engi_nerd
I disagree with you wholly and completely.
Tired of seeing people on the internet defend obvious propaganda
Should I not call Chinese propagandists as I see them?
Why should people who are interested in high quality technical discussion surprise you with their presence?
"Hacker" used to mean a lot more than "software developer".
"Don't engineer things to failure."
When you find yourself saying "I ought to be able to generalize this", that's when you need to stop and just write the code you need to write NOW. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Do you really want to have faith in a place that is likely ephemeral?
People once had this same degree of faith in the technology corridor of New Jersey.
The Super Hornet is a bigger airframe. You can think of it as "what would happen if we scaled up a Hornet by about 15%?" New wing. New intake design. It required a development program and a flight test program of a kind that you do when you make a new airplane, not upgrade an old one.
The Super Hornet is much more capable. Greater endurance, can have an AESA radar, better ESM suite, better communications.
One of the big anecdotes from the early days of stealth aircraft development in the 1970s is how at some wavelengths the Hopeless Diamond shape wasn't visible to range radars at all. During one test, the range radar guys went absolutely crazy trying to detect the shape -- which was a pole model, not even flying yet -- and were about to just give up, when suddenly, there it is on their screens, plain as day. Awesome, the Hopeless Diamond lost its stealth! Or not, because what really happened was a bird landed on the pole model.
That's the power of your aircraft's shape.
David Axe, the guy you linked to, has a long history of misunderstanding the F-35, like also, this piece.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/test-pilot-admits-the-f-35-...
You described that this was "covered up". You would have only gotten that idea if you read the piece I just linked to.
You linked to this yourself.
You can't truly know unless you're on the inside, and then, you can't talk.
You cannot know this unless you are read in to both programs, so this is further speculation. And if you were read into both programs (or either one) you wouldn't say things like this.
You yourself linked the article that I'm referring to, and you mentioned it originally.
And I am informed on the F-35 and don't think it's wonderful, but I don't think it's a horrible piece of garbage, either.
Look at what the pilot says about pitch rate, and I'll pick out the part that makes all the difference. Brackets and emphasis mine:
"Insufficient pitch rate exacerbated the lack of EM. Energy deficit to the bandit would increase over time. Therefore there were multiple occasions where it would have been tactically sound to accept excessive energy loss in order to achieve a fleeting WEZ. [Weapon Engagement Zone]. The CLAW [Control Law] prevented such shot opportunities (and hindered defeating shots)."
In other words, the control laws prevented him from doing what he wanted. But, as he knows, because he's helped develop the aircraft, the control laws are trying to be conservative. Therefore, in his conclusions and recommendations, he says:
"Consider increasing alpha onset." and "Consider increasing pilot yaw rate control authority".
These fixes were put in the CLAW really quickly.
As for your jab about "pilots themselves aren't qualified to criticize the program either", well, look, the reporter didn't do his due diligence. You can criticize anything you like, but when you don't do the work to make your criticisms informed by relevant experience and knowledge, you're just another guy with an opinion and a blog.
There was no coverup. Rather, the reporter who was sent the document and wrote about it simply didn't have the engineering knowledge to understand what he was reading, nor did he ask anyone experienced with flight testing to review what he had been sent and what he had written.