International Aerospace Discussion

[JayS]

By this standard, we will not see a 5th Gen Fighter in operation before 2050.

And when they do eventually develop something that even remotely has these characteristics, sometime in 2060-2080 time-frame, the science fiction inspired requirements process driven folks will demand that it be immediately cancelled and something resembling this -



be pursued instead

In that case my definition of 6th Gen Fighter is:

Warp 10 Capability is must for the 6th Gen Fighter so that it can be everywhere in the Universe at once, eliminating the need of Stealth and Missiles and Lasers and Phasers (and of coarse Pilot as well since it will have "Einstein" installed in it). Only One would be enough since it would take out all the targets in one go by simply being there and switching them off, plus would take out a robotic arm and slap the President of Enemy Galactic Federation as bonus feature...

PS: The feature of Chameleon Skin is dropped after an incident when they forgot to switch off the prototype's Chameleon skin system while parking it and then could not find it ever again. You cannot afford to lose your only 6th Gen Fighter after all, now can you??

[brar_w]

Einstein can be saved for a Mid-Life upgrade, for baseline "Grandson of Watson" would do

[Neshant]

Reduced radar signature from carbon composites as opposed to an all metal airframe is 4th gen technology.

No aircraft type relies on carbon composites to achieve VLO capability (incl. F-117, B-2, F-22). They all require extensive RAM application & re-application at the unit level (in addition to RAS & shaping). Carbon composites are employed primarily to reduce weight.

Carbon composites reflect less RF energy than metals. They are part of the stealth makeup of an aircraft.

If you've ever used a spectrum analyzer in an Anechoic RF chamber, you'd know this.

That is one reason they are used, the main one being structural strength.

[Neshant]

If you wan't pie in the sky capability you will have to pay for it. You must be willing to spend Trillions to sustain such high end capability, and hundreds

It certainly did not take IBM "trillions" to develop Watson - which was a first and a VERY challenging task of winning Jeapordy against the best human opponent. The originality of the research alone has spawned an entirely new industry.

Can you name any technological breakthrough of equivalent significance coming out of the trillion plus dollar boondoggle that LM sent the taxpayer on? The F-35 is the most expensive military project in all of history and hardly any breakthrough technology has come out of it.

It isn't much better than a late generation F-16 and if its much vaunted stealthyness turns out to be hype, the only thing to have come out of this program is a huge bill.

Now I'm guessing you have some financial interests tied in with the sale of this plane. So I don't think its worth going on any more about the downsides of this project. In any case, there is nothing that can be done since a whole lot of money has already gone into it.

[NRao]

Can you name any technological breakthrough of equivalent significance coming out of the trillion plus dollar boondoggle that LM sent the taxpayer on?

Yes. The JSF!!!!!!

Up-to 3,500 air crafts, some 10+ partners, potentially another 10ish.

[Neshant]

That's a breakthrough in boon doggling, not technology.

[NRao]

Just to be sure, Watson is a great technology - no doubt, but it is revolutionary. Even https://www.ibm.com/watson/ says:

Understand

With Watson, you can analyze and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video.

Reason

With Watson, you can provide personalized recommendations by understanding a user's personality, tone, and emotion.

Learn

With Watson, you can utilize machine learning to grow the subject matter expertise in your apps and systems.

Interact

With Watson, you can create chat bots that can engage in dialog.

Nothing there is new, been there since 1970/80s. Watson and IBM's effort is great because of the speed. That had to happen, therefore "evolutionary". What we did in predictive modeling in the 70/80s, that took 24 hours to run on an IBM 370, machines do the very same in a very few minutes. Those are advancements in hardware. The logic used by Watson is pretty much the same that was in those yester eras. Stats has not changed THAT much.

Today I am able to place ALL DB2/Oracle/SQLServer data of a leading financial institution into memory - everything. But the logic (of HR/fin/accounting/etc) has not changed. It has just made it faster. But it looks like there is some quantum leap in human thinking - nope, just hardware.


The F-35 is revolutionary. Yes, it does replace a F-16, a A-10, a Harrier, etc. But only in terms of a name. In terms of function, it is a totally diff platform.

[NRao]

That's a breakthrough in boon doggling, not technology.

So, what is so great about Watson?

We did ALL that in the 70/80s. That tech, from those days, more than sufficed for our then needs. We predicted in 1980 what our cities would look like in 2005 and saw the results too. Predictive modeling for you. (BTW, they have prepared the plans for 2040 too - it is the law in the US to plan for 25 years in advance - no Watson there. And we have done very well thank you.)

Today the problems are more acute and therefore we think Watson is great. Watson is only faster than yesterday. (Which is why Watson - to make is so cheap ($3 mil?) and the ROI is so HUGE).

Make me a F-35 at the price ratio of a Watson.




Better still, let Watson design me a F-35. (Hint: Watson will have to learn from the LM team. ) (dumb machine.) (Sorry, I was typing away without thinking. It is IBM "engineers" that will have to learn first from the LM team, then teach Watson to mimic the LM team first and then hopefully design a F-35. Bet it is a cool 10-15 year project - IF it is able to do that.)

[Neshant]

I'm not sure what you mean by "been there since 1970/80s.

The basis of Watson is its neural network. While that concept arose in the 70s, its only recently that its potential for deep analytics has been realized.

The basis of Google's driverless car is also neural networks.

That sort of breakthrough will never emerge from companies with their hands on taxpayer's wallets.

And you don't need a Watson to figure that one out!

[TSJones]

It isn't much better than a late generation F-16 and if its much vaunted stealthyness turns out to be hype, the only thing to have come out of this program is a huge bill.

an assertion for which you provided no facts. only opinionated trolling......

[Neshant]

F-16 vs. F-35 Dogfight – The Reason Why A 40-Year-Old Jet Was Victorious

“It’s one of the worst airplanes we’ve ever designed for a lot of reasons. But the most important reason is because it was compromised by having to three different jobs. You can never make a good airplane if you don’t focus on a single job, single mission.”

– Pierre Sprey

[NRao]

I'm not sure what you mean by "been there since 1970/80s.

The basis of Watson is its neural network. While that concept arose in the 70s, its only recently that its potential for deep analytics has been realized.

The basis of Google's driverless car is also neural networks.

That sort of breakthrough will never emerge from companies with their hands on taxpayer's wallets.

And you don't need a Watson to figure that one out!

So, what is so great about "Neural Networks"? You are talking as though all these techs are some newly discovered or invented techs of the 2010+.

We implemented NN is Ada in the 80s Sir. Just that our machines then were SLOW. Our largest memory was barely a meg (ever written code for less then a meg? Ever heard of thrashing (in a computer)?). PDP-11, heard of it? The size of a fridge. Not even a door stop today.

Google auto drive is based on parallel processing, using GPUs - you can NEVER get the same performance out of CPU. The algos are nothing new - they just run "faster" (actually do many things at the same time) (because of teh GPU - parallel processing). BTW, it was Digital Globe that lead the effort on the use of GPU (among a few other companies.)


WRT to tax payer's wallet - MOST techs have come out of labs that were/are tax payer supported. The private companies have run with them. Will post a vid of Arati Prabhakar (Dir of DARPA) some time - better still look for it on youTube. No DARPA, no Watson. HP, IBM, GE (of course) and many others had substantial dealing with Govs - they still do, look for gov sectors within them. Tax payers.


Seriously, I think using googled info will not get you too far.





Neshant,

if you bring up Pierre Sprey, then you must be a high school kid who started googling about ................ a year ago. Std check points need to be followed: does you mom know you are on BR? Is it past your bed time? ..............

Seriously please visit teh Turkey thread for more info on Pierre Sprey. And, please spare the band width of thsi thread and derailing it.

thx.

[NRao]

The basis of Watson is its neural network. While that concept arose in the 70s, its only recently that its potential for deep analytics has been realized.

Two points imp points using that sentence of yours:

* You are partially right about the Neural Networks. It was NOT a concept is the 70s, it was s very solid science, just that it never had the support of hardware as it has today - thus the speed. On "deep analytics", not true. We had it then too and we did solve a lot of problems, just not so many as we do today, again because of the low cost of the hardware - nothing else has changed. The statistics is the same, the code is the same (IF at all we have taken a step backwards in computer languages).

* Now APPLY that very thought to the F-35. IF you think NN is great, well, the F-35 is a NN in its own rights. The F-35 certainly cannot use it to play Jeopardy, but it was never designed to do so. IT DOES play "Jeopardy" in a field it as designed for.

And, as an aside: https://www-935.ibm.com/industries/gove ... fense.html :

Strengthen national security by optimizing support functions

Optimize military effectiveness and efficiency - including areas such as mission systems, logistics, operations support, business processes, IT modernization and intelligence information analysis. To enhance your mission preparation, deployment and execution, use technology solutions that help you:

Improve defense logistics so military forces are better prepared, well-supplied and intelligently deployed
Optimize your back-end business processes and IT infrastructure to lower costs and deliver better service
Extract high-quality, actionable intelligence from massive amounts of disparate information to gain military advantage

Finally, there are companies like Autonomy (it was bought by HP and the two wound up in a huge scandal) did what Watson did, but used Bayesian Theorems. It has a wonderful search engine that literally understands languages (BBC uses it to categorize news feeds and send it to teh various language sites it ha - NO human intervention at all - since the 90s) (ESPN uses it to look for specific pictures from its vast store of sports vids. It can look for a yellow tie - yes it understands natural language - in all vids that ESPN has. 1990s tech.)


In fact I now wonder why India has not produced a Watson yet. India is home to the very best statisticians. All India needs is a super fast computer and some folks who will feed their Watson.


Anywasy, I am done on thsi topic.

[TSJones]

the f-16 has a little less than 6,000 lbs internal fuel storage for its single engine, the f-18 has less than 11,000 lbs for its twin engines.

this means that they must add fuel drop tanks for their mission requirements.

upon approaching hotly contested air space they must kick off their drop tanks to help their survivability factor.

if they don't, their goose is cooked.

this leaves them a reduced fuel supply that they must use to:

a. hit any targets

b.defend themselves

c. make it back to rendevous point where hopefully their in-air refuelers have not come under enemy attack.

the f-35 OTOH:

can arrive at a highly contested air space and kick off their drop tanks and have:

a.over 18000 lbs of internal fuel for its single engine

b. present a miniscule forward rcs aspect

c. completely aware of friendly weapons systems available both plane and missile

d. track enemy systems plane/missiles as they are revealed/activated

e. combat command of its own weapons and mission requirements and coordinate with friendlies

f. exit to rendevous point if necessary, and looking for bad guys who might be bushwacking its in-air refuelers.
in short, if planned right, arriving not fuel starved.

none of the above points have been disputed factually by any critic.

if anyone has facts to the contrary then lets see them.

[Austin]

In 1986, the United States offered the UK to purchase stealth aircraft Lockheed F-117

http://bmpd.livejournal.com/2360806.html

As the French resource « opex360.com » in the article « Quand Washington You proposait an à Londres des Avions furtifs the F-117 the Nighthawk », in late November 1988, the US officially recognized the existence of a previously completely unknown aircraft - unobtrusive tactical strike aircraft-117A the F the Nighthawk , developed by Lockheed , and by the time several years in service with the US Air Force. But as it turned out, not only the US military have been privy to the secret. This is indicated by the declassified British files.

So, in 1986 in a letter to Margaret Thatcher, who led the British government, US President Ronald Reagan offered to the UK to take advantage of technologies the F -117. Tactical strike aircraft the F-117A the Lockheed the Nighthawk (registration 85-0819, A.4049 serial number), the US Air Force, 20.05.2006 (c) Manny Gonzalez / Airliners.net

A priori, Margaret Thatcher was a need to discuss the project under the name « Moonflower » with the then US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger ( Caspar Weinberger ). Washington's proposal is strongly inspired "Iron Lady." "Dear Ron. I am very impressed by your excellent development: US triple hurray "- she wrote to President Reagan before the report was" very touched by the generosity "of the US proposal.

However, negotiations have not gone very far, the UK Ministry of Defence cool reception to the idea of acquiring the F -117. Why? "Mr. Weinberger gave us the chance to buy American aircraft are available, but we are told that we do not want to buy it because of the continuing high level of secrecy of the program", stated in a letter to Thatcher's advisor on international affairs, Charles Powell ( of Charles the Powell ).

"[George] Junger [Defense Minister UK] very briefly discussed the issue with Weinberger ... only to realize he will not be disappointed if our response. He certainly did not seem as such, "concludes the letter.

Given the fact that the F -117 aircraft was a shock, we can assume that he could replace the fighter-bomber Tornado RAF. At least partially. Ultimately, the choice of London was correct - the "black" aircraft Lockheed was decommissioned in 2008, despite the fact that the Tornado still continue to fly. And this is without taking into account the high costs to operate the US aircraft.

[Viv S]

Carbon composites reflect less RF energy than metals. They are part of the stealth makeup of an aircraft.

And a petrol engine delivers better peak HP across a wider power band than a diesel one. That still doesn't make it a replacement for gas turbine.

The F-35 (& F-22/B-2) does not derive its VLO capabilities from 'carbon composites'.

F-16 vs. F-35 Dogfight – The Reason Why A 40-Year-Old Jet Was Victorious

“It’s one of the worst airplanes we’ve ever designed for a lot of reasons. But the most important reason is because it was compromised by having to three different jobs. You can never make a good airplane if you don’t focus on a single job, single mission.”

– Pierre Sprey

From Popular Mechanics to Pierre Sprey. Is this really supposed to help your case? Do you also subscribe to his opinion of the Su-30?

"The Su-30MK is simply another modification of the Su-27, a not-very-high-performing Russian imitation of our F-15 that had its prototype flight in 1977. The new version is significantly heavier and has poorer dogfight acceleration and turn than the original, mainly because of all the weighty and draggy gadgetry added to allow these spectacular maneuvers.

The more of these turkeys the Russkies sell, the longer the now-ancient F-16 (designed in 1972) will reign supreme as the world’s best fighter."

- Pierre Sprey

[Singha]

Point is sprey hot rods are not survivable. A f16 block20 which was best dogfighter of its line will be easily tackled by tvc hobs launched sraam and bvr aams of today. You need ew , large aperture radars, lo shaping , heavy aams to get home alive thess days all of which add weight and internal bays obviously add more weight..throw in a larger engine to push that weight

Once the f16 gained all these and long range in block52 it became more of a bomb truck.

[Austin]

Mr. President, Cancel the F-35

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... et-program

[TSJones]

doesn't address the Corp's need for a replacement of the harrier. not even in the slightest. nor for the gator navy effectiveness.

pilot confusion and disorientation upon launch for the C model? r u serious? the C model plane flies itself upon launch from the carrier. the pilot doesn't touch the stick until well away from the carrier.

despicable political hack. 'nuff said.

I dare Trump to cancel the f-35.

I double dog dare him to do so.

[brar_w]

If you wan't pie in the sky capability you will have to pay for it. You must be willing to spend Trillions to sustain such high end capability, and hundreds

It certainly did not take IBM "trillions" to develop Watson - which was a first and a VERY challenging task of winning Jeapordy against the best human opponent. The originality of the research alone has spawned an entirely new industry.

Can you name any technological breakthrough of equivalent significance coming out of the trillion plus dollar boondoggle that LM sent the taxpayer on? The F-35 is the most expensive military project in all of history and hardly any breakthrough technology has come out of it.

It isn't much better than a late generation F-16 and if its much vaunted stealthyness turns out to be hype, the only thing to have come out of this program is a huge bill.

Now I'm guessing you have some financial interests tied in with the sale of this plane. So I don't think its worth going on any more about the downsides of this project. In any case, there is nothing that can be done since a whole lot of money has already gone into it.

Seriously, you have offered zilch in evidence to support any of your claims. On top of that your knowledge on the program is quite superficial. Most if not ALL of your points have been discussed extensively in the JSF thread over the last couple of years. I've provided excerpts and even complete academic papers to prove some of them over the last few years and others have provided a lot of valuable discussion on the topic at hand. It's pro's and con's etc.

Anyhow, pick most folks on the forum that have expereince or knowledge on aerospace and/or military hardware and they'll all agree that if your requirements are to -

- Possess Watson like intelligence
- Hypercruise (Sustained cruise at hypersonic speeds)
- Possess Chameleon like skin
- Be stealthy than anything else
- Shoot long range offensive DEW's

Than you will come to cost trillions in sustainment cost and a ton of money to design and develop. If you think this is doable with 'today's technology' than you are highly mistaken.

You for some reason (without providing any context) think sustaining 2400 US fighters that include more than 600 that can either land on a carrier, or land vertically on an L class boat, over their entire Life Cycle over a time period of 65 years, adjusted for inflation, adjusted for ups and downs in cost of energy, ups and downs in manpower cost and basing cost etc comes in as expensive when you put a $ 1 trillion dollar price tag.

Yet in the very next sentence you always claim that what they really need in a true "5th generation" are the capabilities listed above. You do realize that these are not cheap? You don't realize that if you pack your requirements with the sort of *phantom* capability you're 5th generation fighter "should have" it will cost multiples more to sustain, design, build and maintain. This is common sense and I'd challenge you to find another on this forum that agrees with you that A) It is possible in 5th generation timeframe, and B ) It will not cost a multiple of what the JSF sustainment cost is.

Can you name any technological breakthrough of equivalent significance coming out of the trillion plus dollar boondoggle that LM sent the taxpayer on? The F-35 is the most expensive military project in all of history and hardly any breakthrough technology has come out of it.

Here we go again with the tabloid "trillion dollar" tagline. Care to tell me how much 2400 Sukhoi 30's would cost to sustain over 65 years with the USAF, and USN? What about F-15's? Simply put, I need 19200000 hours from a Sukhoi 30 or F-15, and I need them without a SLEP/SLAP. Tell me how many aircraft of each type I need to meet that requirement, and what it will cost me to sustain each and every one (O&S cost) in USAF's cost-structure over these many hours. I'll ignore the fact that neither the SU-30, nor the F-15 can land on a carrier let alone on a L class boat. I'll also ignore the differences in capability between these aircraft. Just give me an analysis of what it will cost me.

If you are going to claim something is expensive, you must first have an appreciation for what it gets you, and then must also provide context. You have done none of that till now. Perhaps you are conducting an academic analysis of alternative cost, if so care to share a timeline when we can expect results of such an exercise?

And the MOST EXPENSIVE in HISTORY is due to the scope of the program. It is replacing literally the 2/3 of the USAF, and USN (Including USMC) total combined fighter fleet. Even if they all magically bought a version of the F-16 or F-15 that replacement program would become the most expensive in history. It is the size of the undertaking that makes the total program procurement spend (@ 390 odd billion and not $1 Trillion) the highest of any program. If you had any serious intentions to look into the cost, you would focus on URF, APUC or PAUC. But you don't because it's getting quite clear that you are not interested in a serious discussion on anything that is why i suggest we begin to start talking about intergalactic fighter jets and how tot tackle the problem of defeating aliens when they eventually do show up at our doorstep. We'll also need to mass produce Chameleon skin and overcome the challenges cited by JayS.

No aircraft type relies on carbon composites to achieve VLO capability (incl. F-117, B-2, F-22). They all require extensive RAM application & re-application at the unit level (in addition to RAS & shaping). Carbon composites are employed primarily to reduce weight.

Carbon composites reflect less RF energy than metals. They are part of the stealth makeup of an aircraft.

If you've ever used a spectrum analyzer in an Anechoic RF chamber, you'd know this.

That is one reason they are used, the main one being structural strength.

All of this is besides the point. You made a WRONG claim that all the JSF does is use more Carbon composites and nothing else. As has been shown through actual references, FiberMat is not simply a composite layer it is a CNT infusion of RAM baked right into the composites. ViV and JayS have tried to put this in context. You totally ignored this. I asked you to find one other aerospace, and military application of a similar implementation anywhere in the world. I am still waiting for you to provide that. When can we expect it? Instead you are talking about something that is totally besides the point.

[brar_w]

Point is sprey hot rods are not survivable. A f16 block20 which was best dogfighter of its line will be easily tackled by tvc hobs launched sraam and bvr aams of today. You need ew , large aperture radars, lo shaping , heavy aams to get home alive thess days all of which add weight and internal bays obviously add more weight..throw in a larger engine to push that weight

Once the f16 gained all these and long range in block52 it became more of a bomb truck.

But the F-16 only gained some of these. The size of the radar cannot change. The SWaP can but most gains come form more efficient electronics. Warts and bumps appeared but the internal mission system l storage from the C onwards for advanced mission system is still capped. Essentially, it began to resemble a medium sized strike fighter starting with the block 50/52, but its DNA is still that of the LWF which always has and will keep it from doing what other medium sized fighters can do in some mission areas.

The F-2, F-16U and F-16 XL offered some change with the F-16U probably being the best out of them in terms of truly taking the F-16 into medium sized multi-role strike fighter category but the USAF rightly wanted survivability and although highly capable it was no where near what the JSF could deliver. They view overcoming Integrated air Defense systems as their biggest challenge in the coming years and decades, and this is what the F-35A does significantly better than even a hypothetical F-16U or any version of the F/A-18.

The F-35 is designed from the outset to be a medium sized (I'd put in the upper tier of medium fighters) fighter. The F-35A's radar for example packs 50% more T/R modules than that of the F-16's, and the low RCS only amplifies this advantage. It brings the targeting internal through the EOTS, all the EW apertures are embedded into the frame as opposed to having antenna blisters like the F-16's and F-15's and all but one EODAS sensors (the one on the very top) are flush mounted with a sapphire window cover. The F-35 also has a ton of space inside to expand and grow while the F-16's SWaP is now kind of maxed out so all they are doing is swapping older systems with new ones that meet the same SWaP but are more efficient. The IDF took their F-15 EW suite and mounted it and required a spine extension and bunch of warts all around to fit EA antennas and the block 60 required the same.



Note that for years folks thought that the JSF's EW suite was passive and relied on the AN/APG_81 upfront for attack and was therefore band limited. As classification levels have changed and more information trickled out, BaE has now publicly acknowledged that the aircraft has an active self-defense EA capability independent of its radar, and we also know that at least some embedded AESA antennas in the wings (L-Band) ones have the ability to actively transmit.

The USAF acknowledged this during their discussion about MAPS and Talon Hate where they said that one of the areas they were considering investing in for long range F-22 and F-35 communication would be to use L band transmit capability in these aircraft to pass off information. This was not publicly known before they revealed it.

Below is an image screenshot of the official company brochure for the AN/ASQ-239 (EW) suite on the F-35A, B and C. The highlighted bullets have only appeared recently. Do note that there was a certain senior reporter who attacked the program number of times for not possessing this capability and dismissed claims by some that it could be a classified capability claiming that it were added later it would have led to a delay etc. The same person now works for the F-35's largest supplier .



They also threw in an AN/ALE 70 towed decoy housed and deployed when needed something that was also claimed to be not put into the aircraft by the same senior reporter at the time. As I've been saying for a number of years their biggest fear was being shot out of the sky by enemy IADS and fighters. The goal was to enhance survivability while disrupting the opponent's situational awareness. The F-35 is one big piece in that but there are other systems that would naturally aid as well. The F-22, B-2, EA-18G's, B-21's etc etc.

[TSJones]

just to make a further point......

much is being made of all US carriers are back in port not on patrol. all of them. an unusual occurance.

except.... there are L class gator(s) on patrol.......yes indeed. they are accompanied by severeral aegis class destroyers plus various support ships and at least one Virginia class submarine prowling the general vicinity of the gator.

so.....are the gators going to get the f-35?

you better believe they are.

dial 911....who ya gonna call"

[brar_w]

Here is a writeup from someone that flies the aircraft a few times a week and has done so for quite some time. (Norwegian F-35 pilot).

This is a post for the genuinely flyinteresserte, with a rather technical approach (you are warned). I'm writing about the start of the aircraft and landing pattern with the F-35A. I want to show that the aircraft is easy to use in connection with takeoff and landing. These are relevant properties when we will be operating from winter slippery runways at Orland, with a stiff breeze from the southwest, but without an instructor in the back seat that can save the situation. Sliding Landing F-35A is something we also coach, but I have to come back to the page.

I wrote a separate post about the "cockpit" in the F-35 earlier. The impression then and now is that "office space" in the F-35 is simple and obvious. There is almost no switches which compared with the F-16, and the cockpit dominated by the big screen in the front. Commencement of the aircraft are similarly easy; move a couple switches and a few taps on the screen as it begins to simmer for auxiliary motor, which generates electricity to start the main engine. Because the cockpit is so simple, I use little time to check that everything is ready before startup.

The rest of the start-up is also simple. The various systems in the F-35A "talking" together over a computer network. Therefore, there really is not much to do for me. It's a bit like turning on your PC at home. It starts by themselves, at their own pace, and you have neatly relate to the machine says "please wait". In the F-16 was the start a long series of tests I had to initiate and switches I had to move on. In F-35 runs most of the time with the waiting and monitoring. There I spend the most time is enough to set up the big screen the way I want. (I feel sometimes that I 'truant' from job - I should have felt busier!) While the various systems starts up, I spend time to brace myself stuck in ejection seat. If one of the systems should ail some, the solution is generally the same as for a PC: Turn off and on again.

When it comes time to "taxe" the machine, it is usually enough to release the brakes. There is so much push the engine idling that it is not necessary to provide gas on the ground, before the runway for "takeoff". F-35 is predictable on the ground. The suspension is soft and provides an easy swaying sensation. Meanwhile, no suspension so soft machine experienced wobbly. Nose wheel steering has two "gives" with different ratios. One for taxiing in medium speed and for retirement and one for maneuvering in and out of the parking lot; "High gain" lets me tight turns without helping to brake on one main wheel well (differential braking, which it is customary to do in F-16).

One detail I have grown fond of is that the F-35 actually rolls straight ahead as long as I did not ask the plane to swing. It may sound trite, but it's a nice improvement that makes it easier to make "admin work" in the cockpit while I taxer, such as studying departure map. (To operate a fighter is a bit like writing style task on smart phones while driving in heavy traffic on the highway; there is much to allocate attention on. Then it is good that the aircraft both wheeling and flying legged forward.) It also helps when the plane pulls speed to facilitate the runway: keeping the aircraft on the center line requires only few small adjustments to the pedals, and I avoid "chasing" and forth.

Enough talk about 'ground ops. " It's time to get up in the air. We usually take off in "MIL Power" - full engine without afterburner. The machine accelerates smoothly and powerfully in MIL. With afterburner acceleration impressive, especially now in the past when it has been "cold" here in Phoenix. When it comes time to lift the nose - rotating - for departure, I must move the control stick backwards about half-way, in relation to the back stop. Nesa lift slowly to begin with, but even and controllable even when the nose wheel "let go" (in the ground). It's easy to point the aircraft in the desired position for the climb ( "attitude"), and there is no tendency to over correct.

When the plane is in the air it is again evident that the machine has a powerful engine. We tend to climb out with between five and 10 degree incline - which is quite steep. Also in the "MIL power" accelerates your machine does well. As I pass the end of the runway the plane has gladly passed 300 knots. (The plane climbs willing just after takeoff with five degree incline with 300 knots with less than half the engine power. Otherwise described fully push with afterburner as 150% engine power). I had the pleasure of being an instructor on the first flight to a colleague with a background from fighter-bomber. He said: "I didn't think performance like that was possible!" (See it in the context of my Marine Corps colleague, who said that the F-35A behaved "... like a hornet, but with four engines ..." .)

We spend little time practicing landings. Much because we have so far checked out pilots with solid previous experience, but also because the aircraft is easy to land. We enters gladly landing pattern from "initial point" or "IP" - a reference point located in the extension of the runway, around eight kilometers from defensive end. Landing Round flown at 1500 feet altitude and 300 knots at Luke Air Force Base. The aircraft like well between 300 and 350 knots, and it requires only between 20% and 25% engine power to keep this speed. In it we are above the runway, break we off to "downwind". My technique is to let the "throttle" will be standing in the same position (20-25%) throughout the swing. Then I end up with about half a nautical mile off the runway and 200 knots on "downwind". If you have handsome you with a bit more power in the turn to downwind, remember to withdraw immediately turn is finished. If not, the F-35 "run" off again at high speed very soon.

On downwind I put down the wheels. There is no trim change to talk about when they come out - the aircraft continued straight ahead. First marked more wind noise and a slight slowdown. A pretty solid "clunk" recognized when the main gear is fully extended. "Final turn" flown in about 13 degree angle of attack - "Angle of Attack" (AOA) - and with about eight degree "plunge" in the first part of the curve. To begin with I pull 'throttle' back a little to establish 13 degree angle of attack. 13 degrees AOA provides an easy "buffet" in the plane - one shaking slightly reminiscent of driving on gravel road.

When I established the correct angle of attack, I must support with a little more power, depending on how heavy load and how sharp turn I have set myself up for. If I want it, I can now choose the "Approach Power Compensator" (APC). APC trim the aircraft to 13 degree approach angle and adjusts the engine power automatically to keep the angle of attack constant ( "autothrottle" and auto-trim). APC is easy to land the F-35; term at the beginning of the runway with three degree "plunge" .... and that's it, really (you have to lift your nose a little when the plane passing runway end). APC is especially useful because it consistently puts up the plane at the correct speed for landing. This is an additional security for a fresh and (or) stressed flyer.

Another feature that makes the F-35 easy to land called "Integrated Direct Lift Control" (IDLC). IDLC "live" in the aircraft Vehicle Management Computer (VMC), as a piece of computer code. It's VMC that keeps the aircraft in the air. IDLC user aircraft's "Flaperon" (combined ailerons and flaps at the rear edge of the wing) in a slightly unusual way in connection with the landing, If the pilot pulls the stick back will IDLC make sure both "Flaperon" are angled downward. The result is a quick and direct front ding of the flight path upward - you feel like the plane rises immediately, and without the nose of the aircraft has moved much on themselves. IDLC lets you easily make quick and accurate corrections in connection with the landing. IDLC combined with APC ( "autothrottle") works perfectly!

Back on the ground again puts F-35A smoothly down; undercarriage and wheels are powerful, and absorbs well a little rough landing. After landing yesterday's nice to "aero brake" F-35A - keeping neshjulet of the runway to allow airflow brake the aircraft. At the same time it is evident that F-35A is more stable and easy to handle on the ground than the F-16. (I think the F-16 is pretty shaky, especially in strong crosswind).

It is also apparent that the F-35A is more front-weighted than F-16 in "Aero brake". It is possible to "brake aero" a light F-16 to well below 100 knots. Between 120 and 110 knots falls nose to the F-35A down by itself, even with the stick fully back. As the nose wheel touches the ground, move the aircraft even on "Flaperon" and aerodynamic fin to help to slow. In addition connects nose wheel steering up automatically. The brakes on the F-35A takes steady and powerful. It's easy to brake and steer at the same time and there is little or no tendency for the wheel lock on dry surfaces.

All in all behaving F-35A very "snillt" upon landing, and especially in crosswinds - which comes in handy in Orland, where I seem to remember that it blows occasionally. (I've got to try me in 20-knot crosswind so far and it was unproblematic. F-35A feels like a freight train on rails, compared with the F-16 in a crosswind.)

A little more about Norwegian conditions and side winds. Defence F-35A is equipped with a brake monitor, just like our F-16. Brake screen becomes important when we land on slippery runways, and especially with high weight. To land the F-16 with brake monitor on slippery roads and side winds can be quite sporty. First felt good that brake screen turns his nose on the F-16 into the wind, like a weather vane. Over time, brake screen pull all the aircraft off the runway. To keep the aircraft on the runway must F-16 pilots often use full deflection of the rudder pedals. It is not uncommon to have to cut away the entire brake screen to prevent the plane ports "in the ditch." Our F-16 has not "forces" in all cases to deal with powerful side wind on slippery roads with the brake monitor.

So far we have only tested the F-35A with brake display in the simulator. Simulated results should be taken with a pinch of salt. We did our first experiences with the F-35A and brake display in late autumn 2013 at Lockheed Martin's most advanced simulator to study flying characteristics. The results were good. So good, that we politely asked the American engineers to check again that they had modeled all effects from slowing screen. "Værhaneeffekten" I described the F-16 was hardly noticeable, and it was not necessary to cut loose screen to avoid the ditch. We tested to twice as much crosswind as the F-16 is certified. Still, we managed to keep us on the icy runway. We should not put two lines under test results, and conclude that the F-35A manages X or Y knot crosswind. I still think it's a good indication that the F-35A will cope much crosswind, also with brake monitor. And that's good.

So what? With costly education, we should well handle a machine that requires little effort? I think there are several reasons to have a fighter who is ready to take up in the air, easy to operate that weapon system and easy to take back to the ground. When our freshest F-35 pilots coming home to Norway in 2019 after graduating in eternal summer in Arizona, they encounter a very different and challenging reality in Orland. Weather conditions and terrain in Norway makes you MUST know what you are doing. With F-16 softens we this transition by training with toseterne (F-16BM). Our future F-35 pilots would never have an instructor in a rear seat, which can intervene and avert a situation before it becomes dangerous. Yet I believe it is irresponsible to introduce our freshest pilots to fly in Norway in our single seat F-35A. One important reason is that the pilots through training at Luke gets drilled in it to fly "instrument flying" in the simulator. The new simulator center in Orland will allow us to do the same type of exercise itself, before the first real flight assignment at home. How can we prepare ourselves to handle even these "administrative" aspects of a flight assignment.

I know that we in the Armed Forces will operate the aircraft to the limits in terms of slippery surfaces, side winds and poor visibility. Therefore, it is equally important that the aircraft is easy and predictable to fly - and that's it! Because the machine is simple and aircraft, and in addition has a good autopilot, pilot may spend more of their time to plan into the future and prepare for what will happen, such as configuring the aircraft for an instrument approach.
Outside the landing pattern is the F-35 one weapon platform. The fact that the machine is easy to operate, making the pilot can concentrate more on the tactical work and less about it to actually keep the machine in the air. We get more tactical "value" out of a machine that is easy to fly. Ultimately, this is about solving a mission as effectively as possible, while maintaining safety; both to preserve life and to take care of costly materials. Therefore it is important that the F-35 is forgiving, predictable and easy to handle on the ground, in the landing pattern and in the air on a mission.

Here is the same pilot providing his views on on the TEST report that has been taken out of context a number of times by the usual tabloid circles - “Here’s what I’ve learned so far dogfighting in the F-35”: a JSF pilot’s first-hand account

But then what do these guys know that a David Axe doesn't. After all he spent some time in Afghanistan covering the war there which clearly makes him an expert. All these guys bring to the table is experience flying 4th and 5h generation aircraft which is clearly not relevant to what we are talking.

[titash]

The basis of Watson is its neural network. While that concept arose in the 70s, its only recently that its potential for deep analytics has been realized.

Two points imp points using that sentence of yours:

* You are partially right about the Neural Networks. It was NOT a concept is the 70s, it was s very solid science, just that it never had the support of hardware as it has today - thus the speed. On "deep analytics", not true. We had it then too and we did solve a lot of problems, just not so many as we do today, again because of the low cost of the hardware - nothing else has changed. The statistics is the same, the code is the same (IF at all we have taken a step backwards in computer languages).

Finally, there are companies like Autonomy (it was bought by HP and the two wound up in a huge scandal) did what Watson did, but used Bayesian Theorems. It has a wonderful search engine that literally understands languages (BBC uses it to categorize news feeds and send it to teh various language sites it ha - NO human intervention at all - since the 90s) (ESPN uses it to look for specific pictures from its vast store of sports vids. It can look for a yellow tie - yes it understands natural language - in all vids that ESPN has. 1990s tech.)

In fact I now wonder why India has not produced a Watson yet. India is home to the very best statisticians. All India needs is a super fast computer and some folks who will feed their Watson.

Anywasy, I am done on thsi topic.

Very true - its not about the algorithms; it's just that the cost of processing (CPU/GPU) and storage (memory) has declined drastically over the years to the point that it's practical to use these algorithms in everyday life.

Regarding Autonomy - I work with the Autonomy folks on a semi-regular basis. Tech Support sucks honestly, they're expensive, and they have trouble retaining expert consulting resources. Plus the software works best when you have a trained man-in-the-loop who knows the software, it's eccentricities, and how to configure to achieve the best result. It does have some cool applications though with text/image/audio/video search...namely Enron, London Olympics, Boston Terrorist Bombing, Store Shelf Analysis (for CPG).

Why India has not produced a Watson - very interesting question. Based on my understanding of Autonomy, a team of 3-4 dedicated data science resources who can code well and have knowledge of distributed computing could hash out a first cut MVP in 6 months. Continual improvements will be necessary of course...

[NRao]

Not to belabor the point on Watson, but:

Is Watson an AI?

Douglas Hofstadter, cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, recently claimed that IBM's Jeopardy! champion AI system Watson is not real artificial intelligence. Watson, he says, is “just a text search algorithm connected to a database, just like Google search.

So, it is not even a NN?

(Autonomy: I sold it more than a decade ago, so much should have changed. But, there are config files that can be tweaked to get GREAT results. Yes, it does help immensely to have a statistician in the loop. And, it helps to have a huge training set - 100K or more instances. ......... end)




Coming back to the F-35. Based on that Watson discovery (above), heck, even the F-35 is a better potential AI platform than Watson - I would say. As it is the F-35 is capable of providing the right data to the right person in the right quantity/form. There has to be a good deal of built-in Intelligence to do that.

And, those that are still clamoring for its demise are unable to let go of the past - you know, turning radius, this speed, that maneuverability, etc. Which is not what it is about.

I just hope a tweet does not kill this bird. Or trade it to the Russians for WORLD piss.

[Neshant]

Unless this program is cancelled soon, the AF will be saddled with loads of over-priced clunkers for decades into the future.
I suspect this financial black hole will expand further once the true cost (both financial and performance) becomes known.

This can't be good news.

___

F-35 could be cancelled

The failed F-35 fighter-jet program can’t be fixed — it’s time to turn the page.

Our incoming president’s willingness to boldly challenge the status quo is arguably the main reason he was elected. And no defense project is more representative of a disastrous status quo than the 20-year-old Joint Strike Fighter program — the F-35. The F-35 program showcases all that is wrong about our military’s vendor-dominated, crony-capitalist procurement system. Unless dealt with decisively, its massive cost and its lack of capability will have a dramatically negative impact on our military’s effectiveness for decades to come.

Therefore, President-elect Trump’s willingness to publicly call out this $1.5 trillion program is good news. However, getting involved in negotiating a better price on incomplete, crippled fighters will not save taxpayers any money in the long run — because the prices being negotiated between Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon are prices designed to fool the public about the F-35’s true costs. Lockheed Martin and the Pentagon both know that any “discount” or price reduction negotiated in public will quickly be made up on the back-end, where a plethora of upgrades, airframe life-extension programs, and uber-expensive spare-parts purchases over the life of the program will easily generate over $200 million for each plane delivered. Consequently, if Trump expends presidential prestige to save a few percent off the top, it won’t solve the underlying problem.
Instead, he will only validate a failed program that is a big part of the swamp he is eager to drain as part of his plan to restore our depleted military.

In place of counter-productive price negotiations, within hours of taking office President Donald Trump could use the extraordinary influence of @realDonaldTrump to tweet 127 power-packed characters: “20 years and the F-35 is still not working. Program a mess. Plane a mess. Time to stop buying F-35s! New, better planes needed!”

More than any other single action, this tweet would signal that a new sheriff is in town — a sheriff committed to taking on the entrenched special interests that have corrupted the Pentagon.

Twenty Years of Failure

Just as Donald Trump turned out to be 100 percent correct about the bloated, $4 billion Air Force One program, he would be justified in calling foul on Marine Corps and Air Force claims that their F-35s have achieved Initial Operating Capability (IOC). Contrary to recent statements made by the executive officer of the F-35 program, Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, the F-35 is not back on track. It’s time to face the facts: Because of fatal mistakes made during the conceptual design process well over 20 years ago, the F-35 will forever be crippled by intractable weight and heat issues that ensure that the program will never deliver a reliable, cost-effective fighter.

Further evidence of this was revealed on Wednesday, when Inside Defense exposed the fact that the Navy’s F-35C model has design defects that can cause pilots to suffer disorientation and severe pain when undergoing carrier catapult launches. As it stands, Navy pilots have determined the F-35C is not “operationally suitable” for carrier launches. New design changes to the F-35C will be required that could take years — and even our carriers may need to be modified to fix the problem. This issue has been known about for years, but until now it has been concealed from the public.

So, instead of an on-track program, what we have is a pattern of deceptive statements and actions designed to create the illusion that the F-35 program is on track. The goal of this deception is to provide the political cover necessary to allow the F-35’s supporters in Congress to continue to fund the purchase of hundreds of incomplete, combat-incapable planes — each of which will require many years and many tens of millions of dollars of structural repairs, structural rework, systems-stability and functionality fixes, engine modifications and retrofits, and more. And that is just to get the planes to where they should have been when we took initial delivery. Never before have we seen a warplane granted so many waivers and reductions in key performance standards. Never before have we taken delivery of so many planes so far from being complete and so far from being ready for combat.

The F-35’s severe, ongoing problems with weight have resulted in indefensible decisions affecting plane safety, reliability, and durability — the most egregious example being the removal of hundreds of pounds of equipment designed to keep pilots from dying in fiery explosions. Some of the safety equipment removed includes the fuel tank’s ballistic liner, critical fueldraulic fuses, the flammable coolant shut-off valve, and the dry bay fire-extinguishing unit. The unprecedented and pervasive presence of flammable hydraulic fluid, flammable coolants, and fuel throughout the plane makes the F-35 a flying tinderbox. But without these risky weight-reduction measures, the F-35 will not be able to meet even its bare-minimum contractually mandated range goals. It should be unacceptable to ask American pilots to fly these fighters.

Other bad design decisions executed in the name of saving weight have focused on reducing the airframe’s weight. For example, load-bearing structural bulkheads originally supposed to be made from fatigue-resistant titanium were swapped out with fatigue-prone aluminum bulkheads. Now, we have aluminum bulkheads suffering stress-induced fatigue cracks that will require heavier bulkheads in future F-35s and weighty retrofit kits for those that have already been built.

Unfortunately, cracked bulkheads are not the only casualty of the weight pogrom. The Department of Operational Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E), which answers to the secretary of defense, has issued reports that are full of descriptions of cracks in engine parts, failed turbine blisks, cracks in the floor, root-rib cracks, and the like. In 2004, the F-35’s F135 engine was also subjected to an extreme weight-reduction program. Not coincidentally, according to an April 2015 Government Accountability Office report, it has very poor reliability — “less than half of where it should be.”

The Pentagon’s Sugar-Coated Assessments

Complementing the extreme, unsustainable weight-reduction efforts have been a raft of deceptive statements designed to fool the public as to the true state of the program. The most blatantly deceptive statements are the declarations by the Marine Corps and Air Force that their variants — the F-35B and the F-35A, respectively — have achieved Initial Operating Capability (IOC). In fact, they have not.

Moreover, it is shocking that best-practices protocols of the rigorous operational testing followed by every major fighter program — including the F-15, the F-14, the F-18, the A-10, the F-16, the A-6, the F-4, and even the F-22 — were ignored. That Congress continues to let the service chiefs and Lockheed Martin get away with their fictional IOC declarations is another sign that congressional obeisance to Lockheed Martin has destroyed its ability to provide effective oversight of our country’s defense.

Despite the thoroughly discredited set of exercises the Marines tried to pass off as “operational testing” in May 2015, no service has been so foolish as to attempt to undertake the standard Initial Operational Testing & Evaluation (IOT&E). In fact, the services accidentally forgot to order the equipment that would allow them to even attempt the IOT&E. They understand that going through the IOT&E could kill the program. Instead, the plan appears to be to continue to avoid IOT&E like the plague for as long as possible, while continuing to buy as many F-35s as possible.

Further evidence of a what a sham the Air Force and Marine Corps IOC declarations are is revealed in a DOT&E memo. In it, we find that on the battlefield F-35s are not an asset. In fact, America’s new fighters will actually have to be protected in combat. Because of numerous performance deficiencies and limited weapons capacity, the so-called operationally capable F-35 will need support to locate and avoid threats, acquire targets, and engage enemy aircraft. Unresolved deficiencies in sensor fusion, electronic warfare, and weapons employment continue to result in ambiguous threat displays, limited ability to effectively respond to threats, and, in some cases, a requirement for off-board sources to provide accurate coordinates for precision attack. In short, the F-35 — a flying tinderbox — will need to be nursemaided by other aircraft that are actually combat capable.

An August 9, 2016, DOT&E memo put the nail in the coffin with this damning statement: “In fact, the [F-35] program is actually not on a path toward success, but instead is on a path toward failing to deliver the full Block 3F capabilities [i.e., full combat capabilities].”

This statement distills to just a few words what independent airpower analysts and all the DOT&E reports have been trying to tell us in gory detail — the F-35 is a failing program and the IOC being touted by the Air Force and Marines is nothing more than PR puffery designed to please Congress and the big defense contractors, the future employers of a whole lot of generals and admirals.

A Plane so Advanced, It’s Obsolete

After two decades, the F-35 absolutely, positively has not achieved Initial Operating Capability. By contrast, both the F-15 and the F-16 achieved IOC in eight years or less — with full production following quickly. But falsely declaring IOC is only the tip of the iceberg of what Lockheed Martin and its supporters in the military have done to prop up a program that by any reasonable measure is already a failure. Indeed, it has become standard operating procedure for the F-35’s flaws and problems to be kicked down the road to be fixed in the future.

In order to protect the F-35 from cancellation, the Pentagon has lowered key performance requirements and helped Lockheed cheat so that it could continue the charade that the F-35 will actually meet its bare-minimum threshold ranges. And embarrassing, inexcusable design mistakes continue, such as the F-35B not being able to carry the number of bombs it was supposed to.

Because the Joint Strike Fighter’s development has been going on for over 20 years, much of its shiny new tech that looked so neat two decades ago is now old tech. One victim of old age is the Distributed Aperture System — the hard-wired design of which means that the F-35 is stuck with older infrared sensors with vastly inferior resolution to what is available today. Likewise, the F-35’s Electro-Optical Targeting Sensor is already obsolete and is ten years behind those being used by our F-16s and A-10s. Upgrading it will be difficult and costly.

After some 15 years of development, the F-35’s aging, increasingly unsupportable Integrated Core Processor computer system needed upgrading. Because of schedule pressures and the imperative to maintain the illusion of progress, the decision was made to port 20 million lines of buggy, immature code to the new architecture and then use that code as the base for coding new significant functionality. This resulted in severe, ongoing problems with the F-35’s avionics, its sensor fusion, and other unresolved deficiencies. Many of these deficiencies are not scheduled to be corrected until 2021.

Given all the above, how are we to interpret the announcement that a few combat-incapable, unreliable, extremely expensive to maintain F-35s are scheduled to be deployed to Europe later this year to help deter Russian aggression? Rest assured, Vladimir Putin is not impressed — and neither should we be. But even after many more years and many more billions of dollars, we still won’t have cause to be impressed. That’s because the rapid proliferation of new anti-stealth radars by peer competitors such as Russia and China will stop the F-35 from penetrating deep into peer competitors’ air space to strike at critical targets as its supporters claimed it would be able to do.

To make matters worse, the published $32,000-per-flying-hour cost is a made-up number; its real cost per flying hour will likely be closer to the $62,000 of the much less complex F-22. Its truly dismal sustained-sortie-generation rate of one sortie (mission) every three or four days means that, as is the case with our F-22 pilots, F-35 pilots will only get a fraction of the 30 to 40 hours of stick-time (actual flying time) per month necessary to gain and maintain fighter-combat mastery. The chunky F-35 will find itself facing faster, more agile, longer-range fighters carrying four times as many missiles. In going up against these planes — fighters such as the Russian SU-35S — our F-35 will find itself at a deadly disadvantage, despite its stealth.

It Takes a President

But enough about missiles and sorties, back to the cost question. Since most of the real costs will occur after U.S. taxpayers take delivery, the drama being played out in the media between Lockheed and the Pentagon is no more than political theater. What we really have is a briar-patch exercise: “Oh, you mean Mr. Pentagon! Please don’t force me to sell you these shiny new planes for a few percent less than we wanted!” cries Lockheed, knowing full well that each F-35 delivered will allow them to mainline taxpayer dollars for decades to come.

The real goal is to obscure the true cost of the program for as long as possible from taxpayers while pumping out as many revenue-producing airframes as fast as possible — knowing that even Congress will at some point become too embarrassed to continue to support the program.

So why, after 20 years, are we still dumping money into this plane? When asked this question, Ron Kollmansberger, an aerospace-engineering manager with decades of experience working on the F-15, the F-4, the A-10, and the CH-53E, had this simple answer: “This is a jobs program, not an airplane program.”

Ron’s answer cuts right to the heart of the matter. If not for its super-sized pork-barrel politics and a military-procurement culture that has gotten far too cozy with the defense industry to maintain any objectivity, the F-35 would be canceled in a heartbeat. Sure, there are a few F-35 critics in Congress, but no individual representative or senator has the clout to lead a successful charge against the F-35. Taking down the F-35 takes a president.

Starting on January 20, 2017, President Trump will be under the gun to get as much done as quickly as possible. While he won’t be able to restore our depleted military on Day One, he can send a strong message that restoring our military is more than just about repealing defense sequestration and spending more money — it’s about being smart in how we spend our money.

The F-35 is irredeemable. Contrary to the conventional wisdom on the Hill and at the Pentagon, there are practical solutions that can replace the failed Joint Strike Fighter project quickly while creating tens of thousands of jobs and filling America’s national-security needs (more about that in my next article). That said, no stronger message about reforming our broken defense-procurement process can be sent than by canceling the dumbest fighter program ever conceived.

Mr. President, please cancel the F-35.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... et-program

[NRao]

I thought Rip Van Winkle died long back. Guess not.

To say anything that the President-elect said in 140 chars, in that many words, is an insult to my President-elect. Lock him up.

[NRao]

THE F-35 IS A SUPERCOMPUTER IN THE SKY

To the joy of many in Israel’s defense establishment, Israel’s most advanced piece of weaponry, a pair of F-35 stealth fighter jets, landed in Nevatim Air Base late Monday after a six-hour delay.

But the jet fighters, which had been grounded in Italy due to fog, are only the beginning, with Israel expecting to receive a total of 50, two full squadrons, by 2022.

“Israel never had a stealth fighter before the F-35; it is a huge jump and will be a huge challenge,” Brig.-Gen. (res.) Abraham Assael told The Jerusalem Post before the planes landed, adding that “it is a very interesting time for our air force,” as the F-35 “is more like a system than a plane, and it will take time to fully understand the system.”

The plane, he said, “is an enigma,” and after years of development of the most expensive plane in history, the advanced jet will, according to senior Israeli officials, give Israel complete air superiority in the region for the next 40 years. Lt.- Col. Yotam, the squadron commander of the Adir, as the Israeli version of the F-35 is called, added that the Adir was purchased “in order to attack places that we are not always able to attack.”

The fifth-generation jet “is a quantum leap in relation to the combat aircraft we have today,” according to Yotam, designed to fly longer and faster than most fighter jets. Its extremely low radar signature allows it to operate undetected deep inside enemy territory, evading advanced missile-defense systems like the Russian-made S-300s and S-400s deployed both in Syria and Iran.

Those missile-defense systems pose an “obvious risk to Israel’s air force, and we cannot ignore their presence in the area,” Assael said.

But the need for the jet was also a subject of fierce debate in the government, where some wondered whether such an expensive jet was necessary, questioning whether Israel could have spent the $100 million plus per plane on hardware that could be more relevant to the current threats facing Israel.

The next conflict that Israel will face against Hamas or Hezbollah is likely not going to be a full-fledged war, and the F-35 will likely not need to use its stealth technology to strike targets, unless Hezbollah gets its hands on Russian-provided S-300 or S-400 surface-to-air missiles in Syria, an unlikely scenario.

But Hezbollah is Israel’s most dangerous enemy, known to have a massive arsenal of advanced weaponry, given to it by its Iranian patrons, and technological advances along with battlefield experience gained by the group in Syria.

Another terrorist group on Israel’s borders, Islamic State, continues to fight against Western air and ground forces relatively successfully, downing aircraft over Syria and Iraq. While Islamic State has been losing significant amounts of territory, its branch in the Sinai Peninsula is their strongest, having killed hundreds of Egyptian security forces, downed a Russian passenger plane, fired rockets toward Israel and released videos showing terrorists with man-portable air-defense systems.

But it’s not only terrorist groups that pose a threat to Israel. According to a senior IDF officer, the military buildup in the Middle East is a significant problem. “We see arms deals totaling $200 billion in weapons in the Middle East. We are a small country with a lot of strategic targets, and that is clear to everyone.”

In addition to the S-300s and S-400s on Israel’s northern border, to the south, Egypt has signed a deal with France to buy 24 Rafale fighter jets. The Saudis and Qataris have also bought the latest, most sophisticated F-15s, and Iran has expressed interest in purchasing Russian- made Sukhoi Su-30SM multi-role fighter jets.

According to Yiftah Shapir of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, it was crucial for Israel to refurbish its fleet of aircraft, as the IAF currently relies on the F-15 Baz and F-16 Barak.

Israel received the first F-15s in 1977 and the first F-16s in 1980, and the first squadron of F-15s are due to be pulled from service next year.

“These planes have now flown for close to 40 years,” Shapir told the Post, and the IAF has chosen the F-35 to replace them.

“If you think about our security, we are currently relying on an airplane that is 40 years old. And since we get foreign military aid from the United States, we cannot even think about buying planes from somewhere else.”

Because Israel buys its aircraft using the Memorandum of Understanding signed between Jerusalem and Washington, there was no option to consider buying cheaper jets from European countries, and the possibility of buying from Russia or China is out of the question.

As Israel awaited the arrival of the jets, US President-elect Donald Trump said that he would completely reevaluate the costly aircraft program, once he takes office on January 20.

Taking to Twitter, Trump said the cost of the Lockheed Martin program was too high and that billions would be saved once he takes office.

“The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20,” Trump posted.

And if Trump cuts the F-35 program, the cost of the plane would skyrocket, and so would Israel’s bill.

The F-35 is a controversial plane with an expensive price tag of close to $100m. per plane, delays and at least 27 serious safety failures as of the end of October 2015, including one where flaws in the plane’s coolant system led to the United States Air Force grounding the jet a mere two months after they were declared combat ready in August. Eight of the planes grounded by the USAF belong to Israel.

The jet had also been banned from taxiing, taking off or flying within 25 miles (40 km.) of known lightning strikes, because of the possibility of an explosive mixture of fuel vapor and oxygen collecting in the fuel tanks.

The restrictions have since been lifted, but a mere week after the USAF declared its version of the F-35 ready for limited combat operations, the Pentagon’s top tester warned that there were still many failures.

According to an August 9 memo by Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational testing, if the F-35 would be needed for a combat mission, it would currently need “support to locate and avoid modern threats, acquire targets, and engage formations of enemy fighter aircraft” because of “outstanding performance deficiencies and limited weapons carriage available (i.e., two bombs and two air-to-air missiles).”

In addition, according to the memo, the F-35 Block 3i also has deficiencies in “fusion, electronic warfare and weapons employment,” which “result in ambiguous threat displays, limited ability to effectively respond to threats, and in some cases a requirement for off-board sources to provide coordinates for precision attack.”

Some reports have even said that it was unable to reliably defeat the older F-16 in test flights. But according to Shapir, the USAF planned to use the F-35, designed for attacking ground targets, alongside the F-22 Stealth Raptor, the best in the world in air-to-air combat. And while Israel does not have any F-22s, the F-35 will fly alongside F-16s, the type of plane that struck Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Despite all the flaws of the expensive F-35 Adir, Israel’s defense establishment is pleased. It has acquired its first stealth jet, a supercomputer that will help Israel maintain its qualitative advantage in an area where one must always stay two steps ahead of one’s enemy.

[TSJones]

since neshant reposted an article already posted by austin, I will state once again........

Further evidence of this was revealed on Wednesday, when Inside Defense exposed the fact that the Navy’s F-35C model has design defects that can cause pilots to suffer disorientation and severe pain when undergoing carrier catapult launches.

the above quote is BS......the f-35c flies itself off of the carrier (so does the f-18). the pilot doesn't touch the stick until well away from the carrier.

the writer is an uninformed political hack.

[NRao]

Mr. President, Cancel the F-35

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... et-program

Trump would face pushback from USAF leaders if he tries to substitute Super Hornets for F-35s, top official suggests

Just before Christmas, President-elect Donald Trump suggested that his administration may sideline the F-35 in favor of buying more Super Hornets. “Based on the tremendous cost and cost overruns of the Lockheed Martin F-35, I have asked Boeing to price-out a comparable F-18 Super Hornet!” Trump tweeted at the time.

But U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James says that Trump could be facing strong opposition from the USAF’s leadership if he tries to substitute Super Hornets for F-35s.

“The Air Force does not view the F/A-18 and the F-35 to be substitutable at all,” James told Defense News in a recent interview. “They fulfill different requirements. They’re both fine aircraft, don’t get me wrong. But it’s fourth generation, and F-35 is fifth generation.”
“The leaders of the Air Force will have the opportunity when the time comes to advise the president-elect on this,” she added. “But based on everything I know, the two are not interchangeable and the Air Force has not expressed interest in the F/A-18s.”

Having a good F-35 is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only "stupid" people, or fools, would think that it is bad!

[JayS]

I personally don't think Trump can (let alone 'would') cancel F35, no one can. US is simply too invested in F35 now to back off for any damn reason. More like he'll do some drama and take the credit of anyway eminent cost reductions. He's not President yet. He would get far more information about the situation when he becomes President.

[Austin]

Tupolev Tu-22M Bombers in Action over Syria

[brar_w]

I personally don't think Trump can (let alone 'would') cancel F35, no one can. US is simply too invested in F35 now to back off for any damn reason. More like he'll do some drama and take the credit of anyway eminent cost reductions. He's not President yet. He would get far more information about the situation when he becomes President.

He met with the Program leader from the services side, LM CEO and them walked out and said that he will reduce the cost of the aircraft "beautifully". He then pointed the PEO out and said that he was a good negotiator (no doubt he was filled in on the LRIP-9 negotiations). He did not say he will cancel the program. His Secretary of Defense Nominee has already cited the importance of the aircraft to US modernization as recently as this week.

There are only 2 ways you can reduce the cost of the F-35 (URF and APUC). One is to stay on or accelerate the program's production ramp up. There will be bumps along the way since the industry has not produced at this rate for a long time and there will have to be quite a few new suppliers brought in. In fact expect that to be the case even with the current planned increase from 50 to 90 and then to 120 and beyond. There are always learning curve issues that pop up every time new suppliers begin producing, even using established processes.

Another way would be to reduce capability i.e. ask for a less capable variant that does not possess all the features of the current one. Option one is likely to be the one exercised if anything different is done.

Do note that if they do nothing and let the program move on the path General Bogdan and Frank Kendall have put it on, it will deliver 5-7% reduction in LRIP-10 compared to LRIP9, making LRIP -10 the first version to have a URF in the mid 90's (Million/A-variant) including the mission systems, aircraft and engine. As the program stands LRIP-9 agreement is finalized and the aircraft are in the production chain. LRIP-10 pre-contracting (Long lead items) and contract ceilings have been agreed upon and Lockheed has been paid Billions to start producing the aircraft. Pratt and Whitney has SIGNED a contract to supply 99 engines to support LRIP-10 contracts. LRIP - 11 Long lead production has most likely also started.,

They have put themselves on a path to get to $85 Million URF in then year $$ by Full Rate Production. This is essentially paying 4.5 Generation prices for a 5th generation product. You can obviously look at more efficiencies but then the returns start to diminish as you require tremendous investments in time and money to squeeze out the last bit of savings.

Also, there is a limit to the US services annual buy rate. They'll like to buy as many a year as they can afford but you can't put yourself in a position to buy so many a year that it takes money away from other programs. The services have in the SAR defined their procurement quantities that they have budgeted in their long term planning. Trump can obviously work with the Congress to increase that level by funding for a higher top-line but concentrating on the export market may be a better option in the short term.

Folks here and elsewhere do not realize how disruptive canceling the program would be. This is why when it had its NM breach, the Congress and a Democratic White House (more likely to cancel defense programs) kept it afloat, made leadership changes, demanded LM make leadership changes, restructured the program and put it on a path to where it could deliver a product that everyone was happy with.

It is not about being "too big to fail", but rather being "too important to fail". It gives the USAF, USMC and USN a cutting edge 5th generation platform at a highly affordable cost and most importantly gets them the "quantity" they require to replenish and modernize vast amounts of their cold war legacy tactical fighter fleet. Do away with it and all you are left with are F-16's, F/A-18's and F-15s when the entire world has seen the importance of 5th generation capability and developed capacity to produce or acquire the capability in quantity, particularly your competitors in China and Russia.


Folks also do not realize that the US forces have been deployed off and on for well over a decade (some would say practically non stop since the original Gulf-War). The Marine Corps Aviation is totally BROKEN..

They are pulling out spare parts from Museum birds as we speak and are looking to buy back some foreign F/A-18C's (Kuwait) to keep their current aircraft flight worthy. The USAF will be there soon with their oldest F-16's. Forum banter aside, they cannot afford to wait 30 or so years it will take to develop to a certain forum member's phantom requirements of hypersonic-cruise, and chameleon skin and son of watson...They need frames NOW, not 30 years from now.

There is a reason why those flying it, and those planning US defenses would oppose any attempt to cut back the program as stated by the current SECAF..It is delivering results to them and they can prove it by taking Trump's team to Red Flag later this month, or to Northern Edge as well. The F-35B has been on a number of large force exercises already and the F-35A will go to its first Red Flag in a few days.

since neshant reposted an article already posted by austin, I will state once again........

Further evidence of this was revealed on Wednesday, when Inside Defense exposed the fact that the Navy’s F-35C model has design defects that can cause pilots to suffer disorientation and severe pain when undergoing carrier catapult launches.

the above quote is BS......the f-35c flies itself off of the carrier (so does the f-18). the pilot doesn't touch the stick until well away from the carrier.

the writer is an uninformed political hack.

It isn't BS. They discovered issues (why you do testi during the last DT testing of the Charlie upon launching form the CAT. Things pop up that is why you have not one but up tong) 3 or 4 developmental testing deployments to find these faults, to develop fixes, to go back and test and validate them and then implement them. As I had mentioned in the US Military thread, the Charlie is the least mature variant from testing perspective. While others have mostly completed their Developmental testing and structural and weapons carriage testing (internal) the C variant is still a little behind because it was the last one out. The Navy has a different schedule to the USAF and USMC so it was always expected that their testing activity would finish last.

The red team has recommended certain measures. As was done during the bulkhead issue (that also surfaced during testing) not he B's, and the helmet issue with the USAF pilots (not effecting any other branches for reasons I've mentioned before) they develop fixes, and test them before approving them for production. THat's what will happen here. It's not a show-stopper, not for the C variant, not for the program. You do extensive testing for this very purpose - so you do not have discoveries when you are operationally deployed when your ability to address them is minimal.

Let's set aside Popular Mechanics to where it belongs (dumpster) and go directly to the Source (InsideDefense) that is the only publication that has seen the testing memo -

Problem -

"During a catapult launch the nose landing gear strut is compressed as the catapult pulls on the nose landing gear, with the hold back bar restraining the aircraft from forward movement due to engine thrust," according to a Dec. 28 Navy information paper viewed by Inside Defense. "Upon release of the hold back bar, the nose landing gear strut unloads and vertically oscillates as the aircraft accelerates towards take-off."

The motion is not only uncomfortable but the Helmet-Mounted Display and oxygen mask push back and up and down against the pilot's jaw. The jostling in the cockpit results in unreadable HMD during and immediately after launch, the paper reads.

"The Red Team believes multiple factors are contributing to the problem, including the pilot's seat restraint and hand-hold (grab bar) locations, the mass and center-of-gravity of the F-35 helmet and display unit, the physical characteristics of the nose landing gear strut (load vs. stroke, damping), and the length and release load of the repeatable-release hold-back bar (RRHB)," according to the paper.

Potential Solutions -

The short-term actions are slated to begin in early 2017 and will take about two to six months to complete, according to the paper. The actions include implementing improved and standardized restraint procedures for pilots and flight testing later this month on the effects of a reduced RRHB release load. VFA-101 will evaluate both the restraint procedures and a reduced RRHB load during its next carrier qualification period in the spring, the paper reads.

In late 2017, medium-term actions ranging from six to 12 months to complete will begin. These include HMD symbology, nose landing gear modifications and pilot motion modeling. Regarding symbology, "Options are being considered that would simplify the information displayed to the pilot during and immediately after catapult launch, to make it easier for the pilot to interpret flight-critical data," the paper notes. One of the problems here is the contractor doesn't think there is enough time in the system design and development phase to demonstrate this in simulation, according to the paper.

Long-term actions would not begin until 2019 and would take 12 to 36 months to complete. These include RRHB geometry that would reduce compression of the nose gear strut before launch. This course of action may require ship modifications, according to the red team.

^ This is exactly how test programs are supposed to function. Testing isn't performed to celebrate your design and spend years congratulating yourself on creating a perfect aircaft. It is done to isolate, discover, and find root-causes of flaws and then go and fix them.

What happened when a bunch of tabloids took a hold of this ID article? "May require" part disappeared and they forgot to report that the Red Team said " A redesign [ of the landing gear ] is not being pursued" .

Anyhow, there is an extremely relevant masters paper somewhere on NTIS about similar issues with the F/A-18C when the JHMCS was introduced into service. Worth digging up.

[TSJones]

OK, but the plane does fly itself away from the carrier w/o pilot intervention. as does the f-18.

[brar_w]

OK, but the plane does fly itself away from the carrier w/o pilot intervention. as does the f-18.

Yes but the issue here is the vibration and excessive movement causing the pilots discomfort during the launch sequence (even though it is automated). The short, medium and long term solutions are designed to mitigate that. They had a sample of more than 100 actual ship borne launch sequences to study the matter and asked the half a dozen or so pilots to rate their discomfort and display readability.

They have not encountered either of these issues during medium and heavy load launches but regardless this is what the test team is going to send back to the JPO and seek fixes on as it has done for other discoveries (and as is the norm during a well run, supported test program).

F-35 Program Executive Officer Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan told reporters during a Dec. 19 roundtable at his office in Arlington, VA, "there's no doubt" his team has to find a solution to the nose gear.

However, he stressed, "the only time that is a problem with the C model is at very light gross weights. At medium weights and at heavy weights you don't see this problem at all."

Bogdan said his office is considering numerous short-term fixes, including changing the way pilots strap themselves into the aircraft and how they hold the straps.

"The long-term fix surely would be one that you would mechanically fix so that you don't have to make the pilots do any kind of special combinations," Bogdan said. "That fix is probably a couple of years off."

Now before our fellow forum member that has only now begun discovering stuff that we had been asking about a year or more ago points out HMD and HMD weight issues (w/o doing a basic search of this forum) let me point out the helmet, HMS and HMD weights and provide a historic perspective -

- HGU-55/P - 2.67 Pounds (with Oxygen Mask)
- JHMCS I - 4.54 Pounds ( Currently in service with the USAF, USN, USMC, and a ton of NATO customers)
- JHMCS II - 4.5-4.6 Pounds
- F-35 HMD (Gen III) - 5.2 Pounds
- F-35 HMD (Modified Gen III) - 4.6-4.8 Pounds

There has been a trend of increased bulk with an increased capability that HMD's provide. Baseline helmets are light, mount a sight to it and it adds little weight. Want a full fledged HMD with its features then it will weight close to the JHMCS I and II and this will be true for anything that looks to deliver that capability. Thousands of JHMCS I are ins service, and JHMCS II is now comping online with Saudi Arabian F-15 SA's. Once JHMCS II is certified across the fighters in service all future JHMCS procurement by US services will be of the II with JHMCS I being phased out of production.

The Generation III + F-35 HMD will bring the weight in the JHMCS class which is what the current crop of pilots are accustomed to.

Basic Stuff -



JHMCS -



F-35 HMD -



Of course the hypersonic cruising, chameleon skin wearing Grandson of Watson capable "True 5th Generation" fighter would need something like this -



If only the F-35, F-22 and all other 5th generation programs are cancelled we could have this like tomorrow.

Meanwhile back on Earth, there are two deployments expected from "Operational F-35 Squadrons" this year. The USMC will be deploying its first F-35B squadron to Japan and will be replacing a Harrier squadron there permanently. Separately, around the middle of the year, the USAF's first F-35A squadron will be deploying to Europe as a Security Package and will probably be rotating through a couple of bases there before heading back to home base.

Red Flag kicks off in a few days and this will be the first for the first F-35A operational squadron. Meanwhile, below are US-Navy's exercise plans for their aircraft (remember they have quite a way to go compared to the USAF and USMC that have declared IOC).

So I call it a crawl, walk, run; we have to get out there and start learning some lessons, which we will. VMFA-121 will go out with 10 aircraft, and six additional aircraft will go out as part of the [31st Marine Expeditionary Unit’s fall patrol from Japan]. So they’ll get out on ground and just start doing what I call familiarization, and then they’ll learn some lessons from that. Then they’ll go and participate in a couple exercises in calendar year ’17; one of the exercises that they’re going to participate in the PACOM region will be in Alaska. … That’ll be approximately 6,000 Marines, sailors and soldiers that will be in the exercise, and it will give them the opportunity to get in the air and test its capability” in a contingency response-type exercise, he said.

The Alaskan exercise, called Exercise Northern Edge, is a U.S.-only biennial exercise that U.S. Pacific Command holds “to replicate the most challenging scenarios in the Pacific theater to ensure joint U.S. forces are trained and prepared to respond to crises in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, with over 6,000 U.S. service members and 200 aircraft from across the continental United States and Asian-Pacific,” Bailey’s office explained.

Additionally, the F-35 is expected to participate in Exercise Forager Fury in Guam this calendar year, and in Exercises Ssang Yong and Max Thunder in the Republic of Korea, Exercises Pitch Black and Southern Frontier in Australia, and Exercises Forager Fury and Valiant Shield in Guam in 2018.

Bailey said bringing the aircraft to the Pacific allows the squadron to exercise in training ranges much larger than those available at home, and eventually it will allow the squadrons to begin testing interoperability with allies in the area such as Japan and Australia.

For the time being, these allies won’t work directly with the F-35B but instead will open their airspace for training purposes. Once the Marine Corps learns best practices and gets farther along in writing tactics, techniques and procedures, then the service will begin sharing lessons learned with its allies – such as Japan and Australia, who are both buying the F-35A conventional take-off variant.

More - https://news.usni.org/2017/01/05/interv ... ns-in-2017

[Neshant]

I personally don't think Trump can (let alone 'would') cancel F35, no one can.

At least that's what LM hopes - i.e. by becoming too-big-to-fail, the program will not be cancelled.

However large scale, runaway military programs have been cancelled or vastly scaled down in the past.

So I wouldn't be so sure.

My guess would be that large scale cuts are coming for this program. You can already tell LM is hurriedly trying to deliver these jets before the axe wielders clue in.

If the (real) US economy continues on a downward trajectory, the need will become even more pressing. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile they have begun a multi-billion dollar program to modernize the B-2 bomber with work at Honeywell about to start on that.

[NRao]

I personally don't think Trump can (let alone 'would') cancel F35, no one can.

Not affordable. The alternative will be more expensive.

Furthermore, one can see a clear smear campaign against it. That is the legacy of the internet: use, misuse, abuse.

Besides tweets, it has become a common past time (as opposed to serious analysis) to flood the internet with - at best - slanted logic and , of course, imagined data points, based on made up science. When logic fails artificially generated news reports, without proper supporting articles, are posted. RegenedTruth.com. From behind curtains.

You can never prevent a Duck from quacking, that is what they do. And you will need more than an Axe to deal with this plane.

[brar_w]

NRao saab I asked here for an analysis on what an "alternative' plan would cost in terms of O&S cost over 60 years, 19200000 + hours of operation, support, adjusted for inflation in both cost of energy but pay and other miscellaneous expenditure encountered at the unit level.

I'm still waiting for it. Clearly if one is going to throw around a "Trillion" dollar meme one must have an idea of what it gets us, and what the alternative costs. Of course even this will be inadequate because 2400 F-35's (A, B and C's) cannot simply be replaced by 2400 F-16's or a mix of F-16's and F-18s since force structure is a function of both capability and threat and there is nothing you can do to the F-16 or F-18 to bring it to the level of the F-35. CAPE/SAR has done a CPFH based analysis and this comes to a net 17% reduction not accounting for the fact that the F-16 cannot land on a carrier, cannot land on an L-Class ship etc. And I did not add EA-18G procurement and unique costs that you would need plus I did not add higher F-16 numbers to account for lower-survivability and overall capability. And the 17% number in CPFH is calculated using data supplied by the same organization that came up with the trillion dollar figure.

Once we get that analysis, my next request would be for a similar number for a hyperscruising Watson over the same parameters . We can then move on to the USS Enterprise and other Warp Cruising Next Generation products as JayS's requirements suggest.

[NRao]

Took a quick look at the "Neural Networks" topic. The F-35 is a FAR closer cousin of NN than Watson is to AI. The decision making capabilities for data fusion are indeed phenomenal (as compared to other air crafts and some national leaders) and the networking makes the data presentation at the right place, at the right time. The worth of the F-35 is not really rate of turning, speed, missiles it can carry/fire, but the ability to provide pertinent data to anyone who needs it at the right time, increasing the survivablity of the group.

Found out that Watson is a Natural Language Understanding (NLU) project and not one of decision making (you can find its data flow diagram in wiki - if anyone is interested). Its search engine "finds" answers to questions posed in English. So, even its participation in Jeopardy is not that it beat the humans, but that it understood what was going on (it did not provide correct answers all the time - but that was not what it was designed for). (IF it were NN, it would have fared better!!)

A a point of reference, Autonomy actually learns NLU, which is why it is not constraint by any "language" (Check out bbc.com and its variety of languages.)


A quick observation on bolt-on solutions - as in making a F-18 = F-35. Try. The very first sentence shoudl help.

[Neshant]

What is an "artificially generated news report"?

The article I posted is an analysis of why the program is a failure.

When the only rationale left to justify the existence of the program is the sheer amount of money already sunk into it, its already is a failure.

Both the F-16 and F-18 have long operational service histories, combat histories, established infrastructure, trained personel, a well develop R&D supply chain base and more. Almost all the claims of how the F-35 is so good come from those who stand to financially profit from the selling the plane (no doubt, one fellow in here in particular). Independent analysis of its capabilities from industry veterans draws negative responses which are quickly buried and quietly overlooked.

Looking at the sheer number of NCRs filed by the makers of this plane regarding its various core technologies alone says something. For a trillion plus dollars, it brings next to nothing in terms of next gen technologies to the table.

This program will be significantly scaled down. All that's needed is the spark.