this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2026
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They want a jet that works. It's not NASA's SR-71, the SR-71 was made by Lockheed.
F35s are chronically grounded with software issues. They want a plane that works.
The F-35 isn’t grounded, nor does it have anything to do with NASA.
Nor would an SR-71 play anywhere near the same role as an F-35 lol. They’re apples to oranges.
they are both hypersonic aircraft.
They are not. The F-35 has a top speed of Mach 1.6. It's a supersonic aircraft.
The SR-71 has a top speed of Mach 3.2 lol. Literally twice as fast as the F-35 but still well short of the Mach 5 required for hypersonic flight.
The F-35 also has a flight ceiling of 50,000 feet, while the SR-71 has an 85,000 foot ceiling.
The SR-71 served exactly one role: High supersonic aerial reconnaissance. No weapons, nothing. Just fly higher and faster than anything else on the planet.
The F-35 is a strike fighter and air superiority fighter.
They're really not comparable.
Technically, they're both supersonic, not hypersonic, but yeah, that's just semantics. The actual important detail is that the SR-71 is twice as fast (or more) as the F-35. There's a lot of testing you can do with the former that's just not possible with the latter.
Neither does the SR-71.
fucking Google F35 software issues, chronic problems. they can't fix it.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/f-35-software-upgrades-stagnated-warns-new-report-ps-031726
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/02/f-35-programs-software-development-isnt-getting-any-better-pentagon-report-finds/402725/
https://www.defensenews.com/smr/hidden-troubles-f35/2021/07/16/the-number-of-major-f-35-flaws-is-shrinking-but-the-pentagon-is-keeping-details-of-the-problems-under-wraps/
Those links aren't smoking guns.
The first details troubled rollout of software upgrades, "upgrades" being the key word. That's really just the nature of complicated software development in general. The previous complete package of software is already up-to-task and running it longer than desired isn't a huge issue.
The second says they can't fix multiple problems simultaneously, which is again another common software development reality and a very different statement than not being able to fix things.
The third flat out says the opposite in that many fixes actually have been completed, just not all of them yet. It's an adjacent issue, but the headline also frames the secret keeping as a bad thing when that's just a sensible thing to do.
The F-35 has nothing to do with this, but just to correct anyone's misconceptions, F-35 loss and readiness rates only sound bad because that kind of coverage gets clicks/views. When you add back in the context of comparison to other aircraft and the total number of airframes produced and hours flown, the F-35 is actually performing great.