So, raise the amount of money paid to the military so the most qualified candidates apply?
The problem is unlocking that brilliance in an organization which has LOTS of office politics, cross currents, uncoordinated long term goals, too many interests who get to requirements to every project, etc.
And the biggest problem is that everything the US military decides long term needs sign off by Congress, so there is always a political dimension to every project approval. Congress laughs at the F35 as the “world’s largest jobs program” with components built in just about every member’s district. The A10 is unlikable because Congress wants to keep it around, even though the AirForce thinks it’s cheaper (logistically) and safer to use other aircraft for the role. Not everybody is thinking about the same factors.
I don’t think that they exploit the military industrial complex for personal job security and fortune makes it likely that they’re incompetent. In fact, as a society we seem to praise those who are exceedingly successful at such exploitation, and even elect them to the highest levels of government and hang onto every word they say.
most of HN will downvote you for it
I like the Stanford Beer quote - "The purpose of a system is what it does".
What does the current defense acquisition system reliably produce? Obscene amounts of money for the defense contractors, campaign contributions for politicians, promotions and well-paid private sector careers for the top military leadership. The quality and suitability of its weapon systems, though sometimes excellent, is secondary.
All people who matter in this system, the ones who built and sustain it, are rewarded by the status quo. It's working exactly as intended.
If we are to assume the unstated aim is long term wealth extraction then I would again suggest the current extent of short term wealth extraction is putting that long term at serious risk so I would not consider that competence either. I would consider it an emergent behaviour where two or more parasites have to compete against each other for resources from the host, each has the very strong intensive to maximise their personal take even at the risk of the killing host because to leave anything on the table is to allow the competition to have more resources which they will use to attack you with.
Perhaps if the intent is to undermine the US as part of some broader strategic goal, OK, maybe those people are competent, but I would hope that those people are a very very small number of those operating in the system.
I’ve heard stories from years ago about some of the waste being protected because it we weren’t producing tanks in excess of what we need, some small town in Ohio would lose a ton of jobs and their congressmen his job.
That's what trump has always believed all government employees are. Since at least the 70s. DOGE was his weapon to enact his truth.
https://view.ceros.com/lockheed-martin/f35-domestic-impact/p...
People don't understand that defense contractors are extremely wasteful in their spending, and the contractor's job is not to produce the latest and greatest. They have a dual mandate.
1. To keep supply chains active so we can continue to be able to wage tomorrow's war with yesterday's technology by introducing rent-seekers and middlemen into companies and processes where they shouldn't be.
2. To keep Wall Street, defense contractors, and defense lobbyists happy.
I gotta ask, while I have the attention of HN - why are defense contractors allowed to be public, for-profit corporations that serve Wall Street interests ahead of national defense interests? Am I the only one that sees a massive conflict of interest that can affect (or, probably has affected) our national security in profoundly damaging ways.
It almost feels like Healthcare companies, who are supposed to be focusing on our health and wellbeing, seem to focus on shareholder returns and denying service to the same people that pay the premiums. What's wrong here?
Wall Street and Defense Contractors and Defense Lobbyists wouldn't make too much of a difference anyway when they are already jobs programs. Any sort of industry would have lead to it being an Industrial complex problem.
That people think it would make a difference mystifies me as much as when people claim that 401ks are just to make people dependent upon the market in retirement. When in reality they would be dependent upon the market either in a state funded pension system too because that is where the money comes from.
The Connie is a good ship and the two under contract will be fine vessels when they're commissioned. Frigates are no longer "cheap" ships, and the sticker shock was higher than expected despite the obvious changes that were going to be made to the FREMM design. But it's cancellation has more to do with dysfunction at the top of the Navy (and DoD) then the program of record.
Also, you're overestimating the flight hour costs of the F-35. Even the B model doesn't hit $50k. The other variants are closer to $35k/hour (adjusted for inflation) than $50K.
I guess they can be put to work intercepting smugglers in the Caribbean Sea or something.
The Booker was overweight, meaning it couldn't be air dropped, which was the entire purpose for the program. No one was willing to pay for it because it wasn't what anyone wanted.
> Frigates are no longer "cheap" ships
The point was to produce a cheap ship. It's a ship that already exists and had a pricetag. The issue was it went from 85% commonality to 15% commonality, ballooning the price.
> But it's cancellation has more to do with dysfunction at the top of the Navy (and DoD) then the program of record.
They are one in the same. They could have produced an invincible super battleship and it wouldn't change the fact that they failed to accomplish what they set out to do. All three programs suffer from exactly this dysfunction.
There was no way we were going to be able to take a base model FREMM and use it in the USN without substantial modifications. The Navy screwed up in how they sold this to Congress, and things like wanting to use smaller shipyards for political and logistical reasons doomed it.
Much of the distinction separation historically was that ship category reflected command officer rank. They have been decoupling that, which honestly makes sense.
I think in a serious drone war we would just have fleets of Cesnas flying around with a person hanging out the door with a shotgun lol.
Pfft, get real - Robinson R22 light broomstick choppers with muster pilots and crop dusting family STOLs make far more sense for their agility, ground hugging, and rough short take off / landing field capabilities.
That quibble aside, I can see things going that way, until flooding waves of many drones push up the human life cost past being able to respond.
Either way, they still need to be backed by some agile radar capabilities - variations of the E-7A Wedgetail design for ground and air to keep sensing on the hop.
In WWII terms they come as a function of aircraft production capability as the stategy was to keep putting fresh young faces in trainer cockpits and advancing everybody that didn't crash after a quick run down of controls and a couple of paired instructor fligts.
I had a couple of aunts that were both members of the UK/AU Women's Auxiliary Air Force (1939 - 1949) and they each had rudimentary training for spitfires, heavy bombers, jets, etc that came down to mere hours and "see how you go".
Worth noting that their mission was delivery flights with the produced aircraft (a handful of them saw combat, because if you're flying a fighter plane into a warzone your guns might as well be loaded, but it wasn't the main aim). Those who were intentionally flying into combat got a little more training AIUI.
Still, thanks for chipping in with a "no true Scotswoman" pilot variation - of course bombardiers got training in sighting, navigators in map reading .. largely at that time combat pilots got experience or got dead while exposed to all the barrack room theory about tactics that may or may not survive enemy contact.
Realistically a Cessna single prop is roughly $100k (average between good condition used and some new ones). A Ukrainian interceptor drone is about $2k + cost of munition. And the Cessna requires an airfield, so it is geo-fenced, while an interceptor drone can take off from flat land or the back of a truck.
People need to wake up and realize the economics of war just changed by several orders of magnitude.
Note that the original article doesn't say anywhere that F-35-like capability is not needed.
Ukraine is a real war and it is about men and women crawling in the mud constantly terrified of getting blown up. It is literally battle of the Somme again. How do you recruit college kids for that?
Men aged 25 to 60 are subject to conscription under martial law in Ukraine.
Yugoslavia did the same in the 30s, conscripting everyone 21 to 50 before turning Communist.
Japan widened it to 18 to 60 by the time they lost WWII.
Re. no swarms of drones because the factories have been bombed, do people really think that'll work on China?
You're confusing short range, highly Ukraine-specific Group 1 quads with long range OWA drones.
RU/UA is special because RU completely screwed up the first 3 weeks of the war (likely because of the culture of sycophancy Putin has, similar to Trump) and was driven out of central UA. Russia is too proud to admit they lost and UA wasn’t allowed to attack into RU territory until their suppliers (US, EU) were confident RU wouldn’t nuke us in retaliation. Now UA is busy dismantling RU’s economy and war making industry. Ultimately it’s not comparable to any other war of our lifetimes for several reasons.
UA drone factories aren’t in large industrial buildings. They have hundreds of office / home locations where the parts are printed / assembled. RU largely has a very few mega military vendors who make drones / missiles and they have consolidated their efforts in a few (now vulnerable) locations.
F35 capability is excellent for preparing the battlefield, such as the first few hours when softening up air defenses.
But don’t underestimate how much all countries are learning from watching RU/UA or US/Iran. Drones will continue to evolve to meet the gaps in affordable interception, affordable anti-5thGen aircraft, etc. UA now has armed land, sea, and air drones and each has variants like scout, bomber, interceptor, etc. we will continue to see specialization and comparative advantage evolve in the space.
This shouldn't be a big surprise to Russia or anyone else, as it has precedent. German aircraft production peaked in 1944 at the height of allied strategic bombing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_aircraft_production_dur...
Just for your benefit, stealth coatings and materials (not "paint") are a tertiary defence after shaping and electronic warfare.
Group 3 UAS can't be assembled in homes and office buildings in any meaningful numbers. They are too big. Even Group 2 is marginal. I think you're confusing Group 1 quadcopters with long range OWA drones like Shaheds.
I'm not quite sure if just putting up a military flag on a civilian transport ship makes it count as a warship or not though.
It’s a lot cheaper to give them a rear camera than to just tolerate them getting shot down indefinitely.
They're doing this to take down all sorts of stuff the Russians are lobbing at Ukraine.
If you count as "allies" the smaller countries that feel like they need to buy US planes otherwise they will get bullied, knowing that the US routinely threatens to invade them... I guess.
The saying "Quantity has a quality all of its own" is not obsolete in 2026.
90% of that are destroyed far away from targets and the other 10% do cause some damage, but it is usually far from being devastating as the drone is far from being very precise.
A single F35 which could penetrate air defense and go into the country would be a real problem. If Russia has 10 of them, I think it would significantly alter the current equation of power as it may allow for air superiority.
USA/Israel forces have air superiority over Iran. That doesn't stop Iran being able to fly drones or missiles.
That they were able to launch >0 after losing air superiority is a testament to how much work is in the last mile.
The difference here is an F-35 + precision weaponry + intelligence to locate high value targets.
It's always going to be cheaper / easier to use shorter-range munitions, which means the launch platform has to be higher / closer.
But without strategic intelligence (what high value targets exist, and what are they supporting?) and targeting intelligence (where are they right now, and where will they be?) neither of the other two capabilities are valuable.
Logistics and command inevitably trend towards centralization, because it's inefficient and expensive to decentralize everything (and at some point the tyranny of compounding logistics makes it impossible).
Where there is centralization, there's a high value target, and that's a job for the F-35 and exquisite standoff weapons.
Should forces be a mix of high-low? Of course! That's something the US realized in the 80s and is why we have the F-16! (still flying, being built, and exported!)
You can fit three Ukraines between Guam and Taiwan.
Also, the physical and economic footprint for that many drones isn't small, and a few smart bombs from an F-35 could put paid to your entire inventory.
Of course it was all tied up with needing allies to buy to increase order size, and the UK Bukit the STOVL bits, so naturally they had to buy all STOVL jets to increase British industry buy.
It's a rat's nest of everyone trying to please all their stakeholders. It is, eventually, a great jet, but it could have been a better, cheaper jet, delivered sooner, and already past Block 5.
Oh yeah, did anyone mention how long it takes to integrate a new system onto the F-35? Fracking years. All of which has to be done by LM, forever. Because the F-35 is not a jet, it's a Master Contract.
This is the new reality of military procurement and has been for years. Integrated Logistical Support contracts are preferred by senior leadership for lots of reasons that won't fit into an HN comment box, but the wave tops are that it's wastefully inefficient to have uniformed aerospace engineers, logisticians, project managers, etc. doing R&D work. Private industry does it faster, better, cheaper, and pays bigger salaries with better lifestyles which means they can attract better talent.
I've been an aerospace engineer both in-uniform and out, and I can assure you that uniformed service members (and their families!) sacrifice a lot that's hard to quantify and not always immediately apparent. It's not 1950 any more; the best and brightest mostly don't want to touch government with a 10 foot pole. There's more money and prestige elsewhere, in the private sector.
This cluster** has led directly to initiatives for open (Govt open) architectures and vendor agnostic interfaces for talking between vehicles and components, and between component, between jets and drones and C2 etc. That has a long way to go too, but at least we've broken with the idea that it can be a closed system.
I'm familiar with the problems of service careers. There is a lot that could be done to improve that, but that's a different discussion. I think it's extra important now that we have jet engineers who know about AI in the aviation context.
Ultimately the F-35 remains Lockheed's intellectual property, which is what drives all this. They want to sell it to other countries, which they can't do if the USAF owns the IP.
The range of the F-35 is too low for the Navy, because it sits in the F-16 concept. But there is no fighter/interceptor split in the AF either, and the range is too low for AF as well.
So now we have the F-47, a very belated ack that the F-35 has short legs. But it also won't fix the problem because it is too focused on the F-22 role, absolute air dominance against e.g. J-20.
No one should call it success. It is what it is.
The F-35 achieved exactly what was written on the tin. To be a stealthy replacement for the F-16, A-7, and AV-8B.
The fact that the USN doesn't have a long-legged air superiority fighter has nothing to do with the F-35, and the USAF never considered China as a concern when the ATF requirements were issued (that became the F-22).
The F-35 achieved a goal that isn't needed, at the cost of extreme delay. An F-16 replacement with stealth would have been delivered faster and cheaper. The USMC could concentrate on drones, STOVL and vertical lift. A larger variant for F-15/F/A-18 replacement would have many advantages. The USN always wanted more range out of JSF, but wasn't allowed to buy it.
This problem is beyond parties and trying to play partisan politics about it only prolongs the hurt.
I'm not an expert but from my friends in the industry (including multiple at Lockheed and Boeing), it's definitely not a story about how good and efficient the private sector is. Boeing especially sounds like it's been a real mess with a lot of project management issues.
I’m currently watching an 8-figure park remodeling project happening near home. Instead of hiring one or two competent construction managers for a few hundred thousand dollars, the city seems to be spending several million dollars for outside management to oversee this one project. (Never mind how much they’re overpaying for the actual construction.)
This would help at all levels.
It's very difficult as a government employee to properly supervise contractors when you have little idea what those contractors are actually doing.
But it's hard to gain that experience when you don't actually ever do those things yourself either.
Empower competent people and the government can still succeed, even today. The issue is that everything seem stacked against the idea of either retaining competence or empowering those who are competent to do their work.
Aside from the very real attempts by people to defang the government by offloading all of its functions to the private sector, government is also undermined by an entirely different coterie of idealist, who believe that all the government needs is more process and coordination.
It's very hard indeed to retain competent personnel when they're needlessly mired in non-value-added process steps that are there simply to provide CYA box-checking.
As for this one:
>I’m currently watching an 8-figure park remodeling project happening near home. Instead of hiring one or two competent construction managers for a few hundred thousand dollars, the city seems to be spending several million dollars for outside management to oversee this one project.
Every time the government touches any money, there is an opportunity for corruption. I'm betting that there are kickbacks, nepotism, or some other bullshit involved in the case you mention here. There are countless fraud schemes. California is trying to pass a law against people like Nick Shirley investigating and reporting on widespread fraud, because they know where their bread is buttered.
Are there any real examples of a government entity in the US competing with a private enterprise in which it genuinely would have been better for the government entity not to compete? I’m thinking of various public utility projects in CA (these are mostly great and more cities should do it), roads (I’ve never heard of a private road operating complaining about a public road), military (contractors complain when the military fixes their own gear, and this is asinine), the military doing some of its own research as you can read about in books like Ignition.
> there is an opportunity for corruption
It could just be incompetence. I read the construction contract. If I were a contractor, I would not have agreed to the fixed price and the steep late completion penalties without charging two arms and a leg and quoting a very long timeframe.
Probably everything the government touches outside of keeping the peace and helping businesses function. Government schools suck. Government insurance sucks. Law enforcement often leaves a lot to be desired. I think one could make an argument that we'd be better off with a toll road system too, but for the convenience and privacy of not having to pay tolls.
It's easier to argue for government management when a service involves practically monopolizing space, such as a road, or if the project is especially dangerous or expensive (such as utilities or the military). But the fundamental forces of competition are still beneficial even in huge and monolithic projects. Even in cases of projects commonly run by governments, the competition emerges as being between governments instead of being between companies.
>contractors complain when the military fixes their own gear, and this is asinine
I agree, it sucks. I am very pro-market but I think the government should lay down the law in these cases and say that it won't tolerate abusive prices and it demands all the technical data necessary for routine maintenance, if not the entire product.
>It could just be incompetence. I read the construction contract. If I were a contractor, I would not have agreed to the fixed price and the steep late completion penalties without charging two arms and a leg and quoting a very long timeframe.
If credible businesses are putting in lower bids and they get passed up for a stupidly expensive alternative, that reeks of corruption. But there could be requirements or assurances that we don't know about. That's up to you to find out if you are interested in that case.
There are plenty of articles out there on this for those who want to Google it.
If you compare corvettes to other sports cars, you'll find they are very reasonably priced. That doesn't make a corvette a good economical option for day to day commuting.
There are only 2 5th generation fighters available for export - the F-35 and the J-35. The F-35 is 40% more expensive than the J-35. No one is buying F-35s for the low price tag.
More to the point, the unit costs are low because the number of airframes scheduled to be built is enormous. The US needs to export hundreds of F35s to help distribute the massive cost of the development program. This development program was nearly 400% over initial budget, and the general managing the project was fired over it. The fact is the F-35 is far more expensive than it was intended to be.
The market sure seems to favor the F-35, with 19 customers.
It's very popular for export since the US has been forcing their allies to buy them over any alternatives, this was shown in the WikiLeaks cables.
If it was the right plane, full stop, wouldn't Ukraine be fielding a wing of them? No, because they're extremely cost constrained.
The former was a military procurement mistake and the latter has been worked on for years [0] but never prioritized.
Also, I'm kind of surprised this was published by War on the Rocks, because it leaves a number of extremely relevant topics unmentioned.
The B-21 explicitly addresses both issues above, while mostly resisting the urge to increase size and complexity.
The Air Force is aware of basing vulnerabilities and is looking at multiple solutions (ACE, autonomous tanking, stealth tanking, modular anti-drone aircraft shelters).
The CCA cross-service effort is already targeting pairing >1 UAV to each manned aircraft.
Replicator and other efforts are addressing the "low-at-industrial-scale" problem, and the US just used waves of Shahed clones against Iran.
The article's points would have been more valid 10-15 years ago, but all now have addressing in progress.
[0] https://www.twz.com/air/plans-to-finally-give-f-35-external-...
I like having C++ on my toolbox, but when Bjarne Stroustoup proudly talks about "F-35 Fighter Jet’s C++ Coding Standards" I am not sure it lands how he thinks it does, given how it turned out to be.
Quite certain that it also contributed to all the software glichs F-35 suffers from.
Sir you're holding the wrong handle. <The audience looks at a hammer with 17 subtly different handles>
The problem is that the F-35 was intended to be the low cost, mass produce-able workhorse for long protracted wars against technologically inferior adversaries where extremely high performance would be unnecessary. Yes it incorporates advanced stealth and electronics that make it a very capable aircraft, especially when it's going up against F-4s, but these weren't driving the cost. The US had already developed these technologies, and once you have them putting them on another aircraft isn't too expensive. And in particular the main focus was on lifetime cost - keeping flight hours reasonable and maintenance down compared to a higher performance aircraft like the F-22. This plane was designed around exactly this sort of conflict.
The problem was horrific project mismanagement. Building factories before the design was complete, delays due to development operations being done in parallel, making essentially 3 different aircraft with radically different requirements use a common design - the initial program cost skyrocketed and the only way out was to keep upping the order quantity to keep unit costs low. Cost per flight hour was supposed to be $25k, it's now $50k. Engine maintenance time was supposed to be 2 hours, it wound up being 50. And the issues didn't stop after initial development - with each successive iteration there have been new issues resulting in further delays, with airframe delivery on average still being 8 months behind schedule. None of that had anything to do with the F-35's core capabilities. For comparison, the F-35 has lower production costs than the non-stealth F-15EX which is based on a 50 year old airframe, but it has a 30% higher flight hour cost, and the program cost is 100X for 20X airframes.
This sort of botched procurement has caused terrible issues for multiple military projects, such as the Navy's failed Constellation-class frigate program, or the Army's immediate cancellation of the M10 Booker. These aren't masterpieces built for the wrong war, these are failures at producing what was intended. One has to wonder how you can mess up Epiphone guitar production so bad you accidentally wind up with a Stradivarius. It does not bode well for the orchestra.