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The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane To Nowhere
schwit1 writes with an update on the U.S. government's troubled F-35 program, the cost of which keeps rising while the planes themselves are grounded. A fire in late June caused officials to halt flights for the entire fleet of $112 million vehicles last week. Despite this, Congress is still anxious to push the program forward, and Foreign Policy explains why:
Part of that protection comes from the jaw-dropping amounts of money at stake. The Pentagon intends to spend roughly $399 billion to develop and buy 2,443 of the planes. However, over the course of the aircrafts' lifetimes, operating costs are expected to exceed $1 trillion. Lockheed has carefully hired suppliers and subcontractors in almost every state to ensure that virtually all senators and members of Congress have a stake in keeping the program — and the jobs it has created — in place. "An upfront question with any program now is: How many congressional districts is it in?" said Thomas Christie, a former senior Pentagon acquisitions official. Counting all of its suppliers and subcontractors, parts of the program are spread out across at least 45 states. That's why there's no doubt lawmakers will continue to fund the program even though this is the third time in 17 months that the entire fleet has been grounded due to engine problems."
so which states make the engines?
blow those states up. shift work to states 46-50 who don't get a piece of the pie.
problems solved.
The whole program should be scrapped. It's time to cut the losses on this boondoggle. Lots of states will lose jobs? Oh well, guess you idiots shouldn't have fucked up the program so royally if you wanted to hang on to those jobs. Trust me, the money will be spent somewhere else and there will be jobs to be had there. Let's build a dozen nuclear power plants for starters and go from there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
Media speak for "new" when it's a big DOD project.
Everybody with an IQ above that of a jellybean knows the main job of the congresscritters is to bring back the pork. The blue guys do it and the red guys do it.
The reason they can keep doing it and no one really gives a shit is because once you explain to Joe Schmoe that cutting program X or agency Y's budget means he or his cousin or his drinking buddy could lose their job, well Joe can rationalize keeping that program.
Americans all want pork cut everywhere except their home district. We are short sighted, have short memories, and aren't willing to endure short term discomfort in the pursuit of long term prosperity.
Anyone candidate that would be for cutting this kind of corporate welfare isn't viable on a national ticket. Eisenhower was right about this all by the way.
And yet only a few million for NASA research.
Why is the USA supposed to be so great again?
The F-35 probably shouldn't have been built. At least, it shouldn't have been built the way it was. "Been built" is the key phrase. Most of the excess cost is already sunk. Nine countries have signed on to buy it. We can't reverse time and get the money back, and starting over from scratch would both a) cost more and b) lose most of the partner countries, meaning the US would pay more of the cost.
Yes, maintaining planes costs money, and the F-35 is no exception. Is someone suggesting that the US should have no planes? Of course not, so maintenance costs will be incurred. There's no choice to be made there. I suppose we could spend nearly as much trying to keep F-15s flying. Would that be better?
This is working exactly according to plan.
Population of the USA in 2014: 317 million
399,000,000,000 / 317,000,000
$1258.68 per person.
I want my money back!
New war plane with engine development problems?
Say it isn't so.
That's Never happened before.... Scrap it! Kill it all now it's a boondoggle built schools and shelters instead blah blah blah it's supposed to be perfect on the first try and give the moneys to the poor and sick and build hospitals we could build 8.2 kajillion new hospitals with all that money herp derp.
The F-35 replaced the A-10 Thunderbolt II's role as a tank buster, CAS bomber...
With the money we have spent on the F-35s to date, we could have repaired, retrofitted, and maintained our supply of A-10s for several decades. Hell, the A-10 is practically a flying tank. It has some of the best armament and is the most rugged fixed-wing aircraft which America has. It was a ridiculously short-sighted move to replace it with another overexpensive "multi role, joint" fighter.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
When all people care about is more jobs instead of actually being productive this is what you get.
You seem to misunderstand what sunk cost means. You're using the phrase as an argument to keep funding the project because "we can't reverse time and get the money back". In fact, the common definition of the sunk cost is opposite of your use. Generally only future costs should be relevant to an investment decision, otherwise you run into the danger of "throwing good money after bad". There is a lot of evidence that continued funding of the F-35 is in fact throwing good money after bad.
You also present a false dichotomy. One alternative option from spending upwards of a Trillion dollars on the F-35 is to manufacture more smaller, cheaper, proven fighters such as the F-18 or indeed the F-15. Keeping our current squadrons operable is less of an issue if we build more at lower cost.
You're on a roll : ). And persistent.
But your spelling is getting better.
I guess you ran out of toads? ; ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The US has unquestioned superiority in technology right now. But this lead in both technology and resources is being frittered away with wastage.
If there ever is a shooting war with China - (a) they're certainly jonesing for it from what's happening in the South China sea, and (b) a limited "skirmish" is "safe" because who's going to go nuclear for this? If China takes all the islands its disputing, and Japan et al kick up a fuss, and in the midst of that skirmish there is actual combat and the US *loses*, what options do you have but to "accept the new reality"?
There has been not a single damn fighter project since the beginning of the airplanes age which has been free of this kind of technical problems.
Every successful aircraft, from stuka to f15 or f16 have had loads of problems.
As well, v22 and Apaches were initially Faulty. Now they are effective and reliable.
The only difference is that today everybody can read about everything happens.
F35 is just good as is, as every complex project It will need some time to fix remaining problems, but that's just normal.
Yep, there's a reason why the A-10 keeps getting brought out of "retirement."
This article doesn't mention the incredible upgrades of the F-35. It has incredible situational awareness (SA), highly networked to acquire SA from all sources, sensors onboard to provide SA, smaller that the F-22, more stealthy, and a range of other characteristics that the pentagon desires (wiki). Those capabilities are the top reason for the F-35 to exist at all. As development has progressed, then the money problems and failures came up as they always do. The capability needs don't justify the failures of the program, but they need to be taken into consideration when there's talk of changing or canceling the program.
Everyone has a different concern. Congressmen are probably concerned about money staying in their state to stay elected. The Pentagon is worried about capability and not being embarrassed over a big failure. The tax payers are worried about not wasting money and some of them about keeping an F-35 job. It's a complicated issue with lots of caveats.
...and buy F22 Raptors!
That's not finalized.
Check the record. EVERY Tea Party member is opposed to this program.
Probably. I'm gonna go check the record.
The F-35 is a classic example of what is wrong with the military-industrial-political complex.
It's bloated. To an extreme nearly unimaginable. Layer on layer of bureaucracy and self interest slathered immeasurably deep. It's not possible for this to be efficient or effective.
The problem is NOT the concept of the plane or its implementation. Nor is it with the inevitable startup issues. Any design no matter how brilliantly conceived would have similar problems when constructed by the set of institutions that are in play here.
What I am afraid is that the only thing that will change this is a real existential threat to the United States. Only then will we see focus on what is really important. The sort of focus that led the United States to an economic output greater than the rest of world combined during WWII.
Much more cost effective, especially since they don't need to be designed to support the limitations of human pilots (like g-force limits). And with a much lower cost we can build a lot more of them.
The project has become too politicized. And politicians will always look for their own interests, which keeps the expenses high. And without the political support there's no plane. It's a vicious and expensive cycle. The core of the problem is not the manufacturing costs, maintenance costs or especially the defects, which are only symptoms of the disease.
The article's summary seems to imply that US taxpayers are on the hook for $1 trillion. That's not quite right:
"But the armed services are not the only customers. Eight international partners have signed on to help build and buy the planes: the U.K., Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark, and Norway. While not involved in the development of the plane, Israel and Japan are buying it through the foreign military sales process, and South Korea recently indicated that it would buy at least 40 of the aircraft."
The US is set to buy 2,443 planes, but international sales will offset at least some of the expense both directly and indirectly.
We've bullied/bribed/... the Canadians into buying them.
How bad can they be?
You cannot continue to go out and fight with older weapons though.
Nominally, the F-15/F-16/F-18 are not as survivable in a modern air war.
A proven fighter is one that has been through the teething problems that the F-35 is going through now.
It may well be that it would be better to start over, but we would then have to start another project, because the above mentioned fighters are getting long in the tooth.
emt 377 emt 4
with expertise in military aviation care to chime in? ...suppose not.
just a lot of joe armchairs spouting "make it cheaper!!" - hey, it worked for the American car industry, didn't it?
It shouldn't have been built, but for other reasons - the biggest one being the enemy for which they're designed to fight is not who the US military is likely to be dealing with in the future.
What role do these hyper-advanced aircraft have when you're fighting Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or whoever the stone-age-terrorist-du-jour is? We're not going to be fighting China, that's for sure; both they and we are way to inter-dependent.
So sure - the money already spent is sunk cost. But why throw good money after bad?
#DeleteChrome
The F-35 replaced the A-10 Thunderbolt II's role as a tank buster, CAS bomber...
With the money we have spent on the F-35s to date, we could have repaired, retrofitted, and maintained our supply of A-10s for several decades. Hell, the A-10 is practically a flying tank. It has some of the best armament and is the most rugged fixed-wing aircraft which America has. It was a ridiculously short-sighted move to replace it with another overexpensive "multi role, joint" fighter.
Yeah, F-35s replacing the A-10 good luck with that. The idea of the F-35 flying into the operational environment of the A-10, i.e. 0-3000ft which in a real shooting war is likely to be saturated by scrap fire and dominated by Manpads, full blown SAMs and mobile Flak such as Shilkas and Tunguskas and having the same survial rates as the A-10 always struck me as funny. Stealth is pretty much useless down there most of the kills are done with heat seeking missiles and the good old Mk.1 eyeball. Experience has shown several times now that no matter how many smart weapons they cook up there is no replacement for getting in good and close and blasting the shit out of the target with a 30mm gun.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Just buy some Eurofighters...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... part 1 of 6...... great interview with someone who knows what he's talking about.
My take is that the problem is they tried to replace everything with 1 plane and wound up with one that could replace nothing....
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Spreading the work across so many states insures continued political support, even when the Pentagon no longer wants to keep buying the F-35 but decides it needs a new plane. They won't be able to stop producing the old one.
these funds were covertly funneled to the Secret Space Program, like everything else
along with the CIA's drug profits, this is what actually finances the black budget - pure negligence, and public apathy, and no one having permission to see where the funds actually go
glad I cleared that up for you sheep
The F-35 probably shouldn't have been built. At least, it shouldn't have been built the way it was. "Been built" is the key phrase. Most of the excess cost is already sunk. Nine countries have signed on to buy it. We can't reverse time and get the money back, and starting over from scratch would both a) cost more and b) lose most of the partner countries, meaning the US would pay more of the cost.
Yes, maintaining planes costs money, and the F-35 is no exception. Is someone suggesting that the US should have no planes? Of course not, so maintenance costs will be incurred. There's no choice to be made there. I suppose we could spend nearly as much trying to keep F-15s flying. Would that be better?
They way things are looking one is almost tempted to point out (with 20:20 hindsight) that the USAF would have been better off producing some sort of F-22 'light" and scrapping the F-35 but it's too late for that now, the only hope is to salvage this disaster.... not that I'm holding my breath.
So basically congress is ok with a wellfare program that brings money into their districts, even if the projects are a complete waste.
If we just put the trillion in the bank at 4% interest rate, you would get 40 billion dollars a year, It could pay 1 million people 40K a year. None of these projects ever create even a large fraction of a million jobs. Even if it uses the money to hire half million people to dig a trench and the other half to close it up it would provide greater economic impact to the economy than such boondongles.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yes, build more for less!
Because the lives of pilots are expendable?
You cannot continue to go out and fight with older weapons though.
Nominally, the F-15/F-16/F-18 are not as survivable in a modern air war.
The F-35 is a compromise design.
Mostly it compromises its ability to loiter on the target, carry large amounts of munitions, and dogfight.
So as long as you don't want to do any of those things, the F-35 is better than older weapons.
A proven fighter is one that has been through the teething problems that the F-35 is going through now.
Ha! The F-35's issues are not "teething problems," they are R&D problems.
The F-35 is a procurement disaster of such epic proportions that tomes will be written to warn future generations on what not to do.
Just to stay on topic, one of those tomes will talk about engine problems and why the military should source 2 different engine designs.
It will also mention that, because of the F-35's unprecedented budget overruns, the second design was canceled.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And most important of all and ignored totally by everyone is that every single plane the airforce has ever developed had these same growing pains. They all have massive cost overruns, groundings and unexplained crashes.
They've spent the bulk of the money quoted for the planes. All those R&D dollars are gone. At this point the planes cost about $120 million a piece to build, which isn't that much more than an F-18. That's nothing, but because they include the R&D that's already spent you end up with dollar amounts that look massive. The less we buy the higher the amortized costs are.
The F-35 is likely to be the last manned fighter ever produced. We've signed almost a dozen countries up to buy some and spread the costs out. It's going to totally streamline all the parts acquisition and maintenance and leave us with a single plane that handles almost every manned role. In time robotic aircraft or drones are going to take over all the dangerous roles. But that time is still decades off and we need something to keep our defense better than everyone else until that point. Air power and navy are two areas I have no problem with out government spending money on. They can be used to deny an enemy entry to the Americas and our separation from the Asian continent is one of the things that provides our best protection.
nooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Ah yes more F-35 hate.
Claim the costs are increasing, except the price per plane is decreasing. Check.
Faux outrage at the $1 trillion price tag that has been part of the plan for decades and pays for R&D for 3 new fighters, a purchase order for ~2,500 aircraft, plus maintenance and training for 55 years. Check.
Complain that it has a part built in every state, just like every other military project in the last 50 years. Check.
Unfortunately the authors forgot to mention how important dog fighting is to a strike fighter. Also passed up the opportunity to talk about how we are not sure if stealth actually works. I mean, the least they could do is compare it to the F-16 using clean specs and a non-inflation adjusted price from the 80s.
Standard cheap-shots on the costs, but weak follow through on "manoeuvrability problems". I'll give it a 6/10.
The F-35 is a compromise design.
As is every aircraft.
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.
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.
We build our own fighters.
Of course ( as already noted ) is a compromise.
And it really isnt supposed to be dogfighting, I expect, but rather ( in an ungentlemanly fashion ) standing off and killing the enemy before they get close.
And yes, they are R&D problems. Any advanced aircraft will be having those.
Note, I am not saying that the F-35 is a perfect plane and is a model for procurement or production.
All I have read leads me to think that there is plenty of learning in how to do it better next time.
But I think it is still possible to have a great aircraft ( albeit an expensive one ) to result from this.
emt 377 emt 4
Military = Republican Welfare
Table-ized A.I.
The parent is wrong. Nothing has replaced the A-10. The Pentagon tried to kill the Warthog earilier this year until everyone who actually uses them screamed bloody murder.
This fricken plane is airworthy with half a wing and an engine missing. Could the F-35 do that?
The Iraqis don't want us to send troops over there to deal with the ISIS business. They have plenty of troops of their own. What they have asked for is some air support. Immagine what a couple of A-10 squadrons would do there..
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
No one is standing still though.
They will not be survivable forever, and you cant ( as we are seeing ) just wait and see.
And I would be stunned and amazed if the USAF were to seriously consider buying aircraft from the same basic generation as the aircraft already in inventory. If they wanted that, they could continue building what they have ( with potential updates, of course ).
The issues are the stealth features, which are hard to backfit on existing aircraft and the electronics/radar, which you might be able to, but you would have a major refit to accomplish ( assuming there is room/power/etc ) in the aircraft.
emt 377 emt 4
I totally agree with you. We are committed and have no other options. As you point out we could scrap the F35 and start over, but if one is upset over the program costs so far there will be no way you will be able to do it cheaper by starting over. One might be able to pull the project from Lockheed and give it to somebody else, but even that will likely cost a lot of money we don't have.
Those who think we can do without the F35 are ignorant (or just plain nuts). The planes the F35 is going to replace have been flying for decades and many of the airframes are at the very end of their design lives. The F35 is designed to replace the AV8B (34 years old out of production), the F-15 (47 years old but in production), the F-16 (39 years old but in production) , F-18 (34 years old in production) etc... Every one of these aircraft are based on airframe designs which are 30 plus years old. We'd be stupid to buy many more of them, but if we don't buy the F35 what other choice is there? The only other possible choice that comes to mind is disarmament, unilateral disarmament by the USA, and that's basically suicide.
The F35 is the only game we can play right now, best we get used to that and get used to having Lockheed take advantage of us. Let's not do this sole source "pick one vendor" thing for such development efforts in the future.. Please....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You cannot continue to go out and fight with older weapons though.
Nominally, the F-15/F-16/F-18 are not as survivable in a modern air war..
the problem is, we DON'T know this for sure. That's what the F-35 is sold on, but note - the F-35 has poorer maneuverability, endurance in the air, etc. - it's main ability to fight will rely on the newer-tech missiles it carries... missiles the older F-15/16/18s could also carry. The idea was that the F-35 doesn't need maneuverability because missiles have improved to the point where it can pull Gs no human fighter can pull, and are smart enough to ignore countermeasures. What it needs is to be stealthy and so fire first. If you believe Pierre Spey et al, the F-35 will empty itself of missiles and then what can it do but run? And stealth is directional - you can't be stealthy 360 degrees so you design for stealth from the front (that's also one of the weaknesses, they're trying to design radar intercepts around this).
So an F-35 can kill as many enemies as it can carry missiles, sure - after which it is useless and will die.
What happens when the enemy puts more planes in the air than the F-35 has missiles? It can do that if (number of enemy planes x cost of enemy planes) (cost of F-35 x number of missiles it can carry).
(don't forget again the poor fuel capacity and hence operational time/range - heck you don't even have to hit the F-35s themselves, just chase down the tanker planes).
What are the R&D problems? What are the procurement problems?
>> A proven fighter is one that has been through the teething problems that the F-35 is going through now.
No, it's not.
A proven fighter is one that has shown itself to have a good combat record.
First of all, I think we all know that future warfare will be conducted with drones. You seem to be arguing to put money into a project that is completely USELESS. This is all about pork for Lockeed Martin.
OK. But to get there, it has gone through it's development issues.
emt 377 emt 4
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.
The F-35 is particularly awful because they tried to make an all services plane out of it. They probably could have made a combined USAF/USN fighter more or less easily. But adding the VTOL requirement for the Marines and the UK was the final straw.
Last time the US tried something like this was with the F-111 and that was a procurement disaster.
They said the same thing about the F-16, which is now the western world's most successful air to mud machine.
The electronics and radar have been retrofitted in these planes more than once. For example the F-16 Block 60 has an AESA radar.
The stealth features are controversial in terms of utility. Plus they make these aircraft a pig to maintain.
Having all the branches use the same plane should have been a cost saver. Only develop one plane, same parts, same training, etc. Except the different branches need different planes for different jobs. So we're going to take one plane and then alter it into a few different models.
I used to design fire engines. I learned a lot of really good lessons about designs and specifications. You have to define the roles for your machine. If it is going to do more than one task, which task is more important? We had a lot of customers that were combining two old trucks into one new one. That was fine as long as they understood that it wouldn't do either job as well as a truck that was specifically built for one task. We usually saw this with small towns who couldn't afford to keep running two trucks because of a limited budget. The US Govt, is not a small town. They definitely had enough money to keep their fighters, ground attack and other warplanes as different models, especially since there wasn't a whole lot wrong with them.
Flawed concept aside, this program has been horribly managed, that's where the real problems come in. Lockheed didn't even finish designing and testing the planes before they started production. Then they start jacking the price up and soon we come to our current situation.
Now I work for a place that actually makes parts for the F-35. As far as the "save all the jobs" part of Lockheed's argument, we'd be just fine without it. In fact, most of the surrounding community doesn't even know what we make or care how much we get paid for it.
I'm not entirely incorrect.
Nothing currently available has the capability to replace the A-10, making it the best tool for the job. So while it hasn't been replaced yet, it cannot be effectively replaced in the foreseeable future.
Semantics, I know.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
One on one, maybe, but how many F-18/e can you build for the cost of *one* F-35?
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
If you start again, which is an option, you don't always develop existing platforms, you develop new.
Or we would not have the highly regarded aircraft we have.
Especially in stealth, where the airplane shape is so important.
F-22, air superiority is it's main task. It is not a swiss army knife.
The F-14 and F-15 were not tasked with other roles until later in their evolution.
Stealth is never handled by having other aircraft along. You move from visible to even more visible.
Wild weasel aircraft will accompany some strike packages to confuse/jam enemy radar, but that is not absolutely not stealth.
If the F-35 is that bad that it will require that kind of support, then the whole point as been missed.
And probably, it is the frontal hemisphere that they care about. It is an attack aircraft, and will be headed towards the enemy ( until they have accomplished ( hopefully ) their mission and are egressing ( but at that point, the enemy knows they are there... ) )
No aircraft came off the designer's in great shape. Not in any era.
WWII aircraft manufacturer came up with a block system within models to track all the changes they were making.
emt 377 emt 4
It is sometimes said by people who support gun rights that we need them in the event it ever becomes necessary to overthrow the government. That's what the right was established for, after all.
"That's ridiculous," opponents say. "You can't fight the federal government! They can just fly right over you and destroy your whole army with half a thought."
Leaving aside that guerrilla warfare works just fine against them everywhere else in the world, we can now say "no, they can't." They are too busy having our money stolen from them by the companies that are supposed to make the jets.
Yes, if the package fits, you can retrofit, but there are limits.
The aircraft's ease of maintenance is an issue, but it take a backseat to it's mission requirements.
emt 377 emt 4
How many F-18/E/F/G/H...'s will you need to build to accomplish the mission?
If it doesn't survive well and doesn't knock down the enemy well enough, you might still blow your budget.
And have more maintenance issues. And have to staff for that number of aircraft.
emt 377 emt 4
If there's one thing the big Obamacare debates on Slashdot taught me, it's that the government CAN be trusted to faithfully and competently handle giant, complex projects. The government exists outside your petty notions of supply and demand. I am sure -- SURE -- that these problems must be imaginary.
lllll AJ
It's just socialism. This is how we do socialism in the United States. We don't have enough work for people to do any more. Too much outsourcing and too much automation. So we either start letting people die in the streets or we start redistributing wealth.
Thing is we spend most of the 50s-90s talking about how Socialism is Evil (tm) . It's heavily engrained in our populace. So we needed a form of Socialism that Americans could stomach. Enter the "Military Industrial Complex". Eisenhower built it up out of fear of another recession and regretted it. It pretty much warps our entire society...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The A10 was a wonder of an aircraft, but I'm not entirely sure it would still be useful in a serious war.
Against ISIS it might be useful, assuming that they're fighting in open terrain. An A10 is not particularly useful against targets in the middle of a city - if anything an aircraft that can loiter at altitude might be more useful for dropping bombs on designated buildings - nobody is going to be swooping over city blocks and hitting the right building visually.
Really the advantage of the A10 over other aircraft is that it can potentially use terrain masking to protect itself from large SAM emplacements. That doesn't matter in a place like Iraq. It could matter in a serious war with a modern defender. The reality is that we don't know how effective modern SAMs will be against things like the F22, and we also don't know how effective aircraft like the A10 will be at getting past them. The former is going to depend greatly on the F22's stealthiness and maybe its ability to maneuver, and the latter is mainly going to depend on tactics since the only advantage the A10 has is terrain masking and that is very situational.
Sure, the A10 can land with half of a wing left, but it is still out of action even if the pilot makes it. Modern aircraft are really hard to replace - it isn't like they'll be rolling out by the hundreds from assembly lines during a war making the pilots the major limitation. We of course should try to protect the pilots, but that isn't going to make the plane all that much more useful in a war.
All that said I wouldn't look to get rid of them either. The reality is that we don't know what the next serious war will be - better to hedge your bets especially if you can do it with really cheap aircraft. I imagine you could field a lot of aircraft like the A10 with some modern redesigns for far less than you're going to pay to make something in the class of the F35 and F22.
risk adverse bean counters did.
In Russian they would have just banged it with a spanner and kept on flying.
The problem is that Americans have too many oestrogen mimicking molecules in their systems and they are all turning into girlie girls.
You don't need a Cadillac to deliver a parcel when a Honda will do the same mission. Thus the F35 may be overkill for many missions that the F-18 can accomplish at lower cost.
In the Second World War the Germans had better tanks but sheer numbers built at lower cost were able to overcome them. So a better fighter doesn't mean you can win battles or wars.
I understand both of those principals.
I am not convinced they apply here.
emt 377 emt 4
The G550 costs approximately $55 million dollars and 300+ have been sold so far. What does it do but ferry dictators and pop-tards to their next fawning session? Seriously, what else does it do? But that's what it costs.
oh bullshit. They've only fought against an iraqi air defense that we bombed for a decade before bush decided that an invasion was better for his legacy. None of them can survive an S-300 or newer.
as a follow up (same anon coward here :-), this needs to be read -
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-f-35s-air-to-air-capability-controversy-05089/
it's a RAND analysis of potential scenarios in an engagement. Even with 100% missile strike success by F-22 and F-35 forces, the US side could STILL lose simply because of numbers. They can destroy the stealth fighter fleet by shooting down all the tankers (the F-35s would run out of fuel before they make it back to Guam), with much cheaper and more expendable aircraft.
The entire strategy of reliance on stealth aircraft is questionable, without even having to worry about the tactical abilities of the fighter aircraft itself.
I work in the military industrial complex and interact with military pilots daily. I seriously doubt any new airplane has been less anticipated since the days of the Vought F7U Cutlass. Basically everyone flying legacy fighters (F-15/16/FA-18) just don't see the cost/performance trade-off. You can easily buy legacy aircraft 2 or 3 to one over the F-35 and that's not counting all the non-recurring engineering. Operating costs for the F-35, once heralded as it's saving grace, are now anticipated to be higher than any of the legacy jets. The F-35B is the worst and is the anchor that has already drug the F-35A/C down. The design decisions that were made to accommodate the STOVL capability have seriously hampered the other two series. And the F-35B has no justifiable mission. The nominal purpose of the F-35B's STOVL capability is to put it close to the action, so you can get aircraft over the target quickly and operate close to shore with your amphibs. At ~13000lbs of fuel, it will be holding a whopping 7K less than the F-35C, which means you can put F-35Cs over target from a regular carrier 500NM farther away than the amphib parked off the coast....and bring more bombs. And if you are going to be operating binocular distance from shore, why the heck do you need a stealthy penetrating fighter??? We already have VTOL attack aircraft that can operate from amphibs, they are called helicopters. F-35B will NEVER operate from unimproved locations (soccer fields, highways). Again, why would you want to put a stealth airplane somewhere bad guys could actually see you take off, or worse, mortar you?
Wrong. Both sides of the isle play about equally. Look into how much crap Steny Hoyer brought to southern Maryland, and he's just one. You think Northrup Grumman or Lock Mart could get billions with only half on their side?
Nuance and Judgement has presided over a bloodbath from Morocco to Pakistan. The Democrats told us to end the United States military and all the problems would go away. But in reality, they allowed an infant democracy to be strangled in the baby carriage. The lesson of history is that war-torn countries need time to recover and recoup. Iraq never got that chance, and now several other nations are being pulled into that spiral of chaos. What does it cost the United States? You know darn well the Democrats have said plainly that they want higher oil prices. They talk about it in the context of their so-called green energy initiatives, upon which they've blown $120 billion dollars during the Obama years, and want billions more, but so far have jack to show for it. If they're going to throw peace and tranquility under the green energy bus, then that's just all the more reason why we need the F-35.
Or, don't work well. Does nobody remember the lessons of the infamous F-111? It was going to replace fighters, attack planes, light bombers, nuclear strike bombers, for both the Air Force and the Navy. The plane went WAY over budget, and in the end, the the F-111 turned out to be a pretty good light attack/recon aircraft, but not much else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... Instead of a plane that's excellent at say, dogfighting, you get one that is mediocre at dogfighting. And VTOL/STOL. And attack. It's like using a leatherman when you could be using actual tools.
I understand your argument and reject it. The F-35 is a bad idea from the ground up. A multi-role fighter that does everything half ass and excells at nothing. A single engine warcraft which is probably the most insane thing about it. Did we learn nothing at all from the F-16? At least the Falcon was cheap so when they started falling out of the sky by the dozen they didn't cost us the insane amount these do. These are going to hurt bad when they turn into lawn darts. It's time to stop the bleeding and start over building the next generation warcraft. This isn't it.
"It counts 1,300 suppliers in 45 states supporting 133,000 jobs"
Assuming the low end ($399 Billion) that puts the cost at $3 Million per job...... If "jobs" are the focus someone needs to have their eyes checked. I also got a kick out of this one “"The jet has flown to every corner of the envelope and it’s meeting or exceeding expectations in performance,” Siebert said". Last I heard the VTOL version cracks its frame. Aircraft Carrier version can't catch the arresting wire, the stealth rating has been downgraded, it can't hold much ordnance, Its maneuverability is lackluster, the airframe is expected to have a much shorter lifespan than hoped, the fuel dump poses a fire hazard, the list goes on and on.
Nothing currently available has the capability to replace the A-10,
We have lots of things that are far better at the A10s limited role.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_AH-64_Apache
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_OH-58_Kiowa
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_AC-130
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper
We can't.
Our two new aircraft carriers can't support anything other than helicopters and VTOL/STOL aircraft. This is thanks to the fuckwits in Whitehall, deciding that we wouldn't add the electric catapults, and thereby save a few million quid.
These catapults would have allowed us to use cheap F-18s, at least in the short term. We scrapped our Sea Harrier fleet a few years ago (they were well past retirement).
So, we've spent billions on two useless flat-tops, while we wait for the F-35 programme to go into a death-spiral.
I predict a +5B quid project in a few years time - adding catapults - the hard way.
Still, it's not like the 12B quid they pissed up the wall, on the useless NHS patient records system. At least we have some working mobile helicopter platforms to show for it.
Well on F22, the execs make trips (at taxpayer expense) to visit the mistress. Nobody seems to care.
Sure, Eisenhower warned of the problems but lets try something radical like reading the entire speech. Here's some context to whet your appetite...
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction....[snip]...But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions....[snip]....In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
In other words, Eisenhower saw the overwhelming power of the MIC as essential for peace and at the same time was warning the nation about the potential of a home grown Hitler.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ummm are you stunned or ignorant of the survivability of the Advanced Super Hornet?
He has some valid points (I only listed to most of the first part), but I'm not sure it is entirely current. For example, he claims that it is trivial for maneuverable aircraft to dodge SAMs. That was true back in the Vietnam days (though we still lost many), and true in Iraq (which was basically Modern US vs Vietnam-era Iraq), but if we go into a modern war those fighters will have to dodge the likes of SA-10s. The missile sensors are much harder to fool, and they have thrust vectoring and are very light at their terminal stage which basically makes them potentially very hard to evade.
Even stealth aircraft are unproven in that scenario since nobody reveals their full capabilities. We'll never know until we actually get into a war with somebody who can actually hurt us, instead of bombing countries that are 30 years behind.
The US likes to maintain foreign interests like Eastern Europe, Taiwan, etc that are very far away from us but fairly close to whoever they're likely to get into conflict with. That means that the US will need all the capability it can get in a war. Since our fighters will be tanker-supported from fields hundreds of miles away, we'll probably be outnumbered, and fighting near foreign territory. Also, the US likes to meddle and voters don't like to hear about dead pilots.
I suspect you don't have the military background I possess.
.50 cal, or a two of one and none of the other.
Firstly, the AH-64 and OH-58 are primarily Army platforms, who use almost entirely rotary-winged aircraft. The Apache is a wonderful system -- the most badass thing in the air. It has a huge armament of 4 winglet pods (16x hellfires, or 76x FFARs or a combination thereof, plus a 30mm chain gun). But it doesn't have the ceiling of the A-10, nor does it have the range. The Kiowa doesn't have anywhere near the armament of the Apache, being a smaller, lighter aircraft -- it can only maintain 1 small FFAR tube and a
The AC-130 is a massive bird. Puff the Magic Dragon, we called it colloquially. Fantastic engineering. But it is HUGE! It is designed to linger over an area, like a village or town, and obliterate everything in the area. 105mm howitzer, 40mm and 20mm rotary cannons. This is used when you need to destroy an insane amount of bad guys and boost morale into infinity.
The MQ-9/Predator/Reaper is nice, but it doesn't have the same capabilities of any of the above craft. Safer in that you don't have pilots put into danger. But it has less armament capability than the A-10 or the AH-64, less agility than the OH-58, and nowhere near the firepower of the AC-130.
So no, there are not "lots of things that are far better at the A10s limited role". You are ignorant. Go back to your Call of Duty.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
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.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/5c95d45f86a5
Unmanned aircraft like the Predator/Reaper are cheaper because they are single engine turboprops with a high aspect ratio wing, not because they are unmanned. In fact at $15mil a Reaper is considerably more expensive than a single engine manned aircraft like a Supertucano or "Combat Caravan". Guess what the G-limit is on a Predator/Reaper? About 2-3Gs. Manned fighters are the size they are so they can be big enough to carry around an air-air radar, missiles etc. The G-limit is as much a function of service life and cost as anything else. Most fighters have a limit between 6.5-7.5. Why don't all fighters have a 9G limit like the F-16? Because it costs a lot to engineer a fighter wing that strong that will not fatigue life out quickly, and 7ish G's is enough. Many other factors determine success in air combat such as turn radius, Ps, ability to make large instantaneous alpha excursions. Look at the size difference between a Grippen and a SU-27, both single seat fighters. One will go Mach 2, or cruise at 1.1-1.2 for a long time, one is a point defense fighter.
If you built an unmanned fighter with comparable performance characteristics to a modern manned fighter it would almost certainly cost more and be more difficult to operate.
For instance Australia's new and inexperienced government is shelling out billions for these F35s in the middle of an austerity budget - presumably because someone in the US leaned on them and they don't know how to do anything other than completely cave in yet.
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.
No, it was a horrible idea. Particularly the requirement to have a STOVL version. Navy/Air Force CTOL is not that different. The F-4 was a great example of a Naval aircraft which successfully adapted to shore life. The AF dropped a few of the heavier duty Navy requirements, put on some lighter landing gear, and got a great plane. Had the F-15 failed, the F-14 certainly could have filled the role, and if pushed the F-15 probably could have been adapted to the carrier. However, creating a requirement that one version has a big freaking lift fan in the middle of the fuselage is not something as minor as reducing the leading edge flap authority.
Also, people say that we can't afford to develop more than one fighter at a time. I argue we can't afford to develop only one. We always need an alternative to pressure whoever is developing. There should always be a plan B.
Forgive me, I am very tired, I should not have mentioned Wild Weasel, you are correct on that.
I believe my point that additional aircraft will not render your strike aircraft less visible stands though.
emt 377 emt 4
You're the one that's grossly misinformed here.
You are misinformed about how aircraft work, how stealth works, how air force logistics work, how SOJ's work, what the 'Wild Weasel' mission is, and generally speaking you wouldn't know how a fighter works in an actual combat environment if it hit you in the face.
So after taking in the natural inflation of such projects... it's basically AT LEAST $2 TRILLION of your tax dollars COMPLETELY FUCKING WASTED on USELESS warmaking crap for USELESS wars. War is STUPID.
Whole lot of DEBT you could be paying off with that, instead of you know, INCURRING *MORE* DEBT, because of it.
You stupid sheeple... ready to revolt yet???
No way could the F35 do the job of an A10.
The F35 program is a turkey. Its not even an F35: its really an A35. Its satisfactory as a ground attack aircraft, but sucks horribly as a fighter/interceptor. There is no ability for huge munitions stores. Because there is only one engine, any failure doesn't mean half speed like you would have with a twin engine aircraft and a longer ride home, but no! One engine gone means a smoking hole in the ground. There are a lot of more viable, more economical options. You really don't want the billion dollar plane floating around, you want something that is reliable, repairable, and reproducable in cost-efficient enough numbers so that if you lose a dozen or two, you can pull more out of mothballs and be back in the air fast. Having all your hopes on one or two dream machines is a very dangerous (and in the past its been shown to be a failing) tactic. The F35 is a turkey that needs to die.
"The NIH invests nearly $30.1* billion annually in medical research for the American people." ...and they spend $1,000 Bn on a fleet of planes to kill Arabs for Israel.
http://www.nih.gov/about/budge...
The military-industrial-congressional complex.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
The F-35 is a compromise design.
Mostly it compromises its ability to loiter on the target, carry large amounts of munitions, and dogfight.
So as long as you don't want to do any of those things, the F-35 is better than older weapons.
You forgot lose an engine and keep flying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
We've signed almost a dozen countries up to buy some and spread the costs out.
You mean strong armed almost a dozen countries to buy some. The fucking thing is useless for extreme conditions as it only has one engine and experience shows that redundancy is really good to have in situations like flying in the arctic, probably the desert too.
I can just imagine the statistics after 10 years of operation, 0 loses in combat (due to being scared to actually use it), 50% loses in training exercises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I remember back in 20th century when it began as the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter. Really. Planners were seeing every new fighter was far more expensive and prohibitively so preventing sizable quantities for adequate forces. I've read some but so many different viewpoints and analysis. I still wonder what went wrong.
mfwright@batnet.com
A pork project is, by definition, good for the economy of the local area in which the money is spent, and at the same time is a net negative for the national economy.
The cumulative effect of thousands of pork projects is to make every local economy poorer than it otherwise would be. In Congresscritter Smith's district, the positive effect of the projects that Smith secures for his district (influx of money) tends to be outweighed by the negative effect of the projects that the other 434 congresscritters secured for their districts (outflux of money). The exception is when a congresscritter is particularly slick at scoring unearned freebies for his local economy, at the expense of the national economy.
Eisenhower didn't articulate the problem in these terms. If he had, Joe Schmoe would be closer to understanding (and using his vote to do something about) one of the worst aspects of our system of government. The president made a campaign promise to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," and pork-barrel politics is the aspect most in need of "fundamental transformation," but sadly, it has only been reinforced since 2008.
A local magazine surveyed dentists, asking "who, besides yourself, is the best dentist in our city?" By not allowing dentists to vote for themselves, the survey produced a much truer guide to where to get quality dental care. Similarly, a constitutional amendment that bars congresscritters from seeking to have money spent in their own districts would boost the overall effectiveness of government. Lockheed would finally be pressured to source its F-35 components from the most efficient suppliers, rather than from the most pork-ified network of suppliers.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Really??? And then she starts whining about the tires. And then of course like most sucky worthless products, it's got an available alternate engine. How about that - a GE-Rolls Royce in your fucking F series. Oh yeah, they really botched that one.
Anybody who thinks there's even a shred of truth in that article really needs to have their head examined. You think otherwise? Why don't you go to any auto dealership and just take a gander at how many different variations of pick-up they have. Wow, what an impossible task! If Lockheed-Martin fucked up, it's only because we can't get an F-35 with a king cab, a stretch payload bay, and those fucking MONSTER TRUCK TIRES!!!
For all you americans out there saying "lets just scrap it!", it is not just you in this boat. You have already signed contracts to sell these F35's to other countires. For goodness sake, here in the UK we have built two of the worlds biggest aircraft carriers just for the F35. If you scrap them, we will be left with two very expencive barges and no future air projection capability.
Cancelling F35 would not only leave the US with a massive air capability gap (current airframes are nearing the end of their lives and will increasing be too degraded to repair), but also leave all of your closest allies (UK and Japan to name two) up the creak without a paddle. It is not just US tax dollers invested in this but a sizable part of NATO. With the way Russia and China have been acting the last few years, especially around Ukraine and the South China Sea can we afford to completetly mess up millitary strategy for half of NATO's members for the next 20 years?
US gets the F-22, the rest may get the F-35, which one is better? not the F-35. It's a project to have the rest of the world pay for aircraft development.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
That doesn't mean they get to stay here
I can hardly believe your naiveté with that statement. They certainly will stay here. If 116 illegal immigrants who have been convicted of homicide are allowed to stay, why in the world would these kids be deported? They won't be. It is said that we urgently need to create a "path to citizenship" for them, and the reason for this is purely political: they and their descendents will reliably vote Democrat for generations to come.
Consider two brothers born in Beijing: Ming and Ling. Ming decides to enter the U.S. illegaly, and Ling decides to stay in the country of which he is a citizen. Which brother is more deserving of benefits paid for by U.S. taxpayers: Ming, who broke our immigration laws, or Ling, who obeyed our immigration laws? The answer is obviously Ling. And the other 1.3 billion citizens of China are equally deserving as Ling. But we don't provide those 1.3 billion people with any kind of social safety net. (It's fiscally impossible... merely doing so for the 0.3 billion U.S. citizens has recently created trillion-dollar deficits.) Yet you argue we should provide those benefits to the less-deserving brother, Ming. Are you starting to see why that position has no credibility?
There is plenty of room here for people who are willing to work and contribute at least as much as they take.
Again, your naiveté is amazing. If we were to become selective about who gets in, I'd be in favor of expanded immigration. Who wouldn't? But under our current policy of lax border enforcement, the vast majority of immigrants are unskilled, functionally illiterate, and disproportionately disposed to criminal behavior, with no hope of ever contributing more than they receive from the social safety net. Please, please try to reconcile that fact with your pie-in-the-sky ideology.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
To many design compromises were made in the basic airframe design. These have lead to F-35 being significantly overweight, underpowered, short-ranged, slow, un-manoeuvrable, and have terminally compromised its low observability characteristics. There is insufficient fuel to cool the avionics properly, insufficient payload to carry as powerful an avionics suite as its competitors, insufficient payload to armour the aircraft for a ground attack role, and a whole lot of other problems. The result is a white elephant, uncompetitive with 4th and 5th generation Russian and Chinese aircraft, and in some respects even inferior to even 3rd generation aircraft. A total airframe redesign is needed. As the US empire sinks, we are left to wonder if this will be the last great feeding frenzy on the nearly picked clean bones.
I feel sorry for ordinary Americans, with their dreadful healthcare and education systems (yes, there are exceptions for the few), and their totalitarian and militaristic rulers, as they trample world peace at every opportunity, and back all the worst people that they can find.
In my opinion, the US truly deserves the F-35 - a $200m/piece turkey.
The whole program is a sunk cost fallacy at this point. Congress needs to look at the cost and return of fixing the F35 program versus scrapping the entire thing, which is probably the best decision it could make.
The F35 is an unmitigated disaster. It is everything a military jet SHOULDN'T be. The entire process was destined to fail from the beginning, and it all boils down to the DoD's decision processes, like those that award contracts based on the race and gender of a company's owner rather than the merit of that company's products, and the ones that say "gee, if there could only be one plane that did everything, that would definitely be the best way to go!"
Jack of all trades, master of nothing, is not what we need in a fighter. The reason we have different branches of the military is because each has starkly unique needs compared to the others. Their needs are so unique that even the most junior engineer can look at the F35 proposal and say "hahaahh fuck no."
The main issue seems to be the STOL requirements from the marines - the plane is designed around requirements of the B variant, especially the huge lifting fan mechanism. If they had been allowed to design the F-35 as a normal plane, it would probably have worked out better.
I hear the F-35 is annoying to work on, though? Due to the does-everything design, the airframe is already cramped and doesn't have much spare weight capacity ... and the stealth coating is both sensitive and expensive to replace, if you need to start ripping off panels.
Oh my ... You really believe in the marketing department of Lockheed...
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
The F-35 program started with the VSTOL requirement and had the conventional and navy variants added on.
I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but how many "modern air wars" have there been in (say) the last 50 years? The Falklands war is one - how many more have there been? How many do we expect in the next (say) 50?
It seems to me that conflict is getting smaller. That is, it's less about taking over entire continents and more about killing a few people at the train station to get in the media and get some fear going. AFAIK, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan used some air support, but there was no "air war" as such (maybe some people trying to shoot down planes, but that's entirely different from dog-fighting).
That said, if another state of reasonable size was to decide it wanted another state's land, then things scale up quite quickly. However, how much of that really causes "air wars"? The issues in Ukraine suggest that the implications of state-based action is more financial than it would be military.
When the Eurofighter project was in full swing, I wondered the same thing - I mean, how many times do we think we're going to need such a thing? That said, it came up with (what looks to me at least) as a pretty cool aircraft with some cool tech inside it. Shame it's all classified :-(
The tiny Belgian armed forces is horribly bloated and inefficient because it's based on awarding political contracts across a broad spectrum of Flemish and Walloon constituencies. This results in badly mismatched and concocted schemes to build systems no one wants and no one can use. For example one model of APC uses a one-off 90mm gun where the ammo is made by a single small company. But the other FOUR incompatible models of APC all made by different companies are all secure in their permanent contracts as well. This is the F-35 in a nutshell.
BTW the Australians and the Brits discovered the F-35 "B" version VTOL runs so hot it melts the decks on their ships taking off.
meh, that's part of being the world power. You get to do what you want, except win soccer matches. You pay for it with bureaucracy, but this is america. If we want to run deficits the way we do we need to be prepared to defend ourselves when someone says "stop". Until then, just keep using debt to fund creation of the raw power...that's what's going to save us, we're going to spend our way into hell no matter what. Pick your poison, something that defends you, or tax cuts weeeeeeeeee!!!!
Everyone knows it makes more sense to choose option A, which is why you'll see that most people here are in agreement: the R&D is sunk, they cost the same price to build as an F/A-18, and there's no reason not to keep going forward.
Next complaint?
Firstly, the AH-64 and OH-58 are primarily Army platforms, who use almost entirely rotary-winged aircraft.
Exactly what you need for close in Air support of the Army and killing tanks.
But it doesn't have the ceiling of the A-10, nor does it have the range.
And doesn't need them.
But it is HUGE! It is designed to linger over an area,
Perfect for immediate air support.
The MQ-9/Predator/Reaper is nice, but it doesn't have the same capabilities of any of the above craft.
It has its own unique set of capabilities.
nowhere near the firepower of the AC-130
With the exception of that useless vulcan cannon, it can carry all the same armaments.
The A-10 is a useless platform in a modern military all these platforms provide more effective close air support and tank killing. The only thing the A-10 is good for is friendly fire incidents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/190th_Fighter_Squadron,_Blues_and_Royals_friendly_fire_incident
It's the only weapons platform in existence with a plane built around it. Every other plane was designed in exactly the opposite manner.
It was built for one purpose: to kill Soviet tanks with a big fucking 30mm cannon. Turns out it was really fantastic at close air support, too.
The Apache is a wonderful system -- the most badass thing in the air.
But gets into trouble when people actually like shoot at it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_attack_on_Karbala
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I wish I had mod points for your response.
We need to make cuts in Social Security because of some perceived budget ramification but blowing $1 Trillion dollars on one weapons program, no problem. Well done Republicans well done.
Seriously, this could have put us on Mars! WTF???
honestly - that's no joke. stupid idea but in terms of cost, true.
Stealth is a complete load of BS though, if you listen to the guys who design these things. The Russians have had long wave radar to detect stealth planes since the 50s or 60s. The freaking Serbians were able to down our stealthiest aircraft with what amounted to Russian army surplus. Stealth is a joke. Active electronic warfare is the way to go.
Why does putting someone on Mars become a joke? Seriously.
I have not heard from the marketing department much. :-)
I do follow news about the aircraft and have formed my own opinion.
emt 377 emt 4
Sprey doesn't know what he's talking about.
He's actually showing a lack of understanding of how airframes work. His credentials aren't what he or others make them out to be: He's not the F-16 or A-10 engineer, he just happened to be there, and today he's using that to offer an opinion that is worth next to nothing.
Try looking for pilot interviews instead. Are they slanted? You bet, but there's another thing you can bet on: The USAF pilots don't want a plane that doesn't work.
I don't really get why it's a suicide to not have manned air force. Defensive UAVs and ships with lasers to shoot down incoming missiles and a crap ton of mines that are not activated but can be activated remotely when needed should do the trick.
With the history of the one child policy and Chinese culture favoring male heirs, there's going to be a lot of Chinese bachelors that can't find wives. That's going to be a lot of horny, frustrated, unemployed men that can't afford homes. Prime fodder to have their frustrations directed outward by a war of expansion where they can be burned off as cannon fodder.
A good investment would be for propaganda promoting the gay agenda in China.
I am only partly joking here.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I was a part of the group that did the second engine study to defend continuing the funding for the F136. Since it was cancelled, I'd expect GE to continue funding it internally and when the F135 can't do the job, they show up with an engine that costs significantly more than it would otherwise and they've got Uncle Sam by the balls.
I would actually argue that it's not an R&D problem but rather a requirements problem as well as a military acquisition problem. The former is largely due to the VTOL requirements that the Marine Corps want is largely incompatible with the Navy and Air Force requirements. The problem is that the Marines needed a replacement aircraft and Congress wouldn't approve two aircraft programs so they tagged along. The latter is a far bigger problem in that Congress dictates what systems the military get, which is why we're making tanks that we don't need and sending them directly to the Boneyard.
I personally think the military should be able to establish their own priorities and initiate weapons programs as needed subject to review from Congress. Congress could then insist that the military defend their position but they would not be able to force systems on the military that are unwanted or unneeded.
Modern aircraft are really hard to replace - it isn't like they'll be rolling out by the hundreds from assembly lines during a war making the pilots the major limitation.
Just a reminder that "modern [military] aircraft" are defined as unmanned drones. They can be rolled out by the hundreds from assembly lines during peace time. They're cheap and, by military standards, disposable. The missiles that have a chance of hitting an F-22 cost more than these drones.
The first time that E-warfare knocks out their connectivity will be hilariously disastrous, and they'll be given more autonomy.
The F-22 is a white elephant. Ludicrously expensive, unscalable, and not fit for the majority of the ACTUAL WARFARE that we just got through. It simply wasn't worth risking in Iraq. But I think it's actually a good thing to have in our pocket. It's a saber to rattle, a testament to our capabilities, and a show of force. It demonstrates that we've still got air superiority.
The F-35 was supposed to be a cheaper version that could actually be used for missions. Keeping the A-10, even on this end of the bathtub, still looks like a better choice for the majority of ACTUAL WARFARE that we'd be sending our airforce against. I mean, really, if we dick around with China or another first-world nation, that's what the F-22 is for. For blowing up stone-age third-worlders, the A-10 works.
You don't plan around what happened in the past. You learn lessons from it ( hopefully ).
In designing any new aircraft, you have to look at what it's adversaries might be.
And plan around that, the numbers likely to be deployed, logistical factors.
Factor in what has happened in the Ukraine, and how that could have gone.
If the Russians had decided to occupy, what would they have used, and what would the Ukrainians have wanted to oppose that ?
( modern aircraft, in part, strike for the Russians, air defense/air superiority for the Ukrainians )
There is conflict in Syria. My recollection is that Assad has been using aircraft on his people, and that is part of what keep him from being overthrown.
What did the Iraqis want from us when ISIS/ISIL/ started taking territory.
Aircraft. For us to use our aircraft to assist them in driving them out.
China is being increasingly belligerent ( I'm sure they see it as taking their place in the sun, but where have we heard that before ), especially in the South China Seas with Japan, the Philippians, and Vietnam ( at least )
( recent news includes the articles about the oil rigs China has placed near Vietnam, and the Naval issue that have proceeded.
They are attempting to jump start their military ( and commercial ) aircraft industry.
Conflict appears to be getting smaller. Yes. But the threat of conflict is still there. And the capability on the part of other nations is still there.
Imagine America destroys all it's aircraft, naval vessels and disbands the army after destroying all it's weapons.
What happens next?
I would predict that our borders with Canada and Mexico would change, at minimum.
I'm not sure if Russian or China have the logistical capability to move in such a scenario, but then, America's moves in Afghanistan surprised the snot out of me. ( not the absolute power, but the ability to project it so far away.
We cant disarm, as appealing as that sounds. We cant even stop looking at what comes next, as that becomes disarming, in effect, after a period of time.
Disclosure, I am fairly liberal, Christian, opposed to war, use too many parenthesis and commas.
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For the 3rd world, though, the A10 seems risky. Its main advantage is getting in low and slow and basically fighting "melee" against batallions of vehicles.
For what it does it is a GREAT platform, but you wouldn't send a lot of these against an enemy and not expect losses. They've vulnerable to fire from MANPADs and such which even terrorist groups could have.
What they can do is fly in at 300 feel where the nearby SA-10 site won't see them and drop bombs, while the F15s would be shot down 80 miles away by the SAM.
If the enemy doesn't have advanced SAMs, then the F15 can just loiter at 40k feet and drop a bomb when requested. Nothing a terrorist has is going to be able to touch it, and if there are older SAMs those can be effectively destroyed at the start of the mission.
I agree that drones are really where everybody should be going. Just look at them like multi-stage cruise missiles. A drone would have a lower radar cross section due to its size, it WOULD be cheaper/faster to mass-produce/replace, and it could fly the terminal portion of its mission at very low altitude. It only costs money, so fighting a war of attrition is politically acceptable - losing 1000 drones in a fight isn't the same as losing 1000 pilots with the POWs being fought over for decades later. It also enables distraction tactics that involve sacrificing aircraft.
Just buy some Eurofighters...
I'm guessing you were going for Funny, but I facepalm at the Insightful mod. We aren't setting $400 billion dollars on fire here, people. That money goes to defense contractors, to U.S. citizens, and from there to other businesses and back to the government as income tax and sales tax, etc. Even if the Eurofighter was half the price, it would hurt the U.S. economy so much more.
The F-35 is likely to be the last manned fighter ever produced.
Probably true, and quoted for emphasis, but that doesn't square with your observation that "that time is still decades off. That implies at least one more generation of manned fighters. Lockheed Martin and Boeing seem to be counting on that, though the Boeing article actually says they would propose a manned and unmanned variant (with an interesting concept image of them both). I saw that Russia expects the next generation to be unmanned.
The F-35 has been in Wargames and after the enemy has Flaming Datum (some enemy plane blows up) stealth is over, and the F-35s die 10 to 1 vs conventional aircraft that can actually fight.
20 years is a single generation. The F-16 was developed in the 60's, the F-18's were developed in the early 80's. Both are still in service.
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.
This fricken plane is airworthy with half a wing and an engine missing. Could the F-35 do that?
I have no idea but an F18 can. I found this link that essentially backs up what I remember.
http://www.aircraftresourcecen...
I read about it in a Navy Safety magazine that I can not remember the name of now. Flightline? Regardless, the story is even more intense than what that web page shows.
One pilots radios in for an emergency landing and ATC grants permission. The second pilot radios in for emergency landing and ATC tells him he has to go to a different airfield because they are dealing with an emergency already... and the second pilot lands anyways because there is no way he is making it to another field. It is absolutely amazing that both pilots not merely lived, but landed their planes safely. Just wow.
The pilot of the plane that had half of a wing missing had no idea half of his wing was gone until he landed and saw the destruction (apparently, he was more interested in landing than surveying all of the damage while in flight). The avionics compensated for all of that damage. Amazing.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I hear what you are saying, but I dont think that Libya is a good example.
Libya looks a lot like Vietnam, and I think things will/have progressed from there in a fight with a "real" adversary ( China, Russia, et al ).
( and now I know why I pulled in Wild Weasels, they would go in before the strike to kill the fixed air defense ( ground to air stuff ) ).
The F-35 is an attack aircraft. It will be dropping bombs. So, going in with all the aircraft you need to fulfill that mission, plus jammers means that you have given the enemy a heads up that you are coming.
Yo u might knock back the ground to air stuff, but if they have fighters, those will be launched. You want to avoid that if possible.
And Iraq was not a great example of what a fight with a real contender will be like. They had all kinds of ground to air, but no effective air to air ( numbers, training, moral ). We wont be in that fight against a real adversary ( praying we wont, but... )
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Here is the problem: Too many hands in the honey jar. So many people wanted in, in the construction of this plane, the cost ballooned to $400 million per.
Is anyone here old enough to remember how planes used to be procured and built for the US Air Force? They'd announce a competition, then the contractors would develop a prototype and would be a challenge between the different manufacturers as to the better plane, and as to who would build the final product. That's how the 3rd generation fighters like F-14, F-15 and F-16 came about.
What's different this time is that the defense industry consolidated, there is no competition, the congressmen and senators know this, there are not enough defense dollars to go around like during the cold war (although, I would dispute that), and everyone wants a piece of the pie. So what happens? Instead of the plane being build in one or two places at the most (plane in one place and engines somewhere), you have 4, 5 even up to 40 different sub-assemblies being built in up to last count, I believe 43 states (?) {I forget the actual number}.
You want a boondoggle? That's the definition of one. And the F-22 was no better.
There is no way to manage something like this.
There is now way to contain the costs in something like this.
If you put me in charge of the program, I would have fired all the program managers. I would have torn all the contracts-up, and I would have started from the beginning with new goals. But that's not how the Federal Government works, and having worked for both it and Contractors, this program will never get better.
Yeah, this is the cluster#$%k for the ages.
Nothing to see here -- move along now...
Sorry, must be built in 'Merika!
If the Israelis were to set up constant patrols over Gaza with them, that little rocket firing business would dry up real fast. Fire a rocket, expect a 30 mike-mike up your ass.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Stealth isn't a reliable solution to protecting aircraft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1... Four F18's cost about the same as one F35, so you outfit one with ECM's and jammers and get the job done.
Jammers and ECM aircraft can make drones crash. Politicians could decide to "Ban the drones!", like they decided that banning land mines was a good plan. We could discover that hackers have sent the unmanned aircraft to bomb us. In war you want options.
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.
Even if a drone crashes, it is okay because they are much cheaper and no lives are lost. Also who the hell wants to ban drones for foreign warfare. People only want to ban drones for domestic warfare and surveillance use.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
Fox news? It's hard to decide which is worse. But keep believing in them, will leave the work of your enemies easier.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Fox "Doesn't matter if it's true" "news"?
No. I have just seen all the turmoil on other planes as they are developed. The V-22 is a example.
I am also, as a software developer, really used to hearing "nothing works!", "it's terrible" as an app is developed.
It may well be that the F-35 isn't a suitable plane. I just think we are gong to need something like it in the not too distant future.
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The problem with the project is that it is plain stupid. You have no way to make a plane it an excellent dogfighter, an excellent striker and the excelent ground support at the same time. A sane general build three aircraft each specializing in something, such as the F22 as fighter, the F15 as a striker and the A10 as close air support. They tried the "Jack of all trades" with the FB-111 and failed, I thought they had learned their lesson. But Lockheed promises that he will be all of this to sell the project and bring the pork home.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
You have a good point, no aircraft can excel at every mission.
And I agree with the premise that they really need to make 2 or three aircraft out of this one.
( funny, the FB-11 is a great example of aircraft in trouble, but it did give up the air combat role and became an OK attack aircraft ( with the F-14 rising from that process to become the fighter ) ).
I think they need to use the F-22 as fighter and let the F-35 be strike/attack. And keep the A-10. Or develop a similar aircraft. ( maybe a V-22 variant ).
What they really should have considered was creating a naval air superiority aircraft that the Navy and Air force could share ( Navalizing Air force aircraft does not see to work well, but the F-4 seemed to work out OK, coming the other way ) Made the F-35 a strike aircraft, either with VTOL, or if not, developing a VTOL aircraft for the marines ( V-22 isnt fast enough ).
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