Originally Posted by
PhilipG
Let us hope that the F35 can be made to deliver on the promises that the some $50 billion development part of the project has / will deliver.
I'd like to make a point about the LO requirement. A variety of risk is taken on jointly by the contractor and the government when a new thing is being put together. In the case of the A-12, it ended in tears. There isn't an A-12. In the case of the F-35, there's a flyable aircraft but the question becomes "is it what the forces need?" Since it has to cover a number of mission areas, the answer is probably a mixed bag.
That last bit, "is it what the forces need?" has been a bugger for requirements writing against the forecasting ability balanced with risk and cost. Regardless of what the forces want or need, and here I only speak for the US forces, Congress typically redefines the requirement around a whole host of constraints. The one size fits all constraint is one such.
When you go back to the A/B/C issue, I remain unimpressed: the A isn't Joint. It can't land on a carrier. The program has had this problem for around 20 years, I'll leave the "do we really need a Harrier follow on" to some other thread. (My position has been for some time that we don't, but I realize some of my USMC friends would whack me for that opinion).
Ken's point on "ya get what ya ask for" is mostly true, with the caveat that during the development of a new system, some of the risks and design (we can get there!) predictions come true in forms different from expected.
The one that most surprised me was how long it took the tail hook issue to surface and then get resolved. It got resolved, but I doubt they expected it to be such a bugger initially.