• BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      There have been over 1,000 F-35 produced and they are continuing to sell in droves. The F-35 is kicking ass.

      • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        Yeah, it’s just like the people hating on the Osprey- the read the media about all the crashes and don’t realize that the overall crashes per mission hour is on par or lower than other military helicopters. The military just takes more chances. Even though they do try to minimize the unnecessary risks being in the military is still inherently risky.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          Over budget just means it costs more than originally projected. It does not necessarily mean it’s too expensive or overpriced, just it’s more than anticipated.

        • jaemo@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          I guess if it won’t fix your whataboutism…then “mmm yes you’re abso-liootly right!”

          But I say this in the voice of that tuxedo wearing Simpsons Yes-guy. If you’d prefer to be taken seriously, perhaps a post that is not completely irrelevant to the subject at hand is in order.

        • Mango@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          There’s a budget? I thought they just took that out of the price of my tuna and rice diet.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      What stealth alternative would you have? Stealth costs a lot. It’s a steal compared to the f22.

        • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          That’s the general feeling from people in allied countries that have been put on the F-35 program.

          Other fighters could have been a better match, instead they got the expensive Letherman.

          • BombOmOm@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Which fighter is a better match than an F-35 if you want stealth? (If you don’t want stealth, you aren’t looking at a F-35) The A model is damn nice for most, and the B model wipes the floor with the VTOL competition. There is damn good reason over 1,000 of these have been produced already and orders keep coming in.

            • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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              9 months ago

              I don’t doubt that F-35 has some good stats, I am looking at this from a more general perspective, what I have seen is that because F-35 costs substantially more than other fighters this limits countries that does not have a US level defense budget on how many planes they can afford, for example instead of 50 F-16 they end up with 10-20 F-35.

              And by looking at those numbers it seems like they get less defense for the same amount even if F-35 is better than the alternatives.

    • frezik@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      The F-35 might have gone wildly overbudget, but it was never going to be out of reach of the US economy. There are over 2,500 orders of it from foreign governments, which run around $80M each. That’s $200B on a development cost of $416B (the >$1,000B figures cited are for total lifetime costs). Given that this was never meant to be profitable on foreign sales, that’s pretty good.

      Russia cannot afford a next gen tank and next gen aircraft program (and they’re doing two next gen aircraft, Su-57 and Su-75). Countries in its economic peer group buy their military hardware from bigger countries. They’re trying to pretend they still have the resources they did under the Soviet Union, and they just don’t.

      Edit: for another way to look at this, the $416B development cost of the F-35 represents less than 2% of US GDP for a single year and the cost was spread over 20 years. If Russia was able to do it for half as much, it would be about 12% of their single year GDP. They would need to spread the cost over 80 years to get close to GDP percentage parity with the US on this project.

      • DragonTypeWyvern
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        9 months ago

        This economic reality is why Putin is so hard for conquering Ukraine, btw. Losing Ukraine was like Texas seceeding.

        Yeah, you don’t really need them, and they can be more trouble than they’re worth, but it’s still a very sizable chunk of your resources, population, and technical capability. A chunk that let you play with big boys.

        That said…

        Do it, Texas.

        You pussies.

        • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          Texas is right. Everything is bigger in Texas, including how big of pussies they are for not seceeding. Do it Texas, you won’t.