Posted on 04/22/2016 12:11:32 PM PDT by MaxistheBest
The bottom line is that a mix of F-15se and F-16s, and a decent light attack aircraft for the Marines life F/A-18s and Harriers is far superior to the flying moonpig 35.
Its sole virtue is that it was designed to survive the procurement process and congress extremely well. And that all it really was designed to do.
“The JAS-39 Gripen: Sweden’s Cheap (and Deadly) Fighter Plane”
When I was employed by General Dynamics I was in a class being addressed by a company director. Somebody said that what we were leaning to do in the class was going to result in increased company overhead. The director laughed and said, approximately, (we are not trying to reduce overhead. The more we charge the more we make.)
The goal of producing a weapons system has never been to make it cheap or maintainable or serviceable. The goal is to make money. A secondary goal is to spread that money far and wide. To that end Congress ladles expensive social and greenness requirements on top of the weapon’s cost so they can send money to constituents or satisfy some non-defense agenda. Does anybody believe that tiny and inefficient and sometimes unqualified minority owned small businesses would get plumb pieces of the pie if Congress didn’t decree it? Many of these companies subcontract the work to real companies and simply add their minority blessing fee on top of the costs. Imagine what that ads to the price of a weapon.
If there was a plane every bit as good that could be had for half the cost I doubt very much that company would get a single contract.
The F-22 shooting flares is not the ‘answer.’ That plane is an air-superiority fighter, not a bomber, not a Close Air Support fighter.
The poor F-22, killed shortly after birth, still does not have the 40 year old tech that most other fighters are equipped with: a heads up helmet display, and only recently got an Air-to-Air missile with a range that is equivalent to the common ones found on various Russian fighter models.
The trouble with the F-35 is that too many cooks got into the kitchen when they were making the soup and seem to have produced something like a Wegu steak soup with a salad (complete with dressing) mixed in for good measure.
As things stand now, the plane is essentially three planes due to the many different requirements - instead of the single plane for all with interchangeable parts.
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