[spamizbad]

I think the reason why you're getting some pushback is because we've heard all these before with another aircraft that had similar teething and development problems: the F-15.

The F-15 project was supposed to be a small and light fighter but feature creep" blew the project up into a massively expensive boondoggle. Some of this was due to the fear of the MIG-25; an aircraft we later learned wasn't so scary.

Yet today, the overpriced, chronic cost-overruning F-15 sits at an impressive 109:0 kill to loss ratio, making it the best performing aircraft in the United State's history.

But you would be correct in saying the F-35 is no F-15. It has a stealth coating that is expensive to maintain (this is true for all stealth aircraft). It also flies with a ton of electronics to function as a "sensor network in the sky".

But in many ways, this is similar to the complaints about the F-15 and its (For the time) dizzying array of modern technologies: An advanced lookdown/shootdown radar, support for BVR missiles, IFF, EW and ECM systems all linked to a central computer. Technically other aircraft had these technologies in the 1970s, but none until the F-15 had them all in the same aircraft. Fast-forward a few decades and that "feature creep" doesn't even quality as "bare bones" for any air superiority fighter.

Anyway, if you want a multi-role aircraft without the stealth or sensor network gizmos of the F-35 there's the Gripen E series. Its purchase price is greater than the F-35 but its operating costs are much less. If you don't envision your country's airforce performing too many SEAD missions this tradeoff might make sense... but there's no free lunch!

[bumby]

I believe the list is long of airframes where you could initially find this complaint. I think the F18 had similar concerns after it originally lost its experimental competition to the F16. But the F18 found itself as a capable workhorse for the Navy for decades. Same with the Space Shuttle, etc.

[spamizbad]

The F-16, incidentally, got loaded to the gills with expensive gizmos after the fact because the Airforce (and other F-16 customers) quickly realized it made the aircraft a far more effective platform.

[ncmncm]

Space Shuttle is a clinker, here. It never did anything well, and its costs gutted other, overwhelmingly more valuable programs.

[bumby]

Generalization (not specialization) was it’s strong point as well as it’s weakness. The reason why it was a design boondoggle was because it had to meet the requirements of many masters. People forget it has a number of DoD missions in addition to the more publicly known NASA missions.

[ncmncm]

The DoD missions its design was compromised for did not happen.

[bumby]

There were plenty of joint NASA/DoD missions that were performed using the Shuttle. Why do you think NASA, an agency built upon freely sharing scientific information, occasionally had classified payloads aboard the Shuttle?

"Between 1982 and 1992, NASA launched 11 shuttle flights with classified payloads, honoring a deal that dated to 1969, when the National Reconnaissance Office—an organization so secret its name could not be published at the time—requested certain changes to the design of NASA’s new space transportation system."[1]

NASA has a long history of working with the military. The first astronauts were all military test pilots (Armstrong gave up his military commission so NASA wouldn’t appear overtly militarized).

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/secret-spa...

[ncmncm]

They did some classified launches, but none that drew on the extreme specs they had demanded in exchange for helping to fund it.

It was an embarrassment.

Literally no STS launches did. And they were so expensive, it would have been cheaper to build more Hubbles and launch them the regular way than to have done the repair missions.

The Space Shuttle was a disaster for US space presence. US ended up depending on Soyuz!

Now, the X-37 is proving another embarrassment. They can't find enough work for it, so leave it parked in orbit most of the time, pretending to be "on a mission".

[jessaustin]

Don't forget, this is an F35 thread. b^)

[bumby]

That wasn’t an oversight on my part

[mr_toad]

> Yet today, the overpriced, chronic cost-overruning F-15 sits at an impressive 109:0 kill to loss ratio, making it the best performing aircraft in the United State's history.

Not to mention Israeli history.