• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

USAF getting smaller still

Status
Not open for further replies.
Allen,

There is no way in the world that what I posted in reply to you ever constituted a "personal attack." I think you are being overbearing with that reply. Pointing out that your standards are unreasonable and reveal an ill-informed mindset is not a personal attack. No aircraft manufacturer in human history has been able to put a truly innovative aircraft on the ramp while meeting flawlessly both budget and timeline estimates. Pointing that out is factual, not attack.

And if you choose to destroy your national industrial base with such an unrealistic expectation, then there won't be any manufacturing jobs in America, and we're terribly close to that reality today! That's also not a personal attack, just a statement of fact.

Milton, I'll bottomline this. If you or any other staff here thinks I "personally attacked" Allen, then go ahead and PM me and I'll leave. If what I posted isn't considered "acceptable," then clearly there isn't any reason for me to "upset the apple cart" here at SOH.

Sincerely said,

Ken Stallings
 
Lionheart said:
A good viewpoint there Allen.


Good point Snuffy on the car purchase.. I was just going to post that.

A family has a budget. They choose the Pontiac 4 door, with air and electric door locks. Due date is 5 months, cost $25K.

They get a call 2 months before delivery. Seats not working right, need an upgrade, setbacks in assembly line, now not delivered until next year, (tack on 7 months), and we had to raise the price to $35K.

9 months later, they get a call. Because of production costs and rise of vacation fares for executives in the car company, and due to price of metal and car paint, we have to raise the fee again to $49K for your car and it will not be ready for another 6 months, (now making it 1 year, six months). But.... It will have this new paint now, and this cool dashboard plastic is a better gray color, and the AC knobs are more hightech, and the engine will have 5 more HP.

At what point should the humble family throw in the towel on this car and get one from someone else that will come through with the bid proposal..?



Bill
Click to expand...

Apples and oranges, Bill.

In your example, the Pontiac is a production vehicle, already in mass production and therefore deliverable on a fixed price and timeline. The F-35 is in test, which means for something so complex and revolutionary it is normal that temporary setbacks will take place.

GM, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, BMW and all other production car companies rarely engage in revolutionary production vehicles, but strictly evolutionary. This reduces the R&D requirement which in turn reduces the cost to ready the car for mass production.

In the defense industry, one could do that also, but the end product would represent a tremendous financial investment for little to no improvement in the quality of national defense.

These arguments have unfairly been used against every complex weapon system in production since the end of World War II. Fortunately, enough patience was shown to allow the kinks to get worked out. The sole problem here is that the DoD is banking on an aircraft still in test phase, and because of the well known concerns present, this action disturbs me which is why I made the thread.

As a virtual aircraft designer, you should understand and appreciate this process very well. Most payware designers I know of are very reluctant to publish a release date while the virtual aircraft is in development. The reasons are very much the same as the F-35 is currently experiencing. The difference is you don't have every delay at Lionheart published for all the world to read in gory details.

Ken
 
After reading this a couple of times it's time to bring it to a end. The Quarter Moon is where it belongs.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top