"Time to Kill the Coot - F-35 Program Update" Topic

50% more expensive than the F-22, with half the capability, assuming it can eventually enter operational service.

Here's an update on the program, which could still further increase in costs, if things don't go perfectly from here on out (like that's gonna happen):

link

A shame it has less capability than the much older, and less expensive F-15s and F-16s as well.

Sounds to me like we should cut our losses, and develop another, better, cheaper, and more capable fighter, or just build some more of an already proven design.

Somehow, given the current inertia, I doubt that will happen, much to the glee of our potential aerial foes, who are probably now, as we speak, ROFLTAO.

Some generals would have to admit they were wrong, and some congressmen would not have it built in their districts.

Good luck with that.

I think many involved in the F-35 procurement debacle should be fired, for cause.

A shame we keep repeating the same mistakes, over and over, while the prices skyrocket.

I suspect you are right though John, so that will never happen, given the last 50 years, or so, of US military aircraft procurement history.

A better, cheaper more capable aircraft would just end up taking longer and cost more….

The F-16 could be used, for less.

I believe the latest variants are still in production for overseas customers.

Well, at least we have the F-22 in case we, you know, get in a shooting war or something.

If you do scrap the F-35, can we have our Harriers back?

Are you sure you want to buy used Harriers from the Marines? Last time I checked, the Marines were getting all their gear second-hand, and running it until it fell apart in use.

Sure.

Of course, they'll be a lot more expensive, due to supply and demand, and the need to fund the new F-44, air-superiority, CAS attack bomber, with VSTOVL, and Mach 4 performance.

Scrap for spare parts I believe. What a far sighted decision. :-(

And as I am reading this, the Military Channel is on as background noise, and they are talking about "Hitler's Secret Waepons™".

Hitler wanted to turn the Me-262 into a bomber, and it held up production for a year.
Some things never change.

Oh, gosh. Did I just violate Godwin's Law?
Or is this a Reductio ad Hilterum?

The F-35 is a boondoggle, plain and simple. Lockheed recently 'discovered' that its range and internal payload capacity are lacking, so they decided to add external pylons, thereby reducing its stealth capability, which even without the external pylons is not nearly as good as the F-22's.

It's not too late to cancel the F-35. The DoD just have to have enough brass ones (and by that I don't mean four-star generals) to do it. After all, the Army canceled the Boeing RAH-66 Comanche stealth attack helicopter after spending $7 USD billion of taxpayers' money on it.

They Navy has already made noises about a 'Plan B' in case the F-35 implodes and the Air Force could probably go back to F-15Es or F-16s (with appropriate upgrades) to cover the mud moving role. Your problem is the Marines. They've thrown everything in on the F-35 and their lobby in DC is one of the most powerful going. (Frankly, I think its time the Marines were taken down a few notches for some of their shenniagans in Congress.)

Ah, you're being too kind to Lockheed.

Sounds like they're really eliminating the stealth capability, or at least most of it, to me, unless the decide to mount the tanks ABOVE the wings, like the British did with some of their AAMs.

Somehow, I doubt they will be able to make that work.

I wish they'd just cancel it, bury it, and buy more F-22s.

Of course, the F-18 was meant as a low cost complimentary attack fighter to the expensive F-14 too.

Somehow, they just never seem to learn that low cost, isn't.

We need fewer aircraft types, and more quantity of a single design for each service, since quantity has a quality all its own, and that'd bring down the unit pricing too.

On the plus side, they did cancel the navy's A-12 program, though in retrospect, that's probably not as good as it sounded at the time, since the eventual replacement for it will no doubt be exponentially more expensive as well.

F35 vs Harrier – The Harrier system of vectored thrust was always better than the additional lift jet idea. My dad was an inventor and when I said (in the early 60s) that the navy needed a VTOL jet he drew the vectored thrust system later used on the Harrier, common sense.
The only thing the F35 had going for it was stealth. If they are tossing that, then they need to put out a spec and have a competition like they did for the F16. Let the engineers have a crack at it.

The more money we spend on these overbloated WWII-thinking weapon systems, the less we have for programs that address the current threats. The make us weaker. But intelligence analysts and fluent Farsi speakers are not nearly as sexy as a fighter that can not be seen on radar, or a ship that has a president's or state's name on it.

It's not the generals or the congress who are at fault. It's us. We voted the guys into office who are responsible for the defence department purse-strings. We can vote them out. But we don't.

I didn't, but I digress…….

Makes me wish for the old F20 design.

Bin it!…..time the brits pulled out, it's a lame duck, but no we'll be slapped with an overpriced white elephant. Another vote for the Harrier, a superb asset prematurely binned.

Canada's opened a competition for a replacement for the CF-188s, before the F-35s were single-sourced.

Wish we would do the same

8th edition Warhammer 40k is going to make these obsolete anyway. Might as well stop painting them now and put 'em up on ebay.

For us Brits a naval version of the Typhoon 'Seaphoon' could be an option

You really want to avoid taking back anything the Marines have bro..er..used.

Cancel the fighter, rip it apart and figure out how to port whatever can be ported over to something that works. Salvage as much as you can from the debacle and move along. Something is better than nothing.

It is sad to consider that if that happens it will be the second time "Lightning" got struck.

Wonder what it would cost to design and build an updated Buccaneer or Harrier?

Good luck with that too much pork on the line to kill it.

Unfortunately there are only two sides to a debate like this: the "If an F15/Buccaneer/P51 was good enough for me / my father / my grandpappy, then dammit, put a new engine in it and buy some more."

And the ever popular "objective" analysis from some Liberal-backed think tank that is trying to destroy the military at any cost.

Let's not pretend that government-run programs aren't wasteful and mismanaged, but technology is a deal with the Devil: you can't just modernize old systems in response to game-changing technological advances. The F35 program has all the right goals – but even with the best management, it is still a quantum leap in technology and will have a lot of risks associated with it. (It's funny that people are saying we should buy more F22s, when the F22 weathered the same criticisms.)

But the real problem isn't weapons systems – it's the will to use it. We could have cheaper, lower-tech systems – if our enemies actually thought we were willing to accept the losses to win with them. But the Liberal media has created a society where one dead soldier is at best a Pyrrhic victory, while a dozen, or a plane, or a ship is an utter and total defeat.

We've been in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade for only one reason: because our enemies believe we will eventually quit. If they didn't, they never would have started. (They aren't stupid – they are opportunists.) They could care less about what technology we have. Europe listens to Putin and not Obama, because they know Putin will back up his words with action. And Iran and North Korea ignore Obama for the same reason. Meanwhile, most importantly for your and your children's future, the Muslims who are coming to power in the Middle East (moderates and extremists both) are going to use us as their symbolic enemy – precisely because Obama stood by and did nothing while they were being murdered.

Uh, Number6, this has exactly what to do with the F-35?

Number6, I would stress that the main argument for cancelling the F-22 program was that the F-35 was going to be so much better and cheaper. F-22 defenders (including me) argued… well, we pretty much predicted everything that's happened since. If we could re-start F-22 production, I'd say cancel the F-35 and eat the cost. The F-35 isn't even done yet; it's bound to suffer more growing pains and an all-drone fleet is still more than a decade off at best. America is highly sensitive to casualties for domestic political reasons, so if we intend to project power at all we have to grossly over-invest in air dominance. At the moment, I don't see how the F-35 gives us that.

Your other arguments get into Blue Fez territory.

F-22 was too fighter orientated which is kind of useless in an age where A2A combat is extremely rare and since 1999, non-existant.

F-35 is bomb truck first and thus infinitely more useful in the types of wars being fought.

ThomasHobbes, the reason air battles are so rare is because our overwhelming air supremacy is a deterrent. The moment a potential enemy achieves something close to parity (either directly or through a "good enough" design fielded in sufficient numbers), we'll end up in that kind of battle. They don't have to get ahead, just catch up a little. Something we know they're doing.

Asymmetrical warfare is so popular right now because we've worked so hard over the past few decades to create that asymmetry.

If all we want is a bomb truck, updating the existing airframes is far more cost-effective. What we needed the F-22 for was to put air combat completely beyond the contemplation of our enemies for another generation.

Wellspring,competent equivalents are out there.the Su-35/37 is more than a match up.

"F-22 was too fighter orientated which is kind of useless in an age where A2A combat is extremely rare and since 1999, non-existant".

Yea, and they said the same thing back in the 1960's, about dogfighting being obsolete, so no need to teach it, or even have a gun on fighters anymore, since the AAMs are so reliable, and deadly.

Of course, history has proven all of the above to be incorrect, eventually.

Using the F-35 as a bomb truck is just stupid, since it'll negate all that fancy and expensive stealth we are paying for, it's outrageously expensive so we literally "can't afford to lose them", and it has a very limited ordnance carrying capability.

the reason air battles are so rare is because our overwhelming air supremacy is a deterrent. The moment a potential enemy achieves something close to parity (either directly or through a "good enough" design fielded in sufficient numbers), we'll end up in that kind of battle.

There's a second factor:

Most air forces in the world do not operate any level of jet combat aircraft and those that do lack anything even resembling modern aircraft and would generally be completely outclassed by even 1980s level aircraft.

E.g.
Serbia: 16 1980s MiG-29 with non functioning radar (several shot down), 60 MiG-21 (obsolete since about 1975)

Afghanistan: 0 operational aircraft

Iraq 2003: Some ancient MiG-21/23/25 and Su-22. All obsolete and barely flyable. No air combat.

Libya: Some ancient MiG-21/23/25 and Su-22. All obsolete and barely flyable. No air combat

Mali: 0 combat aircraft. No aircombat.

Looking at potential adversaries:

Syria – mainly obsolete MiG-21/23/25 and ground attack Su-22/24/MiG-23BN. Some MiG-29s, though most are 1980s vintage with only a handful being modern.

Easily handled by existing F-15/16/18.

North Korea – mainly obsolete MiG-21 and Chinese J-5 (MiG-17) and F-6 (MiG-19). Some mainly 1980s MiG-29 and MiG-23 – all obsolete.

Iran – mainly obsolete F-4/F-5, Chinese F-7 (MiG-21) as well as 1980s vintage MiG-29. Some F-14s though these are strictly 1970s tech. Also ground attack Su-24.

And these are the "tough" opponents. Countries like Sudan and Yemen are in an even worse position.

Asymmetrical warfare is so popular right now because we've worked so hard over the past few decades to create that asymmetry.

Fighter market has collapsed by 90% since 1991. A lot of that has been in potential adversary countries who have lost USSR sponsorship.

A lot of poorer countries (Africa but also Middle East)have basically collapsed too and have lost the ability to maintain any form of coherent defence force, including functioning air defence.

Countries that have continued to invest in sophisticated modern fighter aircraft are generally US allies (i.e. NATO, Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE, South Korea, Singapore etc).

The exceptions are generally nuclear armed countries ala India (neutral and getting closer to USA), Russia and China.

The only way A2A combat against an advanced opponent can occur is a WWIII type scenario against China or Russia.

Using the F-35 as a bomb truck is just stupid, since it'll negate all that fancy and expensive stealth we are paying for, it's outrageously expensive so we literally "can't afford to lose them", and it has a very limited ordnance carrying capability.

F-35's primary role in USAF was always strike with considerable A2A.

In initial ops, it's load is limited to bomb bay to maintain stealth until enemy AD is suppressed.

After that, they load up bombs on pylons like any other F-16/-18.

Once the enemy's AD network is neutralised, stealth is pointless and you load up as much ordnance as you need.

For the two lead partner countries (USA and UK) F-35 is being acquired to replace ground attack tasked fighters:

USAF – F-16 (primarily used in strike and SEAD with secondary AD role) and ground attack A-10 and potentially some F-15C sair defence jets.

USN – multirole F/A-18A/B/C/D

USMC – ground attack AV-8B, ground attack F/A-18D and multirole F/A-18A/C.

RAF – ground attack Harrier and Tornado.

If all we want is a bomb truck, updating the existing airframes is far more cost-effective. What we needed the F-22 for was to put air combat completely beyond the contemplation of our enemies for another generation.

The 187 F-22s are way more advanced than anything fielded by China and Russia.

The F-35 will also be more advanced not only due to stealth but also electronics and patricularly inter aircraft networking.