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Comment by engi_nerd | Hacker News Reader

David Axe exhibits poor engineering understanding of the aircraft, which results in him interpreting the reports that he reads in ways that are simply not supported by the source material. As someone with detailed knowledge of the program, I consider his reporting to be misguided at best and potentially malicious at worst. At the very least I wish he would consult someone with flight test experience as he writes.

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Actually, the test pilots tell him it's such a poor design that they lost to F-16's in the mock battles:

Rather than denying it, Lockheed's response was that it was intended for "long range" dominance. Axe's claim was that it would fire off its payload and be destroyed in dogfights by any planes that survived. The pilot's remarks and Lockheed's support that this is true... even if they have their older planes. ;)

Far as long-range, there's concerns even if we take Lockheed's word their stealth is great. Their word hasn't been reliable so far but let's pretend it is. That leaves two problems: engine being picked up by upgraded infrared sensors on next-gen aircraft; fact that tests showing long-range dominance were done with weapons it doesn't even have and still aren't in the program. Both mean it might not perform as well as expected with one being straight-up deceptive.

So, the evidence in dogfights, Lockheed's response, and their cooked tests show this plane is worthless. Upgrading proven designs that are each great at their respective missions would've been a better investment. Far as aircraft engineering, I haven't met one engineer that in private will endorse F-35 or existing VTOL aircraft. They all mock both while praising their choice of prior aircraft.

F-15's, A-10's, and F-18 Super Hornets get my vote for upgrade dollars. That's air, ground, and multi-mission. Maybe try to make the F-22 cheaper while they're at it. Improve some drones or human, recon craft. Throw in improvements on an ECM craft. All adds up for most bang for buck. Collective capability would rival a bunch of F-35's. Military with with the F-35's. Should've chosen Option A.

As a layman reading about this plane for years and years and years it almost seems like the military would have had better results stacking the 400 billion dollars up in 5inch stacks and strapping it to the soldiers as body armour at this point.

They're doing some cool stuff though, the military. The new railguns and laser systems the Navys building are pretty neat and will probably end up having some civilian benefits in the future.

This unfortunately feels like a huge sinkhole which won't produce any tangible benefit for the military or civilians.

Lmao that might be true. They could've upgraded the whole military with next-gen rifles, IR, Playstations, and so on plus some new jets at these prices.

One article pointed out that the F-22 acquisitions were canceled due to cost. Yet, they did seem to be untouchable in the air. Now, we have an enormously expensive plane that can't beat F-16's in short-range and might loose to China's clones in long-range. Prior gen performance approaches F-22 prices. (slow clap for U.S. military)

My theory is that the money is actually siphoned out to black projects.

It could and they almost certainly do. Probably a combo of projects and profit. We have no way to test that, though, for this program. I'll note that black projects already have a way to get tons of money without much accountability: SAP's, USAP's, and waived USAP's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program

I know in the 90's that Aviation Week reported that they spend around $100 million a day on these with a House committee admitted they review only 5-10% of them. So, plenty of money slushing around to who knows what. Every now and then we get details such as NSA's exploit development and subversion program costing around $212 million a year.

Not all SAPs are black. Some are publicly acknowledged.

I forgot to add that I learned quite a bit from SAP security thanks to Uncle Sam publishing it:

http://www.dss.mil/documents/odaa/nispom2006-5220.pdf

It's not the end all but it was a nice start to organizational security. Just had to... de-bureaucratize it into something a person could comprehend lol. Then worked from there based on expert writings in each subfield, spy vs spy literature, and what worked for organized crime dodging LEO's. And that's how one learns real security. :)

Yep. That's why they add "Unacknowledged" and "Waived [from extra reporting]" in front of SAP for those that are. I usually only call USAP's, esp waived, black programs in my usage. Seems most accurate, eh?

The whole long-range dominance idea reminds me of early-Vietnam era F4 Phantoms - they were supposed to use the early models of Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles exclusively for air-to-air combat. So when they actually got into combat, the armorers started strapping externally mounted gunpods on them, so that they could have a chance to dogfight with the mostly cannon-armed MiGs they encountered.

What you are describing is historical truth. The Sparrow missiles were really bad. They had poor seekers, poor motors, and poor maneuverability. It took multiple Sparrows to even have a chance of killing a target. I believe their Pk was below 20% and was often as low as 9%. Early Sidewinders were more reliable, but had a narrow engagement envelope. And pilot training completely eliminated any work on how to conduct traditional dogfights. This was a recipe for lots of aircraft and aircrew losses.

However, the aerospace industry and government have not stood still. Newer missiles are orders of magnitude more reliable and capable. High off boresight missiles mean that pilots can engage targets from a wide variety of angles. Seeker technology is amazingly better.

One of the VTOL opponents I know was my grandfather, who flew F4's. :) He loved them (unsurprisingly). He told me they did a lot of interesting stuff with them trying to squeeze out more ROI or effectiveness. The gunpods sound like an interesting example of that. Probably the best example of that idea in Vietnam, though, were the AC-130's with Vulcan's. I think the F4's might have been more cost effective, though, given how much munition the Spookies dropped vs number of kills.

The test pilots told David Axe no such thing. Someone inside the program leaked a pilot's report on a basic fighter maneuvering test. David Axe basically failed to understand

1) The exact nature of the specific F-35 used in that test, and how it differs from production aircraft in crucial ways

2) The intent of the test plan this test was conducted under. Axe says "The two jets would be playing the roles of opposing fighters in a pretend air battle, which the Air Force organized specifically to test out the F-35’s prowess as a close-range dogfighter in an air-to-air tangle". This basic assertion is incorrect. The intent was to test how the F-35's control laws responded to the kinds of inputs that it would receive in combat maneuvering, and how the pilot would feel about how the aircraft responded. As the pilot himself reports, "The test was designed to stress the high AoA [Angle of Attack] control laws during operationally representative maneuvers utilizing elevated AoAs and aggressive stick/pedal inputs".

3) The meaning of much of the language used in the pilot's feedback.

The key takeaway from the report was not, as Axe says, that the F-35 " is demonstrably inferior in a dogfight with the F-16", but, as the pilot himself says in the leaked report (I will not link to it -- it is ITAR controlled and should not have been distributed in the first place, but Axe has posted it), "Whereas rudder inputs often feel sluggisth or gradual/delayed, the anti-spin logic is immediate, abrupt, and forceful. Perhaps some of the available authority may be given to the pilot while still preventing departure." In other words -- the plane has more maneuverability in it, please give that to me. The pilot also recommends some changes to the seat to allow for better visibility, and a change to how various regions of the control laws are blended together.

By "Lockheed's response", did you mean https://www.f35.com/news/detail/joint-program-office-respons.... ? Because that's not Lockheed, that's the JSF Program Office -- run by the government. Their response was more nuanced and detailed than what you describe.

The pilot's remarks do not mean what you are asserting that they mean, as I have outlined above.

F-15's have already been upgraded significantly. A-10s have received two different service life extensions. F-18 legacy Hornets are receiving entirely new center barrels. All of this helps, but it's not a long term solution.

Making the F-22 cheaper sailed out the window when the current administration stopped production orders in 2009.

Edit: also, "Cooked tests"? The test plans are approved by the government and are conducted with government engineers participating in every single step of the process, from test design, simulation, planning, briefing, execution, and data analysis. Nothing is passed through as OK until the JSF Program Office approves of it. Please refrain from baseless speculation on a process that you have not participated in or witnessed.

Your argument doesn't seem to make any sense.

You say that the F-35 engine would be picked up by upgraded sensors on next-gen planes ? But next-gen planes don't exist yet. So that means the F-35 would dominate older generation planes when in its preferred position. Which makes it anything but worthless does it not ?

I'm saying that tests already prove outdated planes would kill it in a dogfight and there are concerns about long-range. Here's those:

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/no-the-f-35-can-t-fight-at-...

Contrary to your post, the goal of F-35 isn't to defeat outdated tech: must defeat old and next-gen tech. Performance at long-range looks like it was optimized to defeat old tech with a bit of improvement. The enemy's new tech is very improved and China straight up stole F-35 tech for theirs. With that, we must assume theirs is at least as good as F-35. Maybe more given that they eliminated its weaknesses in their version. Add Russia and the new radars to get anything but assurance that F-35 will deliver.

It might. So far it's failed on everything else, though, while specifically eliminating strengths in its design for politics essentially. Enemies's designs aren't doing that. So, I'm not betting on F-35 in any scenario.

The Chinese 5gen we don't even know what it's for. It's not stealthy like the F-35, only from the front. The Russian 5gen (T-50) looks like what the F-35 would have looked like if it was made as a 5gen fighter for the USAF without the stovl crap bolted on. As such it can get a huge energy/payload/maneuverability advantage over the F-35, like the F-22. In any case, the F-35 might run into problems when pitched against 4.5gen or 5gen craft, if the battle isn't decided at long range before the F-35 is detected. A large part of the problem lies in the payload capacity; if you face an adversary carrying 2-4 times as many bvr missiles per craft you are at a huge disadvantage.

"The Russian 5gen (T-50) looks like what the F-35 would have looked like if it was made as a 5gen fighter for the USAF without the stovl crap bolted on."

One of my biggest gripes with the program right there. F-35 seems setup to fail against 5gen's while others aren't doing that in design decisions. I'll take everyone's word for it that the others' designs aren't finalized or sufficiently detailed to tell what they can do overall.

Combat effectiveness testing is done on all aircraft the US introduces. So the question of "can we succeed against other types of aircraft that we will encounter?" will be examined in great detail. Nothing on that yet, so it remains an open question with respect to the F-35.

These hit pieces are never actually written by anyone with actual air combat experience. Test pilot reports tend to be quoted out of context and misinterpreted in the media.

Its ironic that "everyone" claims the F-35 can't dogfight etc. forgetting that the former JSF program director [0] has actual experience in an actual dogfight[1].

[0] http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=288

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Sidra_incident_(1981)

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