Posted on 01/28/2011 11:16:20 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
F-35 started with recipe for trouble, analysts say
By Bob Cox
rcox@star-telegram.com
As Pentagon officials worked on the 2012 defense budget proposal late last year, they were forced, yet again, to devote several billion dollars more to try to fix the F-35 joint strike fighter program.
Nearly a decade after Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth division won the F-35 contract, the company is still struggling to deliver on its commitments for what is arguably the most technologically ambitious aircraft ever built.
In a nutshell, the F-35 program is five to six years behind schedule. The estimated cost to taxpayers has nearly doubled.
The military will not have combat-ready F-35s to replace 30-year-old warplanes until 2016, if then.
There are numerous reasons for the F-35 debacle, say longtime defense observers, and most of them were predictable: Pentagon officials and military officers cobble together unrealistic goals, timetables and budgets, and defense contractors sign on knowing that once a big program is launched, it's seldom canceled and the money keeps flowing.
Not a new problem
"What's happened here is what happens with 90 percent of defense programs," said Tom Christie, retired Pentagon director of operational testing and a battle-scarred veteran of 40-plus years of internal Defense Department weapons-buying conflicts.
The "biggest mistake," Christie said, was made in the mid-1990s to appease the Navy, Air Force and Marines, which all desired a new warplane. The Air Force and Navy wanted stealth. The Marines wanted a replacement for their Harrier jump jet, which has short takeoffs and vertical landings.
Top Pentagon officials tried to combine all three services' wishes and desires into one
(Excerpt) Read more at star-telegram.com ...
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics
Two F-35s fly over Edwards Air Force Base in California last year. Eleven F-35 test planes have flown as of Thursday.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/29/2806149/f-35-started-with-recipe-for-trouble.html#ixzz1CPF2E5uq
So I might get a good deal on a used F-15?
They can’t beat the A-10 for air to ground warfare.
As for the USMC demand for VTOL, can anyone produce evidence of it actually being practical in a battle situation? (Before you complain, the Sea Harrier was STOL, so was the YAK 38, and it never saw combat.)
Why did Lockheed promise so much more than it could deliver?
If the average work could think of it, they’d say they’d do 100x an indian worker for 1/100 the cost. Ok, they got the contract.
Now it’s entirely out of scope. Why didn’t the ugly guppy Boeing design win? Would it have been better?
Nobody can answer this stuff. It’s all top level Lockheed/Congress costs.
F-35 is a raptor variant, Lockheed..
If it weren’t for the Sea Harriers, the UK would have had go for unrestricted submarine warfare or use their nukes against Argentina in the Falklands.
STOVL is the only option for medium-sized navies which can’t afford full-size carriers. Would the navies of the UK (now retired), Spain,India,Italy, Thailand and the USMC want to have some form of aerial combat capability or none at all??
This would have happened with any other company. For a competition which stresses commonality and international cooperation, this was probably bound to happen.
“Top Pentagon officials tried to combine all three services’ wishes and desires into one aircraft, which would become the F-35 Lightning II....That right there was the recipe for big problems,” especially the mandate to develop a short-takeoff-vertical-landing version for the Marines, Christie said.”
Yup, that’s it in a nutshell, IMHO.
Same thing happened with the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. It ended up being able to do everything asked of it.
isn’t this the same problem the Luftwaffe had? witness the bf-110 and Me-310. Also, didn’t McNamara try this with the F-111 and fail miserably? afaik the only combat aircraft that has been successful cross branch has been the F-4.
Either one would have been fine by me. The world wouldn't have missed Cordoba.
As for the rest of your comment, the Marines ac deal with USN or USAF air support. I've never seen a Marine aircraft mentioned in Afghanistan.
They would have had to give up the sheep.
May it serve as long and well as its predecessor
Probably yes. Lousy, terrible. They are all $ over results. And yes, that’s how it is with contracts. Terrible.
The top down needs to be redone like the Soviet system was redone after 1992 for Mig or SU. It really is that bad.
By the time this aircraft flies, it will be obsolete.
UCAVs are the future. A the rate this is going, UCAVs will have more capability than the F35.
What a debacle and waste of money.
Did you ever see the HBO movie “The Pentagon Wars”, by chance? It takes a number of liberties with the actual Bradley story in the interest of entertainment/humor, but also gets a lot of things right about the cluster*bleep* involved in getting the Bradley online and trying to get it done right. Kelsey Grammer is quite good in it.
I got to witness an A-10 "dropping something off" from a distance in '04.
That was most awesome. The sound and light show was nothing to sneeze at either.
If by air to ground warfare you only mean close air support in a low surface to air threat environment a short distance from your air field.
If air to ground warfare means hitting a target surrounded by "double-digit" SAM threats, like an Iranian weapons facility, then you are going to need a different plane.
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