>>29743528
Do you know what the price of a F-16 was supposed to be, and what it actually ended up being?

It's a mix of inflation, currency differences and most importantly, feature creep.

>>29743544
You mean am i aware that corruption may have occured previously too?
Of course,

Its not...its just the acquisitions process gone awry. The Department of Defense hasnt been very good at producing things for a while. (see Comanche, Crusader, FCS, GCS, uniforms... would encourage you to read about it if you care about how bureaucracies work)
What happened with the F35 was kind of 3 things. First, its a very complicated aircraft that required a lot of technology to be created in order for it to function. From a defense economics perspective you can use a platform to advance your level of technical competence, but on the flip side you end up having a lot of difficulty mastering it and you have to pay a lot of money. The F35 uses almost no Commercial Off The Shelf tech for the major systems and so all of it is developed/written/manufactured from whole cloth. This is expensive. Congress then saw a massive aircraft bill and reps/senators wanted in. Factories are being stood up in an almost Soviet fashion, all over the country as subcontractors vie for business. Lobbying served as an irritant. Instead of doing a block type capability upgrade, congress mandated new project objectives while it was being developed requiring all that proprietary special snowflake software, tech, whatever that was already expensive to produce to have to be rewritten. With a Cost-Plus contract there is really no incentive to pinch the turd off and just get what you ordered when just a liiiiiitle bit more cash will get you so much more capability. Whats not seen is the sunk cost. As orders shrink a lot of these sunk costs arent absorbed and the price per unit goes up.
I very much doubt a lot about this is done in bad faith. Its just a very big red flag finally pointing out the broken contracting process.

It's totally unneeded. I don't see how anyone can argue that the arsenal of US planes wasn't served well by what we have now. Few countries can even afford to buy any new fighters in volume anymore, almost all european countries have had severe budget cuts and most of the fighters in use how are just used to bomb people in caves, which an F18 will do just as good of a job at as any newer fighter. It's just government giving out corporate welfare.

>>29743667
meh.
A lot of airframes are very old and are feeling the years. Ive got AF maintainer friends that are fretting over the age of a lot of A10s/F15/F16s (mind you long live CAS) many of these platforms probably cant be Block Upgraded much anymore. They do need to be replaced and frankly their continued use threatens to undermine our technical edge. Youre kind of correct about corporate welfare, but keep in mind if the government doesnt dole out the occasional contract, all those aerospace engineers and defense facilities and technical know-how disappears. In short the Defense Industrial Base dries up. See EU defense companies. The AV8B/A10/F15/16/18 need replacements but they should have been done not with a common platform but with specialized aircraft. GAO says it would have saved money.

>>29743652
This broken contracting IS the corruption.

>>29744101
No, I very much doubt theres widespread bad faith.

>>29743528
I don't think it was corruption - remember; when they set the original requirements for the JSF, they wanted a 5th gen fighter that would cost $28 million (in 2002 dollars; that's $37 million in today's dollars) for the USAF variant.

Today's budget jet, the Gripen, costs around $70 million.

Should Lockheed and Boeing said "hey man, that's impossible?" definitely... except that few, if anyone saw it coming. Before the GFC, an F/A-18C cost $30 million. In 2014, two F/A-18Cs crashed; each was valued at an average of $75 million.

And even if they did see it coming, consider that whoever said "this is impossible" would have just lost to the other guys who would have gladly said "phh, for them perhaps, we can do it to your budget!"

At the end of the day, it's not what was originally promised, but it's the best deal that's available in today's reality.

>>29744224
Don't forget that we're in the cultural mindset assholes like Sprey, Boyd, Riccioni, and their journalist buddy helped create: All military procurement is the work of greedy, corrupt MIC types and their 4-star cronies, and expensive projects only exist to feed that.

You can bet your ass the next plane after the F-35 won't be developed the same way. No changing goals and shit. There will be a purpose and a plane built for it, lickity split.

>>29744608
What goals were changed?

>>29744628

The entire program was restructured about 4 years ago once they accepted that the original goals were 100% impossible. The price goals were changed. The target specifications were changed. The timeline for introduction was changed. Everything.

>>29744608
Look at the LRSB.

The entire competition was and is top secret.

Yes, less open means less known, but less known means less shitposting.

Every time a bolt comes loose on an f-35 45 threads are created on the 73 articles about it. >>29744608

>>29744645
The price and timeline was changed because the original ones were impossible. The actual aircraft design specs stayed almost identical.

>>29743555
>everything is corruption

Kek

>>29744657
Don't worry, we'll still hear shit about it; we've already had the first wave or two about its cost and how it's the B-2...1 Electric Boogaloo

>>29744645
>The entire program was restructured about 4 years ago once they accepted that the original goals were 100% impossible.

not quite
there was no goal, and that was the problem
requirements creep happened and the goal kept changing
what happened 4 years ago was pinning those requirements down so the goal is clear for everybody

>>29743528
>spending money to create a functional aircraft to certain specifications

>corruption

>>29744699
>there was no goal, and that was the problem
>requirements creep happened and the goal kept changing
No, there were fairly clear-cut goals; the restructure took place because there was a severe (Nunn-McCurdy) breach of those original goals / requirements.

>>29744710
>spending money to a lemon that's been under development for god knows how long and is still not combat worthy

>>29744738
How's the nursing home treating you, Pierre?

File: slzzpfuakagvftnnlune[1].jpg (157 KB, 1056x816) Image search: [Google]

157 KB, 1056x816

>>29744719
>>29744699
Here's a copy of one of the early (if not original) master schedules. All in all, the program's about 5 or 6 years late, which has brought it up to the average of about ~20 years (from program start to IOC) for modern 4.5th / 5th gen fighters. For comparison, Lockheed was selected in 2001 to build the F-35, Sukhoi was selected in 2002 to build the PAK-FA.

>>29744738
>still not combat worthy
USMC IOC was last year; it's not a mature jet, but if you had to get bombs onto strategic targets, today's F-35s would be more capable at doing that than anything other than a B-2.

>>29744789
>>29744719

>New F-35 video when

>that fuzzy feeling you get when someone calls you a hacker