It's smooth, it's shiny and costs more than the better equipped competition.
Designed in Cupertino.
Built in China.
Why have a link that you cannot read???
We'd be better off if they took a lesson from Colonel John Boyd and his fighter mafia!
Nobody will say it:
Time to re-import production.
AMEN! The procurement system is broken. Fly then fix. No changes in scope on original requirements. TCTOs to upgrade, if required.
It would save billions and get better equipment into the field more quickly.
I expect China will do this. If we don't... I'm screwed.. I can't hear Mandarin.
/johnny
You'd have to connect to an iTunes account to download a new mission package to it.
All the weapons attached to it would be painted white. (what, most already are? oh...)
The ECM system would take down enemy air defense systems by RickRolling their C&C bunkers/systems.
All the weapons attached to it would be of a proprietary nature.
An internet open-source project would soon start showing how to build your own iFighter-like aircraft out of a 1992 Chevy and the Android OS. But doing so would somehow void the warranty on your DVR.
Hitting severe turbulence in flight would be misinterpreted as shaking, and erase all the maps stored in the navigation system.
The HUD would be a touch screen, and all pilots would have to get gloves with capacitive/metallic fingers in order to operate it.
Navy aircraft carriers would be re-branded as iFigher docks.
A new version would come out every year or so, and cost more than the last model. But air forces that pre-ordered would get a discount.
During the second year of production an unfortunate programming error would cause a bunch of crossover Apps to appear in the iPhone App Store. Things like "Chaff & Flares" and "Ground Attack Munitions" and "BVR Air-to-Air". A 14 year old would accidentally install and activate the "ELINT/ECM/ECCM" App and shut down the cell network in Cleveland for 3 days.
Apple and the Air Force would jointly sue the US Coast Guard over trademark infringement because their cutters are painted white - an obvious attempt to ride on the iFighter's brand.
What if Microsoft designed a fighter?
You’d have to log onto iTunes to get your flight orders...uh, no thanks.
The genius of our World War II procurement was the ability to produce large quantities of weapons that were rugged and reliable, not necessarily innovative.
Consider the M-4 Sherman tank. Vastly inferior to the German Panther and Tiger; outgunned and under-armored. In battles with Panzer units, a standard tatic was for some Shermans to take on the German tanks while some of their colleagues tried to maneuver around for a shot at the Germans from behind, where their armor was thinner. The Sherman also had a nasty habit of catching fire after being hit (but to be fair, so did a lot of other tanks). Many British crews nicknamed their M-4 “Ronsons,” after the cigarette lighter that lights “first time, every time.”
There are other examples as well. Initially, the “solution” to our bomber losses in Europe was supposed to be something called the P-75 fighter, an ungainly looking contraption with contra-rotating propellers. While dubbed a wonder plane, it was no better than the existing aircraft it was designed to replace. Fortunately, someone had the good sense to cancel the P-75, after someone else hit on the idea of putting a Merlin engine in the P-51.
The procurement whizzes also stuck with inferior (and defective) torpedo designs far too long, resulting in the loss of some U.S. submarines and their crews. On the surface, our Liberty ships suffered problems in design and construction; a few simply broke in two under rough conditions. About 30% of the remaining ships had severe cracking problems, a result of their rapid assenbly and the lower-grade steel used in their modular sections.
The biggest problem with military procurement today is that weapons systems are extremely complex, and the armed services keep making design changes in the R&D process. Those factors result in long lead times and billions in cost overruns. These problems are further exacerbated by our desire to create revolutionary, versus evolutionary systems. But revolutionary has its advantages; the advent of stealth aircraft made billions of dollars in air defense weaponry obsolete.
Going back to the WWII model might give us cheaper systems (and more of them), but at a price, namely a reduction in our technical superiority. With today’s under-sized military forces (compared to the Second World War), it’s an advantage we can’t afford to lose.
Everyone who bought the iFighter1 would be pissed when they intro’d the iFighter2 a few months later and dropped the price below what the first one sold for.
In World War II, we didn't have Socialists sabotaging our efforts. If we're going to maintain our military technological edge—we need to stop accepting domestic enemies into our military.
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Wasn’t the last businessman to run the Pentagon a guy named MacNamara in the ‘60’s?
- It wouldn’t be able to communicate with any other asset in the inventory.
- Pilots would run over each other to get a chance to fly it, to show how cool they are.
- After they get their shot, pilots would spend all their time talking to each other about how cool they are, and how uncool the other pilots are.
- Meanwhile, all the other planes would do the real work of winning the war.