"F-35 on 60 Minutes?" Topic

I had a friend tell me they saw the episode of 60 Minutes tonight and were amazed at the new F-35.

According to them the plane was touted as a super air superiority asset. "Due to its technology advantages, it can't lose a dogfight because the other plane will never see it".

I didn't see the segment but is this really what they said? Was it an accurate news story or more of a sales pitch that the news people couldn't see through?

Haven't seen that one, but I'm not surprised. 60 Minutes has a pretty shoddy history of reporting.

They've definitely had some misses along with some good reporting. That's why I'm curious about this specific segment.

I'm far from an expert but I was really surprised when I heard it was an unbeatable dogfighter. I didn't even think the people who liked it were saying that.

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Marketing 101. Tell the customer what they want to hear.

Somehow, I doubt it is better than the F-22, and/or some other fighters.

"The new, overpriced product is better than you can even imagine".

If it turns out it isn't, it is due to operator error.

Have to agree, Mako. The absolute last places for any reliable info regarding a weapon system is the project office and the contractor. If the project head for the F-35 told me that the sky is blue and the ocean wet, I still wouldn't believe him without independent conformation…

From watching this segment, '60 Minutes' isn't pro F-35 at all. This isn't an op-ed piece, it's a profile. And the correspondent did ask some pointed questions that could haunt the program later:

David Martin: I want to nail that down here. If the F-35 was going up against another stealth aircraft of the kind that other countries are working on today, it would be able still to detect that aircraft at five to 10 times the range?

Robert Schmidle: You would be safe in assuming that you could detect that airplane at considerably longer distances than that airplane could detect you.

David Martin: Is this F-35 program now under control?

Frank Kendall: Yes, it is.

David Martin: Has the F-35 program passed the point of no return?

Chris Bogdan: I don't see any scenario where we're walking back away from this program.

David Martin: So the American taxpayer is going to buy this airplane?

Chris Bogdan: I would tell you we're going to buy a lot of these airplanes.

Now if the bold claims made here prove to be false, '60 Minutes' may well air a follow-up expose' in the future that's much more damaging PR-wise to the program.

60 Min= white house mouth piece. That was a sales job. look at how it did in the Pacific war game F-35 and F-18 were crushed by Russian counterparts.

Having watched various documentaries on this especially how the allegedly open house Australian bid for a future fighter project was in effect a closed shop from the very beginning, as you watch one nation cave in after another to the hype. It leaves a horrible suspicion billions of taxpayers money across the globe is being squandered on a lame duck.

The truly scary thought is this program is going to crush just about every other manufacturer in the process as they go under. And once we realize the error there's no possible alternative. But then maybe that's the whole idea.

Affordable ?

I love it when TMPers point to all of these exercises, mock simulations, etc., to point out deficiencies in the F-15, F-22, F-35, and so on and so on. How many F-15s, F-15s, F-18s, and F-22s have been lost in air to air combat in the last 30 years? Hmmm. Makes you wonder that maybe it isn't about individual aircraft going "one on one" with the latest, greatest Russian or Chinese aircraft that will miraculously appear and shoot down anything the U.S. puts into the air!

Modern warfare, particularly air and naval combat, is incredibly complex. It requires massive amounts of infrastructure, operational planning, and training. However, it also requires something that very few countries outside of the U.S., Israel, and perhaps the U.K. (although budget cuts there are killing them slowly) have that Russia and China do not; actual operational experience in high tempo, modern operations. When it comes to coordinating cruise missile strikes, satellite recon, EW ops, aerial refueling, etc., my bet is on the guys flying the F-18s, F-22, and F-35s to dominate everything in any particular region of the world that they want to.

"Having watched various documentaries on this especially how the allegedly open house Australian bid for a future fighter project was in effect a closed shop from the very beginning, as you watch one nation cave in after another to the hype."

Yes, nation after nation is just ignoring their own pilots,experts and evaluations and signing on because Lockheed Martin is just that good at snowing them. That's some amazing marketing ability they have to get every nation just sign on despite how awful the plane is.

Or maybe, the anti F-35 hype is just a bit overstated and pushed by people with their own agendas?

Is the plane late? Yep.
Is it over budget? Yep.
Is it some wunder plane that will save the world? Nope.
Is it 'TEH DOOMED' (spelling intentional) against the T-50, J-20, J-31 (none of which are as yet operational and each having development programs completely closed off to the world press so that we have no insight into problems they are facing) as so many anti-F 35 ranters claim? Not even close.

Should the DOD have demanded a program that required 3 variants with completely different requirements from a single base airframe? Hell no.

I for one prefer to keep an eye on the program, take the good and the bad and evaluate what's going on in reality, rather than what either LM or the Pierre Sperry crowd are putting out there.

If you read the actual program reports (and not the political papers put out by people without real access to the data), the program is not as ridiculously off kilter as those same folks want you to believe. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be scrutiny, or that people who screwed up shouldn't be held to account- they should, to the fullest extent possible, but the government, who demanded a be-all swiss army knife that would deliver all things to all people and should incorporate all changes dreamed up during development into the design shouldn't be surprised with such a design takes longer than expected and runs into troubles.

It used to be that a design was pretty much fixed outside of minor changes until it was operational, and then the engineers tried to add new changes with future revisions. Now we try to incorporate all new requests as design continues and wonder why it adds to the schedule and budget.

By all accounts, even after that kind of ridiculous kind of development and design mentality, the plane is starting to deliver. Testing is accelerating, design flaws fixed and cost estimates trending downward as real world costs are compared to the original estimates (though it will still be over budget at the end of the day).

Does that forgive all? Hell no. But if you were going to cancel this plane, the time to do so was 5-6 years ago before spending the money to finally get things working. Cutting the program now after spending the money and taking the time to resolve the big issues gives you the worst of both worlds.

I'm honestly disappointed with the JSF competition. I think the Boeing version was better overall, but needed a lot more obvious work done before it could be considered ready for series production. Lighter, less complex for the STOVL system, and better view from the cockpit.

Sadly, it turns out that LockMart's version needed just as much work to get it into production.

I remember a 60 Minutes episode years ago that was critical of the M-1 Abrams program…..seems the experts at 60 Minutes were wrong that time. In their defense, they were right about the Sgt York.

Sudwind, 60 minutes was VERY critical of the Bradley as well.

Look, I'm not worried that the fighter is late and over budget. That's to be expected. My main three concerns are:

1) This was supposed to be the utility fighter backing up the F-22 superiority fighter… which the F-35 advocates insisted was too expensive and had too many delays and so lobbied to cancel. With an F-22 around, the F-35 doesn't have to be the end-all be-all a2a champion, it just has to be able to hold its own. Congratulations, you got your wish, there's no F-22 (not in the numbers you'd need to replace the F-15)… but there's no way you're taking air dominance in that thing.

2) This was supposed to be the CHEAP fighter that gives you multirole capability for all services and in all theaters and saves precious budget dollars. That's already failed. The F-35 isn't optimized around cost or effectiveness, it's optimized around politics and navigating the procurement process.

3) The problems are very basic to the design. It's not like the F-22's oxygen problem, or the thrust vectoring problem early on. It's more like the Osprey-- basic "does it work at all" stuff. Now, the Osprey DID eventually deliver. So this at least is rescueable. But tell me again how you fit this into a coherent air dominance strategy without a Generation 5 fighter clearing away the enemy's front line fighters first? Or deterring them getting involved in the first place.

The Navy needs a new Tomcat and the Marines need a new Harrier. I get that. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only reason you don't scrap the whole thing and stick with the F-22 clearing the way for F-18s and F-16s.