[Jtsummers]

And for special forces, in particular, both in and out of wartime. They'll take systems straight from a lab or buy drones off Amazon or even commission their own cheap $5k (cheap at the time) drones to conduct their efforts.

The rest of DOD has shifted to very conservative approaches to system development and sustainment (for better or worse, mostly worse IMO). It's stuck in the mindset of "This aircraft platform will be around for 50 years." Which is not conducive to the move fast, breaking things or not, approach.

[pfdietz]

Another problem with that mindset is that in a war, things won't be around for anywhere close to that long. What matters is how fast and cheaply you can build things, not how durable they are.

[Jtsummers]

> What matters is how fast and cheaply you can build things, not how durable they are.

Even WWII demonstrated that.

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

Nearly 300,000 planes built by the US during that war. Peak production in 1944 approached 100,000 new planes built in one year. The nature of the aircraft also changed substantially across the war, it's not like they took a few 1938 designs and churned out more and more each year. What was being made was constantly changing as their understanding of what was needed and what did or didn't work changed and engineering advances led to better systems (by some measure).

These weren't planes meant to last a century like the B-52 is currently targeting.

The JSF project began in 1993 (studies) with competitions later. First flight training batches delivered in 2012 and it reached operational status in 2015. 22 years from conception to operation. A grossly unsustainable approach for a military capability. It's not even one of the worst systems I'm aware of.