Still Around
Charlie Pierce manages to brighten my week with his headline for his piece on the grounding of the F-35. If you don’t get it, I’ll explain in the comments.
Oh, Charlie is wrong about the F-35 not flying. Before the latest grounding, they were flying in the area. I would note that they were taking off and landing using a pattern that has the aircraft over water most of the time. If there’s a problem, they don’t want to crash into private property. I have seen flights over the bay and the Gulf. OTOH, with enough thrust a pig will fly, so that isn’t much of an accomplishment.
McClatchy is providing links to the White House’s judgement on the effects of the ‘sequester’ on the individual states and the District of Columbia. You might want to check out your state, because it is fairly certain that no deal is going get done in time to stop the stupidity. The ‘sequester’ is no different than the scene in Blazing Saddles where Sheriff Bart takes himself hostage. What no one in the Village imagined was that Congress would actually ‘shoot the hostage’.
The real impact is not going to be felt for a month, when the Federal workers get furloughed. Then you are going to see the certainty of the US falling back into recession, as demand takes a big hit.
Washington is just interested placing the blame on the other party, not in actually fixing the problem.
4 comments
You know… You may think this is strange coming from me, but I think it’s a real shame about the F-35. Also, for all the bad mouthing, the project had had some real and measurable successes. My feeling (as an engineer & project manager) is that they simply tried to do far too much and they allowed the project to be changed far too often by almost everyone and their dog (especially the dog & ponies in Washington DC!) Yes, it has had problems, but I think most of the reasons for them can have the finger pointed directly to the Politicians and all the SIG’s!
Anyway, for some refreshing contrast, read this story (I love the photo’s here also!) 😀
Inside the F-35, the world’s most futuristic fighter jet
It has much potential, the biggest issue I see now is… is the F-35 actually going to be economically viable? The way the cost is increasing, nobody, even the USA, will be able to fly or maintain them!
I thought the saying was that “with enough thrust, even a brick can fly”? Which of course was said about the F4 Phantom :).
The F-35 isn’t a *bad* plane. It just doesn’t do anything that the F16 didn’t do, other than doing it stealthily and all super-cruisy. But you really aren’t going to super-cruise outside of combat anyhow due to fuel consumption so (shrug)…
Or perhaps I should say “with enough thrust, even a turkey can fly”? 😈
When they work they seem to fly fine, according the guys involved, but it is all of the extra bells and whistles that are screwing everything up and going to make them a PITA in combat. Nobody says it, but I’m getting a strong ‘sensory overload’ vibe from some of the people involved.
The other worry for the plane drivers is the single engine, especially for the Navy and Marines. They really like two engines to help them avoid swimming. They are going get more vocal after the fleet being grounded for an engine problem. Everything is new, so everything is unknown, as far as reliability is concerned.
We are pushing the envelope for manned flight with some of the maneuvers the F-35 and F-22 can perform. We have reached the point where the planes can kill the pilot with their turning ability. Only the software for the fly-by-wire system prevents it from happening and it is highly unlikely that the guys who wrote the software actually fly airplanes.
We are ending up with an extremely expensive piece of hardware that does a lot of things, but doesn’t really excel at any of them.
Badtux, a turkey is a bird subjected to too many change orders during development.