[orthecreedence]

Creating one thing with the purpose of doing everything well is usually a terrible idea. Why not have different planes for scouting, bombing, dogfighting? It just makes more sense to build for a particular use case, and send the right plane(s) for the job.

The whole thing seems like a bunch of guys with a bunch of other people's money got together and thought of all the cool things they wanted to see in a plane and set out to build it without really thinking about why, only to try to justify it after the fact.

In investing, you never double down on a stock that's sinking because "it might come back!" you get out of that stock and look for another one. I wish we'd just let this stupid plane die instead of sinking more tax dollars into a worthless project.

[sevensor]

Exactly --- F35 went off the rails at the concept stage. The "focus" mentioned in the article is incredibly diffuse:

> he said they stayed focused on “delivering a stealth fighter that could fly faster than the speed of sound, carry its weapons internally, conduct short takeoffs and vertical landings, and be deployed from amphibious ships and austere bases.”

The justification was, if you can believe it, that having a single platform would reduce costs.

[falsestprophet]

The F-22 Raptor is a specialized air superiority fighter and an overwhelming success at that.

The F-35 is meant to do everything else and can certainly drop bombs on enemies of the United States. What else do you want from it?

Think of the US arsenal from the point of view of opponents. If you were running any other country, would you feel comfortable going to war with the United States? Iran? China? Russia? Israel? France? United Kingdom?