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

(www.cnn.com)
291 points Michelangelo11 | 1 comments | 27 Aug 25 11:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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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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1. nradov ◴[27 Aug 25 21:58 UTC] No.45045849[source]▶
Nah. Parts of the F-35 program were terribly managed (procurement malpractice) but the final product largely works as promised. The whole reason it was developed starting in about 1994 was that exercises and simulations had shown that legacy strike aircraft weren't survivable against modern air defenses: that part hasn't changed, in fact the situation has gotten worse. It doesn't matter how cheap an aircraft is if it can't accomplish the mission.

Perhaps someday cheap, expendable drones will be and to take over the entire mission set. But for now that concept is still science fiction.