F'd: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World's Worst New Warplane

Real Clear Defense ^ | August 14, 2015 | David Axe

[C19fan]

From all the recent sounds of celebrating coming out of Washington, D.C., you might think the Pentagon’s biggest, priciest and most controversial warplane development had accelerated right past all its problems. The price tag—currently an estimated $1 trillion to design, build and operate 2,400 copies—is steadily going down. Production of dozens of the planes a year for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps is getting easier. Daily flight tests increasingly are hitting all the right marks. Or so proponents would have you believe.

[rdcbn]

The F-35 is very effective Strike Fighter that can perform it's primary function of taking out high value, heavily defended enemy targets and still hold it's own against 4th and 5th Gen air superiority fighters.

Given our depleted force of air superiority fighters, the JSF’s ability to defend itself and actually take the fight to enemy aircraft if necessary allows our F-22s to concentrate on establishing air superiority while the F-35s take out enemy infrastructure.

F-35 is no A-10 but in an all out conflict, the close air support tool of choice is precision guided munitions launched from large stand off distances, which the F-35 is designed to do.

Once the F-22s have established air superiority and the F-35’s have taken out high value infrastructure, our more conventional aircraft can operate in relative safety in a much lower threat environment.

A large fraction of the cost overruns and delays in the F-35 program have been a result of the need to upgrade the F-35’s air to air fighter capabilities to offset the loss of F-22s due to the cancellation of the F-22 program.

What we are seeing is the end game of the Obama led Democrat plan to gut our Air Force's superiority by killing the F-22 on the justification that the F-35 could replace the F-22 and then killing the F-35 with the justification that it can't do the job the F-22 was intended to do.

It takes a decade or more to bring new fighter online and if we cancel F-35 we will be dead in the water with a fleet of 1960s - 1970s vintage F-15, F16 and FA18 aircraft until the year 2035.

It would take at least 5-7 years just to restart the F-22 program.

[shibumi]

You've probably seen this:

http://www.standard.net/Military/2015/07/02/F-16-beats-the-F-35-in-dogfight-Pentagon-says-it-s-no-big-deal

Their contention is that the F35 will win just so long as the planes are not up close and personal.

To which my brain responds "Yeah. Riiiiight!"

[alloysteel]

I am well aware of both the Hawker Harrier and the predecessor airframe called Kestrel. They were bad compromises made then, and they were more of an engineering experiment than a real and serious implement of defense and aerial assault.

Crash and burn come to mind.

[PGR88]

Big government is expensive government, bureaucratic government, inefficient government, and corrupt government

in WWII, the US developed, tested, built and deployed the best and most advanced fighter plane the world had ever seen, in a span of about 6 years (starting in 1937-38).

The P-51 cost today’s equivalent of about $650,000 per copy and 15,000 were built. Herman Georing, head of Hitler’s Luftwaffe said: “when I saw P-51’s over Berlin, I knew the game was up.”

F-35 sounds like a bureaucratic, military-industrial, lobbyist, crony-capitalist screw-job on the American public and the American fighting man.

[SampleMan]

Building more F-22s and F-15 Silent Eagles would have been cheaper.

The Navy should have looked at Navalizing the F-22 for 1 fighter squadron per CVN and continued with the FA-18E/F/G family for attack.

The USMC should give up on 5th generation fighter aircraft and go with the FA-18F/G and attack helicopters.

[familyop]

By David Axe, from "War is Boring," the site named after the novel written by a cartoonist and friend of David Axe.

David Axe:




He's a favorite of publications like the following.

The American Prospect
Wikipedia

The American Prospect is a bi-monthly American political magazine dedicated to American liberalism. Based in Washington, D.C., The American Prospect is a journal of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics'[3] which focuses on United States politics and public policy. Politically, the magazine is in support of modern American liberalism, similar to The New Republic and The Nation.

[familyop]

Also exposed as anti-defense liberal leftist here and after in this thread.

http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3323972/posts?page=5#5

[SkyDancer]

Guns Guns Guns rule the sky. Okay, maybe a rocket or two here and there. Saw the film. Tnx. My bucket list has an F-16 ride in there.

[Sergio]

Just a random thought but I wonder if the F-35 is really designed to help ease the way for combat drones, the way Obamacare is designed to convince people that a single payer system would be better.

A pilot might hesitate to perform an unlawful order, a drone would not.

I’m hoping it doesn’t, but if the F-35 turns out to be a flying turd that is costing the lives of pilots and the ground pounders the F-35 is supposed to defend, autonomous drones start looking more like a viable option.

Just my tinfoil hat $0.02 worth.

[doorgunner69]

Surpris, surprise!!

A darling of the liberals that makes his living criticizing military projects.

[Robert A Cook PE]

The P-51 cost today’s equivalent of about $650,000 per copy and 15,000 were built.

True, true. But the A-1, A-6, A-10 could fly further, faster, and land more bombs more accurately than the B-17, B-24, or B-29. And drop them more accurately in the dark and bad weather (sevral missions per day if needed!) with only 1 or 2 crewmwn.

B-17 needed 10 men flying, 10 repairing, and had one mission every three days. If that.

[smokingfrog]

The final weapons package isn’t ready yet either.

[PGR88]

yes, of course the A-10 was better, but it was also 30 years old.

For its time, the P-51 was cutting edge. What is cutting edge today? And how much does it cost?