But my point that open systems require maintenance remains.... Manufacturers are not out to build things that last longer, just long enough, preferably without maintenance. 100K miles is way past the warranty running out and way past the point where the original owner has sold your average car and moved on. As a manufacturer, what would YOU do? Put something in that lasted forever but required maintenance every 3K miles or it wears out in short order, or go with the maintenance free option that usually makes it to 100K miles? To me, the choice is easy, you go with the reliable option that doesn't require maintenance. It's what your customer wants.

Where I cannot argue with your outline of the F35's faults, we really have no choice but to keep the aircraft in production. The F35 suffers from trying to be to many things, but there are no other options, at least options that are viable.

Not in the least, it works fine, just like my 65 VW bug still runs and I can use it to get to work...Rebuilding the engine and replacing the avionics doesn't change that the airframe design is 34 years old, just like rebuilding the engine in my bug, straightening and painting the fenders doesn't make it a new car.

What I'm saying is that the F-18 is getting old. Both in terms of the average age of the airframes we have and in terms of design limitations imposed by being 30 years old.

The F-22 is about air superiority and it is not built for close air support or other roles envisioned for the F-35. The F-22 is also insanely expensive per unit compared to the F-35. On both accounts, strike the F22 from this list..

The rest are foreign built, so where they may be fully capable for the mission, they are politically impossible to buy. (You'd never get funding for congress to buy any of them.) So strike those..

The F-35 is the only option left, which makes it the "Only game in town" right now..

You cannot be serious....

Where a Tesla has similar components and designs as other cars, the front suspension is going to be totally different than 90% of other sedans it's size. The Tesla Model S is rear wheel drive, which is a departure from the normal front wheel drive for most other cars. I'm sure they omitted the CV joints/boots and half shafts from the front end. So, where the design may be classic, it's not all that common any more.

But more importantly, manufacturers have abandoned the use of grease fittings in most cars decades ago. They never got greased and everything fell apart faster. Not to mention that it is more convenient and maintenance free to have a sealed system. One could argue that sealed systems are less prone to wear because the dust and grit cannot get in and the grease cannot get out, but I'll skip making the obvious point. Go ahead and drill and insert grease fittings if it makes you feel better, just don't try to sell the car to me, I don't want a mess like that.

Both are true. We have a fleet of aging aircraft which are slated to be replaced so we are not buying new ones, at least not enough of them to keep pace with retirements. Many of the aircraft are reaching the end of their service life and will need to be retired. This is a slow but steady decline in the fleet and requires that you back fill with new equipment to keep the same force readiness levels.

Also, the F-18 is based on a design that went into production in 1980. That is 34 years ago. Yes there have been improvements and bug fixes over the years but that means that the basis of the airframe is generally 30+ years old. We've rewired, re-engined, replaced avionics and even made structural changes since then, but the base of the aircraft is pretty old. The F-18 will be flying for many decades in the reserves or for other countries. Just look at the history of the F-86 or the F-4 phantom. But the problem is about the nature of war and conflicts.

If everybody has the same weapons, prevailing becomes about attrition and tactics. In a conflict, you want/need to have as many advantages as you can and you never know for sure if your tactics are best until the shooting starts. Unless you can clearly demonstrate that the F35 is less effective as a weapon (and I don't think anybody can) we have to take the upgrade, we have to buy F35's, because the F-18's limits which are fundamental to the 30 year old design are going to show and the playing field will be tilted less in our favor.

So on both grounds, we buy the F-35 wars and all...

The youngest of the aircraft it is replacing went into initial production 34 years ago. That's like 120 years old in fighter aircraft years. The F-86 was in fighter service only 20 years. The planned retirement for the aircraft being replaced is fast approaching and extending that date will be expensive (if not impossible as in the AV8B's case). Could we keep flying what we have? Sure, but we are going to pay in logistics costs and readiness problems, not to mention that many of these aircraft are reaching the end of their airframe lives and will be forced into the scrapyard at higher and higher rates as time goes on.

So it's not a hard and fast, date sure, deadline, but a continued decline of readiness and increased maintenance time and attrition for what we are flying now. And it's time to start buying replacements to stay on plan and keep the mission readiness requirements. At this point, the F-35 is the only game in town, so we buy them, warts and all.

Now you can argue that we don't need to be as ready as we are and that we can stand having a fleet that is less available than previously planned, but neither you nor I are in a position to say with authority either way on that question. But this is really just disarmament, albeit a slower version of it.

If you cannot get Congress to fund your "viable" aircraft, it's a non-starter to argue for them. Sorry but the reality of the political situation makes doing what you suggest extremely unlikely to succeed and even if you could prove it would be better and cheaper, your idea will never "fly" so why waste time? You can moan about how this shouldn't be the case, how politics shouldn't decide the question all you want (and I may even agree with you), but it won't change the fact that it does.

If you think the guys at the local quickie lube place is going to know what to do with a Tesla, you are nuts. Most of those guys only have experience with changing oil and usually only for as long as they've worked there. You are lucky if they know "rightie tightie, leftie loosie" and don't cross thread the drain plug putting it back in.

I would suggest you just take it to Tesla and pay them the $600/year to do the maintenance you may need.. In the end it will be cheaper than fixing the mess the oil change places will cause you. If you can afford a Tesla, surely you can afford to keep it maintained...

Oh yea, they do... http://www.wheresgeorge.com/

Actually, the serial numbers are generally NOT tracked much beyond being used by the Federal Reserve to verify a bill is valid and properly monetized. Not that a bank couldn't, which is why the rumors are running about the tin foil hat lobby. If you really care or think they do this, just get cash back on your purchases or cash a check at the bank.. No way they can track that.

Excellent point. What on earth do they mean by "hack"?

You give me a Tesla and a box of tools, I can hack the thing in some interesting way. Perhaps I can make it produce toast and keep your coffee warm.... In today's parlance, that would be a "hack" of a Tesla. I saw a story where a guy "hacked" his Prius by adding his own charging circuits to get more distance out of the battery pack, then figured out that he could run most of his home electronics directly from the 200V DC the battery provided. Billed the car as an emergency power supply of sorts, and a large one at that.

Now if they are asking you to hack the security or systems using only the exposed connection points, that's totally a different thing. Some how this is what I think they mean...

Jiffy Lube for your Tesla? What are they going to do to a Tesla? Change the oil and filter?

I don't care who you are, that there is funny...

On that I disagree. The Harrier had it's issues too, some really SERIOUS issues which caused us to loose a number of airframes. I am very aware of these because I worked on this aircraft as an electrical engineer back in the late 80's trying to fix some of them. They had engine problems, wiring problems, software problems and even operational (what switches you put in what positions when) issues to work out. We got grounded a number of times for some of these.

All aircraft have these kinds of issues, especially military only designs like the AV8B and F35. We should not be surprised when they pop up.

The F18 is 30 years old, which is like 120 in fighter aircraft years. We flew the F-86 Saber only 20 years, the F-4 phantom flew 20 (as a fighter), and these are the grey beards of the fighter world from the past. The F-18 is a fine platform, to be sure, but like it or not, it's getting really old for what it does.

If you want to buy F-18's, fine, but I don't think it is wise to scrap the F-35 to do so. There are just things that the F-18 doesn't do and will never do that the F-35 is supposed to. Any way we go, we need to keep buying F-35's for now.

Personally, I think we should start the replacement program for the F-35... It will cost some money, but I'm sure it would light a fire under Lockheed to get some stuff fixed on their gravy train project.. If we had another option, I'm sure Lockheed would be working hard as they can to fix the F-35 as fast as they could. We just don't have any other viable options.

I see your point, but I don't think we have time to develop anything else. We really have no viable choice but to fly the F-35 for now so we need these planes in production. Where some of the goals of the program haven't been realized, the thing flies and does the job... mostly.... Working out the operational problems in a system like this takes time (and money) so I'm not yet ready to conclude it's a hopeless cause.

Now I'd not argue with a NEW program or programs to replace the F-35 getting underway right now, but this will be IN ADDITION to F-35 production and I'm not sure where the extra money will come from.

Sorry for the spelling mistake... The browser they make me use has such TINY print sometimes this old man has issues reading it. (BTW it's "civilian" not "civilain")