McCain urges U.S. to think about F-35 alternatives

Pentagon buying chief: F-35 ‘unaffordable’ without changes

http://thehill.com/news-by-subject/defense-homeland-security/162119-pentagon-buying-chief-f-35-unaffordable-without-changes

Um, the F-22?

I would much rather think of an alternative to McInsane.

The F-35 is a multi-service fighter, the F-22 is for the Air Force.

Assign the F-22 as a multi-service fighter?

Alternatives? We don’t need no stinkin’ alternatives!

The F-35 was priced at around $130 million per originally and is now running about $152 million per.

The F-22 is running about the same price now, and doesn’t have near the program problems that the F-35 has.

“The cost of each F-35 jet, short of program changes, would be $103 million, according to Christine Fox, director of the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the committee’s ranking member, noted earlier in a hearing on the program that, initially, the Pentagon intended each plane to cost $69 million.”

I suspect if you look at the actual value of the dollar over the interval of 1999-2011, the cost increases aren’t too far out of line. That corresponds to little under 4% annual inflation over that interval...

The F-22 is running about the same price now, and doesn’t have near the program problems that the F-35 has.

The maintenance costs of the F-22 are astronomical which is why the Air Force didn't kick too hard when it had its procurement capped at 187 aircraft.

The F-22 line, while still cranking out the last few of those 187 Raptors, has already begun to go into a shutdown mode. Even if you ordered more Raptors today, because of some long lead time items there'd be almost a year of no production from the line. And the costs of any more Raptors will be over $200 million each because of not keeping the line cranking.

Funny how people forget the almost 15 years of development problems the F-22 went through, and how we have three tiers of F-22 aircraft in our inventory as a result.

OK, let’s kill the F-35 program when we are this close to production. Let’s throw away the billions we have sunk into it, and start all over again. This pisses me off to no end. We start a program so we can replace aging equipment, and then abandon it after sinking a crap ton of money into, and still don’t replace the gear we set out to replace.

I was on one of these programs. The NLOS Cannon. It was set to replace the M109A6 Paladin. We got the axe in June of 09. Now we are putting band-aids on the Paladin with no replacement in sight. The NLOS came into being after the Crusader program was cancelled.
The program I work on now is the JLTV. It is set to replace the HUMVEE. We just finnished the TD (Technology Demonstration)phase. The next phase just got pushed back to Jan of next year. Again, more wasted money, engineers and techs moving on to other things or other companies, so you end up with a talent drain and your not guaranteed that talent will come back when the nect phase kicks off. It is just plain stupid!!!

The F-35 is also for the Navy, carrier landings, which the F-22 wasn’t designed for. In actuality the F-35 is the successor to the F-22. The F-22 wasn’t designed for carrier landings, it was designed to replace the F-15.

In actuality the F-35 is the successor to the F-22. The F-22 wasn’t designed for carrier landings, it was designed to replace the F-15.

No, the F-35 is not the successor to the F-22. The JSF concept (of which the X-35 won against the X-32) was meant to be the lower end of the Hi-Lo bracket with the ATF concept (of which the YF-22 won against the YF-23) being the pointed end of the spear. The Advanced Tactical Fighter was oriented to be a high (and multi-spectrum) stealth fighter that had superlative kinematics when it came to energy management and maneuverability, could supercruise, and was meant to not only be able to defeat any future Soviet fighters (including stealthy versions) but also as an advanced IADS penetrator (able to ingress advanced and integrated SAM networks). The Joint Strike Fighter on the other hand was supposed to be a cheap but highly effective strike fighter that had an appropriate (read, capable for the task) stealthiness (primarily in the front quadrant, and particularly against X-band radar as opposed to S and L bands), was supposed to have kinematics that were comparable to those of legacy fighters (the minimum being the F-16, the target being the F-18), no supercruise, and basically to be backed by the F-22. Basically, a future version of the F-15/F-16 Hi-Lo mix. The JSF was also meant to replace not just the F-16, but also the Harrier, the A-10 and (originally) the F-18 (although the SuperBug and the F-35 will be serving together for more or less the duration of both their lives).

The F-22 was to replace the F-15; while the F-35 was to replace the F-16/18(originally, but the two will now work together)/Harrier/A-10. The F-35 has never been the successor to the F-22. The F-35 is a cheaper but still capable airframe meant to add numbers, with the F-22 being present for those tasks that require either a superlative A2A solution (where the Raptor needs to sanitize advanced enemy airspace ...e.g. say with SU-35S, T-50 prototype iterations, or J-20 prototype iterations) or requires a deep IADS penetrator (where the F-22 with SDBs would be part of a package with B-2s and waves of cruise missiles to penetrate and destroy advanced IADs with double-digit SAM systems and advanced redudant networking that have radar systems that require an airframe that is not 'just' X-band stealthy like the F-35). Basically the difference between the Navy SEALS (F-22) and Army Rangers (F-35). In no way, then or now, is the F-35 a 'successor' to the F-22. What has unfortunately happened is due to budget cuts the F-22 has gone down from its original 800+ numbers to under 187 (following the crash of the Raptor a short while back, and I am sure the actual operational numbers will be lower than 150), meaning that the F-35 is being made to take on duties that the F-22 was meant to. Ironically, this has led to the F-15 getting a new breadth of life, with Golden Eagles (F-15s with AESA radar) being found to be just as good at A2A as F-35s (which just shows how good the F-22 is). Just last month a study was done that showed how F-15s could be used against stealthy platforms (cough cough, hi China). However, the original plan was 800+ ATFs backed by a couple thousand JSFs.

I don't have a problem with the F-35. It will be perfect against 90% PLUS of the possible foes the USAF/USN/USMC may face. Actually, a modernized F-4 Phantom would be just as perfect against 90% PLUS of the possible foes the USAF/USN/USMC would face, if we are talking about the usual list of suspects (Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Guam, Panama, Bosnia, and other sorry states that couldn't down a mosquito with a watergun full of Raid!).

The problem is when it comes to the remaining 10%, and in particular the crucial 5%. That includes nations like China. The only way to maintain a CAP to protect (say Taiwan, if any American president had the gonads to protect that island nation against its powerful neighbor ...something I doubt since I do not believe any president, Dem or Rep, would do that) would either to fly Raptors off a place like Guam or use naval assets (SuperBugs and F-35s) off a carrier. That would run into difficulties from the get go, ranging from IRBM with bomblet warhead attacks on runways that base Raptors to direct attacks on US carriers. However, let's assume China doesn't do that to avoid a needless escallation of the confragation. For the Raptors to do a CAP, they would need refueling aircraft ....those may be easy prey for Chinese assets (a RAND study looked into this, and they made the Raptors invincible - none got shot - and also made the Raptor AMRAAM missiles perfect - 100% probability of kill, which is not backed in the real world. Even with those perfect advantages, with each Raptor killing 6 enemy aircraft with no losses, all Raptors got destroyed. How? Because the Chinese aircraft waves managed to destroy the airborne refueling aircraft, and the Raptors ran out of fuel and splashed into the ocean). Now, the naval assets - the F-18s and F-35s would be facing off against over a thousand Chinese fighters. Let's say 75% of those are older obsolete fighters ....they would still need to be shot down, since if ignored they can still cause damage. The remaining 25% would be comprised of a mix of 4th generation, 4.5 generation, and a smattering of 5-ish generation fighters (asusming this is 2020). The main problem would actually not be the 5-ish gen, but rather the couple hundred 4/4.5 fighters, which by then have had avionics upgrades (with some having AESA, which although not as good as that in the SuperHornet and/or F-35 is still good enough to do the job) and with far better pilot training than they had in the 90s (China has been investing a lot in that).

There is a reason the ATF concept included a NATF (Naval Advanced Tactical Fighter) aspect to it, which is one of the reasons (not the only, or the biggest, but one of) that the YF-22 beat out the YF-23. The YF-22 was believed to be easier to convert to a naval fighter (the true successor to the F-14) than the YF-23.

Anyways, let us hope that the US continues to fight againsts banana republics and desert fiefdoms. I fear the day the US faces off against someone truly capable the results may not be pretty (not that the US will lose, but the toll in materiel and people will be something that the American public is not used to ...not many imagine the sinking of an Arleigh Burke AEGIS Destroyer as even remotely possible, and the shooting down of a F-18 by an Iraqi MiG-25 was considered so shocking that for a short while it was believed it must have been a SAM. Against a near-peer adversary such 'impolite' occurences may easily happen). The dominance of the United States Fighting Machine has been due to investment in the right people, the right tactics, the right equipment, and the right support and situational awareness systems. Four legs that led to a result of the US being absolutely unbeatable, without even having to threaten the use of nuclear weapons (unlike nations like Pakistan that require a nuclear Sword of Damocles to avoid attack by the US and/or India). The US has been undefeated (the situations in Viet Nam, Somalia, Iraq etc have been due to the US deciding to stick to certain rules ....if the gloves were off WW2 style, with anything goes being the only rule, I doubt the word 'quagmire' would be in regular use outside nerd circles. The US fighting machine could crush all resistance). However, stop investing in any ONE of those legs, especially as the rest of the world (particularly the 10%, and in particular the 5% that can actually DO something) catches up, and all that is happening is seeds for future pain being planted.

The F-35 was always meant to be second best. The good thing is the American second-best is better than the best of 90-95% of the world, and in particular 99% of the nations that would probably be an issue to the US.

The problem is always that 1%.

Absolutely. Love the F-22, but sure seems memories are short. That plane was also overweight over budget and behind schedule, and was a Gore or Kerry presidency away from being completely mothballed. Now, of course, it’s the greatest plane ever and we should have ordered 3x as many...so it goes.

I think given the same chance, the F-35 will positively surprise, so lets see. Also, McCain has unrealistic expectations if he wanted a $69 million 5th gen fighter. Even the 4.5s blow that out of e water...look at the Eurocanards, for example.

FUJM