"Five Terrible Alternatives to the F-35" Topic

"It appears that no bad idea ever truly dies in Washington. Whether it is high marginal tax rates, greater government regulation, or resurrecting terminated defense programs, there is always someone around to advocate for bad ideas.

Recently, for example, the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, responding to a fire in one F-35 engine, published a report asking the Pentagon to reassess its decision to cancel the program to develop a second engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. Then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – no friend of wasteful defense spending – cancelled this alternative engine program back in 2011 on the grounds that the cost to develop a second engine and maintain separate supply chains, parts inventories, and training for maintainers would exceed any savings that might accrue from competition between the current engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, and a second source.

The June 23rd engine fire has brought all the F-35 naysayers out of the woodwork advocating the same tired, misguided alternatives to this must-have modernization program for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. Here is a set of the best of the worst alternatives (recently put forward by Robert Farley in the National Interest)…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

don't have the money for any of it so why think about it.

It's not like the F16s don't have two different engines…

and I think the GE option was better in the first place. Less mature, technically, perhaps, but when you have an engine that can automatically shift from turbofan to turbojet to ramjet (much like the mighty J58, but half the length and weight), well, that's a design worth pursuing!

Immature engines have been the bane of aircraft development since--well, since the beginning. If you're willing to endure prolonged development and crippled performance for years, you can go ahead with them. The F-14 is worth remembering …

The article actually made some sense. There are no guarantees the other alternatives are better than the F-35 in the long run. One option it didn't mention is buying new variants of the 'legacy' era aircraft (like more Super Hornets or the advanced 'Silent Eagle') which would avoid the high life-cycle costs of maintaining old airframes, but still we'll be stuck with 4th + gen aircraft rather than a 5th gen one.

For better or worse the F-35 is here for the long haul.

build an F18 with a conposit body and some hull shape changes and you have a 5th gen fighter that can out fight a F35 and cost less.

The whole idea behind the F35 is broken, that you can have one aircraft that can do all the jobs well will never work. You end up with an aircraft that is only ok at everything and excels at nothing but cost.

Sorry what? Build an F-18 with a composite body etc? And Hull shape changes? You do realize that you said that out loud don't you?
What makes you think that the option you have just mentioned would be cheaper or better than the F-35? You want to change the airflow over an F-18? Wow… If you now claim to be an aerospace engineer I will now weep for the industry.
No-one who is committed to the F-35 as a purchaser (USN/USM/USAF/RAF etc) have any regrets about ordering it. Only politicians who have lobby money to make and those who believe them. The article Tango linked to was about the futility of saying drop the program… The USA has already dropped the ball on Raptor!
Oh and your last point is wrong… Multirole is proven to work. That is what the F-35 is meant to be, a fifth generation multirole fighter. The harrier was multirole… Were you against that? Oh my word… Even the F-18 is multirole!
First post so sorry about the rant. Been reading for years but this got my goat enough to join.

F-35?
F-35A?
F-35B?
F-35C?
Super F-35?

Ad nauseum………..

Just don't or someone will suggest the hyper F-15 which because it might have to take off on a damaged runway uses a hovercraft launching device (look that one up it was posited). Paint it in black anti-radar paint and…

F-22 is a great fighter, but no more can be economically added as the program was cancelled. F-35 is not as good air-to-air but IS needed. It must not be stopped. Who wants enemies to get one up on us in air to air or close support? F-35 is the savior. Jesus, Britain has carriers based on it. Fail to deliver and expect them to never trust an American aircraft again.

Wot Zerostate said.

F-18 is multirole? Really?? it does sea based anti air and large land/sea target bombing. not land based, not VTOL, not air dominance. They want the F35 to do all 5. Its going to suck at all of them. Its a over priced piece of crap idea.

hull shape changes would make it stronger and more aerodynamic if the are planned right. nothing wrong with its design just shows up on radar to big.

aerospace engineer NO but I do build RC aircraft and gas powered rockets that I design myself :)

Stick to designing toy planes.

F-18 is multirole? Really?? it does sea based anti air and large land/sea target bombing. not land based, not VTOL, not air dominance.

F/A-18 is multi-role in that is can do A2A, ground attack, strike, SEAD/DEAD (EA-18G) and recce as well as buddy air-to-air refuelling/tanking.

It also is land based – indeed Australia, Canada, Malysia, Switzerland, Spain, Finland, Kuwait and USMC all operate them from land bases.

As for air dominance – it will dominate 99% of the time. The exception is against China or Russia who will have similar quality jets backed up by AWACS, electronic warfare, C3 etc.

F-35 isn't meant to do air dominance. That's the F-22s job. It's main "party trick" is stealthy strike missions in a heavy IADS environment.

In real life, probably 95% of the actual combat missions ever flown by an F-35 will be ground attack missions with similar requirements to Iraq 2003/Serbia 1999 or counter insurgency.

In real life, if it ever encounters an enemy aircraft, it will most likely be a helicopter or recce drone.

In real life, if it ever encounters another enemy jet, the opponent is likely to at best be a MiG-29 equivalent without AWACS, without electronic warfare and without advanced C3.

F-35 is fine except for destroying US and European competitors, thus leaving all eggs in one basket.

I can agree vwith the sentiment of that article, but a lot of it is rubbish.

E.g.

ery other air power, including Russia, China, and our European allies, have deployed more modern aircraft than most of what we are flying today

They might have deployed "newer" aircraft but certainly not more modern. After all the F-22 is still the best fighter in service by many miles.

The Chinese and Russians are buying F-15/-16/-18 equivalents for most part – various Flankers, MiG-29 and J-10.

Some of the Europeans have Eurofighters and Rafales, none of which compare to an F-22 (apparently they have to completely strip the Eurofighter to the bare bones to make it competitive against an F-22 in WVR. In BVR F-22 absolutely dominates).

No country other than USA has operational 5th generation fighters.

This is like having the Air Force fight the Vietnam War with a fleet of Wright biplanes.

It's a daft comment too, given longevity of modern designs.

If we were to use a similar comment regarding say aircraft operational during Kosovo, we could say it was the equivalent of using F-80s and F-84s during Vietnam War.

An F-16 in 2014 is a vastly different machine to an F-16 in 1979.

the tooling is gone,

Wrong. F-22 tooling was preserved.

Finally the author writes for Lexington Institute which is notorious for acting as a mouthpiece for paying customers. Basially their job is spruik their customers' products but masked as "independent thought."

If Boeing dumped more cash into Lexington Institute, the author would change to supporting the F/A-18E/F and claiming the F-35 is rubbish (they did it a while back with C-17).

"Fail to deliver and expect them to never trust an American aircraft again".

Ha, they should've learned that back in the 1960's, with the cancellation of the Skybolt program:

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