The F-35 Just Isn’t Good Enough

When something isn’t very good, someone may joke that it’s still “good enough for government work.” Maybe the thinker who coined that expression had the F-35 program in mind.

The F-35 (also known as the Joint Strike Fighter) is a military jet that was supposed to be able to do it all. The program was started in the 1990s with the intention that it could serve the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines and their various mission needs with only minimal changes to the initial platform. That would deliver cost savings across decades as one jet replaced (at least) three other types of plane. It seemed like a great idea in concept.

But, predictably, the jet that tried to do everything ended up having more problems than successes. By the time designers had added stealth technology, short runway functionality, and various weapon systems, they had a jet that was too bulky, too slow and too costly. “The result is an expensive jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none,” The National Interest's Dave Majumdar writes, calling the JSF “one of the 5 worst fighter jets ever made.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. By this time, Lockheed was supposed to be churning out F-35 jets at a cost of $40-$50 million each. Instead, the military now says it wants to buy 470 of the fighters, at a cost of $34 billion. That would be more than $80 million per plane, twice what was promised.

Yet even as it tries to buy more of these planes, throwing good money after bad, the Pentagon admits the JSF program is failing. The Air Force’s top testing official wrote in 2016 that the F-35 is “not effective and not suitable across the required mission areas and against currently fielded treats.”

It also falls short of existing platforms. Military analyst Dan Grazier writes, “In the air-to-air mission, the current F-35 is similarly incapable of matching legacy aircraft like the F-15, F-16, and F-22.” And when it comes to supporting troops on the ground, one job the JSF was supposed to be designed for, “testing shows the F-35 is incapable of performing most of the functions required for an acceptable close support aircraft, functions the A-10 is performing daily in current combat.” One reason for that failure is that the F-35’s guns aren’t very accurate. A report noted that pilots routinely miss their targets because of software failures.

Plus, contractor Lockheed Martin struggles to even keep the F-35 in the air. “A handful of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters built during the early days of the program could become unflyable by 2026, after just 2,100 flight hours,” Popular Mechanics wrote this year. “The culprit is almost certainly the F-35’s design and production plan, which involved starting to build the planes before the final design specifications were set.”

Just last month, the Pentagon’s Inspector General said Lockheed may have over-billed the military by more than $10 million for spare parts that were never delivered. “We determined that the DoD did not receive RFI F‑35 spare parts in accordance with contract requirements and paid performance incentive fees on the sustainment contracts based on inflated and unverified F‑35A aircraft availability hours,” a report concluded. Spare parts wouldn’t save the plane, but we shouldn’t be wasting money on parts we never even get.

The Washington Post reports that “the late senator John McCain called the F-35 a ‘poster child for acquisition malpractice’ a ‘scandal’ and a ‘tragedy’ at different points during his tenure as Senate Armed Services Committee chairman.” I frequently disagreed with Sen. McCain, but he was correct here. Even after all the time and money invested, the F-35 isn’t very good.

Not very good isn’t good enough for the men and women in military uniform. They deserve the best tools our country can give them. The over-budget, under-delivering F-35 is not such a tool, and it’s not “good enough for government work.”

[The current generation four aircraft we have were, and still are fantastic performers, however S300/S400 air defense systems are rendering them impotent. ]

Is that really true? Can’t S300/S400 systems be targeted in the same way SAM sites were back during the Gulf War, going all the way back to Vietnam, when F-100’s used AGM-45’s against SA-2’s? At worst, aircraft loss rates would revert to Vietnam-era levels - high compared to anything since the Israeli experience in the Bekaa Valley. Of course, with around 2,400 lost in combat during the Vietnam war, these loss rates would require a big expansion in the aircraft inventory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War

But here’s the question - could aircraft losses really get back to Vietnam-era highs? Don’t long range air-launched cruise missiles like the JASSM-ER provide the ability to destroy systems like the S-400 without putting pilots at Vietnam-era risk levels?

Sorry it took so long to get back to you, I got wrapped around some axles.

Wiki has a fairly decent synopsis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system. Granted it is Wiki, but like I alluded to earlier, it is unclassified info... not the real true facts.

When I worked in the F-15’s (’75 thru ‘96), it took nearly a year and a half from start to finish to produce one F-15 from McAir. The average Wing consisted of 72 F-15’s. Some Squadrons had 18 F-15’s or less depending on their mission. There were probably 7 or 8 Wings (24 squadrons) worldwide. When the call came, F-15’s would usually deploy by Squadrons within geographic regions.

The S400 supposedly has a 250 mile range anti stealth UHF radar, along with other radars of varying ranges and capabilities interlinked at command and control. The info at Wiki states “One system comprising up to eight divisions (battalions) can control up to 72 launchers, with a maximum of 384 missiles (including missiles with a range of less than 250 km (160 mi)). The missiles are either semi-active, or active homing.

IF, AS ADVERTISED, the S400 alone has that capability, a squadron of F-15’s would be detected and tracked, and suffer dozens of multiple missile launches from several directions. As I recall, and it’s been a few years, on-board detection and jamming systems do not cover those kind of ranges in fighters. SA-10 and SA-11 missile batteries are located pretty much anywhere in the coverage zone of the radars, and the pilots may not even realize they’re there until they’ve been fired upon by a dozen of them and still be over a hundred miles from the control center.

So, given that the missiles can be replenished at a much faster rate than F-15’s can be purchased and built from scratch to replace losses in combat units, the question becomes: “How quickly and how many F-15’s in a 24-ship squadron can be lost before the squadron becomes useless?” This is true for any generation four aircraft units, especially A-10’s because they’re slower than molasses.

There are rules of thumb out there that deal with maximum ranges of a weapons, and what effective ranges actually are. In other words, at max range a cruise missile may only have a 5 percent chance of reaching it’s target and inflicting damage. Whereas, if the missile is launched at half of it’s max range, it may have a 45 to 60 percent chance of reaching it’s target and inflicting damage. If a HARM missile has, say an 80 mile maximum range, then the launching aircraft would have to be well inside the detection and tracking envelope of an S400 radar command and control facility.

The F-35’s were designed to be low observable enough to get well inside the S400 coverage umbrella to launch its weapon(s) at effective ranges. Once F-35 units can neutralize S400 systems, fourth generation fighters can more safely operate in the regions without suffering paralyzing losses. You can have an infinite number of missiles, but if all of your fighters and bombers are rapidly destroyed by S400 batteries and your experienced pilots are killed or captured, then you’ve got big problems. It’s the Japanese at the end of World War 2 all over again.

Also, keep in mind, anti radiation missiles are usually subsonic and can be shot down too. If you’ve followed the news recently, President Trump just cancelled the F-35’s that were supposed to go to Turkey because Turkey insisted on having an S400 system. It would not take too long to gather statistical analysis of the F-35’s shortcomings against the S400 (if there are any). I’m predisposed to think that there’s no such thing as a perfect stealth aircraft. Turkey would hold the keys to the kingdom if they possessed both the S400 and the F-35. What are the odds that someone in the Turkish government would hand the keys over to the Russians?

[You can have an infinite number of missiles, but if all of your fighters and bombers are rapidly destroyed by S400 batteries and your experienced pilots are killed or captured, then you’ve got big problems. It’s the Japanese at the end of World War 2 all over again.]

The idea here seems to be that the aircraft are going after their non-SAM targets even while being targeted by SAM’s all the way in. My impression, from Desert Storm, is that the first target of US airstrikes will be SAM systems, from the outer envelopes all the way in, as the outer ring is destroyed. Given that a radar is always going to be more expensive than a missile (unmanned kamikazes by another name), that seems like a pretty cost-effective strategy. Note that the JASSM-ER has a range of 600 miles. In theory, a JASSM-ER can reach Tehran when fired from Kuwait City. That’s likely more than enough

Now, if there’s a need to mount a Star Wars-style attack in the face of the threat of planetary destruction (or, in our more prosaic case, an enemy ICBM launch), perhaps a better solution would be a multi-SLBM launch with nuclear-tipped warheads against the suspected ICBM sites, given that conventional strikes aren’t fool-proof. But in the case of something like Iran, where an Iranian nuclear first strike isn’t a possibility, wouldn’t we simply re-do Desert Storm’s air phase, with month-long (or however long it takes) air strikes against SAM sites before going after the real targets of the air campaign?

And if his ground units leave their fortifications to attack US bases in neighboring Arab countries, we will find out if he can replicate the strategy deployed by the Egyptians during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, where mobile SAM umbrellas took a significant toll on Israeli aircraft while shielding their ground forces from air attack. It would be weird if we got to re-fight Yom Kippur, with us and allied Arab countries as the Israelis, and the Iranians as the Egyptians. The Iranian problem is that the Persian Gulf is not the Suez Canal, and the distances involved are far greater than what was involved during the Egyptian invasion of the then Israeli-controlled Sinai.

Yep. Granted I’m no expert, and it seems like the S400 systems were the Russians response to our strategies in the Gulf War. The S400 control center may be over a hundred miles from the widely dispersed actual missile batteries it controls. The batteries don’t radiate, they receive launch commands from the control center, and if they’re semi-active homing, the missile won’t even radiate until it’s within striking distance of the target. That doesn’t give the pilot much time to manuver to avoid being shot down. And the problem he faces is multiplied if several SAH missiles are converging on his position. And the problem is even more significantly complicated if there are multiple S400 systems deployed and interlocked. Even worse, they may have the ability to jam GPS and other electromagnetic guidance systems used by our weapons flying towards the control centers. It’s anybody’s guess. Nothing is assured in warfare systems these days.

I worked Avionics on the F-15’s way back when, and I recall that the only way you knew for sure that missile warning system was working was that indicators weren’t going crazy, and you weren’t going down in flames. All of this was, of course, dependent upon whether or not some kind of a HPRF signal was being detected (usually from the parent radar controlling the missile). But nowadays, the missile flys to a computed trajectory point, like an AMRAAM, then when it’s in the kill zone it goes active and locks on. At that point, the pilot is alerted to the missile...very late in the game.

Iran’s recent claims kind of intrigue me concerning taking over control of drones and things like that. If there’s any validity, Iran may be the beneficiary of some really clandestine stuff supplied by who knows who. They’re in bed with Russia, China, N.Korea, etc. And then we have quite a few unsavory types in our own country who worship the almighty dollar and crave power who are not above compromising all of our best technology, ala the Walker clan and Russia, and the Clintons giving our tech to the Chinese.

Iran has been spoiling for a fight with the U.S. recently, and we don’t have much in the way of equipment around there for a sustained operation without mobilizing like prior to the Gulf War, and that’s not going to happen in the absence of something really big going down. President Trump isn’t giving in to their temptations and blowing them out of the water militarily (which is fine by me... one drop of precious urine from my grandson isn’t worth going to war with Iran over some other countries’ ships getting whacked). The President is clobbering them harder financially and they’re feeling the pain.

It’s as if Iran has some new playthings they want to test out, and the Russians, Chinese, N.Koreans, etc. are watching and taking notes. IF they have the ability to take control of drones, and that’s pure speculation, they may also have the ability to shoot down our cruise missiles too. I don’t recall where, but I’ve read that the various different radars and shorter ranged missiles under the S400’s control do have capabilities to down very small targets like cruise missiles and drones that stray into their coverage envelopes. Something tells me they want a real world test of the system to see if it can safeguard their desire to build nuclear weapons. Let’s hope the rumored existence of “Rods from God” are true.

It’s been a long day, and I’ve truly enjoyed corresponding with you. We need to do it again soon. I’m signing off and heading to bed... long day tomorrow. Take care, and God Bless!

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