The M16 rifle was a dud during its early years, but once they worked out the kinks, it became a respectable, mainstay weapon for decades. I know I'm comparing apples and oranges, but maybe the same will be true for the F-35. Then again, I don't know if there's a lot of wiggle room for updating and refining planes seeing as how they aren't built anywhere near as quickly, cheaply, or in quantity as a rifle.
That's a good point. Planes do tend to get better over the course of their deployment but I don't know that most weapons systems come out of the gate this much worse and this much more expensive than the previous generation. I'd say one of the big fears of the F-35 is that an endless trough of expense is getting deployed. The program is not doing well at deployment and it's way over budget. because so much hope and money has already gone into it the pentagon will just keep pouring money on it until it's up to snuff.
So what you're saying is that the Pentagon is up to their eyeballs in one of the most expensive examples of the sunken cost fallacy we have ever seen?The program is not doing well at deployment and it's way over budget. because so much hope and money has already gone into it the pentagon will just keep pouring money on it until it's up to snuff.
The JWST could give the F-35 a run for its money. Some of the space science industry has been hurting as a result. I got ex-NASA workers telling me that NASA technicians are riding contracts that extend far past the launch dates of the projects they work on, just in case they were to have a schedule delay that pushed back the launch. They're literally getting payed to work on their own motorcycles, cuz gov't. Because you know that shit wouldn't fly in the private sector.