Didactic Mind, Ep 70: Requiem on a Joint Strike Flying Piano

This week's episode is all about the F-35 Joint Strike Flopter and the epic debacle that it represents. Well, that's only partly true - it is actually all about the legendary USAF Col. John Boyd, the man behind the Fighter Mafia and the force of nature who transformed the very Art of War in the modern age. In today's podcast, I talk about: The longevity of stupid and terrible ideas; The idiocies of managerial types who come up with cockamamie "solutions" to problems that they then prolong; The need for simplicity and effectiveness in weapons design; Why the US military never learns from its mistakes; Why the USA will lose its next real shooting war against a serious opponent; The true principles of effective fighter design; The reasons why the F-35 would never have worked anyway; ... and much, much, MUCH more. Here is the article that inspired this week's podcast from David Axe over at Forbes, and here is a follow-up article at RT about the same issue that laments the sheer waste and ineptitude involved in spending $1.7 TRILLION on an aircraft that "can't climb, can't turn, can't run". The Turducken Plane has indeed lived up to its name, and we will all pay the price for American military stupidity as a result. Protect Yourself From Big Tech As I keep telling everyone with sense enough to listen, you MUST take steps to protect yourself from the Big Tech companies. Start here with this post. Here are the specific steps that you can take: Make sure that your web traffic is safe and protected from prying eyes using a VPN – click here to get a massive 81% OFF on a 24-month subscription with Surfshark, the best-value VPN client out there today; If you want something a bit simpler with fewer bells and whistles, subscribe to GooseVPN here; Build Your Platform Get yourself a proper domain for your site or business with Namecheap; Put your site onto a shared hosting service using A2Hosting for the fastest, most secure, and stable hosting platform around – along with unlimited email accounts of unlimited size; Create beautiful websites with amazing, feature-rich content using Divi from Elegant Themes; Book References in Today's Podcast Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security by Grant T. Hammond The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard by James G. Burton Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos Video References in Today's Podcast Bill Whittle's classic Afterburner segment on the F-35 Joint Strike Flopter Pierre Sprey torches the F-35 in multiple interviews, but this one has to be perhaps the best of his burns;