Of military acquisitions and requirements specifications.

I am on record since at least 2019 as a critic of the kinds of 'security' arrangements that led to AUKUS, and also of the purchase of the over-expensive, problematic F-35.

In my party draft policy document I recommended working with China on regional security and investing in Chinese arms tech. No one wants to deal with Russia in its current state of religionist oligarchy, but the West should have continued to give China a better option than Russia as an ally. However, The West is full of delusional, god-bothering, misatheist politicians who need to be checked into a psyche ward rather than be allowed into any parliament.

As for the F-35, I can draw on my expertise in the scientific method and philosophy of science, as well as my experience as a trained software engineer (I studied software engineering formally in my first degree in computing in the 1990s) to offer an analysis.

All fields of engineering - software and hardware - have some common principles. For example, it is usually the case that elegant designs and more testing are favoured over unnecessary complexity and lack of testing.

There is no question that a huge part of the F-35 program, and any contemporary weapons platform, is going to be software. However, such platforms involve an enormously complex integration of high performance hardware and software. It is thus probably one of the most demanding engineering projects ever undertaken by human beings (second only to space program developments and some medical technologies using neuroscience and molecular bioscience.) It is of course probably closely matched by contemporary efforts by Russia and China, and by the projects of several European countries.

One thing that is known about the F-35 is that it is a multi-purpose solution. This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but any engineer knows that there is more complexity and more compromise involved in the design of such a system.

The more operational and functional requirements for any given system or platform, the more difficulty is generally involved in delivering the solution/platform. Tensions and problems are introduced from an operational, methodological, and implementation perspective. Any time that these kinds of conflicting requirements exist in a requirements specification (of which there will be a number in a complex program of this size), the level of complexity of the solution goes up. It is simply a given because of physics, and because of the physical parameters of the system in terms of dynamics and performance.

Engineers can solve certain problems with advanced materials, CPUs, and components, but there are limits to how much of the complexity can be managed elegantly in a given space of time with limited resources. Complexity and changing requirements specifications also tend to result in mid-course design corrections, which almost always introduce further problems (and that's not to mention the pressure for mid course corrections from more stakeholders as would be the case in the JSF - or Joint Strike Fighter - program).

Another thing that is known about the F-35 is that it is a US led joint development project (JSF) with other nations. This brings into the requirements stream all kinds of complex issues based upon security, diplomacy, and politics, and introduces even more user requirements from different users, resulting in (if the project is not carefully managed) the 'horse designed by a committee' design anti-pattern. So - without any pessimism or political negativity needed, engineers know that such a project is not necessarily doomed, but is doomed to be vastly more difficult to bring off than say - two separate projects with the requirements split between them (say - an interdiction fighter and a missile platform.)

Multiple competing and conflicting requirements and multiple stakeholders, with more problems to be solved using only one platform: Those are red flags for any project with limited resources (even with a very large amount of resources). Look at the way China and Russia approach the problem. China built lots of Sukhoi-based 4th to 5th generation fighters that are less stealthy but (comparatively) cheap to produce in numbers, and then developed the J-20 Chengdu Flying Dragon as a separate long-range missile delivery platform with stealth capabilities. Russia used a similar approach with its PAK-FA and existing more conventional fighters, while developing new missile delivery platforms.

The US' approach seems driven by the impositions of big corporate MIC procurements and contract bidding with lots of red tape, and legal problems and strictures, imposed by the corporate contract system. This is not a problem that China has to deal with, as the government will simply direct the state enterprises to co-operate or else, and no litigiousness will be trucked. The US has things like eminent domain, but this doesn't deliver control nearly as fluid as the Chinese government's control of such development projects due to the rights of corporations in a capitalist, 'free'-market 'democracy'. In the end, all of these multiple and multifarious levels of requirements demands, resulting in overloaded and complex requirements specifications, are more likely to be a recipe for disaster. It is not necessarily the case that the program will fail, but the statistical likelihood of failure - or of partial failure - goes way up. Certainly the chance of cost blowouts and other complications increases, and that is bound to negatively affect project outcomes.

There are sure to be design, development, and delivery problems for the projects of this kind conducted by any nation. China's J-20, for example, has had problems associated with use of foreign manufactured propulsion systems limiting the range, power, and stealth of the platform (recently allegedly solved with the installation of new locally produced power plants).

However, there is also an overriding cost-benefit trade off that is a problem for the F-35. With serial budget blowouts (of epic proportions), fighters regularly crashing into the ocean (more regularly than expected in terms of normal rates of attrition) and reports of the fighters rusting, as well as a slew of other software and integration problems: the F-35 is vastly more expensive to maintain, use, and lose than competing platforms of other nations.

It is already known that the older F-22 Raptor platform has been effectively discontinued on the basis that the systems are so complex and so expensive that they are no longer developed. Volume production is not really a viable way of reducing costs for such vastly expensive and complex (and already outdated) platforms (this is not necessarily the case for some Chinese and Russian fighters because of the different approach used in development), and it has been reported in the media that some components are in mothballs and undocumented (no one knows how to integrate or use them anymore), while others are simply not available. The F-35 is already beginning to suffer some of these problems (with component complexity and cost) even at delivery.

The F-35 turned out to be an effective lemon for the Australian Air force in multiple ways, and even Donald Trump - in-principle champion of US manufacturing - decried the cost blowouts of the F-35 program. In summary, there are ways of doing fighter platform development, and ways of doing fighter platform procurement, and the F-35 is not a good example of how to do either. Considering Chinese systems as an alternative is far from ridiculous.

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