F-35: What The Pilots Say

Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by threeseed on Thursday March 28, 2019 @12:02AM (#19509126)

The word smile was mentioned once in the article.

And the F35 was always going to be shared with allies for cost and geopolitical reasons so not sure how that can be considered a negative.

The US structured the F35 program to specifically avoid the F22 failures.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by james_s_tayler on Thursday March 28, 2019 @12:40AM (#19509317)

I guess they will structure the F48 program to avoid the failures of the F35 program.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by dodobirdlord on Thursday March 28, 2019 @01:22AM (#19509496)

It would be pretty bizarre to refuse on principal to learn from experience. The F35 is expected to be in use through the 2060s. Part of the engineering challenge is designing around the fact that human pilots are expected to be phased out mid-lifecycle for these airframes.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by threeseed on Thursday March 28, 2019 @01:34AM (#19509541)

Not just that human pilots would be phased out.

But that the F-35 is planned on being a command and control centre for a fleet of drones flying alongside it.

In that context weapons capabilities and dogfighting aren't important but its key strengths in stealth and sensor unification definitely are.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by Already__Taken on Thursday March 28, 2019 @05:48AM (#19510662)

Isn't this being sort for beta-phase at the moment because currently the f35 doing the targeting doesn't have to be the one launching the weaponry?

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by FrojoS on Thursday March 28, 2019 @07:57AM (#19511278)

Wouldn't the sensors and fusion system be entirely swapped out in that case, too?

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by james_s_tayler on Thursday March 28, 2019 @01:29AM (#19509520)

The whole thing makes a lot more sense knowing just that.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by neuronic on Thursday March 28, 2019 @05:43AM (#19510636)

I have read countless of pieces bashing the F-35 without ever mentioning strategic details like that...

I suppose propaganda and political articles tend to put a spin on everything after all...

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by lotsofpulp on Thursday March 28, 2019 @07:20AM (#19511071)

Sharing with allies for cost and geopolitical reasons is good for the contractors designing and building th plane.

You spread around the tax dollars spent on jobs between many different US states and counties, and voila, immunity from politicians. Kick that up to a nation scale, and you really have something good going.

Taking advantage of people’s interest in only their immediate future and their immediate surroundings, and people’s willingness to ignore long term and worldwide costs is a path to success and a downside of “democracy”.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by et2o on Thursday March 28, 2019 @10:10AM (#19512318)

A strategy to advance the geopolitical stability of America and its Allies is about the opposite of taking a short-term view.

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Re:F-35: What The Pilots Say by lotsofpulp on Thursday March 28, 2019 @11:19AM (#19513041)

There are far better ways to advance geopolitical stability than a boondoggle of an aircraft project, especially when the military is already so far ahead of everyone else. However, this specifically results in lots of long term high paying defense contractor jobs in many congressional districts. We could have beefed up education, research, space exploration, energy efficiency improvements, mass transit, etc.

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