Posted on 12/31/2014 7:19:35 PM PST by thetallguy24
At this point, it's not even funny how much the Pentagon has screwed up the development of its new stealth fighter jet, the F-35. But the latest report that the jet's 25mm cannon won't be operational until 2019 at the earliest is just laughable. Even more laughable is that it probably doesn't even need the gun to begin with.
Unnamed Air Force officials revealed the bad news in a Daily Beast story about the F-35. Apparently the software that will power the four-barreled rotary cannon on the Air Force version of the jet, the F-35A, won't be ready for at least four more years. The Navy and Marine Corps version use a different cannon, but it'll also be years before the software's ready for those guns.
The real kicker here is that the gun is probably just dead weight (read: a waste of taxpayer dollars) anyways. The F-35A's cannon can fire 3,300 rounds per minute but can only hold 180 rounds. "I would be lying if I said there exists any plausible tactical air-to-air scenario where the F-35 will need to employ the gun," one senior Air Force official told the Daily Beast. "Personally, I just don't see it ever happening and think they should have saved the weight [by getting rid of the gun altogether]."
The jet, which is also known as the Joint Strike Fighter, is already the most expensive weapon in American history. It's expected to cost the Pentagon well over $1 trillion over the next 50 years. And little hiccups like this only add more taxpayer dollars to that price tag. [Daily Beast]
Desert Eagle works for me...
You are forgetting the dozens of spec changes and funding burps during the development period, and the best efforts of engineers who’ve never been in the field and think that new & different is better than appropriate.
No good place to put the ejection port where the empties won’t cause problems. Remember, the F-16 is the plastic fantastic fighter. Also, the empties are used to help keep the plane’s weight and balance in line.
The Battle off Samar - where the Imperial Japanese Navy finally learned that the Americans of the time were more ferocious and crazy than they were.
Our WW2 MK 14 torpedoes were not garbage. They were 95% functional engineering successes that met all design specifications except three:
1. There were a small fraction of circular runs, which produced glancing blows to the launching submarine and sunk (if I remember correctly) two of our subs,
2. The depth setting was off by four feet, but only for warshot torpedoes and only because the explosives were heavier than the buoyant dummies used to retrieve practice shots in certification, causing torpedoes to pass too far under the targets to explode, and
3. The MK 14 magnetic exploders worked reliably at high latitudes, just not near the equator where most Pacific battles were fought. The contact exploders reused from the MK 13 torpedo were perfect and reliable at the slower relative speeds before the MK 14 torpedo. It was only at high speed and nearly 90-degree impact (the firing geometry submariners were told to use) that the contact exploders failed.
The sort of person who worships Obama as 95% successful would give the MK 14 the same high marks they give to socialism.
“seems like the F22 worked just fine but we had to scrap that... so we could have MRAPs... which were giving away to local police departments now.”
All part of the plan, get us to spend wildly on boondoggles that don’t work while shelving reasonable replacements, gridlock.
Over reliance on software. They have numerous guns fighters now that work. Some contractor is making a mint on something we most likely already have that works.
If a big war comes along and we have conservatives running it, then all this goes out the window and we would see that gun work the next day and new aircraft flying in a years time while building a thousand more F-22’s
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