"Oh no, the sky is falling!" Topic

The F-35 is grounded due to cracks in the turbine. Maybe they outsourced it to the lowest bidder in China:

link

the F-35 should just be cancelled but won't cause it has spread the job load to as many congressional districts as possible

And the idiots in charge over here decided to buy some off you…

Cancel the F-35 and there is no next generation fighter available to replace it (F-22 production already ended). The Air Force (and to a lesser extent the Navy) needs new aircraft. They could either buy more of what they have now, or develop something more advanced since they need to replace the aircraft anyway. While one could argue the F-35 is not turning out to be what is expected, there is nothing behind it that can act as a replacement…it's starting from scratch again!

Damon.

yea but if it does not work its not worth building.

you can't build one plane to do 5 jobs and expect it to be any good at any of them. In this case flying seems to be one of the questionable things its not so good at.

so build new copies of the older aircraft they work very well and cost less.

The HORROR, something like this has NEVER happened to any other fighter plane, or wait…

Give them time to work the bugs out. All weapon systems have teething problems like this. The initial production units always have problems that didn't show up on the hand built prototypes.

I have no problem giving them the time to develop it.

It's the $400 USD+ Billion that I object to.

The F-35 Coot should be cancelled, since it is such a worthless bird, and they should ask for our money back, and put that towards purchasing more F-22s, which are far more capable fighters.

Alternatively, they could put the money towards some of the futuristic F-16 test aircraft, e.g. perhaps a rudderless bird, or one with those forward swept wings for supermaneuverability at low speeds.

Heck, I bet for a few billion, they could even come up with a decent blended stealth shape for it as well.

I believe recently the Iranians developed a low cost stealth aircraft they might consider selling.

F22 a more capable fighter?

Well, I suppose you can say that.

But the F35 is not primarily a fighter. It's a mud-mover, and the F22 cannot drop bombs at all.

And as far as cracks in the turbines go, anyone else remember the Sioux City crash? link

These things do happen. Trying to prevent them from happening is what leads to parts costing 100s of thousands of dollars each.

IIRC, the F14 went through a horrible development cycle. As did the F4, F18 and a host of others. In fact, no new plane goes through development withour some hiccups. Hold your water and give it time. Canceling now would just mean having to start from scratch all over again. And ya ain't gonna save any money that way…

IIRC, the F14 went through a horrible development cycle. As did the F4, F18 and a host of others. In fact, no new plane goes through development without some hiccups. Hold your water and give it time. Canceling now would just mean having to start from scratch all over again. And ya ain't gonna save any money that way…

That's a very expensive, stealth mudmover, which can carry very little ordnance internally, and if you add bombs under the wings or fuselage, you negate its chief design feature.

Perhaps we could use some new blood in the military procurement and planning stages, since you can get bomb trucks for far less than has been spent, or is being planned for.

Yea, I know turbine blades crack, and there are always development issues, but the F35 seems to be a very poorly run program, despite the Hundreds of Billions (caps added for emphasis) spent on it.

Clearly the ROI on this project is way behind the curve.

Review the difficulties faced in the F-111 program, or the YF16/YF17 competition.

Any time you try to make a single bird meet both USAF and USN requirements, it's a Charlie Foxtrot of the first order.

The USAF complains about the extra weight needed in the structure for the USN version, and tends to ignore the USN's weight limits, too.

Too big too fail.

Most fighter programs have these sort of problems.

The bigger problems are lengthy delays and more importantly, skyrocketing price tag.

If they trashed the F35 program, the US Marines would literally have nothing to fly. Their Harriers are rapidly reaching fatigue limits, and so are the F18s. The Marines do depend on their Harriers for organic fast-mover air support.

The USAF will be forced to buy more F16s, good thing that we kept that assembly line open with foreign orders.

The Navy's FA18C/Ds are in the same boat as the Marines, rapidly approaching fatigue limits.

How long did the F22/F23 contest take? I'll give you a hint, Rockwell was still an aircraft maker when both the ATF and JSF programs started. That's more than 20 years from program kickoff to first delivered article. Laugh all you want, but can we afford to not see the first aircraft for a replacement program until 2035?

Bring those F-14 sprues out of storage!

"Too big to fail" is an oxymoron.

Should read "So big it is definitely gonna fail, from its own weight and inertia".

and the F22 cannot drop bombs at all.

Um, the F-22 can carry 2 1000 lb laser guided bombs internally. They even show the bomb bays off during air shows.

When did the F22 finally get the software upgrade to allow it to drop bombs? Last I heard, it still didn't have the software to talk to the bomb's fuze and navigation system.

You can hang anything on a pylon from a toilet to a grunt, doesn't mean you can actually DROP whatever's on the pylon.

Sure you can drop it.

However, it may not hit what you want, as was proved during the WWI bombing campaigns.

F-22 also lacks integration with nearly all the current ground munitions in service.

Lots of software and some hardware mods required if it's to carry LGBs or AGMs.

It would just be stupid to waste precious, limited, and extremely expensive F-22 flight hours carrying bombs anyway.

Surely someone, with a brain bigger than a walnut, at the Pentagon can figure that out.

The F-22 is an excellent SEAD platform and will be one of the handful of platforms able to safely work around Syrian IADS when we get involved there. With Increment 3.2, the Raptor can carry SDB I (GBU-39), and SDB II (GBU-53) shoud be in the pipeline shortly. The ALR-94 is the secret ;)