[divbyzer0]

(with my tin-foil hat securely fastened)

I've always had a suspicion that the generous piles of cash thrown at the F-35 program was really going to two programs:

1) A well-publicised cover (F-35)

2) A secret Skunk Works project like F-117, SR-71

But a corporate welfare program as you suggest is more likely.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Why not have both?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Aurora#U.S._sighting_c...

(Evidence of something moving around Mach 5 at high altitude, rattling the rocks, captured by seismic equipment since the 90ies. Overton Window has now been open long enough for Lockheed Martin to tentatively present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_SR-72 as something new.)

[mikorym]

This is always an exciting question... You know, it's nice to daydream about all kinds of secret and mysterious projects. But I think another question is more about necessity, and I think necessity is what fuels a lot of politics around these kind of military projects. People pull towards both extremes and end up somewhere in the middle, which is maybe the mean of perceived necessity.

If the US is clever (NSA: this is your queue) it would find a way to use the current difficult political climate to focus on what they are supposed to do (I guess preventing war maybe) and in a relevant way for the times. The Russians basically did this with internet trolls. They took something simple (and amusing at times) and weaponised it.

I guess one would hope enough people that are both clever and uhm, ethical, work for the three-letter organisations.

[Patient0]

nitpick: in this context, you would want to use the word "cue" not "queue". "cue" => signal for an actor to go on stage or whatever. "queue" => orderly line of people waiting to buy a movie ticket.

[mikorym]

True, thanks. But in this case it was a fortunate fluke. Their queue is probably pretty long and unresolved as we speak.

[albemuth]

It... doesn't really work

[mikorym]

It was a typo, I acknowledged it, and made a joke. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[clSTophEjUdRanu]

It's such a good corporate welfare program that it produced an actual good aircraft.

[nabla9]

It's more worker/voter welfare than corporate welfare. Socialism for the middle class.

Lockheed Martin's long term profit margin is around 6-7 percent (recently above 9%). Lockheed pays more wages than it makes profits.

If you count the whole value chain, with contractors and their subcontractors, it's probably something like 50% total worker compensation (wages, benefits), 10% profits, 10% cost of capital, rest is taxes, real estate, energy and raw materials.

[divbyzer0]

Trickle-down economics?

[chiefalchemist]

No tinfoil hat required. Not only was this guy a famous general, he was the POTUS as well. The Military Industrial Complex is very real.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9QXjBVC233s

The Afghanistan Papers - which dropped off the mainstream media's radar almost instantly - is further evidence it's alive and well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

[ptero]

Real work is (comparably) cheap. With F35 budget well over a trillion dollars this is 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than needed to fund maximum number of projects Skunk works can sustain, at max manpower. It is bureaucratic waste with minimum productive output. My 2c.

[wolfgke]

> Skunk works can sustain, at max manpower. It is bureaucratic waste with minimum productive output. My 2c.

Isn't the idea of skunkwork projects exactly to avoid bureaucratic waste for the sake of radical innovation?! Let me give three quotes from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Skunkworks_projec...:

"A skunkworks project is a project developed by a relatively small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation."

"Everett Rogers defined skunkworks as an "enriched environment that is intended to help a small group of individuals design a new idea by escaping routine organizational procedures.""

"[T]he term [skunkworks] was generalized to apply to similar high-priority R&D projects at other large organizations which feature a small elite team removed from the normal working environment and given freedom from management constraints.".

In this sense, the projects you are talking about surely cannot be skunkwork projects, but are just ordinary cooperate projects with a huge conservative cooperate-bureaucratic structure.

[stan_rogers]

Yes, and that's exactly what the post you are responding to said. Read it again: it says that the money is far more than skunkworks could possibly spend, so it's far more likely that the evaporating money is being boiled away by ordinary bureaucratic waste with nothing to show for it.

[wolfgke]

I am no native speaker of English, but at

> Skunk works can sustain, at max manpower. It is bureaucratic waste with minimum productive output.

to me, "it" seems to refer to "[s]kunk work" and referring to skunk work with respect to "max manpower" does not sound like skunk work to me, but throwing lots of cooperate ressources (instead of a small elite team) at the project.

[mkl]

"It" here refers to "F35 budget". The punctuation is not ideal; I think it would be clearer something like this:

> With the F35 budget well over a trillion dollars (this is 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than needed to fund maximum number of projects Skunk works can sustain, at max manpower), it is a bureaucratic waste with minimum productive output.

[stan_rogers]

The word "Skunk" does not start a new sentence. It is in the middle of this phrase: "this is 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than needed to fund maximum number of projects Skunk works can sustain". I'll agree that the punctuation isn't ideal; that phrase should have been preceded by a comma.

[ptero]

The poster you are responding to is correct. Sorry, I could have been clearer in wording and "it"s.

Skunkworks is great, but works while it is small and nimble. Fund it fully. But this could cost billions, tens of billions at most. Not trillions that have been spent on F-35.

[chiefalchemist]

Isn't the idea of skunkwork projects exactly to avoid bureaucratic waste for the sake of radical innovation?

In the true sense of the word, yes. However, the MIC and the budgets that support it have their own working definition. It's not about the ends/results, It's about the means (swallowing more and more budget).

[chipsa]

Pay attention to the time frame for that trillion dollars: 55 years.