Flight/Planes

Debi said:
America Is Stuck With a $400 Billion Stealth Fighter That Can’t Fight
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I worked the JSF program for four years in the late 90s/early 2000s. Much of this gloom and doom is overstated, anytime there is a big step forward in technology and capabilities there are going to be problems needing to be addressed. We saw it when first generation jets came into the picture, saw it again when the supersonic "Century Series" a/c came into service, and the F-111 was as big a mess early on as the F-35 is currently. I'm confident this will be a good combat aircraft in the end.

Now, all that said, I can tell you from being involved in the program the acquisition process for JSF was an absolute cluster flop. Although it's difficult to explain, the DoD under order from then SECDEF Perry did away with our ability to mandate military specifications and standards on contractors. We defined performance requirements, but Lockheed decided how to design and build the a/c. The JSF program motto was, "A new way of doing business." We were told we had "insight, not oversight."
 
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This is not the first time Boeing messed up and didn't learn from their mistakes, change to the systems and not updating documentation nor training pilots. I saw a documentary recently where a third of Boeing employees at the South Carolina 787 assembly plant said they wouldn't fly in one due to shoddy builds and various safety issues.

Kegworth air disaster - Wikipedia
 
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TonyM said:
This is not the first time Boeing messed up and didn't learn from their mistakes, change to the systems and not updating documentation nor training pilots. I saw a documentary recently where a third of Boeing employees at the South Carolina 787 assembly plant said they wouldn't fly in one due to shoddy builds and various safety issues.

Kegworth air disaster - Wikipedia
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I worked with the old school Boeing guys for a while when the USAF was doing an upgrade to our KC-135 tankers after the Gulf War. Other than Lockheed Martin (former General Dynamics Fort Worth), the Boeing guys were the most arrogant, hard to work with prime airframer I dealt with in my career. No surprise they are in this situation, they came across as thinking they were infallible.
 
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This guy I follow on YouTube, he's always on the ball and good at explaining what's going on.

 
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