sethnintendo said:
Oops... Not sure how I got the F-22 and F-35 mixed up... My drone statement was a little exaggerated but there probably won't be another program for a manned fighter such as the F-35 in the future. The F-35 might be one of the last manned fighters for the USA. F-35 program as a whole has been a disaster. "a new report says F-35 pilots can’t see that well out of the cockpit." "Last winter, the Pentagon’s top buyer, Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, told a defense conference that the George W. Bush administration had committed “acquisition malpractice.” “I can spend quite a few minutes on the F-35, but I don’t want to,” Mr. Kendall said. “This will make a headline if I say it, but I’m going to say it anyway: Putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was acquisition malpractice. It should not have been done, OK? But we did it.”
"Gen. McPeak said that the real mistake occurred decades ago, as the Air Force basked in the success of Desert Storm. The Air Force aimed to replace the F-16 Falcon — considered one of the most successful low-cost fighter productions ever — by designing a successor in its image: lightweight, technologically advanced, with flexibility to adjust to new threats. But then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin overruled the Air Force, and decreed that the next generation of multi-role fighter jets would be “joint” — one plane for three services — to cut costs. “We did what we were told,” Gen. McPeak said, adding that , 20 years later, the Aspin decision has had the opposite effect. Trying to build three versions of the same aircraft has required adding layers of different features to meet the demands of each service. Development and production has been overseen by a succession of different program managers from the three services, each with their own tweaks for the final product."
and the most ironic problem of the F-35 Lightning... "The $237-million F-35B has been banned from traveling within 25 miles of a thunderstorm, amid fears that lightning could cause its fuel tank to explode. The aircraft, which is ironically known as 'Lightning II,' is not permitted to fly in thunderstorms until an oxygen gauge in the fuel tank is redesigned." http://rt.com/usa/f35-lightning-design-flaw-360/
Anyways, the feeding homeless was kind of a blank statement. I pretty much meant you could do a lot more with that money than the money pit the F-35 has been. Mainly I am for rebuilding USA infrastructure. Do we need a strong military? Sure, but we need to stop trying to be the world police force. I am more of an isolationist but if one of our allies is attacked then we should respond. I view the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as a complete waste of time, money and life. At most we should have just let the Northern Alliance take over Afghanistan with the help of CIA, special forces, and air power. Putting bases and stationed troops on the ground in Afghanistan only pisses off the locals. Who wants foreign troops setting up bases inside their country? So replace the homeless statement with rebuilding USA failing infrastructure. We have numerous bridges that are becoming structurally unsound, highways that need to be expanded and built, and other forms of transportation to built. What do we have now? Well in shitty Texas we have highways being built with public money which are sold (usually to foreign private companies) to be toll roads. I thought double taxation was illegal? |
Eh, i've heard as much good as I have bad on the F-35.
He's just an oldschool guy, the oldschool guys like the F16, and thought the F22's sucked.
The F22 and Eurofighter also can't fly near thunderstorms, so that's really just a matter of people trumpeting up something as a flaw that's a standard issue with modern planes. (The F16 couldn't fly in thunderstorms either as far as i know.)
Even the cockpit thing... The F35 is supposed to be run off the gages. So you aren't actually supposed to be looking out of the cockpit, unless there is some huge emergency that has blown your gages.
I mean look at it this way. Norway wants to get up to 52 of the things.
Why would Norway buy 52 of them if they were junk? They could get Eurofighters cheaper if they really wanted... or even F22's since Norway is replacing F16s.
Hell Norway was part of the Eurofighter program. Then Eurofighter dropped their plans to seek norway from buying the F35, basically because they knew the F35 would beat the Eurofighter.
And your fooling yourself if you think manned flight won't play a large part in conventional warfare in the future. I mean, think of the imput lag in the first place. Let alone if jamming occurs. Most drones are practically just hobby planes with advanced backend technology to control them good. Any decent air defense is going to rip them to shreds.
Most people have a false sense of what drones are.
I mean hell... look at Norway above. They plan to buy 52 F-35's... and they're Norway. The US buying 214 doesn't really seem off when Norway is buying 52 does it?
I mean Norway doesn't really have any enemies, isn't likely to run many military oprations and only probably has 5 billion citizens or so.
As for failing US infrastructure... again that's not really an issue of money. We spend a LOT of new infrastructure. Just the way we do it, means it's poorly allocated to things that aren't needed that fall ino disrepair.
Roads are sold to private companies because building is federal, mainting is almost exclusivly state money.
You tend to get hundreds of people voting on a trasnportation bill only like maybe 3 people are going to know if it's needed or not, and those people are just trying to get pork for their districts. Or people like Harry Reed who build roads to inflate the value of their own real estate holdings.
This is also a problem for state level politics, but not quite as much. Our crumbling infrastructure is more due to our divided district system and new projects just being a lot easier to maitenence.
There really aren't any problems in the US that boils down to "More money". It's all more "Change the way money is spent to something smart."
You can add stuff with more money. Like say, increase science funding. Or even better... just not spend that money at all. But extra money isn't really going to solve any problems, or even really help much. The issues are systematic not due to a lack of funding.
