Did Chinese cyber spying cause the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s cost spikes and production delays? That’s the question Pentagon budget officials are asking according to Aviation Week.
Chinese spies apparently hacked into secure conference calls and listened to meetings discussing the classified technologies aboard the jets. In particular, China may have stolen info about the F-35’s secure communications and antenna systems; leading to costly software rewrites and other redesigns to compromised parts of the plane.
The worst part, this problem isn’t just limited to the F-35, though the program’s size and the fact that it’s information systems were apparently designed without any concern for cyber espionage made it an easy target.
Anyone who has been following U.S.-China military relations and cyber warfare knows that China has been hacking into the networks of U.S. defense contractors and the Pentagon and rolling out brand new weapons like the J-20 stealth fighter.
Here’s the latest from Av Week:
Before the intrusions were discovered nearly three years ago, Chinese hackers actually sat in on what were supposed to have been secure, online program-progress conferences, the officials say.
The full extent of the connection is still being assessed, but there is consensus that escalating costs, reduced annual purchases and production stretch-outs are a reflection to some degree of the need for redesign of critical equipment. Examples include specialized communications and antenna arrays for stealth aircraft, as well as significant rewriting of software to protect systems vulnerable to hacking.
It is only recently that U.S. officials have started talking openly about how data losses are driving up the cost of military programs and creating operational vulnerabilities, although claims of a large impact on the Lockheed Martin JSF are drawing mixed responses from senior leaders. All the same, no one is saying there has been no impact.
While claiming ignorance of details about effects on the stealth strike aircraft program, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, says that Internet technology has “led to egregious pilfering of intellectual capital and property. The F-35 was clearly a target,” he confirms. “Clearly the attacks … whether from individuals or nation-states are a serious challenge and we need to do something about it.”
The F-35 issue was ducked as well by David Shedd, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, but not the impact of cybertheft on defense spending and operational security.
“I am not going to talk about the F-35, Shedd says. “I’d be sitting with the secretary having a counseling session. The answer is absolutely yes. The leaks have hurt our efforts in that it gives the adversary an advantage in having insights into what we’re doing. It should be clear that whether there are leaks on the technology side or that affect preemptive decision-making, they are very damaging to the intelligence community.”
Those closer to the program are less equivocal about the damage that cyberintrusions are causing the JSF program.
“You are on to something,” says a veteran combat pilot with insight into both the F-35 and the intelligence communities “There are both operational and schedule problems with the program related to the cyber data thefts. In addition, there are the costs of redressing weaknesses in the original system design and lots of software fixes.”
Here’s the kicker, the JSF’s info systems weren’t built with cyber espionage in mind, this led to a bunch of subcontractors networks being ‘totally compromised.” Shocking considering the plane was meant for the 21st Century. C’mon guys.
Defense analysts note that the JSF’s information system was not designed with cyberespionage, now called advanced persistent threat, in mind. Lockheed Martin officials now admit that subcontractors (6–8 in 2009 alone, according to company officials) were hacked and “totally compromised.” In fact, the stealth fighter program probably has the biggest “attack surface” or points that can be attacked owing to the vast number of international subcontractors.
There also is the issue of unintended consequences. The 2009 hacking was apparently not aimed at the F-35 but rather at a classified program. However, those accidental results were spectacular. Not only could intruders extract data, but they became invisible witnesses to online meetings and technical discussions, say veteran U.S. aerospace industry analysts. After the break-in was discovered, the classified program was halted and not restarted until a completely new, costly and cumbersome security system was in place.
{ 243 comments… read them below or add one }
If the Soviets had lasted into the modern age, the KGB would be rolling on the floor laughing their asses off.
We've leaked like sieves before. But has it delayed our procurement by this much before?
If the Soviets were still around we would have better security and bigger budgets for that security. We are too busy trying to be friends with the chinese to consider them a security threat apparrently.
I don't where and how you got that idea. The US has always viewed China as an enemy and has been exploring different ways to sabotage China's rise. Every move in the Middle East and Central Asia has been designed with cutting oil supply to China in mind. It is the Chinese who are stupid enough to delude themselves into thinking that the US can be a partner of some sort, and thereby funding illegal US military operations around the world by purchasing large amount of US govt debt. In effect, China is funding its own encirclement. You've fallen victim to America's propaganda like most Americans. The US is the biggest sources of global conflict. As we speak, the CIA, MI6 and the Mossad are arming Syrian rebels just like they did in Libya. They want to control all ME oil fields. China has been very passive and slow to react and defend its interests. If Russia had China's economic power and population, a full-blown war would have broken out in the ME. China has been too timid and low-profile against US political and military aggressions.
That's an interesting angle. The PRC is playing the long run Meijii Restoration game, sending people overseas to learn foreign industrial, scientific and military practices, then bring them home and jumpstart innovation.
Geopolitically, most people are of the belief that America's long-term game is to encircle Iran. Knocking China out of the Middle East is probably icing on the cake. Maybe they should give serious thought to peaceful nuclear power, finding oil in the Uighur areas or Tibet or the coastal shelf, or figuring out how to build an Iran-China pipeline.
The government and DoD does a lot of talking about cyber security but I don't see much being done in the way of actual effort. This is absolutely unacceptable.
The DOD actually has finally gotten started on the problem. There is a movement underway to eliminate the sprawl where every platoon has its own independent IT department, and start centralizing IT services in larger data centers with cross-domain security and other hardening. That will greatly reduce the attack surface of the DOD cyber infrastructure in general.
Similarly, the F-35 itself is running a secure separation kernel that at worst would limit any cyber intrusion to the one component that was compromised.
Unfortunately, none of that includes the contractors who are actually doing the development. That's the weak link–Lockheed and the zillions of subcontractors all doing classified work behind whatever toy firewalls they happen to have, if indeed they have firewalls.
That's the problem here. The DoD's classified network wasn't breached, but the contractor's was.
I'm beginning to think this truly is the age of transparency.
You'll get it no matter what one way or another.
Really?…. I'd like to think our defense industry isn't so outrageously silly from time to time…
It would better for security if you just build a separate "internet" not connected to the main web, but a separate series of computers and servers only on their own network, and only linked to major bases, contractors, etc. Problem is building that in this economic environment.
The network you're talking about is basically what stuxnet got into.
But stuxnet coud not really spy the programm it was designed to sabotage the ractor by manipulating the software
I would think a network like that already existed, i mean schools and universities have them.
They have one in Iowa, ICN (Iowa Communications Network), built exclusively for the school system. This was done ~15 years ago. Only way in is to have access to a computer on that network, having said that, I've heard that 'security' has been relaxed to an extent, but it has been reality for some time and done only within one states budget. Not saying it would be cheap, for the DOD, but it's at least feasible.
The problem is that defense contractors don't put programs together with information security in mind. If they did an entire program would be developed, designed, tested, and built in the same campus. The problem with that is you'd only have the ear of one House representative and one Senator. So instead they take a boondoggle like the F35 and spread it out over almost all 50 states so they can leverage more political clout to prevent sanity from intruding on its lousy track record.
Nail on head. In the old days you kept everything close and in-house. Not so anymore. Imagine if Apple did final assembly of iPhones here in the US from parts integrated in China and shipped overseas. That kind of inefficiency would be expensive, at best.
What you are describing is called the milnet, later Defense Data Network, and today NIPRNet.
Is it possible that part of our counter-espionage tactics include overstating the damage of an intrusion like this? Let them listen to conversation A so they don't drill down farther to something we really don't want them hearing? Then rant about how the Chinese hacked an important meeting? Wish I could believe we were that buttoned up.
Not Lockheed. I wouldn't put it past the CIA though.
Sometimes the "Stone Age" is not that bad.
As far as cyber security is concerned, there is no barrier that people can't find their way around. You need to think about the physical means in which your data is being transferred in order to stop data theft.
Serial connections are the only feasible means of doing this – Connect PC "A" with PC "B" and not anywhere else – No internet, No outside connection, no Wi-Fi… you would actually need to physically commit theft.
your right Bill, being a network guy myself, it really makes you wonder why EVERYTHING needs to be connected to the Internet, Firewalls are only speed bumps.
All sensitive info should be kept in a completely isolated network from the corporate network i.e. you have to be there physically to access the data
Go intranet.
Then again, once people decide they want to be able to stream important data between points in real time, they're just leaving the door open.
Classified data is stored on isolated networks. On the down side, a lot of the critical data such as CAD data is stored on networked drives.
Which is probably why the whole classification system is a false sense of security.
That said, if you classify your fighter designs; then your R&D gets more complicated if you have to pass CAD designs all over the place.
In the old days, you kept all your designers in every department in the same building. If you wanted to have a project meeting, you went from cubicle to cubicle and grabbed your supervisors and workers and put them in the same room. However, if you have people in different divisions and branches all over the country, then your data is on the internet. Unless you segregate dark-fiber between point to point or somesuch, then it's vulnerable to attack.
The alternative is having an active cyberwarfare unit that forces enemy governments to spend physical dollars on cyberdefense instead of being able to dump it all into cyberattack.
Yes, while I promote stand alone environment, some idiot is trying to promote a network dependent cloud computing. DoD should flush military variation down the toilet and forget about it.
Yeah, it's the Chinese that are causing F-35 development to crawl along at a snail's pace. It certainly is not the fact that we pay the defense contractor a profit incentive to drag out development. No, it is clearly China's fault. Right. We have found the enemy, and it is us.
Nothing to do with the cost-plus contract. Nothing to see here people; move along. Still asking questions sir? We know how to handle people like you.
Cranky
Excellent rebuttal. Completely agree.
It's a pretty smart move to blame China – US defense contractors can divert public attention on their greed and incompetence, while creating excuses to get more funding from the government.
Next thing you know they'll come up with a fantastically complex PowerPoint chart — too complex for any mere taxpayer to understand — showing conclusively it is all someone else's fault. It's China's fault, it's the fault of the Air Force's own procurement people, it's middle management's fault, it's Congress' fault, it's a vast conspiracy by the crooked defense contractor's thieving employees. It's always someone without a name, because someone with a name might fight back. Then after considerable hand wringing and staring at the sky, nothing ever changes. Another year goes by and all the defense contractor CEO's pocket their millions and proudly show their stock holders how their lack of conscience has produced record profits even as the real value of their companies has gone to zero, and nothing ever changes. Our bravest young men are killed using weapons that are optimized on the greatest possible cost for the least possible performance and we curse the brave dead because clearly it couldn't be the fault of the weapon they were put in harm's way to serve, and nothing ever changes.
Never would have happened in the Kelly Johnson days.
Kelly kept everything in-house and the only outsiders plugged in were guys like Dick Bissell. However, this mode of business is long dead, and everything is teleconferences, audits and interconnectedness of data and ease of download (versus sending crates of paperwork). Any espionage group can simply scoop up everything they can get their hands on and sort it out later: in the old days, espionage depended on being able to quickly decide what was worth stealing and grabbing it. Kelly's practice was to avoid excessive classification so that interesting things would hide in background clutter and someone going for the highest classified items would probably not find anything of interest design-wise.
I run four servers and I constantly see Hong Kong IP's trying to get in.
In an age of zombienets, it's hard to say where attacks are coming from anymore. Maybe Hong Kongers are just as bad as Americans when it comes to computer security?
I was harassed by some IP addresses leadeing to China weeks ago, and I port scanned them back as a warning, and they came back port scanning with mini-DoS from several more IP addresses. If the government ever gave permission, I would be trigger happy to wipe their computers off the network.
It's easier to get pardon then permission
unfortunately, having seen normal chinese people on games attack other player's systems merely to 'win', i would say a single person responding to such things of this nature would be futile. for every one u break down, there are dozens more that will come back at you.
complete disregard for the rules of cyber space is simply something that goes from the basic level upwards in countries like China.
Agree, I don't disagree with any of the comments in general, but the overall 'lets be friends with China' atmosphere is destroying our competitiveness. The underlying lack of morals/ethics within the Chinese culture is so pervasive that only a massive cyber attack would get their collective notice, like the Soviets before them, they only respect strength, and right now America's Prez. is acting like a coward towards them.
The US is still the largest cyber security threat in the world. Many of reported cyber attacks may very well have been done by CIA/MI6/Mossad operatives via poorly guarded networks in China/Hong Kong/Korea etc.
The US has been a leader in false flag operations after Britain's decline.
How many acts of war must China commit against us before we do something about it?
Well considering they haven't yet, your question is a touch premature. Its espionage dude, lighten up or perhaps we should carpet bomb Tel Aviv because of their spying on us? Or maybe the UK should order an arty strike on Lakenheath because we spy on the UK? Should we sink a Japanese destroyer or two because they spy on us? Grow up.
@ DanS
So once we grow up we can't protect ourselves and our possesions?
Yeah and I always hear about US Specia lForces and spies are molesting countries like China at will all the time. You don't think that's an act of war?
You watch too many movies.
We stopped arming the Tibetans when Nixon recognized the PRC over the ROC.
The problem with calling this an act of war is proof. Any decent cyber attacker can claim plausible deniability due to zombies (using someone else's computer as a proxy to attack someone). The victim of the attack also has to disclose how they discovered the attack which could compromise intelligence sources.
DanS has a point that espionage has always been one of those "we all do it, so don't get upset" situations. While I would love to see every military server in China fall victim to a power surge tomorrow, if everyone decided to launch an airstrike every time there was a hack or a spy talked to someone it would be WWIII. Hell, between us and China if we started an all out cyber war we could probably shut down the world if we put enough resources into it. What good would that do?
Exactly, we are never going to war with one of our largest trading partners and someone who holds 8% of our national debt. Particularly when it would absolutely cripple our economy. The impact would cripple us, as there isn't another source available for all the goods we need on a daily basis. The scale of Chinese production resources is amazing. Its something we could never make up for within North and South America let alone the US. All this blathering about a future war is several pay-grades below where the actual decisions get made. Or its done to jin up donations to Heritage or AEI.
Easy fix. Every time we prove that the Chicom's hack into one of our systems, we tally up the cost to repair the damage and the cost to modify the system they hacked. Then you deduct that amount from what we owe them, thus reducing our national debt. Of course, that makes to much sense, so it will never happen.
And then the Chinese just laugh and say they want be buying any bonds next month and we have to go our knees again and beg them to give us another chance.
Exactly spot on.
I was waiting for someone to ask this question, but now that obama is in charge, probably nothing will be done sabout it. Stupid on our part to start with not protecting ourself fromsomething like this.
The real question is how many acts of war must the US commit against China before the Chinese do something about it.
dumb = you
Where have you been? The U.S. navy and drones has been along China's coastline routinely scanning and trying to crack into China for decades.
Possible. Now we need to reboot the price to $ 1.
I think they're releasing this info to make us feel more "protected" when they cram SOPA type law down our throats.
Just don't hook the server to the internet. Use firewall, secured router and secured satellite cable from IBM.
satellite cable…?
Yeah blight, it goes all the way up into space, super high tech!
Tethered to the space elevator where we drop our tungsten death rods
Its IBM century old tech. Saudi Arabia or one uses IBM tech using Satellite networking with UNIX as there operating software, used on their servers and networking. I work in that part of the world in the 90's.
Ooh, intriguing.
Upon digging, could it be this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Business_S…
Its IBM century old tech. Saudi Arabia for one uses IBM tech using Satellite networking with UNIX as there operating software, used on their servers and networking. I work in that part of the world in the 90's.
Time to pull the plug on these contractors and subcontractors. None of them should have internet access anywhere. No such thing as secure internet. Also time to fine the hell out that taxpayer leech LM for being cheap, incompetent and lazy.
If you actually read the article, you might have noticed that it didn't say that it was Lockheed that was on the phone, or that it was Lockheed's system that was compromised. And, if you'd actually ever worked for anyone, you'd know that LM's junk has worked reasonably well since the 1930's. If you've been following the news you'd know that virtually every public utility in the country has been hacked, virtually every bank and virtually every large credit card company, the CIA, defense department, and on and on. But, yeah, let's blame Lockheed.
Would it be so hard to keep everything offline?
Whats wrong with Snail mail?
Is flying so expensive they cannot get together?
Granted, this would slow things down, but it would also make the aircraft not an open book…..
Yes, it's pretty hard to keep everything offline in a collaborative project like the F-35.
What's wrong with Snail mail? It's too slow and insecure.
Yes, it's too expensive to be flying back and forth for meetings.
No, it would slow things down and still make it an open book. Money can buy anything.
Whats wrong with Snail mail?
Kinda saiz it all right there imagine the delays with snail mail.
And we wouldn't want any delays with the JSF program.
What's wrong with Snail mail?
It's no more secure than e-mail for a start.
If the DoD is so serious about cyber security, why do they run almost solely Windows, Outlook, etc…?
It's not like Mac or Linux is inherently safer, especially when a nation-state puts its mind to discovering exploits and backdoors to penetrate your systems.
The reasons Linux and Mac dont have as big of a record of hacking is logical and obvious. Most things run on windows. So most hacks are to windows.
This also means that Linux and Mac's arent as evolved to emphasis security. So in the end faced with a similar more determined hacker could actually be easier to get into.
if !windows
safer=false
Also – 90% of businesses use them. Hence 90% of the files sent to the DoD will be .doc, .docx, .xls, .ppt, etc. Hence – office.
You are not authorized to know that answer.
Microsoft operating systems are the only ones where you can truly centrally control settings, security and auditing. If you deploy linux or Mac then you are usually in the dark as an admin and have very little idea if those systems comply with your security policies. Don't assume Windows is to blame. The attacks could have different vectors. They could be through the Cisco gear that was manufactured in China where they installed their own back door before shipment. They could have attacked an Apache server running an older revision, or a Windows or Mac end user system. Everything has holes. Opening the systems up to the internet is the real problem. Allowing stuff manufactured in China into our networks is the other problem.
They have us by the balls, you just don't know it.
While yes the Chinese could be trying to hack into US aircraft makers databases I doubt all could but related to the many delays in this troubled planes development. A big problem is that this is a international program so some allied nations have access to materials and lacks security to keep them confidential.
Overall the J-20 was based on Russian technology NOT American a F-35 is still ahead of a J-20 by light years.
What Russian plane did the J-20 canopy and intakes come from?
Alot of its technology came from the Russian MiG 1.44 ATF which was cancelled. With both Sukhoi and Mikoyan working on TA-50 and other new projects and the Russians not really wanting to give China latest technology the older MiG project was given to Chinese aviation experts. China also had information from the F-117A shot down over Serbia in 99. But they lack latest technology from the F-22 F-35 or TA-50.
Speaking as someone who generally doesn't regard the PLA as a threat…
The DSI intakes were from the F-35 programme. The WS-10 is based on US engine technology, at least in part. The list goes on…
Some of it was transferred by US companies, and some from Israel. A fair bit was supplied by friendly neighbours (hello, Pakistan).
A certain amount is as the result of espionage. I suspect mostly the old fashioned, personal style, with a modicum of network based stuff.
The PRC develops its own stuff, and buys, borrows or steals where appropriate. Much like everyone else.
No it's not. Russian tech is crap now . Exploding rockets. No one wants that.
That said, it is possible that attempted theft by the PRC and causing these types of delays could be their mission in the first place. Hard to say that they aren't winning the longer JSF is delayed.
If they wanted immediate deliverables, hack P&W and GE and grab engine designs, then prioritize reproducing next-gen American engines. Why sleep at night?
We SERIOUSLY need to retaliate for Chinese espionage and cyberattacks. This kind of behavior cannot go on tolerated like this. The United States NEEDS to respond with economic penalties, cyber-retaliation of its own, and other punitive measures.
Like the US doesn't spy?
President Carter? is that you?
Its not a game, sportsmanship only puts you at a disadvantage.
I understand your point, as far as it goes, buts its not realistic to treat possible or potential enemies as if they were reasonable. Either you find common cause somewhere and prove yourselves to each other as in the case of the US/UK or you make them your friend while standing on their chest with your bayonet at their throat. as in the case of the US/Japan.
You may be a nice person Blur but its not a nice word, and no amount of asinine compassion or fair play will make it such. You gotta be the baddest, motor scooter on the block or you get owned.
Ben, for all you know we're already doing it. We're certainly not going to advertise if we're conducting cyber attacks on someone.
Nothing connected to the Internet can ever be secure. We need to stop deluding ourselves that we are so clever that we can keep other, equally clever, people from hacking into our stuff. Nothing is more secure than NO CONNECTION (except maybe powered off…). When will these dweebs figure this out? We are not that smart, despite what we tell ourselves…
Wow… and thought the F-35 design itself was a problem. This takes things to a whole new level. Our security is seriously fucked up right now. However, I still believe it's true that we are getting more information on the Chinese than they are on us. The question is who is really benefiting from the espionage? We certainly have a lot more to steal in the area of advanced technology. I doubt we can acquire anything new from the Chinese as they exist now.
How about this:
You steal our stuff, we stop all business with you…
and and by the way, you can forget about getting your loan to taxpayers paid back.. consider the money you borrowed the US a DOWNPAYMENT on the secret stuff you stole!
And who would loan money to USA after trick like that? None.
EXACTLY !!! NONE! And maybe finally this country will WAKE UP and live within its means, cut its crazy out of control spending and get its act together… exactly the point!!!
If we lived within our means, we'd probably have very little. Welfare isn't cheap. SS/Medicare/Tricare isn't cheap.
Considering we can't even consider the tiniest of cuts to the SS juggernaut without the AARP crushing someone, living within our means isn't an option.
Even if we lowered personal taxes and corporate taxes, it will never again be cheaper to make consumer goods in the United States. The expensive, high-tech low-human labor goods might continue to be made here, but the unemployment will go up and the politicos will see this as an opportunity every election year to attack the incumbents.
There was a recent article about Apple and their iPhone production in China. Sure they employ tens of thousands of unskilled laborers, which in "theory" could be replicated in the States. However they also employ over 5000 electrical and mechanical engineers as supervisors. It would take upwards of 9 months to hire that many in the States. It took them 15 days to fill the positions in China. Its scale people, when you have lots of assets to throw at a problem, you can get it fixed. We don't have the people to fill all the jobs, period, end of story. The economy is shifting, so be agile, successful and happy! Or bitch and moan.
Didn't you people see Sneakers? No secrets folks, no secrets.
DanS – Per that article, the “engineers” were Industrial Engineers, and they lacked college degrees, so not really “engineers” in the sense we use the word here.
It said that China’s advantage in large-scale manufacturing was *not* cheap labor, but a concentration of resources: Suppliers, workers, “engineers”, finance, etc. They are close to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, where many suppliers are located. With so much manufacturing concentrated in one area (the Pearl River Delta), it simply has better resources for the job. There is no place in the U.S. like it, at any price.
I've heard they owe the US $1 billion in bonds from before the communists took over. Of course, lying is communist truth if it furthers communism, theft is communist honesty etc. So Chinese leaders conveniently ignore that old debt.
Don't know if there's any truth to this …
Its time to take the kiddie gloves off when dealing with China
The USG would have to ask Walmart for permission first.
And BTW, isn't that where you got those fancy 'made in Shanghai' "kiddie" gloves in the first place?
Also a salient point,
I tend to get lathered up at left wing stupidity but there is plenty of mutual stupidity going around these days. "engaging" the Chicoms was popular on both sides of our domestic political aisle.
It's also popular due to the two different meanings for engage.
The US tried it twice – in the Korean War and the Vietnam, when China was still struggling economically and technologically following WWII and a Civil War.
The US barely fought to a tie in Korea, and utterly lost in Vietnam and got kicked out.
China now owns a big chunk of US govt debt, has a bigger industrial base as well as larger financial and human resources. You think the US can fare better than it did in Vietnam?????
My only real question is this, are you someone who has been banned previously or a completely new persona on your way to banning? I generally can spot them in their personal attacks on particular people. Oblat was easiest last time when he couldn't resist going for William he totally outted himself.
Whatever happened to Oblat?
He was banned. Came back and started on some of his same rants, I was suspicious and then he fired a broadside at William and totally blew his cover.
me? I'm new here. I don't remember having attacked anyone. Who are you? are you uncomfortable with negative views of the US govt and its military? I don't know who Oblat is and haven't read his posts yet. But I find your post rather objectionable.
The mods aren't too concerned typically with the direction of the conversation as long as it remains more or less civil.
Never said you had attacked anyone, just making an observation based on your posting style.
Feel free to continue, your post on China should role their currency reserves into their own tender already led me to draw the conclusion you don't have a clue in regards to economics.
If they're smart, the powers that be are only pretending to keep the almighty JSF tech secret. Because with any luck, the ChiComs will get sucked into swallowing it whole, and then destroy THEIR OWN air force and military budget by trying to copy the three-way cluster**** called the F-35.
Once that's dopne, the DoD can finally reveal that its real name is not 'Lightning II, but 'Trojan Horse II"…
Perhaps since it renders impotent any country who relies on it, the name should be shortened to simply "Trojan II"?
The prophylactic effect is preventing an air force from being born.
So far, only our own. If only we could get the Chicoms to copy our latest crap. Hell, for years now every time we get a security briefing the usual joke is, "if only the Russians and Chinese would steal what we do now… They'd never recover."
totally agree. Even some US engineers call both the F-22 and F-35 expensive junks.
Yeah, this one included.
I'd like to add that it's been my belief that the US had employed a similar strategy in the past – the Apollo project – fake manned moon landings. It will be interesting to see if the US has actually spent hundreds of billions on F-22 and F-35, or redirected the funds to some secret projects.
Right now neither the F-22 nor the F-35 can fight a real air war. But then neither Russia nor China seem to have fielded any high-end fighter jets or bombers in any significant numbers.
The real drama, in my opinion, is going to be a grand-scale economic warfare centered on the US dollar.
It would be nice if that were true, but sadly neither of your conspiracy theories are correct. The reality is, we wasted nearly 3 decades developing the F-22 only to build 180, we will waste another 3 decades, if not more, developing the F-35, and the failure that is NASA has not been able to repeat the success of the Apollo program in 4 decades. Now the only thing NASA pioneers is the use of the "cost plus award fee" contract. They are the ones who started it all.
The problem with the F-22 isn't that fewer than 200 have been built. It's that the plane can't do what it's purported to be able to do. Those 180+ Raptors aren't even fully flight-worthy.
Similar problem with the F-35. It's hard to fathom that after 3 decades and hundreds of billions, the US is nowhere close to fielding a competent successor to the legacy teen-series jets.
Equally hard to fathom is that NASA managed to land a man on the moon in just 8 years starting from scratch but somehow can't reproduce the rocket used in the Apollo project for the Space Shuttle program – starting from scratch again to produce a vehicle with inferior lifting power but costing several times more???
That on top of a wide selection of provably faked photos and videos, along with some leaked internal documentaries, no wonder so many engineers around the world have rejected NASA's manned lunar landing claims.
I imagine building the rockets and boosters of the Saturn V (and we still have an extra Saturn V left over!) would not be hard, but our decisionmaking about how to redo the command module and the LEM are going to be the money-killers.
NASA's budget was likely ginormous at the time; that said America had enough money to fund CIA black projects, Great Society, NASA, the Cold War in Europe and the Vietnam War all at the same time. Simply pointing to America's past and assuming "we can do it again" doesn't always jive.
At it's peak, NASA's budget was 32 billion in 2007 dollars. It was 16B in 2007. Working on finding historical employment numbers at the moment, plus subcontractors. The other problem is that the aerospace industry no longer has as many employees with space program experience. The men who worked at Rockwell (Command Module) and Grumman (LEM) are gone, as are their respective companies.
Thank god this ani't the Cold War with our pal Ivan. But this is a new kind of Cold War with the PRC. They coutinually pull crap like this year in and year out. Honestly I hope we are getting more from the PRC than they are from us. But ending buissness with the PRC is not a great idea. They'll be able to weather the economic backlash better than we the USA will. For the time being lets wait till they do something really stupid. Like being coaught selling Iran missiles. Or becoming more aggressive in the South China Sea, as in firing on someone allied with us. So in the end our options aren't at all open. So for now, FEAR THE REDS!
China doesn't need to hack into anything. With dems running the show all they have to do is name their price and it will be handed to them.
agreed,
Leftist political thought is highly dogmatic in many areas, notably economics and foreign policy and unable to adapt to evidence that contradicts a "correct" position.
To be fair, right-leaning political thought (in the US at least) is dogmatic on many social issues. However this is not a threat to my children nor to my country so I give them a pass, and concentrate on our enemies, radical Islam, China and worst of all the traitorous American left.
Our real problem is political gridlock, in large part because the right-wing fringe has encouraged narrow-minded arrogance like this post, rather than treat it as ignorant and destructive.
It’s obvious that both sides can adopt that behavior, and that it’s not in anyone’s interest to refuse to respect other opinions and work together. The political gridlock is killing us; the world continues to turn and problems accumulate, while our government stands unable to act.
Or we could let the left have what they want and the country will still collapse anyway; guess you can't win for losing in the game of "nice guy"…..
Its not the government's responsibility "to act" at every man's perceived "problems" and self interests. That is how we have arrived in our current state. I for one am happy with the gridlock as it puts the brakes on the rampant leftism destroying America with its nanny statism and soft socialism.
The government is working perfectly. Americans voted for a crew of obstructionist Republicans to stop the Democrat agenda. It is not the duty of government to constantly pass laws and address new problems and constantly churn out regulations, especially when those very regulations and laws end up harming the country's military, cultural, economic position through unintended consequences.
Thanks for the leftist meme disguised as rational thought.
You are an IDIOT. You don't have walking around sense. You need a keeper.
Dems running the show? Which show, and which "dems"? Large corporations are suddenly democratic and not virulently republican? It was your patriotic republicans who waged war against Iraq – TWICE! It was Bush who failed to listen to CIA's intelligence about the twin towers, who then promised he'd never forget, and then forgot. It was Reagan and Bush who repealed or failed to enforce regulations on our S&L's, banks, credit and financial industries. It was NIxon who "opened" China. It was during Clinton's second term that this country ran a profit. How many beers has Fox paid you not to think?
Oh come on, this smacks of desperation, grasping at the last flimsy straw of spurious excuses to justify a monumental fuckup. FAIL.
so your wife's taking a bath and not closed the windows and your neighbor's enjoying the show so you gonna grab your double barrel and shoot him? act of war lol…..
is anybody getting the distinct impression that the metric of future world dominence won't be how many missiles or tanks, or how large a GDP or industrial base is but… how many "girls with dragon tatooes" a country can educate and support…?
GDP and industry still count. Even if North Korea had a large cyberhacking corps, it couldn't do anything for millions of starving peoiple; except maybe hacker blackmail.
Agreed.
The rule of thumb:
If you don't know who to blame, blame China.
This is the dumbest story ever. Lets build a shitty plane and blame it on the Chinese. Brilliant.
Chinese have already won the war. Entire areas of mostly Chinese in every major town globally. They say even, Canada, will someday soon have a Chinese majority.
They will never war us simply for that fact. They just prepare for if Korea kicks off & to keep competitive in the arms market.
As I see it they are smart, they prepare for the worst case scenarios. We haven't & hope we start soon.
Muslim is further ahead on that front of your theory than China.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
"They say even, Canada, will someday soon have a Chinese majority".
"They" being who, in this case?
And what does "have a Chinese majority" mean? More Chinese living in Canada than actual Canadians (however you define that term)? Well, Canada would have the space for them, I suppose, but it still seems a tad unlikely….
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
"Entire areas of mostly Chinese in every major town globally"
How conspiratorial! There are huge areas in Canada where only Canadians live. Bow in fear when people of like culture congregate.
Islam and China will both implode due to factors ingrained in their fundamental structures. Look at the barbarism of both cultures in the areas of basic human rights and decency. Both populations simply look the other way or approve of the public hangings and mutilations, women as slaves, and the One Child Policy… I dont really need to elaborate further. What is the Chinese ratio of men to women, like 10 to 1 now?
You are myopic. What the west terms as human rights, they term decadence and societal decay. Considering the incredibly social and economical slide downwards that western Europe and USA have undergone the last 50 years, I am not sure they are wrong.
Oooooooh scary. Because all people of Chinese descent are just deep cover agents for the motherland, right?
Rabbit – You are missing the point. Everyone not like him is a threat. People from different countries (China, do you want to bet on Mexico too), with different religions, etc … it must be scary to walk down the street!
The F-35 is an extremely complex jet with all sorts of sensors and an extremely complex avionics suite as one might think it might be simply too much as they should essentially build a F-35 with the basics before adding in the avionics and more sophisticated avionics in later versions as this would allow the cost of the F-35 to be built for a lower cost like the F-16 which has a starting price of about $75-80M while the top tier variant with things like the AESA radar is almost $150M.
That opens a systems integration can of worms when you start throwing in more possible combinations of tech that has to work together. However, basic stuff can be churned out quicker without waiting for other tech bottlenecks to be resolved, delaying procurement.
so what you're saying is buying a F35 is like buying a BMW that you can option it to whatever you like? so LM needs to make multiple radars work with multiple other sensors so that's why it's taking sooooooo long to get the think working at all
This is okay with a lot if liberals. They dont like the fact that the US is the only superpower and want someone like the Chinese to match us economically and militarily.
Which “liberals” say that? Do you have any pride in your credibility, or is it too much fun to make things up?
And you are not? I love these debates because in reality most of us don't know what we're talking about anyway…..
Straw men are needed for maximum contrast. Where would we be if we couldn't compare people to Hitler, Stalin or Mao? Maybe even all three at the same time!
He is making things up. This kind of child-like, playground variety labels and accusations are quite symbolic of American voters. It's also why America is hopeless. The propaganda apparatus (the mainstream media) has done a good job dumbing down the general population.
This happens because we all have computer parts, software, networking , radar boosters and etc all made in China. Think about it. Where did it go wrong?
I agree – espionage is just part of the game. But its too easy to just blame it on the ignorance or an unwillingness of the contractors to prevent cyber attacks. Even with all of the technical resources, trained and dedicated people, and command authority available, the DoD gets hacked, too.
It's a blame game gimmick that serves two purposes at once – (a) deflect responsibility for various failures on the part of the contractors such as severe budget overruns and delays in development, and (b) justify demands for additional funding to the tune of tens of billions to fatten the pockets of the contractors.
The US military industrial complex will further benefits by hyping up the so-called China threat as part of their propaganda campaign to justify further theft of US taxpayers money through extraordinarily wasteful spending of various military programs.
Whenever a news story comes out that has the consequence of justifying additional military spending while blaming foreign countries for espionage, it's time for heightened vigilance, suspicion, and scrutiny.
I wouldn't take the report at face value. The US military and defense contractors have been persistent liars over the past 4-5 decades to say the least.
I think they want more money and divert media's attention of their own failures.
I dont have a problem with an industrial / military complex as military defence is chartered in the original US Constitution.
Additionally, the entire defense budget of the United States is legal, necessary, and constitutionally mandated, unlike the elephant in the room known as Welfare Entitlements which have an unfunded liability number of $244 Trillion (or several times the economic output of the entire planet in a given year) which were not in the original constitution and are bastard children of the failed leftist / progressive / socialist policies of the early 20th century that swept all corners of the globe in various forms.
Wrong on all counts. The US Constitution says nothing about "chartering" any military industrial complex. You obviously have never read the US Constitution and don't know what "charter" means. The US government is criminally negligent in making promises on Social Security without properly funding it. In effect, the US government is lying to the American people, and playing a ponzi scheme similar to the one pulled off by Bernie Madoff, who's currently in federal prison. The US has the most corrupt, incompetent, and criminally culpable government in the world. GW Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Obama, Hillary Clinton, along with many members of US Congress are war criminals on the loose, protected by a mafia-styled military. Instead of spending trillions on criminal military operations around the world under false pretenses, the US government should be funding its liabilities and promises made to the people, like Social Security. If you don't want to pay retirees, don't set up the retirement program. Now that you have set up the program, you must make sure that the program is funded. This is a moral issue. Apparently you don't understand it either.
The entire amount of American tax dollars spent past, present, and future on promised entitlements dwarfs military spending by exponential factors.
Military spending is a ping pong ball, entitlements is a watermelon, understand?
BTW I said military defense is chartered in the constitution, not a military industrial complex, although I dont see how you cant maintain a decent and self sufficient military without a "military industrial complex", literally. There has to be a relationship between business manufacturers and the military that requests specialized hardware.
On all your other points… Bush, Cheney, war criminals, semi standard leftist boilerplate but you dont even understand the hypocracy. Social Security was born out of leftist redistributionist policies, it was never going to work to begin with! Another corrupt, bogus, and failed promise from socialists.
Welfare programs help a lot of people, but have problems too. To dismiss them all out of hand is just ignorance and laziness. It’s too bad we can’t discuss issues intelligently; our country might actually get somewhere.
Instead, we waste time calling names and trying to argue that the other guys opinion should be disregarded entirely. They are socialists! It’s not in the Constitution! The political figures that teach you this language are just using you for their purposes. Don’t let them do it. Let’s get together and move forward as a nation.
Matt Sturgeon, don't make things up, OK. SS recipients have made their contributions to SS and have been paying taxes. The military industrial complex has been taking FAR MORE money from taxpayers than they ever pay in taxes. Some companies make billions in profits without paying a dime in taxes. Some even get tens of millions in rebates, thanks to absurd laws their bought puppet congressmen have passed by design.
You don't know what you are talking about.
Social security constitutes a beneficial social welfare for the ordinary folks when they retire. There is nothing wrong with that. Spending trillions on weapons of mass destruction, hundreds of military bases abroad, funding murderous tyrants, assassinating democratically elected leaders abroad, building secret prison/torture camps etc etc are pure evil. What happened to morality and common sense, aside from identifying false information??
The US deliberately leaked details of the F-35 to the Chinese … how do you think the Chinese developed a stealth fighter that looks similar to the F-22 ? Once the Chinese come up with a reverse engineered variant of the F-35, Lockheed will use its lobby in the White House to push sales of additional squadrons of the F-35
"The US deliberately leaked details of the F-35 to the Chinese" – Evidence, please.
" … how do you think the Chinese developed a stealth fighter that looks similar to the F-22 ?" – Maybe because they have skilled aeronautical engineers?
While it's certainly possible that specific details of the F-35 project (e.g. related to stealth materials or sensors" obtained through cyber intelligence gathering have been integrated into the J-20, the notion that "The J-20 looks like the F-22 because the US leaked details of the F-35" remains unsupported. Why details of the F-35 and not of the F-22? The latter at least would make more sense. And do you really think the J-20 looks like an F-22?
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
We honestly should not be so interested in how the aircraft /look/, but what goes on underneath the skin. However, for armchair folk…
That's right. The inscrutably sly US gubmint deliberately allowed foreign plastic model companies to make accurate scale models of the top-secret Raptor just so that the Chinese would buy one and … VOILA! The J-20 CopyCat now dominates the skies over the Pacific!
Sheesh…
It's all about money. They want to squeeze US taxpayers dry by creating imaginary / false enemies and trick the US voters and the government into spending more on new weaponry.
The modus operanti never gets old. The military industrial complex has more than enough money to wage propaganda campaigns via the mainstream media, and buy off corrupt politicians in Congress to give them trillions after trillions in outrageously priced products and services.
That's why they have been funding Mitt Romney and his ilk, while sabotaging Ron Paul, even if it means flagrant fraud.
The only trillions going out the window is for the elderly, welfare queens and future Obama Voterz of America. The elephant in the room. Compared to this, defense spending is a teddy bear.
That's a lie. First of all, the US government set up the Social Security program a long time ago for retirees and has been taking contributions to the program. When incoming funds outpaced outgoing payments, the US government had the audacity of secretly transferred the surplus meant for future payments to fund its federal budget deficits, mostly on ultra-expensive criminal military operations around the world and ultra-expensive weaponry. Now the baby-boomer generation will not be getting the SS payments the government promised because there is not sufficient fund in the account to pay them. You have no clue what is going on inside the US government. Obama, Clinton, GW Bush, GH Bush, Reagan, … they are all puppets of the military industrial complex. Same for the new crop of wannabe presidents – Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Buchmann, Palin, … they are all scums. Ron Paul is the only Rep. candidate showing some wisdom, conscience and backbone.
Yup; the evil military is out to take over the world, just like in Avatar. Tremble in fear and vote for Ron Paul, ye cynics of the world!……
edit: middle paragraph – and buy off corrupt politicians in Congress to give them trillions after trillions in exchange for outrageously priced products and services.
The Editors of Proceedings, Defense Weekly., and Av Week published an editorial years ago foreseeing problems like this. They were imploring the Reagan Administration to restore educational funding, student loans, and Pell Grant programs. Without our own (American) educated students, we would be reliant on outsiders to procure, manage, and design these complex systems. They all considered it to be a matter of national security, and now we get to reap the rewards (if you can call it that) of an uneducated society. If you think education is expensive: try ignorance.
I was in a unclassified JSF briefing in April 2008 where I later found out that the info presented was classified. I sent a "challenge" notice through my security bubbas.
The response back was effectively, "We are JSF, we can do what we want. F. U.."
"The response back was effectively, "We are JSF, we can do what we want. F. U.." "
Well, at least they did't try to blame the Chinese for that one as well ("Well, sir, we believe that a secret, Chinese cyber warfare unit hacked into our presentation and covertly inserted classified data. Really! That's what we think happened!").
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
Lockheed Martin is either making a scapegoat out of China because it cannot manage this project's costs anymore, or it is actually in cahoots with our soon to be Oriental overlords in bankrupting Uncle Sam. Either way, make LM pay!!!
Asian, not Oriental. Oriental is a type of rug, not a people.
Asian also suggests a conspiracy including more nations beyond the PRC.
Then again, in the '80s everyone thought Japan was out to get the United States…
Lockheed Martin IS part of the US government, just like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. They make taxpayers pay. Not the other way around.
No, if they were part of the government, then their CEOs couldn't make 60 or 70 times more than the president of the US.
China is evil and our enemy. War will come. God help us. We will need every nuke we have to scrub this garage from the earth.
"War will come" – it will with that attitude, certainly.
"God help us" – the Chinese have gods too, you know. Just sayin'.
"We will need every nuke we have to scrub this garage from the earth" – Garage? You're proposing to nuke sombody's garage?
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
I need to clean my garage. Got some CLR for that.
I think his point is that he lives in a dirty garage.
Chinese elites have traditionally been atheists. I'm not kidding. In a strict orthodox neo-Confucian interpretation of the world, they stick to Confucius's line never to talk about the gods and spirits. That's because according to them, they don't exist.
For the historical Chinese state, based on a secular ideology of social control, religion has always been a pest that leads to annoying episodes of cult-lead revolt. We have Scientology making oodles of money off a pseudo-science. They have the Heavenly Kingdom leading to the world's deadliest civil war.
"….leading to the world's deadliest civil war."
Like I said: Gods.
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
PS: At least Sun Wu Kong (the old Chinese monkey god) was kinda fun. Not like some of the others (*shudder*).
The monkey king is at most a demi-god. He brought havoc to the heavenly kingdom, just as any demi-god would.
Incidentally, the Japanese named the main character in "Dragon Ball" Sun Wu Kong as well (Sun Gouku in Japanese).
So here's the hidden message – gods are aliens living among us.
Just for laughs, don't take it seriously.
You have no money for new airplanes anyways, so don't worry, at least somebody is using the technology…
China is funding America's military programs, literally. It's doing so by purchasing / holding over 1 trillion US govt debt.
China should smarten up and start dumping the US treasuries while the dollar is still worth something, and at the same time pave way for demanding payments for its exports in RMB instead of USD.
Except that would be the completely wrong thing for China to do. They would cut their own throat economically. Their economy is export driven and driving up the value of your own native currency would be just about the dumbest thing a nation could do.
China isn't plowing trillions into US securities to control the US, they are doing it to help keep their own currency artificially low. If the US gets its spending habits under control China is in big trouble on the world trade scene. They won't have anywhere to plow their currency reserves. It's a big question whether the Euro is going to even survive so that leaves them essentially no choice.
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China's economy used to be heavily export-driven. But transition to a strong domestically driven economy has been in the works for over a decade. While it's hard to say how much of a success China has achieved so far, the direction has been very clear. Now China is getting close, or has already reached the stage where decoupling from the US should start in full force. In fact China is already doing it. And it's not just China. Russia, Brazil, India, South East Asia, South America and parts of the Middle East (notably Iran) are doing it.
cont'd – The US doesn't have the money to buy China's stuff – China is lending US the money. All China needs to do is to stop lending money to the US and redirect surplus production inward. Right now China is getting soon-to-be-worthless pieces of paper from the US in exchange for its export of real products. In the process China accumulates soon-to-be-worthless dollars and recycles them back to US treasuries to fund China's own encirclement. It's a bad deal. Once you understand the big picture, everything the US is doing will make sense. But first you will have to ween yourself off the US mainstream media – it's nothing but a propaganda apparatus of Wall Street banksters and military industrial complex vampires.
China already has redirected inward, that's how they artificially maintained growth through the recession by pouring billions into infrastructure projects they had no use for. Problem is that can't be maintained.
In addition China isn't weening itself off of anything, it never has and still won't allow its currency to be floated on the international markets, all part of keeping the value down to drive down export costs.
In addition they just lost a WTO appeal in that they were artificially monkeying with mineral exports to drive prices down domestically, to again, make manufacturing for export cheaper.
You're completely wrong on China and what it is doing with its economy, plus I don't even know why I bothered posting all this when I read your moon landing conspiracy comment. You have a nice time here, this will be my last post to you.
Why dont they justeet face to face/ Robert DeNiro prefered it in GoodFellas so people didnt WIRE INTO THEIR CONVERATIONS. we should be having face to face meetings about this top secret stuff until we get our cyber security up to requirements
Blaming the Chinese now for fundamental design flaws – it's beyond laughable its just pathetic.
Somehow I do miss military personnel commenting more in this forum. When occasionally they identify themselves as such, it's hard not to notice how the the quality of the comment is above average (including – notably – the spelling). Reading the comments from all the armchair warriors below is often a challenge, though.
The fault lies with the deterioration of the public education system. I imagine the quality of the posts probably correlates with age and education moreso than vet/non-vet; which is in turn biased because less than a percent of the population even serves in the first place, raising the quandary of whether or not 1% of the population can be a representative sample.
Your reply is entirely too simplistic. Human civilization is alive, and it is changing, evolving. The Koran unveiled a new form of society called the 'nation'. At that time, the city-state was the dominant form of civilization, but over several centuries the nation-state took over the world, and advanced civilization and human rights. Today, however, that same nation is a barrier to the cause of justice. The world is today in transition from nation-states to one world federal system, modeled after the United States in fact. We already have in place many of the elements, and every nation is today connected via dozens of different multi-national organizations, many of them for profit, many of them legal, financial, social. In times of rapid change, you find reactionary elements fighting that change, and progressive elements trying to foster it. Inevitably, however, change occurs, and if the United States allows itself to fall prey to its own reactionary elements (as Islam has fallen), then this country will become an observer of history, rather than a significant part of it.
We should slap a huge tariff on all their export goods they are killing us in every area and not many seem to care. The JSF will be a helluva warplane..one day. Disgrace.
I agree with you on the tariffs, but not on the F-35. The only version worth keeping is the VTOL version, which will probably be the first one cancelled. Even it has some fundamental problems like you don't want to be sitting in the pilot's seat when that lift fan explodes and cuts you into top and bottom halves.
Kind of like being afraid of the wings on your F-14 shearing off during a dog fight? (OK I'm stumping for a fight ;)……….
If you compare the rate at which wings fail in flight to the rate at which compressor disks experience uncontained rupture, you'll find that the latter happens several orders of magnitude more often. Not surprisingly, (to me, at least) the F-35 program has gone through considerable trouble to mitigate the effects of that particular failure mode. I was surprised that there was not sufficient ballistic armor around the pilot for this not to be a problem, especially given the roll the F-35 is supposed to have as an attack asset. Given the lack of armor, I'd at least have expected them to put the fan at the bottom of the fuselage duct, which they also did not do.
Why bother? If the F-35 proceeds to serial production and are actually used in a war, its pilots will be getting killed long before any part of the compressor assembly has enough time to develop fatigue or wear.
The F-35 will most likely be a single-trip "strike fighter" if used against China or Russia or N Korea …
"You're trying to branch out further by taking on manned lunar landing."
I'm trying to branch out? It surely has not escaped your vastly superior intellect that in your post above (1 day ago by this time) you initially brought up your belief in a moon landing hoax. What we have done since then is simply refer back to this original statement.
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
Its not so hard to incorporate a tight security framework into these projects from the very beginning. This is an expensive lesson painfully learned. Hopefully from now on, any new technology and systems developed in the future will have cyber espionage countermeasures in place at every level.
Considering even Verisign, one of the first names in internet security was cracked; it suggests that simply slapping on more "espionage countermeasures" is not a magic panacea. It's more about policing our external security, more than putting in security on every level. It's cost and time prohibitive.
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RE: Did Chinese Espionage Lead to F-35 Delays? by JOHN REED for Defensetech.org http://defensetech.org/2012/02/06/did-chinese-esp…
When an article title is a question we know its content will be political obfuscation, finger pointing, and straw man arguments. Mr. Reed does not come out and say it but it does seem he (and no one else either) is buying the story of schedule and cost overruns because the Chinese ate their homework.
The beauty of this admission of lax cyber security is that it gives these tax gobblers deniability, and provides a scapegoat for the cost overruns that can not be touched. Also, there is no one person or group to blame for the security problems, so heat from this will quickly dissipate, and oodles of yummy tax dollars can be begged from congress to patch these dastardly cyber holes.
Pork Barreling and cronyism in defense contracting are as American an baseball and apple pie. This is, alas, not an attempt at sarcasm considering steroid scandals and high fructose corn syrup fueled obesity epidemics. Contractors will continue to drag out and over charge contracts and politicians and officers in charge will always get very lucrative positions after retirement.
The Chinese do not have to worry about the wide open front door being finally locked against internet attacks. I had a conversation with a colleague who works on missile guidance software. He is the only American in his department. All the rest are Chinese nationals that only speak Mandarin at work and in his opinion: "You can't tell me they don't report to the Chinese embassy every night after work." His comments stemmed from a debate about how easy it is to get top secret clearance. Defense contractors seem to hand out these clearances (or at least tell the government these guys are OK) based on who is cheapest to hire not who is best for the project (or the country).
This is depressing – are there any stories about big defense contracts that are on time, on budget, stick to the original intent, provide an outstanding all American engineering achievement, and are actually needed by the military?
Here's a couple of my least favorite military contracts:
M16/M4 rifle: Designed as a light survival rifle for downed air crews it was adopted as a main battle weapon to replace the overbuilt M14 (why does everything have to be full-auto?) based mostly on the premise that soldiers do not like to carry or fire big, heavy weapons (????????????). The direct gas impingement design makes it hard to keep clean and places far too much gas pressure in direct contact with the bolt gas seals which need regular replacement. It also has a tendency to jam due to extraction failure and U.S. forces tend to carry cleaning rods to knock out stuck shell casings. After over thirty years I still refer to it as a "Mattel" – a cheap plastic toy.
Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey VTOL – best way to fly if you want to die in an air crash.
Bradley Fighting Vehicle – So ridiculous HBO made a comedy about it ("Pentagon Wars")
You're thinking of the NYTimes series, which I thought was great. We let the outsourcing get so bad the entire infrastructure just up and moved to China, simultaneously.
Actually, that series mentioned that the jobs that were missing were those "between high school and college", suggesting trained technicians who did not need engineering degrees. There's a massive gulf between Target workers and college trained engineers (to say nothing about the college trained people who do other things who wouldn't find jobs even in a manufacturing future). We lost trained blue collar guys…how do we get them back?
We have to be networked now, otherwise how are we going to send our latest CAD data to the foreign countries that actually build the parts? You talk like one of those crazy people who think we should design and build our weapons right here in the USA like we did when they didn't cost a fortune and when we had the best weapons in the world.
"Make friends with China" doesn't mean "stop competing with China". If anything, having them in our schools gives them a preview of America just as it gives America a preview of how good the best of China's students are. In STEM, you can count on Chinese students hitting hard; or at least they did when I was in statistical mechanics.
Morals and ethics were a huge part of Chinese culture, until the British came in with complete disregard for all of that, by flooding the market with opium illegally. Now the Chinese play by western rules – no rules.
You are posting off topic comments and ranting. Don't you think?
He's answering a question I had about a guy who had…interesting…posts.
With regard to economics, you are seriously mistaken. I've replied in some detail on another, subsequent thread. You have got a false picture of the economic dynamics between China and the US.
Like the way they manipulate their currency? They are vermin.
Yup; I'm sure that even people like Hitler or Stalin had good ideas, and that people should have worked with them for the betterment of their countries.
I'm not saying anyway in the States are as bad as those two, but you can be completely and utterly wrong when it comes to national policy……
No one is dismissing all welfare programs flat out. You are easy to decipher, RTFA.
"Lets get together and move forward as a nation"
Translation:
"Agree to the left's agenda and no one will get hurt"
Let me tell you something, RTFA: Socialism is a bad word and it is a corrupt and thoroughly failed ideology. Modern history has many hand accounts. So turning America more and mroe socialist is a failing proposition and Americans are smart enough to know that. Second of all, Americans have a respect for rule of law and precedent of law, which the US Constitution is, after all. Only with the new deal era did progressives really start to show their frustrations with our 3 branch government….
The progressives in culture and media are always the first to lament that the US Government is just broken, that the US can't be governed, ungovernable, needs a new set of rules, new set of rulers, etc
Here is your problem. You recite what you have been fed by the mainstream media without thinking for yourself. You don't look at the evidence to the contrary, even when some it has been available from the mainstream media.
China's infrastructure spending doesn't constitute inward redirection of surplus production. It's part of a necessary long term program to build efficient mass transportation of goods and materials between coastal areas and central China.
Chinese central bank governor has laid out a timetable for a fully convertible RMB – 2015. In addition, China is establishing bilateral currency swap agreements as well as bilateral trade-in-local-currency agreements with trading partners, in effect paving the way for eliminating US dollar in the process.
The biggest currency manipulator in the world is the US – it's printing Trillions out of thin air. That's precisely why so many countries are openly advocating a move away from the dollar. It's also why the US is instigating conflicts in the Middle East to create excuses for military invasions to control ME oil fields and maintain its petro-dollar hegemony.
You are obviously not trained in a science or technical field so I'm not going to discuss manned moon landing hoax based on evidence and logical inference.
Don't be so conceited about your (false) knowledge about economics. As I said, until you ween yourself off the mainstream media, no real understanding of the world is possible.
The biggest currency manipulator in the world is the US – printing trillions out of thin air.
Of course you are not going to hear it from the mainstream media – propaganda apparatus of the corporate-owned US government.
"You are obviously not trained in a science or technical field so I'm not going to discuss manned moon landing hoax based on evidence and logical inference"
That's rich. Really, it is. Considering the scientific quality of the so called "evidence" of a moon landing hoax, you certainly don't need to be "trained in a science or technical field" (what are your qualifications, BTW?) to debunk it.
And "Don't be so conceited about your (false) knowledge…."? Seriously? You call STemplar conceited, yet you are the one who won't discuss a particular topic because he's "obviously not trained in a science or technical field". Pot, meet kettle.
Personally, I am a trained bachelor of science in the field of mechanical engineering and energy conversion machines. Will that do?
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
No, it won't do, and not just because of a mere claim to a degree, but the actual competence demonstrated in one's argument. I suggest you go back and read his posts and my posts again and see who's the one not wanting to discuss the topic at hand (hint: it's not manned moon landing).
This is a basic reading comprehension exercise.
"not just because of a mere claim to a degree"
I'll send you a scan of my diploma, how about that? And you still haven't elaborated on your own qualifications.
"hint: it's not manned moon landing"
No hint needed. You stated quite clearly that you didn't want to discuss that because (in your view) your opponent "obviously" wasn't educated enough to grasp you arguments.
"I suggest you go back and read his posts and my posts again and see who's the one not wanting to discuss the topic at hand"
I did that, and I see a lot of willingness to discuss the subject at hand (except for your statement as referenced above). What I also see is that your opponent does not agree with you. Is that what you refer to as "not wanting to discuss"?
Regards & all
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
LOL. I don't know about others but if I were to grade your performance in this reading comprehension exercise on a scale of A to F, I would give you a double F minus, giving due consideration to your B. Sc. degree.
Perhaps repeating the exercise a few more times would help?
Leave this site and go find one where people are as smart as you. Fact is we are all to stupid and uneducated to understand your priceless words of wisdom.
After all, I'm sure you speak for the experts, and when you die no one will be left to tell us what really happened. MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!………….
Well, it seems that crackedlenses pretty much took care of the "I don't know about others…." part.
And for the third time: What exactly are your qualifications? What have you done, accomplished or otherwise achieved that makes you more educated than us? Not to mention enabling you to grade my reading comprehension skills?
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
PS: It amuses me that you seem to think I give one jot what you think of my reading comprehension skills. Or anyone else's ditto, for that matter.
You missed this part or simply don't understand it: quote: "You're completely wrong on China and what it is doing with its economy, plus I don't even know why I bothered posting all this when I read your moon landing conspiracy comment. You have a nice time here, this will be my last post to you."
He thinks he's right without explaining why he's right. And he doesn't want any more discussion.
How difficult can this be? LOL
Qualification to grade your reading comprehension skills doesn't have to be a degree. Most degrees from universities mean nothing more than a record of attendance, if even that.
Ability to recognize and demonstrate that you failed to properly follow or understand the a series of posts is more than sufficient qualification.
Don't get me wrong. There are some very smart, educated and knowledgeable people here. It's just that you are not one of them.
Oh THAT one! OK, I confess, you got me, it's a fair cop. I will immediately shred my B.Sc. diploma and put on a dunce cap.
The only excuse I can think of is that my eyes and brain on occasion skips over things to do with moon landing hoaxes (and flat earth theories and Elvis still being alive), as a sort of intellectual self defence.
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
Well, a series of very strange things happened after the alleged "manned lunar landings" – design papers and blueprints of Saturn V rockets were all "lost" while some claimed that they had been deliberately destroyed. NASA could have continued to use Saturn V immediately and economically without spending vast amount of money and time to develop an inferior vehicle – lower lift, more expensive to use. When some official photos or videos or exhibits were demonstrated to be faked or of dubious credibility, NASA would just quietly take them down and then either replace them with new ones or simply forget about them and refuse to talk about them.
The Vietnam war was a big hit in terms of cost, among other things. It's also a big factor in the outflow of gold and Nixon's 1971 decision to close the gold window. I wouldn't doubt that the US had some black projects. But all these only add to the lack of credibility of the Apollo program. 8 years for a complex system engineering project like the Apollo is simply too short to be believable to honest engineers, including US engineers. We'll see what the Chinese find out if and when they make a manned lunar landing around 2025. Let's hope WWIII doesn't break out before that. You can't wait for the US to declassify the Apollo documents – all astronauts, engineers and perhaps their relatives (sons/daughters) will have died by then.
No, I would be ashamed of myself if I were as know-it-all and cynical as you. I don't think that I'm always correct (hence my screen name), but you sir are seriously off in some areas (moon landing included). I have nothing against Ron Paul, but you give him and his supporters a bad name……
http://web.archive.org/web/20100818173517/http://…
"The denial came in response to a recent story in SPACE.com that reported on a claim John Lewis made in his 1996 book, Mining the Sky, that he went looking for the Saturn 5 blueprints a few years ago and concluded, incredibly, they had been "lost."
Paul Shawcross, from NASA's Office of Inspector General, came to the agency's defense in comments published on CCNet — a scholarly electronic newsletter covering the threat of asteroids and comets. Shawcross said the Saturn 5 blueprints are held at the Marshall Space Flight Center on microfilm.
"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5 … The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of parts that are simply not manufactured any more."
"The Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, also has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents," he said. "Rocketdyne has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program. This effort was initiated in the late '60s to document every facet of F 1 and J 2 engine production to assist in any future restart."
Shawcross cautioned that rebuilding a Saturn 5 would require more than good blueprints.
"The problem in recreating the Saturn 5 is not finding the drawings, it is finding vendors who can supply mid-1960's vintage hardware," he wrote, "and the fact that the launch pads and vehicle assembly buildings have been converted to space shuttle use, so you have no place to launch from.
"By the time you redesign to accommodate available hardware and re-modify the launch pads, you may as well have started from scratch with a clean sheet design," he wrote.
In years past, rumors have abounded that in the 1970s the White House or Congress had the Saturn 5 plans destroyed "to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands".
That seems doubtful — it would be a formidable terrorist group that decided to build a Saturn 5 to wreak havoc on the world, or build a lunar base. Also, by the1970s, the Soviets apparently had given up on the race to the moon.
Geoffrey Hughes from the Rotary Rocket Company supported Shawcross's view.
"There is no point in even contemplating trying to rebuild the Saturn 5," he said. "Having a complete set of Saturn 5 blueprints would do us no good whatsoever. True, we would still be able to bend the big pieces of metal fairly easily. But they are not the problem.
"The real problem is the hundreds of thousands of other parts, some as apparently insignificant as a bolt or a washer, that are simply not manufactured any more. Everything would have to be redone. So a simple rebuild would be impossible. The only real answer would be to start from scratch and build anew using modern parts and processes. Yet another immense challenge!"
It turns out that NASA is taking on that challenge, but not necessarily to chase asteroids.
Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are working on designs for a new giant launch vehicle called Magnum. It would use a curious mix of Russian rocket engines — derived from the abandoned Soviet Energia rocket program — and newly developed strap-on, liquid-fueled boosters that would first be tested out on space shuttles.
The Magnum would use the space shuttle launch facilities at Cape Canaveral and could launch 80 tons (81,280 kilograms) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO). This compares with around 20 tons (20,320 kilograms) for the piloted space shuttle, and for un-piloted vehicles like the U.S.' Titan 4-B and the European Space Agency's Ariane 5. Its lift capacity, however, would be less than the 100 tons (101,600 kilograms) that the Saturn 5 and Energia could manage."
The oldest archived version of the url is from 2000. If I had time and money and clearance to see the docs, I'd take a road trip I would go check it out…but as my training is more the S in STEM than the E they could probably fool me easily enough.
Thanks for taking the time to dig that out. I remember having read something like this years back.
The problem is, of course, credibility. Simply put, it's not convincing, i.e. it doesn't pass the smell test. Take the parts that were no longer being made, for instance. Are we supposed to be that the parts were so complicated that nobody could ever make them again? That's just silly.
edit: meant to say "Are you supposed to **believe** that …"
I think their point is that when you re-open a production line you have to start the whole quality control process over again, and redo the part and systems integration. At some point, you are remaking old parts that were made before, but have to re-test everything as if you were making it for the first time to weed out production kinks-and by then, you might as well be paying for a large fraction of the development costs of Saturn V.
Again, the real killer is likely what to do about CM/LEM…look at Bush's "return to moon" program, which was essentially a reboot of the Apollo CM.
You may be over-exaggerating the virtues aspect of Confucianism, though Cixi was no Julius Caesar, or even a Cleopatra.
The Sasson family wasnt british by a very long shot. They deftly exploited the bumbling, greedy & clueless imperial brits as fall guys and muscle. Just saying that you need to brush up on your opium war history.
Honestly, I think the military industrial complex would rather people believe the Moon landings were a hoax. It keeps them from having to explain why things are so f'ed up now. When NASA had a real rocket designer working for them and designed their own rockets, we went to the moon. When they started their "cost plus award fee" contracting with defense contractors designing and building their rockets everything went to hell in a handbasket. The shuttle did not meet any of its major objectives. It could only lift 40,000 lbs to low earth orbit, not 120,000+ as was intended. It took months to years to turn around between launches, not days or weeks as intended. The combination of failures was fatal to our manned exploration program.
I'm used to assuming the pilot lives. Sometimes it's hard to shake those old ways of thinking, even when confronted with over whelming facts to the contrary.
Been a while since pilots were getting blown out of the sky left and right. Vietnam?
The bottom line of the military industrial complex is Profit, not Preservation of human lives.
Larger loss of human lives ==> Larger scale of war ==> Larger government spending on weapons ==> Larger profits for the death merchants.
If you have time and like to read great novels or stories, I highly recommend that you dig up stories about a secret meeting on Jekyll Island, Georgia, in 1910. (google will suffice) Keep an open mind and trace the events to 1913 (how the Federal Reserve Act was passed). From there, either move down the timeline or back up to the presidency of Andrew Jackson and his duel with shadow powers to establish a central bank. Then move on to Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy and their actions related to central banking. Similarly for Sen. Louis McFadden, President Woodrow Wilson (and his words of regret). Read Michael Hudson, Paul Craig Roberts, Peter Schiff, and watch/read Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, and Max Keiser (RT.com)
It took me at least 7 years of reading (avg 1-2 hours a day on this particular subject though I tended to branch out somewhat from time to time) to get the big picture of the real power center and structure of the United States. But it was entertaining as well as enlightening.
You will be thrilled that you did. I recommend that you try to get the picture in 3 or 4 years. As time is kind of a big issue – money related.
You are acting like a know-it-all right now. I don't know how I've come off as a know-it-all or cynic. You're more than welcome to make your case on areas you think I'm seriously off.
As for Ron Paul, I support him and recommend him as the next president of the US to every American voter. I agree with him on many important issues but disagree with him strongly on quite a few others. Many Ron Paul supporters hold similar views as mine on US economy, filthy, corrupt US political culture, US violation of international laws, which Ron Paul agrees, as well as the moon landing hoax and 9-11 cover up which Ron Paul differs. Since when does holding different opinions in a democracy that allegedly value freedom of speech and freedom to have one's own opinion make someone else look bad?????? That's just ludicrous.
If you can prove that NASA's Apollo program did succeed and all of NASA's released photos and videos are legit, go for it. (Note. By "prove", I mean prove in the sense the word is used in Mathematics and Physics. So reciting NASA's claim don't count.)
Come on. Let's hear it.
While China has consistently emphasized the importance of, and given special treatment to, the Opium War era in schools' history texts, I don't think the ethnic background of those involved in the opium trade has ever been discussed, nor is it deemed necessary. There was no reliable source on the inner dealings between the British drug traffickers and the British government, or the Crown. The latter has never come forward (to my knowledge) with any credible inside information on the matter. In Britain, it's a war about "free trade"
Confucianism was probably a big contributing factor in the decline of China.