Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackuser | Hacker News Reader

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This story really is about propaganda and public manipulation. (The following might sound condescending, sorry; there's no easy way to say 'you're being manipulated'. Everyone is, at various times.)

The F-35 is highly politicized, and that political fight takes place on the battlefield of public opinion, with both sides trying to manipulate the public with propaganda. And many here on HN are playing their roles perfectly, responding to the propaganda like mice responding to stimuli in a maze.

We're all susceptable to it and I try hard to learn to recognize it. I think a good sign of propaganda is the choice of phrasing. If someone is trying to manipulate you, they often try to arouse anger and outrage -- angry people aren't open to reasonable discussion and other opinions, so if you get people outraged on your side then they are innoculated against other arguments. You can see the lack of balanced, smart analysis and the widespread expression of outrage here. Someone trying to inform you will take a much different approach, carefully presenting information and avoiding distorting your understanding with provocation. For example, consider the phrase, "New stealth fighter is dead meat in an air battle" -- clearly it's meant to arouse and not inform.

The article represents the analysis, abridged and without context, of one tester in one test of a system that's in its test phase and not meant to be in production for 1.5 years. There are many other articles, representing individuals' opinions (including test pilots), some that praise the F-35 and some that criticize it.

I'm not saying the F-35 is a good deal; I don't know. I don't know much at all about fighter planes (and reading the comments, I know more than many here). I don't know if dog-fighting is relevant; maybe it's gone the way of broadsides in combat between warships (and better dog-fighters are like Henry Ford's 'faster horses'). I don't know if the problems described by the test pilot are bugs of a test system (that's why we test!). Think about the state of your systems 1.5 years before production -- they may not look so great.

I do know that propaganda like the OP reduces public knowledge; it doesn't increase it.

EDIT: Edited to be a little less obnoxious.

From the perspective of someone that has been following the program pretty closely, I think one of the big problems is the USAF has worked quite hard at making themselves non-credible when it comes to talking publicly about the actual capabilities of the aircraft. While WiB are unabashedly not fans of the F-35 program, this report is pretty much in line with past leaks.

It's definitely frustrating that we can't seem to get a straight story about what's going on. I mean, it's gotten to the point where USAF generals thought they could get away with literally telling airmen that speaking to Congress positively about the A-10 is treasonous (this being related because the USAF wants to kill the A-10 to divert the funds to the F-35).

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story/military/2015/04/10/fired...

Try Breaking Defense (http://breakingdefense.com), who unabashedly are fans, for the other side's stories and leaks. Again, I don't know enough to distinguish. It would be most valuable if someone could map out the insider politics, so we could read people and motives better.

The story about suppressing other opinions is bad, but I think that's typical in any workplace: Undermining your boss' and your co-workers' careers will get you in trouble anywhere.

I'm honestly not familiar with their coverage, but when the first article in its defense I can find from them can pretty much be summed up as "it's doing great things for the military-industrial complex," I'm somewhat skeptical.

http://breakingdefense.com/2015/06/5b-and-700-high-tech-jobs...

I also couldn't help but note that there's a Raytheon sponsorship banner at the top of the page and a conspicuous amount of positive Raytheon coverage when I was looking for articles.

They may be a totally credible source, but on the surface it doesn't feel like I'd get a straight story there either.

Hmmm ... take a closer look at that article. Its title is "$5B And 700 High Tech Jobs: Reasons Why F-35 Has Friends", and says money and jobs are buying political support for the project -- something I'd think you would agree with.

EDIT: Anyway, I didn't say you'd get the straight story, I said you'd get the other side. They do provide some very informative defense policy info that I don't see mentioned elsewhere.

It's more the context of the piece I take issue with. e.g., the fact that they call out critics for saying the program is behind schedule by linking to a piece they wrote quoting a civilian contractor saying he's very confident they'll deliver a specific component on time... that was written about a month before Lockheed announced more overall delays.

I'll keep an eye on them, but the handful of articles I've read through so far definitely feel like they've been run through a PR filter rather than a reporting one and that's not just limited to the F-35 coverage.

I actually just read through the last dozen or so articles about the F-35 on breadkingdefense, they don't sound like fans of the F-35 so much as they just are enthusiastic in general.

OP's article is an anecdote, true, but it is one of many similar anecdotes. There are a number of factual data that support criticism of the F-35.

>The article represents the analysis, abridged and without context, of one tester in one test of a system

If what you're waiting for is some kind of controlled comprehensive experiment and lots of data, that's something you'll never get. It's something that the pentagon may even not get until many years of operation, and something that neither they nor Lockheed will ever share with the public. You'll have to make your decisions about the issue with imperfect information.

>I don't know if dog-fighting is relevant;

If it isn't, why build a fighter?

Re: The propaganda. It exists on all sides of this F-35 debate. The author makes no secret of the fact that he is not a fan of the program. I also don't see much in the way of inflammatory language in the article that the author is supposedly trying to use to elicit anger or emotion. So, I am not sure what you're on about in that respect.

You can also look at it the other way--we have fighters, and what do they spend most of their time doing?

The F-16 was designed expressly to win dog fights, but today most F-16 combat missions are air-to-ground. So when designing the plane to replace the F-16, it might make sense to take that balance of missions into account.

The main reason the F-16's missions are primarily air-to-ground is because nobody wants to fly against it (especially not now, with F-22 support.)

If you stop (successfully) designing aircraft to win air-to-air engagements, an opponent can focus on winning air-to-air engagements, and pretty soon it'll be their aircraft that are being used in ground attack roles ;)

So, a new attack aircraft instead of a new fighter? I'd go for that. I'd even go for a new fighter that fights (to ensure air superiority), and a new attack aircraft. I think you'd get better results in both areas and spend a lot less money.

This. I remember hearing about how terrible the F-22 was, how Americans are duped into paying for it, how its all flaws and sci-fi tech that would never work, etc and now it dominates the skies.

Propaganda works. The F-22 and F-35's success is scaring a lot of autocratic nations hoping to catch up to US air power. Meanwhile, Russia and China's stealth attempts are laughably terrible, yet we never hear about those. They're not at the top of reddit and HN. I think sites like HN and reddit encourage a groupthink because of the upvote mechanic at play. Certain narratives win out. Typically what a white suburban college-aged male thinks how the world works. Hence, long diatribes about how awful the US is how wonderful China, Iran, and Russia are. Its concentrated angst, not intellectual discourse. College age identity politics wins out, per usual on the internet. That includes a strong anti-military aspect and a bizarre pro-autocracy/anti-democratic aspect as well, usually sold under the threat of political correctness. Of course Iran, China, and Russia are just as good as the EU/US in terms of human rights, economies, public policy, etc. Anything else would be racist.

Pretty much any voting based forum will become a lowest common denominator crapfest. Some topics are just more hot button than others and someone is going out of his way to make sure the F-35 is one of those topics.

The military poured a trillion dollars of tax payer money into the development of one aircraft that can do everything.. don't tell me I'm being manipulated by reports showing that the F-35 in fact does not do everything.

> I'm not saying the F-35 is a good deal

I can't imagine how many lives the F-35 would have to save (or combatants to kill, not sure how these equations are calculated) for the money to be "a good deal". You can't put a price on human life. If we could, how much would the average life that was lost on september 11th be valued? In the billions?

> You can't put a price on human life

Interestly, anyone engineering human safety, and anyone dealing with its consequences, including the courts and insurance industry, all have to. For example, designing a car, you can always make it safer and more expensive, but where do you draw the line? What are the ethical and legal requirements? What will customers pay for? There is a number out there for the value of a life and also one for serious injury (major loss of function), but I don't remember what they are.

More importantly, there is far more than the pilot's life at stake. There are the other soldiers, sailors and pilots who die because they are now unprotected. There are the civilians who suffer because the mission fails. And there is the security and safety of the entire nation and its allies -- if Western air forces don't have effective fighter planes, it increases the threat to democracy and liberty around the world. It sounds dramatic, but those are the real stakes.

> Interestly, anyone engineering human safety, and anyone dealing with its consequences, including the courts and insurance industry, all have to.

This is generally context sensitive and inaccurate. Engineers are attempting to limit liability, courts are attempting to compensate, and the insurance industry is attempting to limit compensation. These are not honest evaluations of human value, but rather honest evaluations of the market value of a human. The F-35 had better save millions of lives.

If we could, how much would the average life that was lost on september 11th be valued? In the billions?

The average was $3.1M per civilian victim and $4.2M per emergency responder, totalling $10.6 billion in compensation.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9087/index1.html

That's just the up-front cost. The resulting political shockwaves (resulting in, confusingly, two invasions) would cost the taxpayer around ~6 trillion.

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