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The WWII-Era Inspired Plane Giving the F-35 a Run For Its Money
schwit1 writes: The US military almost adopted the A-29 Super Tucano, a $4 million turboprop airplane reminiscent of WWII-era designs that troops wanted, commanders said was "urgently needed," but Congress refused to buy. "It's a great plane," says recently retired Air Force Lt. Col. Shamsher Mann, an F-16 pilot who has flown A-29s. "Pilots love it. It handles beautifully, sips gas, and can go anywhere. If you want to get into the fight and mix it up with the guys on the ground, the Super T is a great platform." The Super Tucano provided the "low-end" air-to-ground attack capability the United States simply never had in Afghanistan-a capability the Pentagon's F-35 could never hope to replicate.
does the A-29 have VSTOL capabilities???
It's not a fly high-go fast toy. They've been trying to kill the A-10 for 30 years because they don't like it.
Kind of like the competition for the F35 design. I took one look at the prototypes and knew Boeing wouldn't win. Their plane was ugly, not sexy.
If I was taking on a steep, rugged, slippery trail in the middle of nowhere, I'd want something like a Jeep. Four wheel drive, high ground clearance, rugged tires, etc. If I was on a race track and was looking for high speed performance, handling and braking, I'd take a Corvette.
(feel free to change the marques of the off road vehicle and sports car to suit your tastes and/or nationality.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If we could only double the price of the F-35 I'm sure it would be..... better.
Screw changing anything, just stick with the A-10 Warthog, a proven worthy opponent on the battlefield (and a beautiful, tough aircraft to boot!)
Can someone offer an explanation as to why this plane has not been adopted? I don't know anything about it.
It'd be a real shame if it's really as simple as, "This is a great plane that's relatively cheap, and both military pilots and their commanders see these planes as serving a real purpose. Congress won't go for it though, because they want a super-expensive cool-looking boondoggle." But is it? Because this is one of those things where I'm suspicious that there's at least some kind of counter-argument.
The reason this is being killed is its from Embraer; and Embraer has no issue with selling to everyone, including potential adversaries. Congress wants them to use the T6 Texan II based system which is local(USA and Switserland instead of purely Brazil).
Besides all that all the A-29 Super Tucano's that the Air Force was going to buy were to be given to the Afgani air force.
Can we PLEASE cancel the F-35 and develop airplanes we can actually use? The F-35 reminds me of a sci-fi book where alien horde A has primitive ships, but a lot of them. They also are not too bright and throw more ships at every battle. Their enemies, alien horde B, keep coming up with new inventions and more amazing ships. Their ships get so expensive even losing a few bankrupts them and they surrender.
by how pitiful that bastard Portuguese in disguise is. Give me a birddog and a 45 and I'm going to war motherfuckers!
Given that a $4million unit cost, and availability of functioning models, makes it virtually impossible to piss away money as fast as you can with the F-35, I can't really argue with the notion that it 'gives it a run for its money'; but only if the expected use case is strafing hapless peasants with zero air force and maybe a technical with a couple of 20mm cannons for AA.
There's something a bit...chilling...about a procurement process so out of control that attempting to keep the cost and sophistication of hardware intended for beating down a force 75 years behind the times is a major political battle, and not even a winnable one.
A turboprop sure could be a fabulous close ground support aircraft. So could the A-10, and we already have those.
Trying to develop the F-35 into a jack-of-all-trades is proving to top expensive, too difficult, too much. We really should reconsider some of the multiple roles projected for the F-35, and keep the A-10.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The super tucano is a thoroughly modern plane that happens to use a propeller.
Who wrote this shit?
It's not a "WWII-era" plane just because it has a propeller. Is the Humvee WWII-era because it has wheels??
A bit more than 40 years ago, the military tried to develop a one-size-fits-all aircraft to be used by all of the services to replace the F-4 Phantom. It was the F-111. It ended up being too big to launch from aircraft carriers and not suitable for dog-fighting, but people thought it was cool because of the swing-wings. An expensive plane that ended up with little real use. There is also a fascination with technology in the military, with the notion that new tech gives you a significant edge. When you have to develop new tech throughout the platform, it gets expensive and inevitably you find flaws and problems you just can't overcome. Not that this doesn't happen in the private sector either. Remember the Apple Newton?
As for the A-29, pilots loved the A-10, which was essentially a flying tank. It had an armoured cockpit and was the first aircraft engineered to be shot at and keep fighting. What's not to love?
The brazilian Super Tucano was designed on the '80s, with a turboprop from the begining, with modern avionics and even got RWR and FLIR equipment, it only resembles a P-51, but it's not a WWII era airplane at all.
but a prop aircraft being smaller and lighter does not require long runways...
The DOD is buying the F-35 and that's that.
Yesss massa!
I'm not sure what you think close air support is, but it isn't the B-52 strategic bomber.
Because the F-35 is a money pit that is under-performing. If it was able to deliver nobody would care.
Hey Marillyn, welcome to /.
Obviously you've never been taking incoming and wishing you had an A-10 on hand. All an F-16 does, or an F-35 will do, is quite things down for a few minutes before it goes away. With an A-10 you can actually catch some sleep.
My very first job was maintenance on A-10 Warthogs courtesy of the USAF. I can tell you know that I've seen a lot of bird maintenance, and the turboprops are stone cold reliable and very cost effective. It's a myth that militaries and drud interdiction forces need whizbang jets. Ask the Germans and the Japanese what good pilots in "slow" prop jobs can do. Modern turboprops are cheaper to make, fly, train with, and the maintenance and parts are orders or magnitude less expensive.
To this day, I prefer and choose to fly on turboprop planes if and whenever possible. My most memorable flights have been on prop planes, like flying over the Atlantic and Pacific on C-130s, island hopping in the Atlantic on Bombadier Dash 8 turboprops. Nothing says fun like turboprops.
The PA-48 Enforcer is a gorgeous plane. Basically an armored, tubo-propped P51 Mustang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A-29 Super Tucano is not a WWII Era plane! that headline is a flat out lie.
Also the A-29 would beat a F-35 for COIN. It is useless for any other mission.
Good GRIEF! The editors on Slashdot are now at the FOX News/MSNBC/Nation Enquire level!
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The plane is coming in under cost. Calling it underperforming is a retarded statement. The plane is meeting all of it's testing goals and only one model has reached IOC capability. It hasn't even been put in a real situation where it would need to "deliver".
Obviously that isn't it's intended mission but it has been used in a similar role in the past. It can do something close to CAS when it carries guided munitions and loiters over a target area. The Apaches, Reapers/Grey Eagles, and AC-130 can do what the Tucano and A-10 do and they also do other stuff.
They have thousands of Super T's in their Air Force. It is an allied nation. So call them to join the fray. They are excellent pilots too.
These articles keep appearing because the F-35 is over budget, behind schedule, and with no end in sight with all the problems that keep cropping up.
From the the cockpit being to small for the pilot to look behind him with all those fancy new VR glasses, to the fuel just streaming out of the tanks when on the ground, to it having the agility of a bagger 288.
The Super Tucano is no more a "WWII-era" plane than the F-35 is, it first flew in the late 1990s, and is derived from the 1980s Tucano. The F-35 began development at about the same time as the Super Tucano ...
About all that's "reminiscent" of WWII designs is that is has a prop ... but then the first pure jets flew in WWII too.
The DOD is buying the F-35 and that's that.
You are missing the F-35's major feature. It's just bad enough to be exportable. We (Lockheed) can sell these to any two bit government. It's good enough to elicit an "Oooooo! Shiny!" response from them. But it's not quite as good as the F-22. So if we should ever have to face them in air-to-air combat, we can still knock them down like flies.
Have gnu, will travel.
The plane is coming in under cost. The plane is also supposed to be having these various problems you mention because it is still in testing. Only one model has reached IOC and that is still considered a part of the testing phase of the aircraft. The plane is also on schedule and the schedule wouldn't really matter anyway since no other country is fielding fifth generation fighters in significant numbers and we already have one that is fully operational (F-22).
Only if by cost you mean the US GDP.
the Arrow!
The U.S. GDP is about 18 Trillion dollars this year. The total cost of the F-35 Program is 1 Trillion and that is spread over a 50 year period. I don't really understand your comment.
Internet of Jets?
The F35 isn't a money pit. It's a good investment. It's crap tech jammed into a pretty package with a lot of marketing and money behind it. When the US begins selling it to foreign powers, they'll pay handsomely for something that is already long since outclassed.
But to get to that point, the US has to "sell it" as the Greatest Thing Evar(tm) in order to get those foreign powers to take the bait. They might even have to "use" them, and maybe even "demonstrate their superiority". All of this will be (and already is) carefully scripted.
What we're getting right now is the sales pitch for the US population that doesn't want to see their taxes wasted on this thing. They're showing off how marginally great it is, so that when it turns out to be pure crap, everyone can feel superior and smug about making the right call.
Give it another two or three years, and you'll start seeing it vastly outclassing other fighters in these promotional scripted combat scenarios. These will be downplayed in the US media, because remember, the US doesn't actually want these. They just want to make sure that the enemy uses these because they're easy pickings. They need to keep the tax base from becoming cheerleaders for this POS.
After that, it will go on sale. Foreign powers will line up around the globe to buy them. They will be utterly useless. And the US will be many (non-metric) shit-tons richer in any area where they build parts for this boondoggle. Which is every area of the US. By design.
A fool and his money are soon parted. This holds true for entire nations just as much as it does for individuals.
They saw service in Viet Nam including shooting down Mig-17s.
Screw changing anything, just stick with the A-10 Warthog, a proven worthy opponent on the battlefield (and a beautiful, tough aircraft to boot!)
No, update the A-10. Include folding wings, sturdier landing gear and a tail hook so that it can be aircraft carrier capable. Then the Marines will be allowed to fly it. Note that the Marines believe that aircraft exist for one and only one reason, to support the Infantry. Marine pilots had to become qualified infantry officers before they were even allowed to go to flight school. The A-10 is a perfect fit for Marine culture, from privates to generals to the commandant; but the Navy so no because of it not being carrier capable.
It was modded as a joke, but turning out more and more true:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
Table-ized A.I.
The total cost of the F-35 Program is 1 Trillion
The big dig cost 24.3 billion dollars. We could have used that money to refurbish a heck of a lot of our run down urban infrastructure?
When you spend money on defense you also have to determine the value of the assets you are protecting. If you reduce their value to zero through neglect then you don't have anything to defend.
I'm interested in the F-35, and I have been reading about it. There is so much noise that it's hard to sift through all of it. It doesn't help that I'm not any sort of military expert.
I have read that the F-35 is disaster piled upon disaster, and I have read that the F-35 is "retiring risks" and converting naysayers into believers. I have read that the F-35 is incredibly expensive to operate, and I have read that it was designed for easy maintenance and that it will save big money in the long run on operating costs. I have read that the design of the F-35 was compromised by the need for a lift fan on the B variant, and I have read that the plane would have been just as wide without the B variant because of the design of the enclosed weapons bay. In short, I keep reading things and then reading the exact opposite from some other source.
Here's what I think I have figured out.
First, the F-35 had better work because at this point we are stuck with it. The old planes are old and getting more expensive to maintain, and in the long run the F-35 is the only reasonable option (but only if it works... if it doesn't do the mission, it is not a "reasonable option"). The Obama administration shut down the F-22 production lines on the theory that we only need a handful of air superiority fighters, and the money would be better spent on the F-35 (and the Growler, according to Wikipedia). It takes forever to make a new plane, and we really don't have a plan B (or "plane B") ready to go. Also, the USA as a strategy would rather spend more money on planes than lose the lives of pilots; it might be cheaper to buy upgraded older planes, but if the "fifth generation fighter" thing works out, and future battlefields increasingly have anti-air missiles, the F-35 might have lower losses in combat than older plane designs.
Second, the F-35 may not be horribly expensive. Right now I don't care about sunk costs... cancelling the F-35 won't get the sunk costs back. All that really matters is the "fly-away cost", the cost to build and equip a new plane, and the F-35 doesn't seem completely unreasonable there (it's now under $100 million for the A variant and trending down). One of the remaining risks is whether production can scale up enough to make F-35s as fast as everyone wants them made, but if that scale-up happens costs will fall further. Again, the big question mark is operating expenses and reliability. If the F-35 needs so much maintenance that it can't fly very often, then it was a bad idea. (And by the way, next time the Pentagon wants to make a new weapons system, then I will be very interested in the sunk costs of this one.)
Third, I'm a cautious believer in the ability of the F-35 to do the missions as long as it's not in the hangar being repaired. It can't win a dogfight with an F-16, but that was never its mission (send an F-22 for that). It basically needs to be able to carry sensors, computers, radios, and missiles, fly long distances, and be a little bit stealthy. I think it can do those things; and once you have the plane, you can upgrade it by improving subsystems. I know, half a century ago, the end of dogfighting was prematurely announced, but with modern missiles and with the stealth features, I think the F-35 will be able to defend itself.
Fourth, I'm not completely certain that the F-35 will be useless for close-air support. The fans of the F-35 claim that the A-10 can't be used effectively against people with any anti-air missiles including shoulder-fired ones; that much of the time in recent years, the A-10 was required to operate from high altitude to avoid being shot down by missiles. The F-35 is not going to fly low and slow over a battlefield and shoot things with a gun, but it could fly past and fire off precision guided munitions, which should work. One thing is for sure: the alleged upcoming test between A-10 and F-35 for close-air support will include simulated anti-air missiles, because if it didn't the A-10 would totally win.
Fifth, I
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
It is when you equip it with cruise missiles and JDAMs...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The F35 isn't a money pit. It's a good investment.
"good" is relative, It doesn't mean "best". A more prudent investment would be one in our own infrastructure. With a trillion dollars we could have a "big dig" type infrastructure improvement in every american city.
The plane is coming in under cost.
1997 projected cost per plane: $113 million (in 2015 dollars)
2015 projected cost per plane: $178 million
sure you can bring it under cost if you keep moving the goalposts
That doesn't even include the B-52, B-1, B-2 and other bombers that will be procured in the future.
Good luck buying any of those in the future.
B-52 stopped being produced in 62
B-1 in 88
B-2 in 2000
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The A-29 is in now way "inspired: by WWII in anyway, shape, or form.
In WWII you did not have COIN aircraft at all. The ground attack aircraft used by the US where in large part fighters the USAC found that single engine attack aircraft were not as flexible as fighters like the P-47. 51, and 38. The navy did have the SDB, TBM, but for close support the F4F, F6F, and F4U where king.
The only thing WWII about the A-29 is that it has a prop. Guess what lots of airplanes still use props. Most WWII aircraft where taildraggers, "with a few exceptions" while the A-29 uses tricycle gear. All combat aircraft in WWII used piston engines while the A-29 uses a turboprop!
Frankly the whole story is bollocks from start to finish but the headline is still pure manure.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I drive on the roads and bridges everyday and the infrastructure seems fine. Go take a look at the amount of money we have spent on infrastructure in the past 15 years and it probably is more than the total cost of the F-35 program. The ARRA 2009 alone added 100 billion to infrastructure spending. We're spending plenty of money on infrastructure in the U.S. There are construction projects going on everyday all around the country.
Pre 9/11 the public had little tolerance for losing soldiers. So stealth, drones, and cruise missiles became popular because you could kill brown people without putting out boys in harms way and everyone was happy. After 9/11 people don't care to much about our boys as long as we kill lots of brown people. So it's dumb to have expensive highly survivable aircraft. What we need is lots of cheap planes that can carry lots of dumb bombs. When was the last time you saw a military death on the news? It kind of stopped once Obama was elected.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
See you admitted that it costs 1 TRILLION dollars.
A turbo-prop-based highly-evolved P-51 variant. Probably would also be better than an F-35 in a COIN role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_PA-48_Enforcer
The plane is coming in under cost.
Oh, Really?
The plane is also supposed to be having these various problems you mention because it is still in testing.
Oops. You're not supposed to be doing that anymore.
The plane is also on schedule
Right. Which schedule? The one they made last week?
Good. So we're spending trillions of dollars on technology we don't need. An excellent, fiscally responsible approach to defense spending.
For a troll, you're not so smart. Use arguments that are harder to pick apart.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I was rooting for Boeing. Their plane design was much simpler and cheaper. Meaning, maintenance would be easier and it shouldn't break down as much.
Lockheed's has that shaft and doors and a lot of fancy over-engineered shit that's going to break. The services are going to need twice as many planes as they think they need: one to fly and one to be in the shop.
The F-35 is the US military's 1970s Jaguar.
You seem to be making the common mistake that an "F" designation necessarily means the aircraft is a fighter designed to mix it up with other fighters. That is not true. Sometimes tactical bombers get the "F" designation, F-111 and F-117 for example. The F-111 was designed for deep strikes behind enemy lines behind a defensive line of fighters and surface to air missiles. The idea was that extreme low altitude flight, computer assisted nap of the earth, would allow the F-111 to avoid SAM radar; and that high speed at these altitudes would help to avoid fighters which were generally less capable at low altitudes. That was the "intent" of the F-111, it was not an F-4 replacement.
Now the F-111 may have also had some fighter roles in mind, but such were more like intercepting Soviet bombers coming south from the north pole. Or in the Navy's version of the scenario intercepting Soviet bombers heading towards a carrier. Note quite a fighter-on-fighter scenarios.
And the F-35 is a royal piece of "shite".
For the price of one F-35, you can get 10-20 better planes, with better fuel profiles, which extend your operational range.
Adapt. The world's not waiting for you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We get it, you work for a company building parts for the F-35. Why do I say that, because anyone not receiving some sort of benefit from the boondoggle know as F-35 knows it is a waste of money. I am a veteran and I can tell you right now that the F-35 is a COLOSSAL WASTE OF MONEY.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolycus_%28submarine_detector%29
Is that with the aircraft intact or is it an expensive crater creator?
You already have the MQ-9 Reaper, a similar aircraft in many respects to the A-29, including price, but with the crucial factor of not having to put a pilot in harms way.
I work in the transportation field. AFAIK I don't receive any benefits from any company involved in F-35 production.
Yeah. You're using two different figures and one includes development cost and one doesn't. Try again.
Then the Army should tell the Air Force to take a hike and fly them itself.
sips gas, and can go anywhere
I don't really understand this statement: it has a much smaller range than the F-35 (by every measurement, even combat range), and is less than a third as fast. It has far more loiter time, but the F-35 isn't intended for that role.
I think the F-35 is a joke, mind you, and should never have been built (and I still hope that we don't end up buying any in Canada) but I'm not sure why the A-29 would be considered in any way a replacement. It sounds more like it's a replacement for the A10, and it's not clear to me how it's better than the A10.
Let me see if I get this straight: a trainer airplane first flown 30 years ago in Brazil beats the American state of the art and for a minuscule fraction of the cost? What a brave world we live in!
It can't survive against a modern air defense system; slow and reflective, it's a sitting duck to any radar guided SAM.
We can't afford to have two air forces, one for half-assed wars we're not willing to win in shitholes, plus another air force on par with China and Russia. So, we've got to pick one to buy, an buying one that would lose a war with an expansionist near-peer adversary seems really fucking stupid.
The F-35 is about 3x as fast, has 2x the range, more hardpoints, more carry capacity and considerably more stealthy. Doubtless this other aircraft is far more suitable for certain support roles (the vids say low intensity environments) and a LOT cheaper but I doubt that there is much intersection with the sorts of roles the F-35 is envisaged for.
When one F-35 can outcompete four A-10s for *AIR* superiority.
A lot of talk is made about how great these planes are, but keep in mind even with 'superior' capabilities numbers can outperform tech, especially where ordinance is limited.
500 rounds of .50 caliber ammo aren't going to do you much against a horde of 1000 people armed with nothing more than their fists and less fear of death than failure.
The A-29 has been selected by the USAF for use by the Afghanistan military. From the actual article (http://www.builtforthemission.com/jax/bftm.nsf?Open):
"As the aircraft selected for the LAS program, the A-29 Super Tucano will be used to provide light air support, reconnaissance and training capabilities to the Afghanistan military."
The Afghanistan military has a very specific set of needs. They need an aircraft for a very specific ground support mission, and they need an inexpensive aircraft, but to acquire and to maintain. The F-35 does not fit those criteria. They do not need a multi-role, multi-service fighter that incorporates stealth capability or supersonic performance. The title of the post is "click-bait." There was never any chance for the F-35 to be selected for this particular mission.
I dislike the "we could use this to fix our infrastructure" argument.
I would be closer to being rich if I got your salary in addition to my own. My guess is that our respective employers have a reason for paying you for what you do, and not paying me double for doing more of what I do.
We should spend money on infrastructure, but we need to be careful here and understand that there is a mission that needs to be completed.
My problem with the F-35 isn't that I don't believe in the mission, it's that the F-35 costs too much to not fulfill its mission parameters. I don't have a problem with a 1 trillion dollar fighter if we need one and it does what it needs to do.
If there is waste in that program, it needs to be dealt with, but we're going to need a fifth generation strike aircraft from somewhere. I like the A-10, but it does have its disadvantages as well. It is meant for busting Soviet tanks in Central Europe, and that makes it superlative at ground support, but it is extremely specialized at that. We either choose a new plane or keep the old one, but we can't do both. And my vote is for the new one, as long as it works.
Let's not get caught by history again. Yeah, we're fighting bush wars now. This isn't the end of history. It is very possible for us to fight a modern war against top level opponents in the future. China is working hard to become that kind of threat. They're behind, but they won't always be, especially if we keep looking back.
It is a stupid story based on previous generation tech. motivated by the usual f-35 hate which is mostly political and counter factual. The year is 2015 and bombs have an accuracy of a meter or less and can contain cameras with real-time feeds that allow for premature detonation or re-targeting should the target move or turn out to be friendly, or civilians are spotted moving toward the target. The entire premise of the story is false.
Isn't this article an avenue for the defense contractor to reach out to the public and whine that they didn't get their contract? I get it, turbo props are retro and they still work and they are cheap. But if you enter the political realm of defense contracting you'll be knee deep in sewage. It isn't about what works all the time, its about scratching other peoples backs and you'd better be able to make your contract look Tony Stark cool if you want to get it, like the F-35
The A-29 is a thoroughly modern, well equipped aircraft which just happens to use a prop. I know one Brazilian airforce pilot who flies it and has nothing but praise for the plane.
After the dumb decision of shelving the A-10 in favor of the F-35 the USAF would do good in considering the Super Tucano as a COIN/CAS alternative. Hell, at $4 millon a pop you can even write them off as minor losses on the F-35 program
How about this? If it's CAS, but unmanned, then the Army can have it; manned fixed-wing aircraft stay with the Air Force. Would that soothe Top Gun's fragile ego?
I think a lot of this self-destructive behavior by the Air Force is due to them knowing the days of manned combat aircraft is rapidly coming to a close and they're panicking (kinda like the demographically-doomed white right-wing).
The big advance of the F-35 isn't the physical capabilities. Jet fighters have reached the limits of what humans inside can endure a while ago. It's basically a refinement to (theoretically) lower costs and maintenance, and expand range.
The big thing is the software, which is supposed to give the pilots an unmatched situational awareness, and ability to respond. Metaphorically it's supposed to be like being surrounded by a mob wearing masks with tiny eye slits looking around for other people around them, while you can just see them all. Probably not actually like that, but that's the idea.
to give a historical example of how this is important, you can compare the MIG-29 to something like an F-16 or F-18. The MIG is physically superior in some ways, but was designed for "dumb" pilots to follow real-time orders from ground based radar and controllers, so the pilots can't get a good idea of what's around them. When Germany reunified, they had plenty of MIG 29s in the air force, but got rid of them for this reason - they just crippled the pilots too much, and upgrading the avionics would have cost more than new planes (the Eurofighter Typhoon, which has similarly advanced software).
I think starting with the current batch of planes, you're not going to see vastly improved physical capabilities, so they'll seem boring, in the same way that all modern mobile phones look like boring, featureless rectangles.
'nuff said...
My question would be is it superior to the Warthog when you're talking ground attack, that's the benchmark. The F-35 can't match the Warthog either.
That the factory was in Baghdad, not in the US! Several such rumors are typical in this US city. So it would be no wonder if Congress did not want to buy: if we already destroyed the factory not knowing it was our factory? People do treat Baghdad as if it had been an American colony here, which makes me worry ownership and rights information coupled to _some_ international commerce theories are becoming so confusing we may be destroying out capacity... sent oversea to reduce labour costs (typical...), and have to hide the secret or the Idiot would show up! Maybe whoever made this comment to the air (pun) while I am reading the article should keep it to himself but didn't.
This is the heart of the conflict.
The A-10, which gets a lot of love here and elsewhere, is a highly specialized plane. It's really only good at ground attack, but man is it ever good at that role! If you want a general purpose capability using A-10's and the A-10 as a force model, you wind up with several different planes. More space, more planes, more pilots, more parts pipelines. The specialization ripples out to the entire air force.
The F-35 attempts to be a generalist, capable of doing everything. Air superiority, ground attack, stealth, VTOL, carrier, you name it. And this can work too, so long as you don't give it too many roles and attempt to consolidate roles too quickly. All indications currently are that the F-35 has been too ambitious.
However if you got it to work, you'd have just one fighter aircraft in your fleet. You save space, planes, pilots are multi-role, single parts and logistics pipelines. The vision is appealing, it's the practicality that is in dispute.
And to be completely fair, we need to remember the (not usual, quite exceptional) counter-example. The C17 was very troubled during it's development, to the point that the entire program was nearly cancelled. The air force reviewed the whole program, put in new leadership, cleaned up the entire system. And the C17 turned out to be a very nice airplane in the end. To emphasize the point, troubled military weapons systems don't usually have a happy outcome like this.
Marillyn bores me to tears.
Hope she never decides to run for prez, like Carly.
Whats the point of an A-29? It might have some good air to ground capabilities but it totally inferior to the A-10, which can take hits and survive has a bigger gun and carries more ordnance. The A-10 can also fly slow and fly from unpaved runways. The F-35 is great as a super fighter with secondary bombing capabilities (like the F-16). As a fighter outperformed only by the F-22. But its to vulnerable for close air support. Any unarmored aircraft is vulnerable in the close air support role. That goes for both F-35 and A-29. Although losing an F-35 is a lot more money. I don't see any use fore A-29. Simply get more A-10's back into service and upgrade them (or build new ones).