When the JSF program started, the only FAANG that existed yet was Apple.

Only a small proportion of the program involves software, and at that they were, for example, designing VR/AR helmets as a feature. What people are talking about being an entire industry was tacked on as a minor feature.

Imagine designing hardware where your single product is developed as computer tech advanced from 1993 to 2006 (program inception to first production flight, more or less)

There was an estimate that the program employed a quarter of a million people, because of how spread out contracts like this are it's hard to really come up with a comparison.

JSF is on a similar level of complexity of the entirety of Google, and has been in development about five years longer.

>the only FAANG that existed yet was Apple.

Which back then was seriously on the ropes, with SJ coming back to turn it around. Nobody would have listed Apple as an industry leading company. How times change.

And what does that say about society? If all of the companies in FAANG were to suddenly disappear, I think society would be better for it*.

Sure, people "depend" on FB for comms etc blah blah, but the world functioned fine before them if not maybe slightly less convenient. Netflix, come on. It's just entertainment. Nothing more. Google? Maybe search could be built to work again. Amazon? Maybe people actually buy local again. Apple? So we don't have luxury devices that cost more than some people make in a year.

*Obviously excluding the sudden loss of jobs. It's just a thought exercise.

It says that we haven’t seriously needed to actually defend ourselves in an extremely long time.

I don't think that's true. It's more like we value people to spam other people with ads and other trivial minutia more than other things.

when was the last time there was a credible threat against the United States that the defense industry was helpful in neutralizing?

Perhaps the reason for that is just having that defense industry.

Sounds like they don't need any help from FAANG engineers then.

Imagine if all of the FAANG engineers took their resources to make the place a better world <snark>. All of that energy on delivering the better ad could be so much better spent on <insert cause of choice here> instead of delivering ads and building the better big brother.

Sure, I agree. I just think defense is a weird thing to pick. Our governments need a lot of help with tech, I think the DoD actually needs less help than most other parts.

These companies exist because the market demands they do. If they disappear something else would fill the gap, swiftly. “Just” entertainment? That seems to me to be a better investment of effort than creation of war machines without a cause.

Aircraft engineering isn't all software though. There's a significantly non-trivial part that is hardware design (arguably the bulk of it), with incredibly tight tolerances, and often unique alloys. All of which can make or break a design.

Even just a single component, like the engine, is a massive engineering undertaking. If the company developing the powerplant under-delivers the entire program can be a bust.

Unfortunately, some of the smartest mathematicians and engineers that I know work for the 'defense' (should be named 'department of war' or 'offense') departments. They believe - which you of course may or may not agree with - that they are doing something for their country, and that the lack of pay is proof of their sacrifice.

Even if it was true that software engineers that don't work for FAANGs can't develop something complex (I doubt that's true, I'm sure there's plenty of skilled software engineers working at Lockheed Martin), FAANGs don't employ a lot of aerodynamicists, flight dynamicists, weapons engineers, material scientists, experts in radar technology etc. though, which is just a selection of the kind of specialists you need to develop a fighter jet.

What do you base this assertion on?

Prices?

You have been sorely misled