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Test Pilot: the F-35 Can't Dogfight
schwit1 sends this report from the War Is Boring column:
A test pilot has some very, very bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The pricey new stealth jet can't turn or climb fast enough to hit an enemy plane during a dogfight or to dodge the enemy's own gunfire, the pilot reported following a day of mock air battles back in January. And to add insult to injury, the JSF flier discovered he couldn't even comfortably move his head inside the radar-evading jet's cramped cockpit. "The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft." That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him. The test pilot's report is the latest evidence of fundamental problems with the design of the F-35 — which, at a total program cost of more than a trillion dollars, is history's most expensive weapon. Your tax dollars at work.
How much extra to make a drone version with 360 degree cameras? Fuck it. We're at $1 trillion. What's a few hundred billion more?
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
...Most recently, there have been concerns over its computer systems' vulnerability, and Chinese hackers have possibly stolen classified data related to the project....
We have tools built decades earlier that was better. Why cant we just let this go, a trillion dollars is a lot of friggen money, dont keep adding to it. If the vendor cannot come through on their promises cut them and go with someone who will.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
WTF?! When was the last time you've ever heard of a dogfight?
The days of air-to-air combat are long gone. And where air-to-air combat is still needed, long range missiles take care of it.
Your tax dollars at work.
Save the editorial non-sense. This site can hardly be called news anymore.
This damned plane has been a big scam from the beginning.
It was going to be all things to all people, but in reality it was a way to get other countries to pay for the R&D of a huge wishlist of things which was never going to come true.
As someone who lives in one of the countries who got suckered into the F-35, this program has been nothing but lies and bullshit since it was announced.
This was the military listing a huge wishlist of things, including a pony, they were going to do.
Instead, it's underperforming, not up to the claims, over budget, years behind schedule, and still a crappy replacement for the things it was supposed to be doing.
Everything about the F-35 has been a pile of lies of bullshit since it was announced. And it seems like everybody (except the people selling it and the people who got conned into signing up for it) has know this for that entire time.
I hope everybody says "piss off" and walks away from the contract.
This plane is proving what people have been saying for the last decade -- that it was never going to live up to the promises made.
As a supposed air-superiority platform, this is an utter failure. I bet they don't even have the VTOL version working yet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
With performance that bad, it's a good thing we can only afford five or six of them.
Use the pieces to make something else. I hope they at least make the next one better looking. Who wants to be seen flying around in that bathtub? If you want safe VTOL, just put a second engine on the Harrier.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But how many US pilots have been in an actual dogfight since, say WWII. Most wars these days are no longer in the air, no large nations are fighting each other and ISIS doesn't have the capacity to fly an F16-like aircraft. Even during the Cold War, the most action was recon missions in enemy airspace which went largely unnoticed.
Sure, the F35 is a boondoggle but are these jets really necessary? The F16 seems to be holding up fine and the Russians, the only non-allied force with similar capabilities is flying mostly rust that is older than the F16 program.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
will it blend?
Technically the gun 'works'; but the vendor is too half-assed to actually provide drivers for the gun until some later revision, for which we will presumably pay more.
Optimists prefer to focus on the fact that, in order to preserve the oh-so-sexy-low-radar-signature design, the system only holds 200 rounds, so nobody expects much of it even when the pilot is able to use it.
And how many Americans could had a free education, better health care, etc etc etc etc etc on all that money spend on war machinery. It really makes me sad how f**ked up the priorities in this modern world are. And no, ISIS is not a thread to American ground. EVER!
The development money is gone. Who you blame the loss on is irrelevant to that. Emotional attachment to lost money is one of the biggest problems plaguing any large organization. The question isn't whether we should add money to a very expensive (but not a trillion dollars, that includes projected maintenance) project.
The question is, given the platform available right now is it worth it to spend money correcting deficiencies, or would it be more cost-effective to take another option, from re-engineering the F-15 to starting all over again. I don't know the answer to this question but by bringing up past cost as if it were relevant and by adding future costs the writer of this article showed a bias that makes me disregard the whole thing. This isn't a policy piece, it's a hit piece.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
It was designed to send money to certain locales and pockets. It's done a great job of it.
Not much of a plane tho.
The gun doesn't even work. Even if it did, the thing was not designed for close-in dogfighting, it was designed for internal payload supercruise or economic stimulus, depending on what we're talking about.
The jets in use around Vietnam weren't designed to dogfight either. Everyone thought they would shoot the enemy down with a missle from miles away. But wars have a funny way of not caring what your weapons were designed for. Dogfights happen.
That's not the full story on Monica.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/c...
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
When was the last time you've ever heard of a dogfight?
1999 in the Balkans though there may be ones I'm not aware of that are more recent.
The days of air-to-air combat are long gone.
There is no evidence to support this assertion.
And where air-to-air combat is still needed, long range missiles take care of it.
They thought the same thing in Vietnam and they were wrong.
"The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft."
Maybe the military should have paid for the $750 "rear camera package" that's already in wide use in minivans. For what the aircraft cost, it should have 360 degree spherical camera coverage with automatic threat identification so even if the pilot's not looking behind him, he'll get an alert when the camera detects an aircraft approaching from an angle where he can't see it.
... the idea was to have one plane do everything and of course the result was that it does everything poorly.
What you want is not one plane but maybe a dozen different types that all do different things.
The A10s are the tank buskers. Using the F35 for close ground support is dumb. The need to take off from a crap airfield which is something the marines like?... Boeing has some very cheap VTOL planes that should have taken that role up.
The british that refuse to put a catapult on their ships should just stick with the harrier until they get over that and put a catapult on their decks. Maybe the new magnetic ones will be more acceptable to them.
The idea I suppose was that if they had one plane they'd save money on maintenance. But that clearly hasn't happened. I'd cut losses and shift to more planes doing different roles.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We've managed to spend a trillion taxpayers dollars on an incredibly expensive airplane, which is being built by our friends. Our friends got their money. Right? I call that an unqualified success. Who gives a shit if it actually works?
Regards,
Your Elected Officials
What fucking planet do these military industrial parasites and hawks live on where they believe that the next War of Any Size will involve dogfighting? Fucking unbelievable the complete and total disconnect from reality.
Needs more cool soundtrack.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The super old MIG-29 can also kick it's arse.
Honestly Why the hell has this aircraft entered into use? It's a piece of crap from day one.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It can dogfight. It may be expensive as hell and already getting old as tech goes before its even rolled out officially, it may not be able to go toe-to-toe with Su-35 Flanker-Es or F-22 Raptors, PAK-FA or the supposed Chengdu J-20, it may not "technically" have Supercruise ability. But all this is academic...it is designed as a multirole, modular attack fighter: it can put up a fight that is risky for even the best fighter jets to commit to if forced to...and that is all that needs to be accomplished. In it's designed role it will act as an attacker flanked by air superiority badasses which as of right now is technically still the F-22 Raptor (that may not be true theoretically now, but still...). In its role as a piece in the air dominance puzzle it fits, it may not be pretty and getting old on the vine and almost ready to ship to the modern jet boneyard, but saying "it can't dogfight" is a stawman: it can, but isn't designed to be an air superiority jet. Its like saying "The Raptor can't attack infantry columns or submerged subs". Yeah...but it can make sure that other attack platforms in the air that can do that are 100% free to do so in air conditioned comfort.
And the US spends $1000 Billion+ on a plane, designed to kill. Imagine, if you can, a world without war, it's easy if you try.
...that the UK Government has reduced the order for the Naval version of the F35 to just 14 planes from its initial order of 138. To be shared (eventually) between TWO supercarriers! That aren't even BUILT yet!
Wait. Why has the order cost not changed??
Initial order for 138 airframes: $50m each. Just airframes. No support contracts, apparently sometime between 2006 and 2015 we mislaid our mechanical skillset in the Royal Navy and RAF. Maybe they went to Turkey for more secure positions (I hear scrap metal salvage is enjoying a massive boost over there - thank the Royal Navy for that one, who at the behest of the British Government sent our entire combat-ready sea force to be scrapped). Following many revisions and the butchering to nonexistence of our defence capability (we couldn't even launch a tactical nuke at the moment!), we eventually get to...
2015 Procurement (14 airframes (NO ENGINES!) and ongoing support contracts for all aircraft): $131m each + costs for spare parts fabrication -- $15m per engine, sold seperately!
Just in the FIRST YEAR, assuming that each aircraft has ONE hot and one spare engine, the new procurement would cost the SAME as the initial tentative order.
In the 2014 Congressional hearings concerning the F35 cost overruns, it was pointed out that while there was not one single combat-ready airframe in service, the project had ALREADY cost more than the ENTIRE GDP of Australia!
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Doesn't the F22 have the same issue? Either way a lot of money has been spent but are these even designed to be dog fighters?
http://www.google.com/m/search...
That's okay, AFAIK we're not at war against dogs.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
congress critter:ill fund the f35 but only if its in my state, and only if it uses whatever is in my macbook.
senate critter: make it fly faster than any jet we have, but also make it use this pork technology i funded in 2006 in my state.
congressional overlord: we need to fund a new jet fighter, we all agree on this, but i think we're overlooking a critical point. this figher needs lasers so it can beat chinese surface to air clam demons i heard about on fox news. use the lasers were building in senator porkpies state
senator porkpie: i stopped funding those things because special interests in my state swore they were blasphemous to jesus and part of the gay agenda
Congressman moneysworth: make the jet use stem cells but also make sure it can deliver food aid in case we need to send security forces to stabilize a region and win hearts and minds.
Senator drifty barnacle: ive served since the cleveland administration and i dont this new hamburger you all want to put in the kitchen...make sure the f35 still has katsup...
engineer: [screaming intensifies]
Good people go to bed earlier.
But how many US pilots have been in an actual dogfight since, say WWII.
Enough that the US Navy developed a school to teach air combat maneuvering (also known as dogfighting). You may have seen a movie about it.
Most wars these days are no longer in the air
That matters not one bit when you run into a war that does involve air to air combat. That's like saying most wars these days are no longer nuclear. Doesn't mean it will stay that way.
no large nations are fighting each other
There is no reason to assume it will remain that way. There are several large nations that it wouldn't be surprising at all to see go to war. India/Pakistan, India/China, China/Taiwan, China/Japan, US/Iran, Israel/Any-Neighbor, North Korean/South Korea, Russia/NATO and others are all potential hot spots.
If a war were to break up, is Dogfighting really "the" efficient way to take care of fighter? With all new modern weaponry (AAM, SAM, laser etc.) I'm not completely sure if this feature is still relevant in modern time.
I mean, the british may had the most advanced battleship of its time during WW2, they still got utterly destroyed by aircraft carrier.
Elok
It's becoming more obvious that the purpose of the JSF program isn't to produce a next-gen fighter jet, but rather to waste money under the pretext of producing a next-gen fighter jet. If they skinned it with bacon weave and built the airframe from ribs, the plane would still be less porcine than the program itself.
The pilot can't turn their head? Dozens of people involved in the program should have identified that fundamental problem long before any component was physically built.
The ghost of the F-22 is turning in its boneyard.
It was supposed to be the one plane that would do *everything* (or that's how it was sold).
It's supposed to replace the A-10, although it does close troop support poorly, and it's supposed to replace the F-16, although it cannot dogfight, and it's supposed to replace the Harrier, although it's VTOL/STOL capabilities are questionable at best.
The sad part is that America will be less safe with this aircraft, as it can't do anything well, except suck dollars through the turbine. A trillion dollar waste, but hey, keep cutting medicare and social programs, GOP!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The big red flag that nobody caught (since nobody actually reads the articles) is that the story is completely unsourced. Where did the author of this blog get his hands on this information? Why can't we see it? What's the name of it? When was it declassified? A quick google search finds the same story being echoed verbatim by the likes of the Daily Mail and others; all of which simply link back to this blog as the source. Until we see an actual source, it's bullshit - how are we supposed to know they didn't just make this up?
/. readerbase was supposed to be smart?
The article summary said "can't turn or climb fast enough" but the article itself showcases the pilot complaining about nose-rate only - i.e. turn rate. As anyone who knows anything about Air Combat Maneuvering can tell you, turn rate is the LEAST important aspect of maneuverability. Roll rate is far, far more important, as every aerodynamic maneuver aside from a loop begins with a roll. Aircraft with superior roll rate can shake better-turning fighters through maneuvers like the rolling scissors. Unsurprisingly, its through tactics like these that the F4F Wildcat held its own against the Japanese Zero, and when the Wildcat was up-engined to become the F6F Hellcat it dominated the Zero flat-out. The US Navy would later adopt the F4F Phantom, a fighter that eschewed turn-rate entirely in favor of absolutely insane thrust (the jet set several world speed records.) They were told this plane could not dogfight - and then pilots like Duke Cunningham defeated nimble little MiG-17s in close combat.
Once upon a time a group of industry experts who thought the Japanese had it right formed a clique named the "Lightweight Fighter Mafia," and their efforts eventually produced the F-16. Pleased with their accomplishment, they spent their time since then spewing BS about every single aircraft to come after it, including the F-18. To this day you hear people claiming the F-18 is a "turkey" and "can't dogfight" and that the navalized F-16 was passed over by the Navy due to sheer inter-service rivalry and pigheadedness. That this bullshit flies in the face of actual pilot accounts doesn't seem to slow them down a whit. The F-22 had its turn on the bullseye, and now it's the F-35s turn.
In light of the decades-old pattern of "sneer at the new expensive jet" popular amongst industry professionals and armchair warriors alike, a complete failure of the article to quote any opinion on the F-35s vertical maneuvering ability (the go-to counter to turnfighter tactics) and the simple fact that the source is completely undisclosed, I'm calling bullshit on this one - and on everyone who decided to sling out a pithy comment without doing a five-second bullshit check. I thought
Because it never will be coming.
You can't make a plane that does everything.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
There is some ceiling on US military spending beyond which they will not be allowed to go. This portion of this for weapons needs to be split in some manner between weapons necessary to enforce US foreign policy, and weapons spending with domestic political benefits. At the time the JSF boondoggle was getting underway, it seemed the US would be facing weak opposition in conflicts. That allowed spending on combat weapons to be restricted, and more to be allocated towards pork barrel projects like the JSF. Indeed, with less projected need for weapons used in warmongering, projects like the JSF were important to keep military spending near its permitted ceiling. The situation is now a bit different. To support US foreign policy, a credible deterrent against a resurgent Russia and increasingly aggressive China is now needed. The JSF may need to go to free up cash for real weapons systems.
fighters do to new, unique maneuver ability.
Col. Boyd must be turning over in his grave. Looks like the USAF is buying another very expensive crew bus...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
"Either that, or the money is really going somewhere else and the F-35 development program is a scam."
CHEMTRAILS!
"Negative, Ghost Rider, the pattern is full."
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Strike the JSF and call it the JSB, "Joint Strike Bomber" that kind kinda sorta maneuvers. Weight: 20,000 lbs for the F-16 and ~23,000 lbs for the F-35 Engine thrust (dry): F-16 29,500 lbs F-35 25,000 lbs So, the F-35 weighs more and has less thrust than a F-16. My math said whatdaya expect.
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.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Someone may have already posted this...
From this map you can see how widespread the $$$ is, and that there are so many congressional districts in the US benefitting from this program, to cancel or make changes to it now would be political suicide for the scumbag congressmen who initiated it.
60 Minutes did a decent job on the F-35 a while back, where the vibe from the Marine general, after being asked if he was going to get the F-35 operational in time was like that of one of Hitlers generals saying he would stop the Soviets after the disaster at Kursk...
Also, take a look at how many countries are already "in the pipe" on ordering for these. A lot.
The US and its allies better hope that when China finally decides to make their own high end fighter jets(which are currently based on Russian-made Sukhoi jets), based on all they have learned after waltzing into the US DOD databases, that it is as much of a CF as the F-35 is.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Okey everyone seems to be to caught up with this report that they forgot to ask themselves if it's true in the first place.
The basis of this report was from a post on "War is boring". A blog by David Axe who is a known F-35 critic.
David cites an "unnamed pilot" who gave him "secret documents" that says the F-35 is inferior to the F-16.
And we are simply supposed to believe this because.....why again?
There are many pilots who refute this claim.
The Norwegian airforce claims that in A-A configuration the F-35 is just as good or better than the F-16.
Topgun instructor Lt.Col Matthew Kelly and Brig Gen. Gary Thomas say that the F-35 will be comfortable at any type of dogfight
Read here:
http://www.defensenews.com/article/20110516/DEFSECT01/105160302/F-35-Tests-Proceed-Revealing-F-18-Like-Performance
Test pilot Billy Flynn who flew F-16s, F/A-18s and Typhoons say that F-35 can match those aircraft in any maneuvering metric and surpass them in some.
Lt Col Lee Kloss went on record that the F-35A has superior maneuverability than a loaded block 50/52 viper.
Read here:
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2012/05/eglin-f-35-initial-cadre-start/
These guys have staked their names and reputation on their claims.
But here we are believing some blogger with his imaginary friend who says otherwise.
Like so many other "tools" these days, this one attempts to provide advantages via some form of automation -- be it in terms of the structural aircraft, or the features within it. Every time anyone ever focuses on such a goal, they reduce the required expertise of the user -- in this case the pilot -- substantially.
Everyone always thinks that's a good thing -- if it can be operated with less learning, then it can be operated by more users. They always forget that every advantage is a sacrifice of some other advantage. If it can be operated with less expertise, then there is less expertise that can be learned.
The end result is almost always the same. A rookie pilot can operate better, sooner, and an expert pilot can do less.
That's fine with self-assemble furniture. It sucks with military applications like this one. I'm always for tools that empower the operator into a god. Imagine a fighter jet, requires many many more hours of learning to master, but that allows the expert pilot to do so much more.
In my head, that's a very lean aircraft, bordering on ultralight. It's also an aircraft with guns that point backwards -- one day someone will explain to me why we love dog fighting so much that we insist on being unable to kill the enemy right behind us. I digress.
I'm confident that an expert pilot doesn't want a fancy helmet HUD at all. He just wants to be able to see -- gauges, backwards, what's going on. And I'm certain that an expert pilot knows most of what's going on without his eyes -- I'm sure his left buttock gives him more information than any HUD ever could.
Presumably when you are very far away and invisible to the enemy, you fly back to where ever you came from, reload, and repeat until the enemy has no planes left. I think this is generally the idea behind the whole F-35 concept.
The other idea (which is why it is so expensive) is in a supposed cost saving measure (lol!) in that rather than design, build, and support multiple airframes designed to do different things, you only make one that does them all. The draw back being that doing them all really well (like dogfighting) is a bit unrealistic. Compounding the issue is functionality creep, where you had various stakeholders (different branches of the armed forces) start adding additional requirements making designing variants anyway such as the vertical takeoff model, which further exacerbates an already blown budget.
Anyway the enemy counter to this, is to build sufficiently good planes, that are very cheap, so that in such an encounter, you just throw pilots at the F-35 until they run out of firepower, then continue advancing to targets while they are rearming. The two things going against this is the ratio of cheap plans to available F-35 and number of armaments they might carry, and also the moral of your pilots flying the planes. Pilots are pretty autonomous insofar as soldiers go, as seen in the gulf war, sufficiently moraless pilots would just fly over and defect rather than just get blown out of the sky. The famous instances of this were the Russians in WWII throwing soldiers into the meat grinder, then having moral officers waiting behind them should they decide to retreat... Can't see that working with air warfare, and even if it did, then you have to have some moral planes trailing the possible defectors... Then again you could build in remote detonators, however at that point having superior electronic warfare (which the US and F-35 likely does), you could possible win any engagement from afar with a single button press...
Oh look, another F-35 hack job by David Axe from War is Boring. Maybe if he wasn't so consistently full of shit, or actually had a source to quote I'd bother to read his blog.
First, it's a strike fighter, why the fuck are people getting so worked up about dog-fighting? You know that these planes are not yet rated for their full flight envelope, or you would if Axe did his job. You would also know that the F-35 has more than twice the range of the F-16. Imagine that, a strike fighter that carrier more weight in fuel than point defence fighter. It's almost like dog-fighting wasn't the primary design goal. You know what else can't dogfight? The A-10 that guys like Axe are always furiously masturbating over.
Second, this isn't the 1970s. Sure dogfights may happen, but a hell of a lot less than BVR attacks and SAMs. And before anyone starts talking about Vietnam, go look at the numbers for that war. The little blurb you got about F-4 Phantom from watching Top Gun is wrong. For every plane lost in a dogfight, two were lost to AA missiles, and five were lost to SAMs, in the fucking 70s. Lord knows the world hasn't had any other conflicts since then from which to draw lessons.
Third, it's the most expensive plane program in history at $1T? No shit, the program is to build and maintain almost 3,000 fighters over 50 years. In fact is "almost" as expensive as the $3T to keep doing what we are doing: pumping out a half dozen different air frames with no common supply chain so that each one can be good at exactly one mission. But if you still think it is too expensive, I have to ask, compared to what? The F-22? Not even close. The Eurofighter? Lol. Russia's latest vaporware? Sure if they ever build more than some prototypes. Some last generation platform with no stealth? Sure that will make a great strike platform against an air defence system in contested air space. The money you save on a "cheap" F-16 Block 60s at $70 million vs an F-35A at ~$85-90 million, won't even cover the cost of all the extra shit you have to attach to it to F-16 to get the same performance.
These endless hack jobs on the F-35 project need to stop. This isn't 2008, we have over 100 of these things flying already. They are a mostly known quantity, and they greatly out perform the systems they are going to replace.
OK, what is the full story?
emt 377 emt 4
And, conversely, we have always known the A-10 Warthog is a good plane.
Time to call it a day.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The F-35 is a ground attack fighter - not a dog fighter. The F-22 Raptor is the bleeding edge dog fighter. The problem is that the F-22 program was cancelled due to budget issues. Issue is not a design flaw in the F-35.
Someone you trust is one of us.
ALL AF bases and the majority of the the other services did away with base stickers several years ago and now everyone in the vehicle over the age of 16 has to display a valid Government issued ID to get on base. That being said it is still relatively to get onto most installations but the steal a vehicle with a base sticker thing no longer applies.
But not having enough room in the cockpit to turn your head is bad. Really bad.
The last time we engaged in any real dogfights was Vietnam.
Demonstrably not true.
The Iraqis, who had the planes to dogfight us in the first war, fled to Iran because they figured they'd die of massed missile fire before they got into cannon range.
Also factually wrong. They did engage in some dogfights at least at first though it didn't take long for the US to assert complete air superiority.
is Dogfighting really "the" efficient way to take care of fighter?
Who said it had anything to do with efficiency? Of course you'd rather stand off and shoot them down with a missile but that's not always possible. Rules of engagement and emergent situations in war sometimes result in the fight getting close and ugly.
With all new modern weaponry (AAM, SAM, laser etc.) I'm not completely sure if this feature is still relevant in modern time.
They've been saying that since Vietnam and there is a reason fighters still have cannons.
Seriously slashdot? What is this crap?
They are slowly fucking up the front page design, one annoying step after another.
Inspired by the stealth design of the F-35 ('Operation Boiled Frog'), the Lockheed-Dice production team are hoping to fly under the radar by sneakily changing the front page one element at a time, so that in 6 months time the site will look exactly like Beta. However, as in the case of the F-35, the final product will be superficially flashy, but less functional than the previous design.
And since when was the last time dogfights were a thing? This isn't the Vietnam era anymore. We have something these days called "missiles", and they work pretty damn good-- good enough that you can swat that annoying guy before he gets anywhere near you with a gun.
Well that does it. I'm canceling my order of three of these F-35 jets to defend our country of Vermont.
The F-16 was a fine aircraft. The F-35 and F-22 have been nothing but disappointments. Neither have lived up to their billing. I think the insider bidding that Lockheed did in order to get those two contracts and the unfulfilled promises of their products should be reason enough to not only revoke the contracts, but they should pay the tax payers back (with interest) and they should be banned from future aviation contracts of this size for at least the next 3 projects. The amount of waste in military contracts and needless spending on hapless projects is insane. Wake up.
The budget for this dwarfs even the most bloated estimate of a mission to Mars. Or a permanent moon base with a focus on research on possible space resources (water, metals, maybe even He3). Pie in the sky projects that have possibility of bearing fruit.
I agree the article seems dodgy at best. But this is still precious dollars devoted to a dubious goal. On the other hand if I were a military hawk, I'd insist on advanced drone development with pilots sitting in a heavy-bomber sized mothership (I don't want a totally autonomous Skynet system).
It is well known, but it is not WWII anymore, who needs dogfights or fist fights when rocket launch distances can be hundreds of miles?
This is US taxpayer dollars at work, but it may not be that bad, actually.
US economy works through permanent Keynesian stimulus on military industry. Public money pored here irrigate the whole economy, even after profit has been made, since the thing is really big: US accounts for 50% of worldwide military expenses.
The problem is that having huge military expenses means you have a huge military power, and the temptation to use it, which will make everyone in the world hate you. The F35 is a solution to this problem: big expenses, but no military power gained. This is a very clever move.
Over 1 trillion dollars for a war toy that doesn't even work is astounding. For comparison that's 10 Apollo programs. I don't mean 10 rockets, I mean ten times the whole research, development and 17 missions. For that kind of money, we could have gone to Mars or solved cheap solar energy.
Biggest waste of money in a long time. Besides what everyone else has already said, this is a useless plane for Canada, yet our goverment has been pursuing it for over 10 years. (Conservatives now, Liberals previously) In the arctic it helps to have a reliable aircraft. The old CF-18s have two engines so they can survive an engine failure, the new, wonderful F-35s have a single engine and don't work particularly well in cold temperatures. If the engine fails, you crash. So they suck for Canada, but I guess they are intended for use overseas, when we are helping the US to bomb miscellaneous countries. But apparently they suck for that too. Oh, and the software sucks, and we depend on the US to fix it.
I say cancel the bloody project and give money to Canadian companies to produce our own plane. We have companies and people with the experience and skills to do this, and it might just create a few more jobs. We should have done this 20 years ago, but it's not too late. And when we finally get a good product, we owe no-one, and maybe, if they ask nice, we might sell them to the US. But we'll probably have too many orders from Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, so the US will have to wait. They do have a shady credit history after all.
The article is more than a little disingenuous. A more appropriate title would have been "The F35 multirole strike fighter can't dogfight against one of the greatest air superiority dog fighting planes every designed".
The F22 is the competition for the F16. The F35 is the competition for the F18 Superhornet and the A10.
No shit the F35 can't compete against the F16. It was never designed to.
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These stories always happen during the adolescence of the development lifecycle of expensive airframes. It happened with the Osprey, the F-15, and even the F-16, arguably the most successful of the affordable fighters.
The F-35 will evolve into a competent fighter as they always do. We really don't want different fighters for each branch of the military anymore.
Kriston
It's just trickery to keep the Chinese back.
"Here. Look at our latest fighter plan plans! This is going to be the shit! Why don't you make a bunch of these suckers?"
> The F-35 will evolve into a competent fighter as they always do.
What makes you think this? While the existing investment is so large that many contractors and military don't dare let it fail, the numbers of design failures seem to be unusually large and more seem to be revealed as time goes on, without resolving the original problems. Some of the new problems seem to be due to attempted solutions of the old problems. (The lightning strike vulnerability seems to be due to fuel tank redesigns to handle the larger power plant, for example.)
This is a common problem with "quantum leap" project designs. All the components have to work at the same time, almost perfectly, without opportunities to fundamentally evolve or refine the designs for specific targets. And this is what made the Space Shuttle such a problematic craft. It could do a very few things better than any other craft, but it could not _possibly_ live up to its expectations of cost, of safety, and of frequent flight. It just had too many complex, compromising kludges. And by effectively siphoning the national budget away from alternative craft for alternative missions, well, look at the current state of US manned spacecraft.
The F-15 and F-16s are still viable fighters where the F-35 is a mess trying to be everything and the kitchen sink.
Does anyone actually expect to dogfight in this day and age? This isn't WW2 or Vietnam anymore, we have missiles, and lots of them.
Either we're fighting someone with 20 to 40 year old tech (ie Iraq) and just pew pewing missiles at their planes from a good distance away, probably while they are still parked on the runway.
Or if we're dealing with a real threat like Russia or China, then we'd just be using nukes or the biggest non-nuke missiles/rockets/bombs we have, again, trying to get the planes while on the ground. Moving in with real planes to clean up once we're pretty sure we knocked out 80+ % of their air capability. And then, missiles.
-- I only play video games, not to be confused with real military strategy.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The F-35 is not built as a dogfighter, it is a ground pounder. Engaging enemy fighters is at most a secondary mission. The F-22 is designed to engage enemy aircraft. And the $1T number is old data, based upon assumptions already shown to not be valid. Plus, it is a lfetime projection for the aircraft, as long as 30 years or more of operation.
Watching the test videos it suffered from the same design flaws as the Harrier in its vertical take off. It also had to take off the cowling to even achieve vertical take off. But it was much closer to budget and it was an interesting manufacturing technique. Boeing has a bunch of un-manned craft which is the wave of the future anyways as man has many more limits on G-Forces than the mechanical systems.
1 trillion is being wasted for useless military crap equipment, but we happily discarded the build of the OWL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telescope) for 1.5bn......and countless other scientific projects... sad sad humanity.......
Will the idiot culprits that allow this gross waste to happen PLEASE get their heads OUT of their asses?!?!?! A TRILLION dollars? Are you kidding?!?!?! I can think of LOTS of far more important needs that would be well served with a quarter of that! Education! Health Care! Social Security! Jobs! What good can come out of spending ridiculous amounts of valuable money and resources just to build killing machines?! What about upgrading F-16s for less money? And how about drone tech? Am I blind to something here? Am I naive? What am I missing here? Lockheed has swindled to get the project when Boeing had a much better plan. It made no sense that Lockheed got the contract in the first place. I say to lock-up the criminal creeps that cause these foopas! Get them OUT of a position with the control of these things.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Can Hosts dogfight? No? Then you're completely off topic in this discussion about the F-35.
Take it to the proper place or drop it.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
LOL, the F-35 pilot is probably just pissed that he got splashed by an F-16. The fighter pilot community is an egotistic one, but that's what makes them the best.