margins of STOVL flight.

Starting at 2:15, he discusses the modularity issue directly (with a bonus discussion on scope creep!) "Holes are really heavy." For every hole, you must have a more robust structure around that hole to maintain overall structural integrity. A modular aircraft meant a heavier aircraft, so heavy that the F-35 was in great danger of being too heavy, missing a key performance parameter for the contract. Eliminating the modularity was the way to make the F-35 meet this performance parameter.

It's all about engineering tradeoffs.

I bet most of the avionics that get adapted for a new plane require some modification to get them working. This is, IMO, much easier if you start from a working version.

Consider the semi-disaster that is JTRS[1] (basically the f-35 of software defined radios). It was designed to be modular, and that was part of the failure. If they had picked a single form-factor that was useful in isolation, that would have allowed a single system to get up and running, and then it would make sense to grow it out from there, reusing where it made sense to.

Instead there was this byzantine connection of interdependencies and parallel development with few integration points that seemed likely to doom it.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Tactical_Radio_System#Pr...

Lots of standard interchangeable parts that can be individually replaced rather than one "do-it-all" pile of dependencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9re9tJckTlk

The pilot in this video, LtCol Christine Mau is a F-15E combat veteran is now flying the F-35. The video description incorrectly states the director of the JSF is "General Michael Gilmore". LTG Chris Bogdan is the JSF Executive Officer and has seen the F-35 up close and flown chased flights from an F-16.

For the OT&E Office at the Pentagon, they do not actually fly the jet, or operate the jet, or even touch the jet.

There are a handful of DoD "civilian" pilots who evaluate the aircraft for the Office of Secretary of Defense. None of the DoD pilots have made public statements regarding the F-35 airframe having any major issues.

Then you get into the situation where the second aircraft is delayed by one FY because nobody wants to put two of these programs into one budget. Then there's pressure to diverge on engines, avionics, etc. which winds up adding to the cost of the second program.

Edit: to clarify: they're not exporting the good one which could change an actual war.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/the-hunt-for-...

It's not like an adversary could shoot down satellites, jam controller transmissions or hack a drones control plane.

We'd be better off buying aircraft from the French.

But for the obvious reasons they vastly prefer two engined planes, plus I've read the F-35's single engine is so big their current logistics system will have trouble getting new ones to a fleet at see, I assume this means it can't fit in a C-2 or maybe V-22.

This fits the Tiger Tank vs. T-33 in WWII. The T-33 had very good firepower and armor. The Tiger was superior in both those regards. However, the T-33 could be more easily produced, dealt better with Russia's muddy seasons and winters, and was far cheaper to maintain.

Drones were science fiction back in the early 90's when the F-35 program was started. Even today they can't even come close to outperforming a skilled human pilot in a combat scenario. (Although perhaps if it were Google working on the hardware and software it'd be doable).

The Navy's X-47B "Salty Dog" got pretty damn close (before the program was cancelled). It can take off, on-air refuel, and land back on a carrier with no human input.

http://dronecenter.bard.edu/chronicle-of-the-salty-dogs-x-47...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twdCdlo3BtA

AFAICT, the first armed drones deployed by the US military were ASW drone helicopters in the 1960s. Ground attack jet drones were successfully tested in the 1970s, and some preliminary and positive testing on air-to-air combat drones also happened in the 1970s. Drones certainly weren't science-fiction in the early 1990s, even if the military hadn't gotten around to actually fielding armed drones (despite the tests) beyond those old Navy ASW drones.

On the positive side for 'drones': they can be viewed as both expendable (with costs/limits) and capable of performing maneuvers that would kill a human.

I can see narrow beam transmissions on multiple carriers and extremely fault resistant communication protocols combining with remotely manned vehicles. The pilots might best be closer for speed of light delay reduction, but realistically you could have a relay in some kind of helicopter type vehicle a short distance from the actual fight, and the expert pilots stationed somewhere even more safe.

While you're at it, that helicopter/blimp/etc could also be your primary communication platform for a local region; it's already a high value target so there's little reason not to use it as an additional uplink.

1. CAS with STOVL capability (Marine)

2. Light attack fighter (Air Force)

3. Carrier attack plane with bigger wings (Navy)

Creating 3 separate programs isn't going to change that. And, if not that, then the software they want is going raise the prices of the 3 different aircraft anyways. The Marines are probably going to want to develop the expensive Augmented Reality helmet anyways, for example.

If you create 3 separate programs, where will you save money?

Max wants to replace his offroading jeep, Amy wants to replace her fast sports car, and Ned drives an amphicar because he lives on an island.

So Max Amy and Ned go to GM and say "Design us a floating, offroading, sports car please we are trying to save money."

By the end of the day GM has to convince them to take three variants of the same car, but the cost, time and design tradeoffs needed to reach that point were never worth it. When you could have designed three (possibly four) vehicles separately that each excel in their focus area.

Saying that 'well all three would need gauges and windshields anyway' isn't a compelling reason to combine them.

Not sure why you single out the USMC for developing the helmet mounted display, because the HMD is common to all variants and is already a working system.

Harrier design is also completely not low observable. An F-35 could splash any harrier derivative from afar, and could probably beat out an Harrier in anything but the lowest altitude, lowest speed confrontations.

F-35 is full of problems, but there's no sense in bringing up ridiculous arguments. Harriers might be able to perform some CAS roles better than a F-35, but it would get completely demolished in any 'stand-up fight'.

Any attempt to turn something based on a Harrier airframe into something as LO and as fast as the F-35 runs most of the same design risks and problems as the F-35.

...Ten years later...

"SimpleY is no longer Simple, it turns out that although we got 80% of what we wanted for 20% of the price, the last 20% of what we wanted were responsible for 80% of the overruns!"

And an X-wing could take out an F-35, I mean, if we're talking complete hypotheticals.

The Harrier is battle-proven everywhere from the Falklands to Afghanistan. Marry it up with modern radar and air-to-air missiles and you will have a very capable platform - one that the F-35 - if it ever flies in combat - which it won't because no-one will risk those mind-bogglingly expensive airframes in a shooting war - won't see coming because its radar has rebooted again.

However, the argument you're making is silly. A Harrier won't beat an F-35 in combat. The F-35 would shoot down the Harrier before the Harrier had even detected it.

The argument you SHOULD be making is one of cost, performance at roles (e.g. CAS, bombing missions, etc), proven for naval operations, extremely flexible, and would likely be delivered sooner (even if they started today, if only one manufacturer was involved, it will likely ship before the naval variant of the F-35 in 2022 or whatever they're guesstimating now).

The core problem with the F-35 and F-22 is that they're the most advanced air to air combat aircraft ever built, so advanced in fact that they have nothing to fight, and worse still will arrive right before swarms of drones take over from manned aircraft (e.g. 10x drones Vs. 1x F-35, the F-35 would literally run out of munitions).

* Greater STOVL performance, without the limitations imposed by needing to carry water for thrust augmentation

* Low observability (certainly lower than a Harrier, which has a big RCS)

* Greater sensor capabilities. Built-in electro-optical targeting so that radar can be used less, or not at all

* Reduce pilot workload by filtering information presented in an intelligent way

* Reduce STOVL cognitive errors created by differing control schemes between STOVL flight and conventional flight

This sounds an awful lot like an F-35B.

My point is, saying you want a "modern Harrier" isn't enough. Because in many important ways the F-35B is a "modern Harrier". You have to figure out how whatever it is you're going to build will be different, if you hope to avoid the same problems.

This doesn't translate into a tactical capability today: Falklands: Harriers fighting Mirage III, which were 20 years old, 34 years ago. Afghanistan: dropping dumb bombs on adversaries who didn't have a SAM capability

Given the situation, it would make more sense to invest in something cheaper that will do the job just as well.

The same criticism has been levied on the F-35, due to the S/VTOL airframe support requirement.