Typical of government. Take a project and triple everything about it, missions, costs, problems, and planes and length of time in development.
F-111, v2.0...
Short description of the “F=35” Very expensive and useless junk!
They tried to make the F111-B (Screw you Robert F—ing McNamara) a plane that would do everything well. It did none of them well.
The idiots are trying to do it again. They will have the same result.
It is supposed to be stealth. The problem with stealth is the ability to detect stealth with sophisticated look down AWACs is much cheaper than the stealth technology.
In effect we have a less effective fighting platform at a much greater cost that can be shot down with much less investment from the opposing side.
If I were the bad guy I would much rather face one stealth than 10 F-16s. If I had 10 F-16s trying to shoot down the one stealth. Economics determine how many war planes you can have and the cost of the warplanes determine the number.
I understand why the Naval version for carrier landings and takeoffs needs to be different.
Taking off that mod for additional fuel/loadouts makes sense, but I’ve never understood why the rest couldn’t be the same.
WOW!! just like that ship in Star Trek that splits into 3 ships
F-35 = Solyndra, with a canopy.
Hmmm. The STOVL version has the largest weight but the smallest fuel load.
“the three F-35 models are only 20- to 25-percent common, mainly in their cockpits.”
Which means by cost of spares they are very common. Also that percent probably does not take into account that the engines have mostly common parts even if the top level part number is different.