In a fight with "real adversary" by your definition, F-35 is the single worst choice of all aircraft, barring downgrade to F-4 or similar, due to its extreme cost. Ignoring the MAD aspect of the issue, if you're facing a massed assault of decent air superiority aircraft in a shitty fighter that has barely any missiles and only frontal stealth, you're dead.
Current fleet at least has a chance because there's enough of air superiority aircraft that have decent to good performance.
And again, you appear to be ignoring the fact that F-35 is a terrible attack aircraft even if we pretend for a moment that Lockheed Martin isn't advertising it as a fighter. Attack aircraft's primary role requires it to have decent operational range and payload. F-35 has neither without external hard points.
And no offence, but in modern world, enemy will know you're coming. Political conflicts that result in massive conflagration between two major states are affairs that take months to appear. And once that happens, spy satellites AWACS aircraft and strategic search radars kick in. Stealth provides little protection from those, you will be spotted. It will only provide protection from fire control radars which cannot get a proper lock due to sensory deprivation, and considering the questionable stealth that F-35 has in the first place and the fact that Russians operate MiG-31s which will be locking on it from above rather than below, F-35 is still pretty much the worst choice.
Why not? US is currently Russia, largely due to complete halt of develpment and massive brain drain after the fall of Soviet Union. That suggests that US has at least ten to fifteen years of head start. If you go into details, Russians probably still lead on aerodynamics and engines or are about even due to two decades of lost development. US has a massive lead in its traditional advantages of logistics, production and avionics.
US most definitely has the time to develop something else. That argument is quite ridiculous.
The main argument here is cancellation of F-35 program because of structural failures of the program mentioned above, and usage of F-35 development to create three separate aircraft for each branch (carrier based fighter/bomber, airforce strike focused fighter bomber and marines STOVL strike focused fighter/bomber).
This would also solve the problem with Lockheed Martin becoming an effective monopoly for future fighter production in US as tenders could be given to separate companies.
Entering? Yes. Reading and managing with numbers? No. You seem to think that the only costs with data management are entering. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not going to even bother with the rest of your argument, which amounts to "spreadsheet bad for everything, world is wrong in choosing it, I stand alone as a warrior for just cause". Good luck with that.
I think your other part where you are grossly misinformed is where you think that stealth is end goal. It's not. It's merely a means to an end, and end goal of stealth is immunity to radar guided missile's targeting system.
Electronic warfare aircraft are means to that very same goal, that are proven to be about as efficient as stealth but take the exact opposite path to tackle the problem - instead of sensory deprivation of stealth, they use sensory overload instead. This approach has significant benefit over stealth in that this approach allows EW aircraft to provide same benefits to entire fleet of allied aircraft. That's how downright ancient Panavia Tornadoes and older, traditionally vulnerable to SAM aircraft like F-15Es and F-16 were able to operate in Libya in spite of heavy SAM presence across the region.
EW aircraft are basically a cheaper, more efficient means to solve the problem that stealth attempts to solve. They are more efficient because they don't just cover stealth aircraft, but they cover all aircraft in the fleet. This solves the massive problem that US discovered it had in Iraq war - few stealth aircraft and too many targets to hit them with, while a lot of older, functional aircraft that couldn't penetrate air defenses and couldn't be used. This is what was solved in Libya.
Unfortunately much of that is outright lie. Lockheed Martin specifically sold F-35 to other countries under the umbrella of "you can replace all your fighter, attack and close combat support aircraft with this one machine". This is why they got so many countries on board with financing in spite of having no aircraft to show for it.
This has since been proven to be false, to the point where several countries like Australia have opted to buy other aircraft like F/A-18E/F models to replacing their aging fleets instead of F-35 after failures of F-35 became evident.
As for "design goals" as it comes to F-35, is there really anyone still having that discussion, other than Lockheed Martin shills? We already know they failed at meeting essentially all of them, and design requirements had to be continuously reduced so that aircraft would have at least some chance of meeting them. Knowledge of this is widely available in mass media.
Point one: I'm looking at it from the point of view of other countries. I readily concede the fact that US will never buy a French jet, even if it's far better suited for the role. It took immense amount of wrangling just to get Harrier in, even though it literally had no alternatives.
Your second point is moot. F-35's commonality is reported at around thirty percent today, and it's likely to go down rather than up as development continues. This is actually one of the biggest failures in the program, and was widely reported.
Your third point is extremely debatable. F-35's stealth is already been reported to be exceptionally lacking in all but frontal hemispheres, and in addition to that it has very little in terms of payload when it's stealthy. It needs to have external hardpoints (read: no stealth from any direction) for any meaningful strike package for example, or to have a meaningful range which it woefully lacks.
So we go back to point one, which as I admitted, I readily concede. But in that regard, there is one point that is being argued in US today: that F-35 program should be scrapped and in its place US should develop three separate fighters (because of point #2 being proven largely failed today). This would get all users an aircraft that is actually at least decent for the designed purpose, instead of an abortion of an aircraft in all usage scenarios that F-35 is increasingly proven to be.
You forget that capabilities of S-300 are well known, because several of the newer NATO countries have the system's naval version on their ships.
S-400 is arguable, and S-300 would definitely pose a significant threat to older planes like F-16 and F-18 without electronic warfare support.
However the rocket at the edge of its operational range is at a massive disadvantage in terms of power of its guidance system vs power of nearby powerful jammer.
You are grossly misinformed. "Wild weasel" is a US program to attack SAM targets with HARM missiles. It was just that, nothing less, nothing more.
Modern NATO aviation, when striking sites defended by SAM installments use dedicated electronic warfare aircraft. These aircraft are designed for extremely specialized role that has nothing to do with destroying SAM targets. Their goal is to track, locate and jam incoming radar-guided missiles. They render stealth moot because they go for exact opposite approach (overloading tracking system with false information instead of depriving it of information) that gets you the exact same end goal as stealth - near immunity to radar guided missiles.
They don't have to stand forever. As noted, you can develop from existing platforms, and you can use experience from F-22 and F-35 projects to design something that would actually perform its role.
F-35 doesn't do that, and F-22 is still dysfunctional as anything other than pure air superiority fighter. Also I'm pretty sure that most NATO countries would gladly take it for air superiority role over F-35 if it was offered for export. So offer F-22 for export for air superiority tasks, and get Rafale or F-18 for ground attack.
And as has been noted countless times, stealth is largely "backfit" into current aircraft by having all aircraft escorted by dedicated electronic warfare aircraft which accomplish the same thing in a different way. As has been widely reported, F-35's steath is already fairly bad outside frontal hemisphere, so it would likely require similar support regardless.
You seem to think that double entry bookkeeping doesn't require extra work (significant increase in costs), that it wouldn't reduce usability (far more difficult to produce reports on wider issues), or that it would make system immune to human errors.
Not even close. VDSL2 DSLAM is (afaik) around 1000 euro for operators who buy them in bulk nowadays, and you can hook it to the building's electric supply. You're not going to need VDSL2 to work if building has no power anyway (modems will turn off without power), so you don't need any kind of batteries.
You seem to think this is hypothetical. This is how much of the internet is being implemented across Nordics as far as I know. They pulled this connection to my apartment building a few years ago, and the rollout is ongoing throughout the nation (I'm from Finland). I know for a fact that operators in Denmark and Sweden at least are doing the same in many cases.
Current versions of all those aircraft are survivable. F-18E/F versions are quite modern and you could work on those to build the next version. Or you can buy Rafale/Eurofighter (depending on whether you need attack focused multirole or fighter focused multirole). And for cheap light fighter needs a la F-16, you can buy Gripen.
The problem with your argument is that you argue that F-35 is necessary to replace those aircraft. It's not. NATO already has several functional aircraft that do what F-35 does, and do it much better. Rafale is a far superior multirole attack focused aircraft for example (far greater payload, has a superb jamming system instead of stealth which proved itself in Libya). F-18E/F will likely outperform it as an air superiority fighter, as will Eurofighter. All of these are cheaper and proven to work.
And if you're looking at competition against states like Russia and China, having a few expensive and largely dysfunctional "sorta" stealth fighters is a far worse option than having many cheaper, proven and reliable fighters with close range electronic warfare support aircraft mixed in. Notably that is how NATO forces operate nowadays, and that is why they have such a high survivability against SAM threats (with exception of Rafale, which appears to basically be an "electronic warfare aircraft lite" on its own, as proven in Libya where it was the only NATO aircraft to conduct air strikes without electronic warfare aircraft support).
The only ones who would take a hit are those who were planning to replace Harriers, because there's simply no replacement for Harrier in existence. That means UK that needs Harriers for its aircraft carriers and US marine corps. Everyone else would do just fine with F-18, Rafale and Eurofighter. Or if they need a really cheap lighter option, Gripen.
No, probably around 100-200m is the more realistic outcome. Which is enough for an average residential building. In a taller building where this range isn't enough, there's usually some sort of a panel mid way where you can insert repeaters to strengthen the signal for much cheaper than having to rip out walls.
Notably this is exactly how VDSL is being currently used. I now use one at home, 100/10 connection over a standard copper pair to DSLAM in the basement which in turn is connected to the central ISP network via fiber that was laid a few years ago in the neighbourhood. No need to rip out walls, and this thing has more speed and range than student network at student apartment I had back in early 2000s (when I moved in, that apartment had amazing speed of 10mbps half duplex ethernet in star topology which was super awesome since I moved from analogue modem at home). Modem reports that connection speed is around 85000kbps down and 10000kbps up. I live several tens of meters of copper wire from the DSLAM and run one ~10m extension from the wall socket the modem.
Essentially what we need right now is the way to utilize standard copper twisted pair intended for POTS service (usually CAT3 around where I live) that exists in most of the older buildings to support last mile speeds that are offered by pulling fibre to the apartment building, because VDSL for last mile is becoming too slow to carry speeds that are becoming more common (350mbps cable and 1gbps over ethernet).
Reading the TFA pretty much tells you that your "likely explanation" is the exact opposite of what actually happened.
Hint: a cleric sitting in his office somewhere filing lots of reports accidentally pasted the wrong number into the column. Woops. Clearly, a government conspiracy to create nuclear weapons from material that you can't make any from in the first place.
What kind of a better replacement that clerics involved in rotating those numbers en masse on continous basis are you suggesting? As far as I know, spreadsheets are used because they are pretty much the best tool we have for the job that meets the sum of all requirements better than any known alternative.
Or, as has been pointed out in the TFA, it has most likely been a clerical error.
Meaning fissile material is actually accounted for, someone just messed up a copy paste into excel file somewhere among the line of filing lots of reports.
In other words, you understand the problem, you just reject your understanding of it.
P.S. Please tell us how monopoly regulation doesn't hurt microsoft with those billion-level fines, or how chemical directive didn't hurt manufacturers who had to invest into phasing out mercury, and countless other examples. Because both companies involved as well as commission agreed on the fact that it was in fact harmful - they just disagreed on whether benefits to the public were sufficient enough to offset it.
I have no idea which country you are talking about - though I suspect Liberia et al probably have no programs to help small business in the starting phase. Well, they do actually IIRC, but that's funded by foreign donors as a part of development aid.
On the other hand essentially entire EU has a wide-reaching support network for starting a small business. Right now, if I had a decent idea, I could walk to my local government office responsible for the subsidies, file the forms and likely walk away with several tens of thousands of euros of start-up money.
Their criteria for acceptance are basically a background check to see if you have money problems and a series of interviews to see if you have a decent understanding what you're getting into and how your business idea works. After that, I would get support from the local small business association (which is funded by both national government and EU) in everything from securing an office with reasonable rent to how to do accounting. There are several programs ongoing on EU level right now that do exactly that, plus the national level programs.
In fact the biggest complaint from the small business owners is usually that once the initial help package is used up, the "drop" in support tends to sink small business too used to having so much assistance, and as a result they are campaigning for various extensions to the start up aid. In addition they have significant other benefits, such as those in regard to taxation, employment costs and so on.
The thing with small business though, is that criteria you put on it, which tells us exactly where YOUR problem lies. You want a "replacement income" and you want it early. Fact is, many start-ups produce no profits for a long time, mainly because they are either breaking into existing market (see: the biggest problem small business faces today referenced by me earlier) or they are developing their initial product. As such, they will obviously be much less profitable than a salary of a good engineer/techie crowd that usually visits slashdot.
Which is why starting small business is hard even with the aid. And it's not the "lack of government support" or "overbearing regulation" or other bullshit that hurts BIG business and that it really likes to whine about. It's the massive competition from incumbents in mature markets where most of the small business operates that makes it so hard to start a business, which brings us to my initial point that you attempted to deny. The problem with starting a small business today is globalization and its effect on the markets.
That is easily proven false. Small business enjoys massive government assistance, including start money, tax breaks, freedom from much of the red tape with accounting that larger business has to deal with and so on.
In spite of all this, it's almost impossible to break into the market that is already controlled by globalized megacorps that can outprice you, outproduce you and out-R&D you.
If you were to remove this assitance, vast majority of small business would be dead within a year across Western countries, as large conglomerates would simply crush the small competition everywhere where they are present, leaving only the most niche places for small business to survive.
Attention span of many people on the internet is about two sentences. I took three to deliver the obvious caveat. I guess I can blame no one but myself:D
Slashdot Mirror
In a fight with "real adversary" by your definition, F-35 is the single worst choice of all aircraft, barring downgrade to F-4 or similar, due to its extreme cost. Ignoring the MAD aspect of the issue, if you're facing a massed assault of decent air superiority aircraft in a shitty fighter that has barely any missiles and only frontal stealth, you're dead.
Current fleet at least has a chance because there's enough of air superiority aircraft that have decent to good performance.
And again, you appear to be ignoring the fact that F-35 is a terrible attack aircraft even if we pretend for a moment that Lockheed Martin isn't advertising it as a fighter. Attack aircraft's primary role requires it to have decent operational range and payload. F-35 has neither without external hard points.
And no offence, but in modern world, enemy will know you're coming. Political conflicts that result in massive conflagration between two major states are affairs that take months to appear. And once that happens, spy satellites AWACS aircraft and strategic search radars kick in. Stealth provides little protection from those, you will be spotted. It will only provide protection from fire control radars which cannot get a proper lock due to sensory deprivation, and considering the questionable stealth that F-35 has in the first place and the fact that Russians operate MiG-31s which will be locking on it from above rather than below, F-35 is still pretty much the worst choice.
Why not? US is currently Russia, largely due to complete halt of develpment and massive brain drain after the fall of Soviet Union. That suggests that US has at least ten to fifteen years of head start. If you go into details, Russians probably still lead on aerodynamics and engines or are about even due to two decades of lost development. US has a massive lead in its traditional advantages of logistics, production and avionics.
US most definitely has the time to develop something else. That argument is quite ridiculous.
The main argument here is cancellation of F-35 program because of structural failures of the program mentioned above, and usage of F-35 development to create three separate aircraft for each branch (carrier based fighter/bomber, airforce strike focused fighter bomber and marines STOVL strike focused fighter/bomber).
This would also solve the problem with Lockheed Martin becoming an effective monopoly for future fighter production in US as tenders could be given to separate companies.
Entering? Yes. Reading and managing with numbers? No. You seem to think that the only costs with data management are entering. That's just ridiculous.
I'm not going to even bother with the rest of your argument, which amounts to "spreadsheet bad for everything, world is wrong in choosing it, I stand alone as a warrior for just cause". Good luck with that.
I think your other part where you are grossly misinformed is where you think that stealth is end goal. It's not. It's merely a means to an end, and end goal of stealth is immunity to radar guided missile's targeting system.
Electronic warfare aircraft are means to that very same goal, that are proven to be about as efficient as stealth but take the exact opposite path to tackle the problem - instead of sensory deprivation of stealth, they use sensory overload instead. This approach has significant benefit over stealth in that this approach allows EW aircraft to provide same benefits to entire fleet of allied aircraft. That's how downright ancient Panavia Tornadoes and older, traditionally vulnerable to SAM aircraft like F-15Es and F-16 were able to operate in Libya in spite of heavy SAM presence across the region.
EW aircraft are basically a cheaper, more efficient means to solve the problem that stealth attempts to solve. They are more efficient because they don't just cover stealth aircraft, but they cover all aircraft in the fleet. This solves the massive problem that US discovered it had in Iraq war - few stealth aircraft and too many targets to hit them with, while a lot of older, functional aircraft that couldn't penetrate air defenses and couldn't be used.
This is what was solved in Libya.
Unfortunately much of that is outright lie. Lockheed Martin specifically sold F-35 to other countries under the umbrella of "you can replace all your fighter, attack and close combat support aircraft with this one machine". This is why they got so many countries on board with financing in spite of having no aircraft to show for it.
This has since been proven to be false, to the point where several countries like Australia have opted to buy other aircraft like F/A-18E/F models to replacing their aging fleets instead of F-35 after failures of F-35 became evident.
As for "design goals" as it comes to F-35, is there really anyone still having that discussion, other than Lockheed Martin shills? We already know they failed at meeting essentially all of them, and design requirements had to be continuously reduced so that aircraft would have at least some chance of meeting them. Knowledge of this is widely available in mass media.
Point one: I'm looking at it from the point of view of other countries. I readily concede the fact that US will never buy a French jet, even if it's far better suited for the role. It took immense amount of wrangling just to get Harrier in, even though it literally had no alternatives.
Your second point is moot. F-35's commonality is reported at around thirty percent today, and it's likely to go down rather than up as development continues. This is actually one of the biggest failures in the program, and was widely reported.
Your third point is extremely debatable. F-35's stealth is already been reported to be exceptionally lacking in all but frontal hemispheres, and in addition to that it has very little in terms of payload when it's stealthy. It needs to have external hardpoints (read: no stealth from any direction) for any meaningful strike package for example, or to have a meaningful range which it woefully lacks.
So we go back to point one, which as I admitted, I readily concede. But in that regard, there is one point that is being argued in US today: that F-35 program should be scrapped and in its place US should develop three separate fighters (because of point #2 being proven largely failed today). This would get all users an aircraft that is actually at least decent for the designed purpose, instead of an abortion of an aircraft in all usage scenarios that F-35 is increasingly proven to be.
You forget that capabilities of S-300 are well known, because several of the newer NATO countries have the system's naval version on their ships.
S-400 is arguable, and S-300 would definitely pose a significant threat to older planes like F-16 and F-18 without electronic warfare support.
However the rocket at the edge of its operational range is at a massive disadvantage in terms of power of its guidance system vs power of nearby powerful jammer.
You are grossly misinformed. "Wild weasel" is a US program to attack SAM targets with HARM missiles. It was just that, nothing less, nothing more.
Modern NATO aviation, when striking sites defended by SAM installments use dedicated electronic warfare aircraft. These aircraft are designed for extremely specialized role that has nothing to do with destroying SAM targets. Their goal is to track, locate and jam incoming radar-guided missiles. They render stealth moot because they go for exact opposite approach (overloading tracking system with false information instead of depriving it of information) that gets you the exact same end goal as stealth - near immunity to radar guided missiles.
They don't have to stand forever. As noted, you can develop from existing platforms, and you can use experience from F-22 and F-35 projects to design something that would actually perform its role.
F-35 doesn't do that, and F-22 is still dysfunctional as anything other than pure air superiority fighter. Also I'm pretty sure that most NATO countries would gladly take it for air superiority role over F-35 if it was offered for export. So offer F-22 for export for air superiority tasks, and get Rafale or F-18 for ground attack.
And as has been noted countless times, stealth is largely "backfit" into current aircraft by having all aircraft escorted by dedicated electronic warfare aircraft which accomplish the same thing in a different way. As has been widely reported, F-35's steath is already fairly bad outside frontal hemisphere, so it would likely require similar support regardless.
You seem to think that double entry bookkeeping doesn't require extra work (significant increase in costs), that it wouldn't reduce usability (far more difficult to produce reports on wider issues), or that it would make system immune to human errors.
You are incorrect on all accounts.
Not even close. VDSL2 DSLAM is (afaik) around 1000 euro for operators who buy them in bulk nowadays, and you can hook it to the building's electric supply. You're not going to need VDSL2 to work if building has no power anyway (modems will turn off without power), so you don't need any kind of batteries.
You seem to think this is hypothetical. This is how much of the internet is being implemented across Nordics as far as I know. They pulled this connection to my apartment building a few years ago, and the rollout is ongoing throughout the nation (I'm from Finland). I know for a fact that operators in Denmark and Sweden at least are doing the same in many cases.
In a large conflict that these are planned for? Yes. In those, everyone is expendable.
For smaller conflicts, you just need a good ejection seat and a solid retrieval team on top of flying electronic warfare aircraft alongside others.
Current versions of all those aircraft are survivable. F-18E/F versions are quite modern and you could work on those to build the next version. Or you can buy Rafale/Eurofighter (depending on whether you need attack focused multirole or fighter focused multirole). And for cheap light fighter needs a la F-16, you can buy Gripen.
The problem with your argument is that you argue that F-35 is necessary to replace those aircraft. It's not. NATO already has several functional aircraft that do what F-35 does, and do it much better. Rafale is a far superior multirole attack focused aircraft for example (far greater payload, has a superb jamming system instead of stealth which proved itself in Libya). F-18E/F will likely outperform it as an air superiority fighter, as will Eurofighter. All of these are cheaper and proven to work.
And if you're looking at competition against states like Russia and China, having a few expensive and largely dysfunctional "sorta" stealth fighters is a far worse option than having many cheaper, proven and reliable fighters with close range electronic warfare support aircraft mixed in. Notably that is how NATO forces operate nowadays, and that is why they have such a high survivability against SAM threats (with exception of Rafale, which appears to basically be an "electronic warfare aircraft lite" on its own, as proven in Libya where it was the only NATO aircraft to conduct air strikes without electronic warfare aircraft support).
The only ones who would take a hit are those who were planning to replace Harriers, because there's simply no replacement for Harrier in existence. That means UK that needs Harriers for its aircraft carriers and US marine corps. Everyone else would do just fine with F-18, Rafale and Eurofighter. Or if they need a really cheap lighter option, Gripen.
No, probably around 100-200m is the more realistic outcome. Which is enough for an average residential building. In a taller building where this range isn't enough, there's usually some sort of a panel mid way where you can insert repeaters to strengthen the signal for much cheaper than having to rip out walls.
Notably this is exactly how VDSL is being currently used. I now use one at home, 100/10 connection over a standard copper pair to DSLAM in the basement which in turn is connected to the central ISP network via fiber that was laid a few years ago in the neighbourhood. No need to rip out walls, and this thing has more speed and range than student network at student apartment I had back in early 2000s (when I moved in, that apartment had amazing speed of 10mbps half duplex ethernet in star topology which was super awesome since I moved from analogue modem at home). Modem reports that connection speed is around 85000kbps down and 10000kbps up. I live several tens of meters of copper wire from the DSLAM and run one ~10m extension from the wall socket the modem.
Essentially what we need right now is the way to utilize standard copper twisted pair intended for POTS service (usually CAT3 around where I live) that exists in most of the older buildings to support last mile speeds that are offered by pulling fibre to the apartment building, because VDSL for last mile is becoming too slow to carry speeds that are becoming more common (350mbps cable and 1gbps over ethernet).
Reading the TFA pretty much tells you that your "likely explanation" is the exact opposite of what actually happened.
Hint: a cleric sitting in his office somewhere filing lots of reports accidentally pasted the wrong number into the column. Woops. Clearly, a government conspiracy to create nuclear weapons from material that you can't make any from in the first place.
What kind of a better replacement that clerics involved in rotating those numbers en masse on continous basis are you suggesting? As far as I know, spreadsheets are used because they are pretty much the best tool we have for the job that meets the sum of all requirements better than any known alternative.
Or, as has been pointed out in the TFA, it has most likely been a clerical error.
Meaning fissile material is actually accounted for, someone just messed up a copy paste into excel file somewhere among the line of filing lots of reports.
But let's panic!
I imagine state of current US court system qualifies as "special circumstances".
In other words, you understand the problem, you just reject your understanding of it.
P.S. Please tell us how monopoly regulation doesn't hurt microsoft with those billion-level fines, or how chemical directive didn't hurt manufacturers who had to invest into phasing out mercury, and countless other examples. Because both companies involved as well as commission agreed on the fact that it was in fact harmful - they just disagreed on whether benefits to the public were sufficient enough to offset it.
I have no idea which country you are talking about - though I suspect Liberia et al probably have no programs to help small business in the starting phase. Well, they do actually IIRC, but that's funded by foreign donors as a part of development aid.
On the other hand essentially entire EU has a wide-reaching support network for starting a small business. Right now, if I had a decent idea, I could walk to my local government office responsible for the subsidies, file the forms and likely walk away with several tens of thousands of euros of start-up money.
Their criteria for acceptance are basically a background check to see if you have money problems and a series of interviews to see if you have a decent understanding what you're getting into and how your business idea works. After that, I would get support from the local small business association (which is funded by both national government and EU) in everything from securing an office with reasonable rent to how to do accounting. There are several programs ongoing on EU level right now that do exactly that, plus the national level programs.
In fact the biggest complaint from the small business owners is usually that once the initial help package is used up, the "drop" in support tends to sink small business too used to having so much assistance, and as a result they are campaigning for various extensions to the start up aid. In addition they have significant other benefits, such as those in regard to taxation, employment costs and so on.
The thing with small business though, is that criteria you put on it, which tells us exactly where YOUR problem lies. You want a "replacement income" and you want it early. Fact is, many start-ups produce no profits for a long time, mainly because they are either breaking into existing market (see: the biggest problem small business faces today referenced by me earlier) or they are developing their initial product. As such, they will obviously be much less profitable than a salary of a good engineer/techie crowd that usually visits slashdot.
Which is why starting small business is hard even with the aid. And it's not the "lack of government support" or "overbearing regulation" or other bullshit that hurts BIG business and that it really likes to whine about. It's the massive competition from incumbents in mature markets where most of the small business operates that makes it so hard to start a business, which brings us to my initial point that you attempted to deny. The problem with starting a small business today is globalization and its effect on the markets.
That is easily proven false. Small business enjoys massive government assistance, including start money, tax breaks, freedom from much of the red tape with accounting that larger business has to deal with and so on.
In spite of all this, it's almost impossible to break into the market that is already controlled by globalized megacorps that can outprice you, outproduce you and out-R&D you.
If you were to remove this assitance, vast majority of small business would be dead within a year across Western countries, as large conglomerates would simply crush the small competition everywhere where they are present, leaving only the most niche places for small business to survive.
Switzerland comes to mind as one of the last bastions of it, as do Nordic countries, especially Iceland.
Attention span of many people on the internet is about two sentences. I took three to deliver the obvious caveat. I guess I can blame no one but myself :D
I agree with you, hence my last sentence and emphasis on "democratic society".