even tankers that they took from an existing airline still takes forever...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus

2002 - DoD names the new tanker the KC-767
2006 - request for Proposal
06-11 - back in forth between Airbus and Boeing
16 - McConnell will receive the first tankers

The oversight of the procurement process, created over decades to ensure that the gov't is getting what it's paying for, now ensures the exact opposite. Rather it now ensures that we overpay for whatever it is we get. Many requirements are set arbitrarily, to be better than what came before, not because THAT is what is needed exactly. Often meeting 90% of the requirement could be done for 75% of the cost, but that doesn't ever fly.

Simple math--if it takes $25 for 5 people to make something, you're not going to get it for $20 if 100 people are working on it, you're going to have to pay more. Build more of them and the price goes down, yes, but throwing more people at it doesn't.

All these estimates of how much it costs for a plane or tank or boat totally ignores the cost of all the gov't people working on oversight who have zero incentive to be fast or cheap or anything.



The Jedi Master

Beat me to it Jayhawk.


Wheels

About the development times (and legit concerns about it) I want to say the following:

Don't forget that new weapons systems, where the F-35 is the pinnacle of it are far more advanced and specially much more complex than older weapon systems. I'm not saying that (too much) bureaucracy doesn't make an impact on the development time of modern weapon systems.

However if we look into the past we'll see that aircraft took much longer time to develop during the cold war than it took in WWI (one) for example.
For example, how long did it take to develop a top line fighter aircraft such as the Camel in WWI?
Heck, for all that I know it, a single skilled person could even build a Camel in a basic workshop something virtually impossible with the A-4 (for example), let alone compared to a F-35.

An another overlooked (I believe) issue here, is that apparently you're forgetting that while aircraft like the F-35 takes long to develop these aircraft will also stay in frontline service for a much longer periods than previous generation aircraft.
For example lets compare the A-4 (FlyingToaster's example) with the F-35 in terms of frontline service but first please notice that the A-4 was perhaps the best case scenario in terms of frontline service longevity regarding an aircraft designed in the 1950's or even among all aircraft designed during the cold war since the vast majority of aircraft designed in the 1950's were very lucky if they stayed in frontline service for more than a decade. But lets compare:

The A-4 entered in the service in 1956 and was retired from frontline service within the US Navy in 1976 (but the US Navy began removing the aircraft from its frontline attack squadrons in 1967) which makes it around 20 years of frontline service.
On the other hand the US Marines retired their A-4s from frontline service in 1994 which makes it around 38 years of frontline service (but notice that the Marines started to retire their A-4s during the mid-1980's).
But again note that the A-4 was an exception among the rule in terms of what an aircraft of that era stayed in service! For example an another important aircraft of that era the F-8 Crusader, entered in service in 1957 and was retired from frontline service within the US Navy in 1976, making it only 19 years of frontline service within the US Navy.

Regarding the F-35, the initial US Marines F-35Bs entered in service last year (2015) and are expected to be in frontline service until at least 2070, which makes it 55 years minimum. Or 53 years (minimum) if you count from 2017 since it will be in this year (2017) that the F-35 will receive the final software package, the Block 3F.

The Bradley is a bad example if you're trying to prove something wrong with F-35.

"Pentagon Wars" dumbs down and misrepresents the whole story. Pure armored personnel carriers were already on their way out by the early 1970's, the Russians already had their BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle.

And the Bradley has, despite some shortcomings, been a very successful combat vehicle.

I suspect the same will be said of the F-35 in the future.

Any program that requires millions of lines of software code needs to be rethought. Increasing the complexity for a modern program does not make it better or more effective, but it certainly increases the number of areas problems can occur.

In theory, it enables wonder weapons that can do all this stuff, but if 30 years of using Windows should have taught people anything it's that software works best when it's really simple and streamlined.



The Jedi Master

A Spitfire is more expensive and more complicated and requires more maintenance per flight hour than a Sopwith Pup. A jet engine is more expensive and more complicated and requires more maintenance per flight hour than a piston engine. Radars and air to air missiles are more expensive and more complicated and require more maintenance per flight hour than an optical gunsight and .50 Brownings.

Modern combat aircraft require computers and software. Is there a point where there are too many lines of code and too much sophistication? Probably, but I don't think there are many posting here, myself included, who are qualified to say what the definition of "too much" is in that case.

When you have a plane that can fly safely and release weapons effectively but is being delayed for service entry because the software to do a lot of stuff that other planes can do is years behind, I think that satisfies the definition of "too much."
Software is now the pacing item, not hardware.




The Jedi Master

We have aircraft that "fly safely and release weapons effectively" with legacy aircraft like the F-15, F-16, F-18. The point of the F-35 is to advance the science of aerial combat to the next level (ala Spitfire vs Sopwith, jets vs pistons etc.) and that requires more than just "fly safely and release weapons effectively".

One thing to bear in mind concerning capability development timescales is that systems integration is very complicated work and is also where a lot of the risk lies in building new capabilities; if one piece of the puzzle isn't moving the 'naughts and ones' the way it's supposed to, the entire system may be rendered useless.

There is complexity internal to a platform or asset itself, but also complexity of the environment in which the platform will operate and interface. Engines, fuselage, flight controls... those are the easy parts - at least usually. With an A-4 or F-8 or whatever else from that era, you slapped VHF or UHF radio onboard and you were good to go. Naturally that's simplifying a lot, but now think about the complexity of a modern jet; you have sensors, multiple tactical datalinks and radios, very often SATCOM, IFF, EW suites, navigational aids, and it goes on, all needing to be integrated and playing nicely with each other. This is a challenge compounded by the fact that different components of a system can be provided by different contractors who aren't always seeing eye-to-eye with each other, or working from the same sheet of music.

But, then once the equipment is on hand, do you have the infrastructure to make it work? Do you have the personnel in post and trained to operate the systems? Are the simulators ready? Do you have bandwidth available for datalinks and SATCOM? Have you deconflicted your radiating equipment from civilian radio spectrum usage? Are the hangars ready to house the aircraft? Have you written the tactics, techniques, and procedures to operate it?

Many of these are important elements on the critical path of managing a programme and delivering a capability; if one of them happens to run into trouble, it can result in cascading delays throughout the entirety of a programme.

Excellent post fatty!

If we complain about the length it takes to develop a new fighter, and demand that it doesn't take longer than the current ones took, we'll be forever doomed to developing slightly improved 1970's era fighters. Want to imagine how long a development phase we get if we take the time it took to finish the F-16A, and then add subsequent upgrades? If we limited ourselves to not increasing development times, all we'd get is a slightly improved 4th generation fighter, because we'd limit ourselves to simply refining what we already have. It'd be a sub-par 4.5th generation fighter jet.

The first fighter planes in history were basically built in advanced bicycle shops. Sorry, development times are gonna increase. But as pointed out, with that so will inherently service times because not even America can develop new fighters at the rates seen in WW2. Money isn't the question, it could definitely be afforded, it's just technologically impossible to improve on something without the further research and development that constitutes the longer design phases of our time.

If a fighter's development starts before its first crop of pilots on reaching IOC are born, it's too long. More than half the components used in development are obsolete by the time the plane enters service! It happened to the F-22, it's happening to the F-35.

Instead of saying "we need it to do ALL this, however long it takes" and then not building another plane for decades to come, maybe we should take smaller steps more frequently? The gap from 4th to 5th gen is just vast, and because of the massive investment in getting 5th gen going we largely neglected upgrading our 4th to 4.5 because A) we couldn't pay for both and B) we didn't want to make our legacy planes too effective and undercut the argument to build them (even though people did anyway).

We have no replacement or surge capacity because the equipment is so complex it takes decades to setup the production lines. What happens if we get involved in a big conflict a year from now and lose 1/3 our F-22s? Well, we now have 1/3 fewer F-22s. We won't have a lot of new F-35s to make it up for years to come, we'll be forced to use more F-15s, which if we lost that many F-22s would be likely to be lost at a much greater rate.

We can't construct a military around the idea of almost zero losses for a given system for the life of the program. We've never stopped building F-15s or F-16s or Hornets (in various models) since they started production, although all are now getting close to the end, but we built every B-2 and F-22 in a handful of years and stopped. To restart F-22 production now would cost far more than just having just kept the line open building a small number of planes per year.





The Jedi Master

I think the F-22 (and the B-2, to a large extent) is a special case. They specifically stopped production earlier than planned for reasons other than weapon performance or age. That puts the US in a bit of a tight spot now, if a major conflict started, but in theory the F-35 will be in mass production soon and could be produced faster to replace combat losses. I think that's the plan, anyway.

Guys, let's bear in mind that two Century-series fighters had teething troubles so bad they KILLED people.

(F-100 & F-104)

Yeah, what can I say? The F-16 was called Lawndart by its pilots due to the number of them it outright killed before getting fixed. It took almost 40 years for it to become what it is today, so it's not like this is the first time the fighter pilots of tomorrow will be the ones flying the plane that is in its initial draft today.

Further, it should be pointed out that upgrading the 4th generation fleet to 4.5th isn't a desirable result. On the contrary, it's what several NATO allies and Western countries have been forced to resort to, to make due with because they can't afford developing 5th generation fighters. The 4.5th generation is nothing short of a stopgap measure to make up for not being able to afford developing, or even importing 5th gen fighters to a certain degree, or at all. Upgrading the USAF/USN fleet would thus solely be a matter of improving capabilities, not cutting costs. The F-16 and F/A-18 are planned to remain in service for only 9 more years now. Why spend outrageous sums to upgrade them to 4.5th generation standards? That would be truly irresponsible.

When comparing the F-22 with the F-35/Software development problems you are bit contradicting yourself.

The objective of making the F-35 more dependent on Software is just to avoid what happened with the F-22 (and with other aircraft) in where some components became obsolete after a while (even during the aircraft's development).
The majority of F-35 upgrades won't be much different from updating your Operating system and/or Programs/Applications on your computer/smartphone/table/whatever...
This was proven when Block 1 F-35s were updated to Block 2B. So the vast majority of F-35 upgrades will happen very, very fast and with a very reduced cost, specially when compared to upgrades of older/other aircraft.

While Hardware based systems can apparently be easier to develop and to troubleshoot when a problem comes up with such systems, these systems must usually be replaced altogether and the same happens with upgrades which makes repair/update operations very expensive.
Besides if you want to make a system based on Hardware that can do the same as a Software based system, you will end up with a system (Hardware) that will be much more bulky, much harder to manufacture and thus much more expensive and again without much chance of upgrades and less capable than a software based system.

Actually this discussion of Hardware based systems versus Software based systems happened in Computer Science in the 1980's and early 1990's with RISC and CISC architecture computers. This is obviously a very resumed and oversimplified explanation but a RISC which stands for Reduce Instructions Set Computer meant a computer more based on Hardware (and less on Software - The Reduced Instructions Set) while CISC stands for Complex Instructions Set Computer which meant a computer more based on Software (The Complex Instructions Set) and less on Hardware.
Guess who "won"?? Or what is the computer architecture of our current computers (including smartphones/tablets/etc...) are based on?? Yes, it's CISC.
The F-35 is the "CISC" of fighter aircraft while all other fighter aircraft are "RISC".


Other things that are often forgotten here and I believe are misplaced doubts:
- Comparing Windows (and it's problems) to the F-35 software isn't a fair comparison, I believe. Windows is meant to operate in very different tasks, many of them didn't exist when the Operating System (whatever Windows version) was first developed and released to the market. The F-35 software while being complex and extensive and will operate with many different on-board systems it will always be much more limited in terms of potential tasks compared what a Windows Operating System will be required to operate with.
Resuming, it will always be much easier to troubleshoot the F-35 software for every situation possible than it will be to troubleshoot a Windows Operating System for every situation possible!
- Someone above mentioned and well that a fighter aircraft is composed by several complex systems that must be integrated together and with all the information that each of those systems will transmit and knowing that all/most of those systems will inevitably need to be upgraded than there's only way to effectively manage all of this: Thru a Complex Software suite!

Finally saying that developing a new fighter aircraft that fills the gap between 4th and 5th gen (the so called 4.5 gen) will take less and be easier to develop than a F-35 is I'm sorry, FALSE!
Just look at the Typhoon or Rafale, they took just as long of not longer to develop than it will take to develop a Block 3F F-35 and none of those aircraft have a STOVL variant (and the Typhoon doesn't even have a CATOBAR version as well) and are far less advanced than the F-35.
Besides and for example the Typhoon when entered in service with the Tranche 1 Block 1 version could only use the cannon and short range IR-guided missiles (for example it couldn't employ AMRAAMs or any Air-to-Ground weaponry) so as you can see, having a fighter aircraft that isn't so based on Software as the F-35 is, is absolutely no guarantee that it will take less to develop, enter in service will full capabilities sooner and let alone not having the need to receive new upgrades very soon or that when such aircraft enters in service that many of its systems won't be obsolete as well.

Good post Fatty and others, especially about the systems integration taking time. I wonder if the different companies not seeing eye to eye is part of the problem - each wants to make a bit more money, so if they can somehow make life difficult for their competitor, they win.

The deaths resulting from testing most earlier planes is, I think, another big factor. Until recent years there was a fairly high tolerance for casualties in aircraft testing. It would probably be fair to say that it was expected during WW1 (but then, more British pilots died in training than in combat during WW1). Today even a single death is unacceptable, and while that is a good thing, it does mean development must be much more careful.

The biggest F-35 software bugs have been "squashed":


http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense...t-ioc/83553372/