Precisely. Projects like this aren’t fuckups, they’re everything working as intended. The goal isn’t to have a fighter jet, it’s to make a couple people richer.
Furthermore, they did display good industrial capability when the situation demanded it in WWII. However, the US doesn’t have the same industrial capabilities nowadays - still, underestimating someone is never the best way to go. If anything, it’s better to overestimate the enemy one might face: It’ll make any victory look like a breeze.
I wouldn’t say it so clearly, but that’s a way of putting it.
In a sentence I would say that the F-35 project was designed to enrich military contractors, and if a fighter jet came out at the end that would be a nice bonus.
In my view it’s like a lot of huge government contracts. It takes ages to get that type of funding through congress, so one of the strategies the owners of these companies fall back to is geographical separation between elements of the project. This increases overall time and costs (distance and communication issues between branches and companies at minimum), but it also makes such a project in the direct interest of more congressional representatives and senators (investment and jobs in their district, to say nothing about bribes campaign donations). These contracts are awarded on a cost-plus basis, where the contractor bills for whatever they claim their cost is, and the government agency pays that cost plus a nominal amount of profit on top. So it’s in the interest of the contractor to drag their heels and make some mistakes. Based on these two structures alone such massive projects (F-35, Space Shuttle, SLS all come to my mind) are destined to be expensive, take a long time, and probably not deliver the expected quality, but they always enrich the owners of the companies involved.
Precisely. Projects like this aren’t fuckups, they’re everything working as intended. The goal isn’t to have a fighter jet, it’s to make a couple people richer.
Until the rest of the world realize the US military is just expensive theater
Expensive theater with nukes. I’d prefer not to test if those are rusted and disfunctional via live fire
Furthermore, they did display good industrial capability when the situation demanded it in WWII. However, the US doesn’t have the same industrial capabilities nowadays - still, underestimating someone is never the best way to go. If anything, it’s better to overestimate the enemy one might face: It’ll make any victory look like a breeze.
So you’re saying the F-35 was designed to be a flying piece of trash?
I wouldn’t say it so clearly, but that’s a way of putting it.
In a sentence I would say that the F-35 project was designed to enrich military contractors, and if a fighter jet came out at the end that would be a nice bonus.
In my view it’s like a lot of huge government contracts. It takes ages to get that type of funding through congress, so one of the strategies the owners of these companies fall back to is geographical separation between elements of the project. This increases overall time and costs (distance and communication issues between branches and companies at minimum), but it also makes such a project in the direct interest of more congressional representatives and senators (investment and jobs in their district, to say nothing about
bribescampaign donations). These contracts are awarded on a cost-plus basis, where the contractor bills for whatever they claim their cost is, and the government agency pays that cost plus a nominal amount of profit on top. So it’s in the interest of the contractor to drag their heels and make some mistakes. Based on these two structures alone such massive projects (F-35, Space Shuttle, SLS all come to my mind) are destined to be expensive, take a long time, and probably not deliver the expected quality, but they always enrich the owners of the companies involved.Too long, didn’t read/s