I’m probably being naive, but I’m still not sure why we even need the F-35, especially given the incredible cost. Aren’t they over a BILLION dollars EACH? We just simply can’t afford that!
Are our existing fighters not good enough? Do we even have any real air-to-air engagements anymore in the first place? Wasn’t Korea the last war we had where there were frequent ‘dogfights’? I know there were occasional air-to-air engagements in Vietnam, but it was nothing like Korea.
To me, the f-35 seems to be nothing more than a grand ‘Make Work’ Project. At least the money is being spent to produce something, assuming it would otherwise be wasted elsewhere anyway.
I am no fan of the F-35, more of a F-22 guy.
Nonetheless, when you say “ Aren’t they over a BILLION dollars EACH?” I have to let you know, no, they are not that costly. Not even close.
http://www.saffm.hq.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-140310-041.pdf
Click on Comptroller Exhibit P-1, go to P-1 Line 1, page1 of 26. This budget document for FY14 reports current cost at $149.715M (million) per jet.
There are previous years listed and out-year estimates and they list different cost-per-jet prices. This has to do with suppliers and production costs and the number of jets.
You can also see the cost-per-jet is projected to drop to $104.883M per-jet by 2019, ending at an average of $121.125M per-jet.
At any rate, as you can see, the cost-per-jet is no where near the “billion dollars each” mark.
Oh, and “Do we even have any real air-to-air engagements anymore in the first place? Wasn’t Korea the last war we had where there were frequent ‘dogfights’? “. . .no. Gulf War I we had a few engagements and most kills were via the F-15.
The strength of stealth is the fact you can see and shoot the bad guy and he never sees you. You try and avoid a “dog-fight” if you are flying a fighter. Why close to the merge when you don’t have to, and if you do close to the merge, you want to remain ‘invisible’ as long as possible in order to give you the advantage.
The question I think is this; do we want to produce jets as good as the bad guys, or do we want to produce jets as good as we can make them?
Modern A/A warfare is not like it was in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or even Gulf War I.