"USAF to reduce F-35 buy, F-22 early retirement?" Topic

USAF has announced reductions in F-35 acquisition.

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Apparently the issues are:

a.) F-35 costs too much to operate ($7.8 m per annum compared to $4.1 USD m for an F-16). The F-35 actually costs more to operate than twin engine F-15.

Apparently the USAF is not confident it can make the F-35 as cheap as an F-16 which was part of the specification.

b.) Procurement strategy has turned out to be unsustainable in terms of maintaining operational aircraft.

What's fascinating is that air force had planned to take delivery of 1,763 F-35s by 2035.

Full scale production was meant to have started years ago but keeps being delayed. As it stands the Air Force won't take delivery of all planned F-35s until 2040s!

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I suspect the USAF won't get even close the 1,763 F-35s!

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Next article discusses the future fleet. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown has stated he wants to consolidate fighter fleet from 7 types to 4.

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Current 7 are F-15C/D, F-15E, F-15EX F-16, F-22, F-35, A-10.

F-15C/Ds are well on the way out – they only equip 3 active duty (to be replaced by F-35s) and 7 ANG units (to be replaced by F-15EX/F-35).

The F-16s are being upgraded to Block 70 standard with new radars. It's still in production for allies so new purchases are possible. Incidentally it appears the F-35 is no longer intended as an F-16 replacement which was its initial purpose!

The F-22 is a crippled beast – if it flies it dominates. But the aircraft are basically hangar queens with only 50% availability (and sometimes less).

General Brown wants to retain the new F-15EX, the F-35, the new NGAD and surprisingly the F-16 (probably cause it's the cheapest jet to run).

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Amazing to see the longevity of those 1970s designs (F-15 and F-16). I suspect it is because they are the last USAF jets to have been designed based on combat experience with a competent foe (North Vietnam).

Hmm, coincidental timing to my post.

Retiring, or even just considering retiring the F-22s is just insane, especially in the high threat world in which we live in, especially since ALL the other aircraft we have are Cold War era designs, that are 40 – 50+ years old.

Problem is F-22 is unreliable. The most advanced piece of equipment on the planet is worthless if it doesn't work most of the time.

And in a war serviceability will drop due to wear and tear let alone losses.

They're hoping the new NGAD jet works better.

Working some of the time is better than none, or not having the aircraft when you need it.

The A-10 seems to be doing OK, though, I suppose.

Is it a matter of working out the bugs in maintaining new tech? IIRC, new aircraft always have a lot of problems never encountered in testing.

A lot of this also has to do with the fact that the NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance) or 6th Generation fighter is supposedly already flying. The advances in rapid prototyping, lessons learned from the F-22 and F-35, needing a replacement for the F-18, etc., has enabled the DOD to move forward quickly. There's no more taking 10-20 years to iron out issues and come out with different versions (blocks) as with the F-15, F-16, and F-18.

I've heard that this may happen. It comes down to …

"No bucks … No Buck Rogers!"

Seems the USA's leadership has found a better use for tax money. The PRC on the other hand are building up their military like they were expecting an alien invasion. 👽

I thought the whole point about retiring F22 was that it would happen a decade or so in the future when NGAD was ready. Its not a near-term OSD.

The irony here, is that the F-35's numbers are far worse than the F-22, so if they want to axe the F-22 NOW, imagine what they want, or should want to do to the F-35.

Perhaps give them to the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians, in order to sabotage their militaries completely???

I hope the rumors about retiring the F-22 are unfounded.

My guess is they are, and they were just left out of the mix, since it should be obvious to all that we really need those until the 6th Gen. jets are operational.

I have read that we have a 6th Gen. prototype flying. I hope that is true, and that we get hundreds of them soon. Thousands would be better.

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Of course, perhaps we're pulling a Russian, maskirovka ruse, for the benefit of them, the Chi-coms, Iranians, North Koreans, and our other enemies.

Thresher,

F-22 retirement is not rumours. And they aren't about to be retired now. They are looking at 2030s.

The F-22 is too unreliable in a war. It's like those King Tigers – sure if they work they pack a punch and will dominate a 1:1 fight versus an opponent.

But in reality most don't work. You can't rely on an F-22 squadron to sustain a sortie rate in war when in peacetime availability is often less than 50%!

Indeed you're probably better off buying more F-15EXs.

There's no more taking 10-20 years to iron out issues and come out with different versions (blocks) as with the F-15, F-16, and F-18.

I think it's great they've finally stopped the taking the silly take 2 decades to get to FOC!

The F-15 was pretty much an instant success. F/A-18A/B was the same and again not a long lead time between F/A-18A and F/A-18C.

F-16 took a little longer but even by early 1980s the F-16A Block 15 offered reasonable capability and the first F-16C/Ds flew in 1984 and entered service in 1986.

The Block 40/50/60/70s were developed simply because they were there. And in reality the Block 40 and 50 should have been the F-16G/H and F16J/K (and for a while they were called F-16CG/DG and F-16CJ/DJ).

Congress didn't want to fund a new version so they got weird names (and USAF designation system has devolved into garbage marketing as a result – F35 (should be F25), B-21 (should be B-3), VH-92 (VH-74), should be MH-139 (should be MH-75) etc etc).

Similarly the F/A-18E/F should have been the F-24A/B but Congress didn't want to give the USN a new jet.

"Hello, Air Force? This is the President. I want you to bomb Somewhereastan right now!"

"Sorry Mister President, but our aircraft are too expensive to be used in combat. They might get damaged!"

Looks like the USAF is already getting to retire some of their older F-35s ? Didn't they just get fielded a few years back ?
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Legion, these offer no combat capability and even limited trainimg as they were delovered to a very early configuration which were really just prototypes or pre-production machines.

This has been one of the many argumemts against F-35.

Regardless … they spent a lot of $ and how long have these been around ? 5 years?

Oldest are just under 10 years old.

Following website has complete list of serials for F-35 (as well as F-16 and F-22 and a companion website with all C-130 serials) link

Problem was whole concurrency buy meant a couple of hundred aircraft were delivered to no operable standard and now cost billions to upgrade.

Very different to how things were done in the past – eg early block 1-5 F-16s weren't acquired in such large numbers and the upgrade to Block 10 or 15 wasn't so massive or costly.

Yeah it looks like this was not handled correctly from the get-go. With Taxpayer $ being wasted and/or not spent properly.

A lot of that seems to be going around currently … it seems …

Legion,

It's been great for Lockheed shareholders and propping up jobs in some Congressional areas whilst destroying a lot of the competition in the fighter market, which were the primary purposes of the F-35.

Nothing new there … I wonder if my broker bought me some Lockheed stock ? 💸💸