Posted on 04/13/2021 5:19:51 AM PDT by maddog55
A senior U.S. Air Force officer has said that there is no value in including the service's current fleet of F-35A Joint Strike Fighters in tabletop wargames simulating future high-end conflicts, such as one covering an American military response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That same individual also called into question how relevant any of the service's existing examples of these fighter jets would be for conducting combat operations near or over the territory of a near-peer adversary, including China. This all comes at a time when the F-35 program, as a whole, is facing a new surge of scrutiny, including from members of Congress.
Air Force Lieutenant General Clint Hinote, the service's Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Integration, and Requirements, made his remarks regarding the F-35A in an interview that Defense News published today focusing on a wargame last year that simulated an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Defense News described the outcome of that wargame as a "pyrrhic" victory for the U.S. military and one that was only achieved by the employment of capabilities that are not yet actually in service.
Those capabilities include F-35As equipped with the full suite of upgrades enabled by the still-in-development Block 4 software package. Block 4 F-35As are set to feature enhanced radar and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as the ability to carry new weapons. This particular wargame also featured notional stealth combat aircraft developed through the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, a multi-faceted project that you can read about in more detail here, as well as non-stealthy F-15EX fighters able to carry long-range hypersonic weapons, cargo aircraft reconfigured as flying arsenal planes, and a swarm of low-cost drones providing a distributed sensor network across a broad area of the battlespace, among other things.
The entire Defense News piece on this wargame is worth reading in full, especially given growing concerns within the U.S. military, as well as among experts and observers, that a Chinese military intervention against Taiwan may be increasingly inevitable in the near term.
So how much money is the general getting from China, I mean Boeing?
Lockheed makes the F35, not Boeing.
Exactly.
Good one, but Boeing’s entry to JSF was sooo ugly..
And they might be posturing for another go at it.
There’s rumors that 6th gen fighters are coming along, so it’s possible there will be another fight. It’s inevitable to happen sooner or later.
And then there’s those that say manned fighters are obsolete entirely. They’ve been saying that for over 15 years though, and it make take awhile longer to be true. Again, sooner or later..
After a certain rank, most go that direction. Good leaders ate hard to find.
Military industrial complex. Eisenhower warned about it, liz cheney is proof it still exists, worse than ever.
The article and headline do not match.
There is no criticism of the F-35, except to say in order to beat China over Chinese skies, we need the F-35 to have the weapons package that was PLANNED into the F-35 program!
Nowhere does it say the General thought the F-35 was a POS like the headline implies.
Once again, as a retired Air Force SMSgt, I have directly heard from actual Air Force pilots and maintainers that the F-35 is an excellent aircraft.
Freeper Armchair Generals may disagree, but so what else is new?
I believe there is little if any leadership left in the military. What there is are CEOs and managers. They are the result of Obama and political correctness.
Love to see the enemy when US Special Transgender Forces prance across the battle field.
Some of us actually worked the F35 T&E and development program for years and saw nothing but failure after failure. Talked with Test Pilots that hated it in private but praised it in public as directed.
To each his own.
Not surprising at all. Introduce stature into anything and you select for those types. The cream does not always rise to the top, but self-promoting marginally talented people often do.
Hmm, I have seen lemons sold on car lots that looked super sexy, etc. Sure here soon, will likely see F-35s being sold on used car lots. /s
>>Some of us actually worked the F35 T&E and development program for years and saw nothing but failure after failure. Talked with Test Pilots that hated it in private but praised it in public as directed.<<
I am a milcraft nut and followed the F35 closely from the old days. I was the biggest proponent of the program’s promise and had the biggest sadness when it got saddled with so much mission creep, bad planning, bloat and bureaucracy.
The F-15 Eagle, F-14 Tomcat and F-16 Falcon each went from concept to design in about 10 years between 1965 and 1975 (dates approximate). The F-18 Hornet came a bit later, also in a 10 year time frame.
The F-35 Lightning (which name was taken from the unsuccessful F-21 competitor to the F-22, which I do not want to get into here) took 25 years and still is not what anyone would call fully in deployment. It continues to be an aerial boat: a hole in the air we throw money into.
Sadly, no one in the military or in Congeress knows the economic concept of “sunk cost.”
F35 is a ground attack aircraft. Ask yourself what use an A10 would be in responding to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
If you were planning to repel a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would do the following 1) Do not expect the American military to save you 2) Develop hard hitting stealthy drones that will make crossing the Taiwan Strait by assault boats and hostile naval surface combatants costly and nearly impossible. 3) Develop an anti helicopter air defense system . Chinese special forces and shock troops will likely cross by helicopter from the mainland. 4) Have mobile, quick reponse combat teams to respond to landings.5) be ready to counterattack mainland China with missiles and stealthy drones.6) Be absolutely sure the population of Taiwan will support a fight for their freedom
The article and headline do not match. There is no criticism of the F-35
—
A) “Today’s F-35As Not Worth Including In High-End War Games According To Air Force General”. The guy is talking about use in a peer-peer conflict with China, not everyday training flights. The only way to even achieve any victory using the F-35 had to include the very expensive Block 4 capabilities and as yet nonexistent weapons it does not have yet. So they do match.
B) Other than that, it has 861 unresolved deficiencies - 10 are serious and 6 of those are classified. “Major problems persist with the cloud-based computer backend, known as the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), which is critical to the day-to-day operation of all F-35 variants”;
C) “the estimated price tag for sustaining F-35A, B, and C operations across the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy was $1.196 trillion through 2070. ... the average cost-per-flight-hour to operate any of the three F-35 variants is $36,000, according to Lockheed Martin. The company says its goal remains to get that figure down to $25,000, which would put it closer to the cost-per-flight-hour of operating an F-16C/D.” It has become simply too expensive to operate as it needs to be.
D) The F-35 is a POS, useless in any major peer-to-peer conflict, too expensive in peace time to maintain in any numbers;
E) Being an “excellent aircraft” according to to pilots has nothing to do with actual performance, usability and survivability in peer-to-peer conflicts.
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