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F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

(www.cnn.com)
278 points Michelangelo11 | 6 comments | 27 Aug 25 11:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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efitz ◴[27 Aug 25 12:23 UTC] No.45038686[source]▶
F-35 is a boondoggle.

$200M for one fighter plane is insane.

If the USA ever had to go to war with this weapon, a huge number of them would be offline at any given time, and every single airframe loss would cause a huge dent in overall combat power.

I don’t understand why our military and political leaders keep trying to buy ridiculously overpriced Swiss Army knife weapons (lots of flexibility but great at nothing) instead of mass producing combat knives (only good for one thing but great at it and lots of them).

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scottLobster ◴[27 Aug 25 13:50 UTC] No.45039654[source]▶
You sure about that? You should look at the F-35's performance in Israeli hands in their recent strikes on Iran.
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haberman ◴[27 Aug 25 14:00 UTC] No.45039830[source]▶
For me, that was a moment when I realized that the received wisdom about military things can be just completely wrong.

I had considered myself to be reasonably informed about the F-35, and how "everyone knows" it's a boondoggle. I think this started with a long-form article I read in 2013, "How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane": https://medium.com/war-is-boring/fd-how-the-u-s-and-its-alli...

Here is the HN discussion at the time, full of confident assertions that the F-35 is useless: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6211029

Fast forward to this year, when Israel's F-35s operated over Iran with total impunity. Not a single plane lost AFAIK.

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lazide ◴[27 Aug 25 14:23 UTC] No.45040154[source]▶
Iran isn’t really a near peer adversary, however. But I guess that is the F35’s target market?

Do you expect it would do as well over Ukraine? Or if there was a spat with China over Taiwan (for example)?

It is possible for both things to be true.

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1. FridayoLeary ◴[27 Aug 25 14:34 UTC] No.45040294[source]▶
They had some pretty advanced anti aircraft systems. Also they are invisible to radar so they were truly surprised attacks coming out of the blue. So yes, it would be.
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2. omarspira ◴[27 Aug 25 14:42 UTC] No.45040411[source]▶
They said the same thing about the F-117 in 1999. It was shot down by a Soviet era AA. It was said once, "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed". The same applies here. Comparing bombing Iran to a conflict with China is delusional, put plainly the capabilities of the aircraft have never actually been tested against a competent peer - when it actually matters.
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3. TiredOfLife ◴[27 Aug 25 14:57 UTC] No.45040595[source]▶
That F-117 was because it was flying every day for months on the same route at the same time and they lucked out with radar catching the plane during the couple seconds it's bomb doors were open.
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4. omarspira ◴[27 Aug 25 15:02 UTC] No.45040669{3}[source]▶
Yes, and they did that because of the same arrogance alluded to in my quote.
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5. scottLobster ◴[27 Aug 25 15:30 UTC] No.45041058{4}[source]▶
If the worst we have to worry about is China getting similarly lucky a few times, we'll win handily.
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6. omarspira ◴[27 Aug 25 15:45 UTC] No.45041245{5}[source]▶
You're missing the point entirely. The adversary in 1999 was not remotely near peer. So say arrogance there costs you only one plane, which nonetheless becomes infamous as a cautionary tale about superpower hubris. The same against China will be far more fatal. Also, fwiw conflict with China is routinely simulated by American war planners, and to put it plainly there is no longer any plausible scenario where America "wins handily" in the Taiwan strait. Your suggestion that this is even possible is therefore vaguely amusing. Maybe also look to the past decades of American war fighting. When was the last time we felt like we outright "won" a war? When against a peer or near peer? Mission accomplished?