My SIL works on the VTOL package as a peon (but quite well compensated) engineer. He’s been extremely busy lately working on quality issues.
I don’t know if this will work out but it seems to me that many of the weapon systems we use are proclaimed POS when they first come out and end up being very good later.
I am sure lots of people with more experience and know how than I have thought this out, but with the massive incompetence in all things government, maybe not.
The F-35 performing aerobatics.
How’s that old saying go? “An elephant is a horse designed by a committee.”
They’re fielding this bird with only about 60-70% of the software written for it. Just the other day they were testing it for how it took off and landed in wet conditions. So, given this, I’m unsure how much credence can be given to criticism. An incomplete aircraft that sucks may be far different than the final product.
Lots of our very good, very successful military equipment was heavily criticized when first fielded, because we were still figuring it out. The criticism usually came from leftists who hated big bucks being spent on defense, in the hope of getting the big buck defense project canceled.
The F-22, an effective 5th generation air dominance fighter, was curtailed and canceled with the promise that the F-35 would be fully funded. This may be an effort to renege on that commitment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also exposed as anti-defense liberal leftist here and after in this thread.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3323972/posts?page=5#5
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.