This plane may well have outlived the technological cycle where it may have made sense.
What is there for a replacement for F-35 if it is dropped?
the FA-18 should have a long life ahead of it. I think the F-16 is still being produced. What was the F-35’s competitor? Of course folks will say: “why produce it, it lost the competition.”
And it is past time to restart the F-22 production line, although it is an air superority fighter, we’ll need more of them.
As a pianist, I’m bound to say this is rather an insult to my instrument.
How disappointing—I thought I was going to read about actual pianos that fly while you play them. Now THAT would be worth the expense.
Each service would get a core model enhanced with elements specific to their needs ~ Army would have fore and aft mounted artillery pieces, the Navy would need two engines ~ one for "on board" tasks and the other to be used as a plug-in module to supplement the main steam system on ships of the line.
The Marines, though, would have both a fore an aft engine, with 1 artillery piece, a full-time "live aboard' company with bayonets at the ready lining the flatcars ~ and would burn wood ~ a proven and reliable energy source.
Army and Navy would, of course, take the big jump into the more risky coal fired variants.
And do not sell the Raptor to ANYBODY other than US forces.
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/ww1/images/08.jpg ~ almost forgot, the Kaiser’s High Command actually moved ahead with these concepts ~
A good article. I’ve long had the feeling that the F-35 was a basically good initial design that has been compromised by being asked to do too many things. No single design can do everything, and efforts to break that rule usually end up with a mediocre plane that does nothing particularly well, and/or a project that ends up costing far, far more than it was ever supposed to.
It's all going to aerospace union members.
Why not have bought a lot more of them and a lot of F-16s, A-10s and F-18s for ground pounding?
Five minutes of analysis would have been enough to determine that this program was going to be a disaster.
A plane can’t be STOVL and Long Range and Stealth and Supersonic and High Payload and Agile and Fight.
If you need STOVL, you trade off speed, range, payload and agility, because the vertical thrust components are going to be too much to carry on a on a fast agile fighter. The needs of supersonic travel and STOVL are simply incompatible.
F-111, they never learn.
Ah, the last time we had a technological goat rope was under McNamara (the “genius” behind the Edsel and the World Bank).
His product?
The F-111...a do all for the USAF and Navy.
The Navy rightly rejected it and the USAF put up with it as a bomber (sort of) for many years.
It wasn’t really a bad plane...but it was trying to be an “everything”...with predictable results.
SCRAP IT! Jump to the next generation design, build more F-15SEs at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost, bolster them with F-22s built on contract by someone OTHER THAN Lockheed who are liars and couldn’t build a balsa model without cost overruns and that doesn’t asphyxiate the pilots.
A proper run of F-15SE and F-22 is nothing but a manufacturing process now. If you must have a air superiority fighter for the Navy, you don’t now and won’t with the F-35, fix the F-22 for the role. This has been conceived as workable. The F-15E has a confirmed record of being a very versatile, high performance truck that can still fight in and out from the target.
The Navy’s FA-18 program is going well and it seems to be a good airplane. Consider the builder... the old MD plant builds good airplanes. Boeing did themselves no favors over the tanker fraud but they still build good airplanes. Change the contracts, incentivize them and refuse delivery for anything that does not meet standards. The job will get done.
A good start would be about 10 new squadrons worth of each mark of the F-15SE and the F-22... 500 new airplanes that we desperately need. Our old ones are falling apart.
Is it impossible to fit the F-22 for Carrier operations?
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-230209-1.html
(The House voted Wednesday) to stop funding for an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – a program Defense Secretary Robert Gates called 'unnecessary.' But his arm-twisting of Congress is far from finished. February 16, 2011
That reminds of the favorite saying of an old Crew Chief friend of mine: "The F-4 is proof positive that given enough thrust even a couch can fly"
