Wall Street Journal Article archive.ph link
Boeing has been awarded the contract for the NGAD program, and will produce the next generation of fighter jets used by the United States. The aircraft is said to be the first 6th generation fighter, said to employ novel technologies such as AI assistance. It will be part of a new “family of systems” that will include unmanned “loyal wingman” fighter aircraft . The designation F-47 appears to pay homage to Donald Trump, the 47th president.
The Wall Street Journal says that the price tag per aircraft will be “several hundred million each”, for reference, the final cost per F-35 is around $80 million.
This feels like a story from The Onion ngl.
It’s so weird that an empire hell bent on violent supremacy just hands the R&D over to proven losers who will undoubtedly make a shoddy product that will make the US empire the laughingstock of the “superpowers”.
Profits before product efficiency. Truly the American military represents the very core of America.
The nazis did the same thing during WWII. Tiger tanks were several magnitudes more expensive in both labor hours, cash, and materials, yet would get 1-shot almost a kilometer out by T-35s and Shermans, while their own shots bounced off a point blank ranges.
Helped Germany go from being one of the most powerful countries in the world to the 5th. most powerful in Berlin.
It’s really funny how Western media Nazi washed the thing so much
Whenever a Tiger is encountered in American film, it’s treated like it’s Metal Gear, but it was an over-engineered, under-armored, unreliable hunk of junk
Also, somewhat related, I found this caption of a picture of a Tiger amusing
Yeah it’s the Cybertruck of tanks. I think some if it is survivorship bias. Shermans were designed to protect the crew because the US had unlimited resources. What the US couldn’t replace was experience. Meanwhile, Tiger crews were all killed, so there weren’t a bunch of veterans writing books about it. It doesn’t help Germans made up all kinds of excuses for why they lost the war, such as ignoring Germany’s inferior manufacturing and claiming nonsense like Russian human wave attacks.
My favorite bit is how Tigers had very small operation ranges. If a tank was driven too far, the transmission would give out (part of why a bunch were abandoned in North Africa). So they had to use trains to take them into the field. Tank commanders preferred setting up ambushes, rather than using tanks for the thing tanks were meant to do (attacking fortified positions), making Tigers just glorified bunkers. There were soviet tanks, on the other hand, that drove from factories in Stalingrad all the way to Berlin.