This level of simulation is on the order of days...how many being dependent on how much computing power is at your disposal (or how backed up your grid is). 

No other major city in the United States has anywhere near the amount of sweeping NYC does. I can see once or twice a month...maybe. But not 2 times a fucking week. They “sweep” so they can have justification to give out the tickets.

Came here looking specifically for this dumbass comment. Was not disappointed. 

This story left me legit impressed...until I saw the closeup of the riveted fender flares. My god that looks like shit. 

NYC makes half a billion dollars a year from parking tickets alone. It has absolutely nothing to do with cleanliness. 

You’re being too nice. This vehicle is a piece of shit. I was cursed with this particularly egregious example of vehicular torture as a rental vehicle all last week.

It is based on the 747-400, not the 787 ‘Dreamliner’...

I like Toulouse. Nice, yet clean, little city. I haven’t been able to do the Airbus tour yet, but I go regularly for business so there’s always next time. 

Nah, he deserved a red:

The plane does not carry the HOB AIM-9X when in a stealth configuration. It cannot carry them internally since there are no (as of yet) rails that can be used in that bay...so external carry only for the time being. That leaves them with the AMRAAM or it’s gun if it gets caught in a turning fight.

One or two...maybe...and very rarely. Not all 6 (or 8, I can’t remember). They have overlapping fields of view for that reason.

You can fly and land without them, and if you’re in a dogfight...you have much bigger problems. Namely you’re in a proverbial flying pig, likely without any AIM-9Xs equipped, and your enemy…

You don’t need rear visibility when there’s cameras built into the plane to allow the pilot to see “through” the fuselage. That’s why the helmet costs damn near half a million dollars.

Supercruise would have been nice. But as I’ve mentioned in my other posts, the DOD wanted a jack of all trades. Design concessions had…

The point is to stay that way. Preferably the one with the pointiest stick.

I don’t necessarily agree with the F-35 program direction as a whole, but it is a way to stay on top...for now. Eventually China will eclipse us militarily and our roles will flip. We will have to make sure we have just scary enough of a stick…

Those that are responsible for reigning in spending are concerned with staying in office, and programs like this support millions of jobs...and therefore votes. There is a reason the F-35 supply map crisscrosses the country (and globe).

Though with that said my employer is not the only large company that does this to…

That’s kinda the point. If you don’t want to fight a war with a major adversary then you must be one of those major adversaries. The world is not all rainbows and butterflies. Those with bigger sticks tend to use them. 

That’s basically what happened anyway. The three variants have only about 70% commonality. 

The coating is not a major cost factor when compared to the rest of the aircraft, though it is also constantly being improved. The current iteration is more durable and costs less than earlier production blocks, and far exceeds those parameters when compared to the F-22.

Also, the coating has uses than radar absorption…

The B-21 is an early development contract, which is about the same stage as the F-35 in the early 2000s. I don’t expect the costs to balloon to the same degree since they are intending to leverage existing or nearly ready technology, whereas the F-35 had a lot of new development. In an ideal world the B-21 leverages a…

The government needs to look at themselves and ask why things cost so much. They asked for a plane that’s a jack of all trades and master at everything, and then kept adding shit to it. The government holds design authority.

I am an LM engineer.

Two of the biggest problems with the F-35 are related to each other. Concurrency and moving goalposts. The F-35 requirements changed (and still are changing), constantly, while getting more complicated. That not only adds to the overall development cost and timeline...it adds to the costs of…