Unfortunately much of that is outright lie. Lockheed Martin specifically sold F-35 to other countries under the umbrella of "you can replace all your fighter, attack and close combat support aircraft with this one machine". This is why they got so many countries on board with financing in spite of having no aircraft to show for it.

This has since been proven to be false, to the point where several countries like Australia have opted to buy other aircraft like F/A-18E/F models to replacing their aging fleets instead of F-35 after failures of F-35 became evident.

As for "design goals" as it comes to F-35, is there really anyone still having that discussion, other than Lockheed Martin shills? We already know they failed at meeting essentially all of them, and design requirements had to be continuously reduced so that aircraft would have at least some chance of meeting them. Knowledge of this is widely available in mass media.

Point one: I'm looking at it from the point of view of other countries. I readily concede the fact that US will never buy a French jet, even if it's far better suited for the role. It took immense amount of wrangling just to get Harrier in, even though it literally had no alternatives.

Your second point is moot. F-35's commonality is reported at around thirty percent today, and it's likely to go down rather than up as development continues. This is actually one of the biggest failures in the program, and was widely reported.

Your third point is extremely debatable. F-35's stealth is already been reported to be exceptionally lacking in all but frontal hemispheres, and in addition to that it has very little in terms of payload when it's stealthy. It needs to have external hardpoints (read: no stealth from any direction) for any meaningful strike package for example, or to have a meaningful range which it woefully lacks.

So we go back to point one, which as I admitted, I readily concede. But in that regard, there is one point that is being argued in US today: that F-35 program should be scrapped and in its place US should develop three separate fighters (because of point #2 being proven largely failed today). This would get all users an aircraft that is actually at least decent for the designed purpose, instead of an abortion of an aircraft in all usage scenarios that F-35 is increasingly proven to be.

You forget that capabilities of S-300 are well known, because several of the newer NATO countries have the system's naval version on their ships.

S-400 is arguable, and S-300 would definitely pose a significant threat to older planes like F-16 and F-18 without electronic warfare support.

However the rocket at the edge of its operational range is at a massive disadvantage in terms of power of its guidance system vs power of nearby powerful jammer.

You are grossly misinformed. "Wild weasel" is a US program to attack SAM targets with HARM missiles. It was just that, nothing less, nothing more.

Modern NATO aviation, when striking sites defended by SAM installments use dedicated electronic warfare aircraft. These aircraft are designed for extremely specialized role that has nothing to do with destroying SAM targets. Their goal is to track, locate and jam incoming radar-guided missiles. They render stealth moot because they go for exact opposite approach (overloading tracking system with false information instead of depriving it of information) that gets you the exact same end goal as stealth - near immunity to radar guided missiles.

They don't have to stand forever. As noted, you can develop from existing platforms, and you can use experience from F-22 and F-35 projects to design something that would actually perform its role.

F-35 doesn't do that, and F-22 is still dysfunctional as anything other than pure air superiority fighter. Also I'm pretty sure that most NATO countries would gladly take it for air superiority role over F-35 if it was offered for export. So offer F-22 for export for air superiority tasks, and get Rafale or F-18 for ground attack.

And as has been noted countless times, stealth is largely "backfit" into current aircraft by having all aircraft escorted by dedicated electronic warfare aircraft which accomplish the same thing in a different way. As has been widely reported, F-35's steath is already fairly bad outside frontal hemisphere, so it would likely require similar support regardless.

You seem to think that double entry bookkeeping doesn't require extra work (significant increase in costs), that it wouldn't reduce usability (far more difficult to produce reports on wider issues), or that it would make system immune to human errors.

You are incorrect on all accounts.

Not even close. VDSL2 DSLAM is (afaik) around 1000 euro for operators who buy them in bulk nowadays, and you can hook it to the building's electric supply. You're not going to need VDSL2 to work if building has no power anyway (modems will turn off without power), so you don't need any kind of batteries.

You seem to think this is hypothetical. This is how much of the internet is being implemented across Nordics as far as I know. They pulled this connection to my apartment building a few years ago, and the rollout is ongoing throughout the nation (I'm from Finland). I know for a fact that operators in Denmark and Sweden at least are doing the same in many cases.

In a large conflict that these are planned for? Yes. In those, everyone is expendable.

For smaller conflicts, you just need a good ejection seat and a solid retrieval team on top of flying electronic warfare aircraft alongside others.

Current versions of all those aircraft are survivable. F-18E/F versions are quite modern and you could work on those to build the next version. Or you can buy Rafale/Eurofighter (depending on whether you need attack focused multirole or fighter focused multirole). And for cheap light fighter needs a la F-16, you can buy Gripen.

The problem with your argument is that you argue that F-35 is necessary to replace those aircraft. It's not. NATO already has several functional aircraft that do what F-35 does, and do it much better. Rafale is a far superior multirole attack focused aircraft for example (far greater payload, has a superb jamming system instead of stealth which proved itself in Libya). F-18E/F will likely outperform it as an air superiority fighter, as will Eurofighter. All of these are cheaper and proven to work.

And if you're looking at competition against states like Russia and China, having a few expensive and largely dysfunctional "sorta" stealth fighters is a far worse option than having many cheaper, proven and reliable fighters with close range electronic warfare support aircraft mixed in. Notably that is how NATO forces operate nowadays, and that is why they have such a high survivability against SAM threats (with exception of Rafale, which appears to basically be an "electronic warfare aircraft lite" on its own, as proven in Libya where it was the only NATO aircraft to conduct air strikes without electronic warfare aircraft support).

The only ones who would take a hit are those who were planning to replace Harriers, because there's simply no replacement for Harrier in existence. That means UK that needs Harriers for its aircraft carriers and US marine corps. Everyone else would do just fine with F-18, Rafale and Eurofighter. Or if they need a really cheap lighter option, Gripen.

No, probably around 100-200m is the more realistic outcome. Which is enough for an average residential building. In a taller building where this range isn't enough, there's usually some sort of a panel mid way where you can insert repeaters to strengthen the signal for much cheaper than having to rip out walls.

Notably this is exactly how VDSL is being currently used. I now use one at home, 100/10 connection over a standard copper pair to DSLAM in the basement which in turn is connected to the central ISP network via fiber that was laid a few years ago in the neighbourhood. No need to rip out walls, and this thing has more speed and range than student network at student apartment I had back in early 2000s (when I moved in, that apartment had amazing speed of 10mbps half duplex ethernet in star topology which was super awesome since I moved from analogue modem at home). Modem reports that connection speed is around 85000kbps down and 10000kbps up. I live several tens of meters of copper wire from the DSLAM and run one ~10m extension from the wall socket the modem.

Essentially what we need right now is the way to utilize standard copper twisted pair intended for POTS service (usually CAT3 around where I live) that exists in most of the older buildings to support last mile speeds that are offered by pulling fibre to the apartment building, because VDSL for last mile is becoming too slow to carry speeds that are becoming more common (350mbps cable and 1gbps over ethernet).

Programming is not something that requires grueling training or rare talents. Algebraic topology, cardiothoracic surgery, and competitive chess require those. If you're writing code that requires elite skills, you're doing it wrong - no one is going to be able to understand it, and you will never be able to troubleshoot it. Someone with an IQ of 100 can become a perfectly competent Java or C++ programmer with two years of intensive training.

You said "competitive chess" which implies a high skill level and "cardiothoracic surgery" which implies doing it well enough to have zero fatal errors most of the time. Those don't correlate to "competent programmer", nor to a programmer who can perform well in a job that requires code that works, has a long service life, and can be maintained. Writing a PGP key manager that can traverse the web of trust without granting privs to an attacker, for example, really does require elite skills -- just like your elite electrician and elite body mechanic.

Anyone can write Hello World, many can write an address book. It takes a lot of study to be able to write a cluster management system.

First off, love your post. Well said.

The tools, well I know people who swear vim is easier to use than the latest IDE that has full intellisense and refactoring builtin, and they are probably right - in that they have learned their craft using that tool and actually are more productive than the bloated and slow IDE could make them.

I would add that very little of my programming time is spent writing code, which is what an IDE is most helpful with; refactoring, code skeletons, reminding you of the order of args, etc. Most of the time I spend programming -- at least on anything that I expect will have a long service life -- is spent thinking through the right way for the code to work so it will be clear, fast, easy on memory, and work in a way that makes sense when we apply it in a different context. There is no IDE or language that can help with that part of the problem.

Reading the TFA pretty much tells you that your "likely explanation" is the exact opposite of what actually happened.

Hint: a cleric sitting in his office somewhere filing lots of reports accidentally pasted the wrong number into the column. Woops. Clearly, a government conspiracy to create nuclear weapons from material that you can't make any from in the first place.

What kind of a better replacement that clerics involved in rotating those numbers en masse on continous basis are you suggesting? As far as I know, spreadsheets are used because they are pretty much the best tool we have for the job that meets the sum of all requirements better than any known alternative.