The F-35 performing aerobatics.
Posted on 12/31/2014 5:11:05 AM PST by C19fan
The Pentagon’s newest stealth jet, the nearly $400 billion Joint Strike Fighter, won’t be able to fire its gun during operational missions until 2019, three to four years after it becomes operational.
Even though the Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, is supposed to join frontline U.S. Marine Corps fighter squadrons next year and Air Force units in 2016, the jet’s software does not yet have the ability to shoot the onboard 25mm cannon. But even when the jet will be able to shoot its gun, the F-35 barely carries enough ammunition to make the weapon useful.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
The political costs of losing a pilot outweigh the performance advantage of the A10 in most situation, imho. Drones are not expendables, but they are much more expendable than pilots.
Every president from Eisenhower to Bush 41 was in uniform during World War II. (Truman served in World War I, Jimmy Carter was an Annapolis midshipman during WW2.)
You are probably right on the political side, but I am looking at the tactical side - where the capabilities of the platform determine what is obsolete, not the proclivities of the politicians.
Until they have an A-10 30mm cannon in a commensurately survivable drone, the A-10 will remain a superior platform.
And if there were another “total war” you can be sure that plenty more would be in uniform.
I don’t see that as a prerequisite for being President. Having a healthy respect for, and an open ear for, the military is.
The last President with true, hero status, was Kennedy. Say what you will about his politics and his family. What he did in the war is pretty well documented. I don’t think you can say that about very many other Presidents in the 20th Century. Probably TR comes closest.
The days of the valiant knight on horseback is romantic. We will not see it again in our lifetimes.
I agree. There is a tendency here on FR to denigrate JFK and his brother’s service. Both of them served honorably, and courageously. Perhaps no more courageously than millions of others, but there is no need to denigrate either. (Besides, the political and social sentiments of either one would be mainline Freeper these days.)
I don’t want a tradition wherein our leaders must be drawn from the military, as in Imperial Rome or other militarized states. My favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, never served in the military. On the other hand, I think it is extremely unhealthy for the leader of the state to manifest palpable hostility towards our military and our traditional military allies. The harm done by Clinton and Obama cannot be undone. No one will ever trust the United States as an ally again. Japan and South Korea, and possibly Germany, will become nuclear powers as the credibility of American nuclear guarantees diminishes. (It is nearly nil now. The U.S. and U.K. made “ironclad” guarantees to the Ukraine to induce it to give up its nuclear weapons.)
So what was wrong with the F-22, exactly?
.
And then there is grammar, spelling, forming the correct letter shapes, placement of the one accent, and all the acronyms, the specialty acronyms ... but learning to count from one to twenty is easy. Your idea of basic proficiency and mine differ wildly ... 60 hours will basically get you to early Russian preschool level. Basic proficiency takes months of intensive learning, years to become truly proficient.
Russian vocabulary is dependent on the grammar, grammar is dependent on what is being said/written ... Learning that every word in Russian is or can be declined is a tough nut to crack, let alone use to any proficient degree.
Russian is usually rated harder to learn than any other language, except English, which is the most difficult of all; the more flexible the language is, the more difficult it becomes to learn.
Test your basic Russian proficiency by translating Yevgeny Yevtushenko - for instance “Babiy Yar”. He translated all or most of his poems into English so you can compare your basic ability or lack thereof.
Mandarin on the other hand has so many similar tones, so many characters it is often very confusing. To my knowledge, Mandarin is a ridged, bureaucratic language - once you memorize the characters and the tones - you are in.
The F-35 performing aerobatics.
Unfortunately most of those slide rule jockeys have passed on to the great pocket protector in the sky.
You make a good point.
I never think of Germany as a nuclear power. But with their engineers, both Germany and Japan could “whip one up” in about six months if not sooner.
The rise of Germany would be an interesting one to watch. They have such a history of running the economy of Europe over the years I wonder if anyone would try to stop them this time.
I do not see an anti-US Germany, but they could flex their muscles a little more than they do now.
We are certainly living in interesting times.
I don’t think this one is Obama’s fault. The F35 was a messed up, crony money making machine from day one.
“I’m sure the details of their flight envelopes are very different, but apparently the Brass want the F-35 to do all missions.”
Fund the A-10 along with the other programs and you get to keep the A-10. The A-10 is on the chopping block because there is not enough money in the Air Force budget to keep all of the support personnel for the A-10 and still have the support personnel for the other aircraft as well. The A-10 is being victimized by the U.S. Government cuts in budget for the DOD missions.
“So what was wrong with the F-22, exactly?”
It does what it is supposed to do ... not good. But was basically killed by a Democrat amendment forbidding export.
From Newsweek:
On July 17, the Senate voted to stop the F-22 program by a margin of 58–40—a more lopsided margin than administration officials had predicted. It was not a party-line vote: 15 Democrats voted to continue production; 15 Republicans voted with Obama and Gates to kill it. (The F-22’s floor managers were Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., representing Lockheed Martin, the chief contractor, and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., representing Pratt & Whitney, which makes the engine.) The vote went the way it did because Gates, a widely respected Republican hawk, provided cover for opponents of the program.
From the nyt:
Immediately after the vote, Mr. Obama praised the Senate’s decision, saying that any money spent on the fighter was an “inexcusable waste” - and that by following his lead the Senate had demonstrated a commitment to changing Washington’s ingrained habits.
Germans are only anti-US to the extent that they bear a grudge over the U.S. siding with their enemies in two World Wars. Absent the Nazi’s antisemitism it might have been impossible to have gotten the U.S. involved in World War II in Europe. Japan vs. the U.S. one-on-one would have been an even worse disaster for Japan. (Of course, without fear of a German A-bomb, there probably would never have been a Manhattan Project.) The division of economic output between the ETO and Pacific Theater was supposed to go 4:1 towards Europe, with the U.S. and Australia fighting a holding action against Japan until Germany was knocked out of the war. The collapse of the Japanese Navy came as somewhat of a pleasant surprise for the Allies.
“The last President with true, hero status, was Kennedy.”
He made a good effort getting his men out of the situation he got them into. If his father hadn’t been connected, JFK would have been court-martialed for getting his PT boat run over by a Japanese warship.
Once shooting starts, most political considerations should be thrown away, imho.
Another question would be if the F-35 has the legs and maintainability to be there when needed. I simply do not see a great deal of value in the 400 billion and counting, spent on this solution to many problems. There is a very high likely hood that it will continue to under deliver.
But our 315 A-10s, 37 AC-130s, 473 F-15s, 983 F-16s, and 178 F-22s can.
I think we’ll be ok until 2019.
A lot of the criticism you hear about the F-35 are the same kind of criticism we have heard in the past about other aircraft.
For example, when the F-18 Hornet came out, it was criticized as having many of the same deficiencies that are being attributed to the F-35 such as short legs, poor reliability, poor maintainability, dependency on unreliable software for control systems, cost over runs, being a strike fighter compromising the planes capabilities as both a pure fighter and as a pure attack aircraft, lack of mission capability and so on and so forth.
The F-18 is now being touted as a superb aircraft and one of the best defense investments the US has ever made.
To cut to the chase, the F-35 is part of the vision of where future technology is heading in the tactical air environment.
If you buy into that vision, you like the F-35. If you don't buy into that vision, then you do not like the F-35.
Regarding costs, all current 4th and 5th generation Western tactical aircraft are VERY expensive and all cost North of $150 million per aircraft.
For example, the costs of the Euro Fighter Typhoon are on the order of 175 million Pounds Sterling per aircraft and the Dollar - Pound exchange rate is about 1.75 Dollars per pound Sterling so the unit acquisition cost of the Euro Fighter is about $325 million per plane.
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