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Comment by jmnicolas | Hacker News Reader

If it was not for HN policy to have meaningful comments I would have just answered "LOL ?".

I'm certainly not an aviation enthusiast (I don't go out of my way to read articles about it) but each time I hear about the F35 it's about its non combat readiness or its costs overruns or just how late it is and it will never amount to anything really usable.

So I'd take this announcement with a (massive) grain of salt. It looks more of a PR move to save face than anything else.

Now the only way to convince me otherwise is to effectively put the planes in real combat.

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If it is ever in "real combat", something has gone really terribly wrong. The US practice has been to launch massive sneak attacks with standoff weapons against air defense systems and grounded air forces. If the F-35 ever sees a large number of dogfights it would be in the context of that having failed already.

Creating one thing with the purpose of doing everything well is usually a terrible idea. Why not have different planes for scouting, bombing, dogfighting? It just makes more sense to build for a particular use case, and send the right plane(s) for the job.

The whole thing seems like a bunch of guys with a bunch of other people's money got together and thought of all the cool things they wanted to see in a plane and set out to build it without really thinking about why, only to try to justify it after the fact.

In investing, you never double down on a stock that's sinking because "it might come back!" you get out of that stock and look for another one. I wish we'd just let this stupid plane die instead of sinking more tax dollars into a worthless project.

Exactly --- F35 went off the rails at the concept stage. The "focus" mentioned in the article is incredibly diffuse:

> he said they stayed focused on “delivering a stealth fighter that could fly faster than the speed of sound, carry its weapons internally, conduct short takeoffs and vertical landings, and be deployed from amphibious ships and austere bases.”

The justification was, if you can believe it, that having a single platform would reduce costs.

The F-22 Raptor is a specialized air superiority fighter and an overwhelming success at that.

The F-35 is meant to do everything else and can certainly drop bombs on enemies of the United States. What else do you want from it?

Think of the US arsenal from the point of view of opponents. If you were running any other country, would you feel comfortable going to war with the United States? Iran? China? Russia? Israel? France? United Kingdom?

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