Broken Promises, Skyrocketing Budgets, and a Fighter Not Fit For Duty – The F-35 Debacle

Townhall.com ^ | June 14, 2021 | Steve Sherman

[Kaslin]

If we didn’t have broken promises, we’d hardly have any promises at all when it comes to the F-35! Broken promises are a hallmark of the F-35 program resulting in a high cost to the taxpayer. The program is projected to cost more than $1 trillion to the taxpayer using tax dollars or the taxpayers' credit card depending on accounting. Either way, the F-35 costs $33,000 per hour to fly, yet the contractor’s promise to get that number down to $25,000 per hour is supposed to make us feel better.

The whole F-35 project feels similar to a trip to buy a new car. When one steps into a car dealership, they immediately are descended upon by a number of salesmen who act like they are your best friend from high school making promise after promise. When one sees the sticker price and flinches, the dealer says that this is a “special, one-time” deal. That scenario ends up producing an owner of a brand-new car who feels ripped off.

The same is happening in defense contracting. Breaking Defense reports that “Lockheed Martin is projecting another 40 percent drop in its portion of the F-35’s costs per flying hour by 2025, a trend that is expected to continue, company officials said today. Moreover, they argue, overall costs could be even further reduced should DoD sign a company-proposed multi-year performance-based logistics (PBL) contract.” In other words, if the government signs a brand-new multiyear contract with the government, then they will save even more money. Sound familiar?

There are many problems circling the F-35 and one of them is the Department of Defense won’t walk away from this project because military leaders are preparing to fight the last war. The F-35, known as the Joint Strike Fighter, may once have seemed like a good idea back in the 1990s. Back then, the idea was to conserve resources, by developing one weapon system that could replace several aging planes. The F-35 would fly for the Air Force and the Marines and the Navy. They could share parts and training manuals. The system would be stealthy, lethal, and undefeatable.

That was the plan, but none of it has come to fruition. The reality is that time has caught up with the F-35, and even sailed past it. The threat in the 21st Century isn’t the Iron Curtain. It is China. And the F-35 wouldn’t be especially useful in a war against China.

Don’t take my word for it. After a war game pitting the U.S. against China, Air Force Lieutenant General Clint Hinote told Defense News, “We wouldn’t even play the current version of the F-35. It wouldn’t be worth it.” That is because the Chinese military already knows how to defeat those planes."

"Every fighter that rolls off the line today is a fighter that we wouldn’t even bother putting into these scenarios,” Hinote concluded. In fact, even for war games, the Air Force is required to pretend it has advanced weapons that are still on the drawing board. Our supposedly advanced F-35 is yesterday’s technology.

Even if the F-35 had worked as designed – and to be fair, it never came close to doing so – it would now be nearing the end of its workable life. The fact that the Pentagon will invest some $1.7 trillion in the program is beside the point. That is a sunk cost, and there is no way to recover it. Instead of pouring another $78 billion into the program over the next five years, military leaders should look for a different approach.

Lawmakers are already taking notice. “Stop throwing money down that particular rathole,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said of the program. “What does the F-35 give us? And is there a way to cut our losses? Is there a way to not keep spending that much money for such a low capability because, as you know, the sustainment costs are brutal.”

There is a way, of course: focus resources on the next generation of weapon systems.

“Last September, the U.S. Air Force shocked the aviation world when they announced that they not only had a design in mind for their Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter, they’d already built a prototype and flown it,” analyst Alex Hollings reports. Perhaps this is the potential weapon the Air Force relies on in its war games so it can defeat the Chinese.

Author Sean McFate sums the issue up. “The irrationality of the F-35 goes beyond the price tag — the plane is superfluous. It was devised as a flying Swiss Army knife that could meet the needs of the Air Force, Navy, Marines and Army,” he wrote at The Hill. “Instead, it proves the adage that a camel is a horse designed by committee.”

The military needs to deploy its next generation of weapons as quickly as possible and stop buying the promises of a contractor that has overpromised for years. This is a time for looking forward, not backward.

[Chode]

somewhere, PukinDog is laughing...

[bigdaddy45]

A Trillion dollars for an airplane program is beyond scandalous. I’m ex-military and pro-military, but this is absurd.

[caww]

“Broken Promises, Skyrocketing Budgets, and a Fighter Not Fit For Duty”...... sounds more like Joe than the F-35!

[SaveFerris]

Yeah

[Fledermaus]

Why was it needed? I thought the F-22A was the panacea.

[rdcbn1]

Perhaps Gen Hinote might like to help us understand how it is that the Chinese already know how to defeat the F-35.

By inference, the Chinese don't know how to defeat an f-16 or F15, but they do know how to defeat an F-35 according to Hinote?

Calling BS on this. If you have a low observable weapons platform operating with operational security, then you have a hard target to shoot down. If we know what the Chinese know about how to defeat our attack, why don't they fix it?

[rdcbn1]

A Trillion dollars for an airplane program is beyond scandalous. I'm ex-military and pro-military, but this is absurd.

---

The money was spent to develop the various components of the F-35, most of which are novel breakthrough technologies. The F-35 is the launch platform for the next gen plug and play technology.

This was proven when the air force put a next gen fighter plane together in a year.

The only real reason to ding the F-35 is if they have leap frogged the F-35 generation tech with new capabilities easier to integrate and optimize in a clean slate design.

[Gen.Blather]

In thirty-three years in the military/industrial complex building weapon systems, I’ve seen lots of failures. They mostly have a common theme. They are trying to do too much at once; too many new concepts, too many untried technologies, too many companies involved. (Look at the map of where subcomponent suppliers are located for any big project and they are spread across 45-50 states...for votes.)

The Future Combat Systems program is the perfect example. The idea was to build one common vehicle and base all the other vehicles for EVERYONE off that one concept. Imagine you wanted to do that with a car, but it had to be competitive as a Formula One race car, an ambulance, a limo, and a grocery-getter. Then, because it was going to be the most expensive program ever, it had to include every company in existence. There were two primes...insane. That’s like working for two different companies. Every aspect of the project was insane. The engineers were aghast at what management had signed us up for. But, and here’s the kicker, the bonuses, by which all the top management got paid, were not based on success. They were based on staying on the spending plan. We didn’t have any requirements documents until the preliminary design review. But most of the design money had been spent, sometimes by engineers playing computer games. When I asked a software engineer about it as he splattered aliens on his machine...he said, “I don’t have any requirements to write to. They are paying me to sit here.” But the top management got their bonuses.

Although FCS was the worst example I ever experienced, it simply combined all the stupidity of all the projects I’d worked on in one place.

The F-35 might be great, but it probably suffers from trying to do too much for too many customers. I’m pretty sure it suffers from having too little technical oversight from people who understand what can, and can not, be done in a certain timeframe and with the budgeted amount.

Every new project is sold because it will do away with the need for any other similar project and all the legacy hardware. They sell unicorns and stardust and deliver crap. But, management takes home their award fees, every time.

The Air Force is buying upgraded F-15’s instead of some of the F-35’s. I’m pretty sure it’s because they realize the F-35 simply will not be competitive in some venues. Also, I suspect stealth is ephemeral. The F117’s are all retired, because they were slow and ungainly and networked radars could see them. It’s much easier to modify radar software to counter stealth than it is to build a whole new stealth vehicle. So, how long will the by good for? If history is any guide, much less time than their cost would justify.

When the Warthog was pitched to an air force general, he said, “If it isn’t faster, sleeker and flies higher than the old model, I’m not interested.” I think that encapsulates the military’s thinking. It’s not about the mission. It’s about the sex appeal. We need a bit more oversight. Rumsfeld was a genius. McNamara, not so much.

[bigdaddy45]

Fantastic. Great research. Over a TRILLION dollars worth? Pigs at the trough.

[pfflier]

Most of the story is recycled rhetoric. The marines that fly the F-35B replacing the Harrier, do not share the opinions of that article, not even close.

None of the article even talks about the datacentric capabilities of the F-35 fleet.

Lastly, show me a dim senator that EVER liked a new aircraft program. They hated the F-15, the F-22, the B-1, the C-17, the E-3 AWACS (Patsy Schroeders famous plane searching for a mission) on and on. If it was up to them, we would still be flying P-40s.

[Renfrew]

The big issue is that at $100 million per plan you can never send an F-35 into an environment where there is more than a 0% chance of losing it.

In a real war, cheaper, faster to produce planes (or drones) will win.

[oldbill]

Are any of you posters fighter pilots?
You all see to know so much, so you must be fighter pilots who actually have your ass on the line.

[traderrob6]

And they sh!tcanned the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor program because it was too expensive relative to the F-35.

[AFreeBird]

No doubt.

[puppypusher]

“Perhaps Gen Hinote might like to help us understand how it is that the Chinese already know how to defeat the F-35.”

Could it be that they have already built a copy of the Jet with plans they stole from Lockheed/Martin?

These Military Contractors have to be held accountable for not securing their classified programs.

Even when they are held accountable they are given a slap on the wrist so they’re not harmed financially. The Tax payers are the ones who are harmed.

[PIF]

Just keep their launch platforms out of the plane’s range - see DF-26

The F-35 is only ‘sort of stealthy’ from the front. It cannot carry a much in the way of a payload without hanging stuff all over the plane. This limits the plane to rear echelon defense of AWACS and re-fuelers, but then that’s where the J-20 comes in - it is designed to take those assets out from BVR, (around 200-300 miles) packing 6 or more R-9s variants internally and more externally.

The 35, AWACS, and re-fuelers are sitting ducks and so defeated before they are effective. And the vaunted data-links are worthless, unless they can get close enough to collect data in the first place.

I know people here seem to have a lot of emotion invested in the 35, like the CVN Ford, class but it is not warranted. Both are duds. So lets move on to the future with smaller, cheaper, low maintenance platforms that work as designed, instead of always going for the most expensive, most technically complicated, high maintenance, shiniest toys on the block.

In a war, the cost of replacing capital ships, advanced planes, and other complex equipment can lose the war as quick as anything the enemy can do.

[PIF]

You are presupposing the Chinese are stupid and incapable of doing anything on their own. Its one thing to copy a design down to the smallest scratch as the Korans used to do, and its another when you take that design and make it your own, as Jobs did with the cell phone. Never underestimate the enemy And this one is on the verge of fielding a new 6th gen fighter.

[oldplayer]

“Why was it needed? I thought the F-22A was the panacea.”

The F-22 is the most fantastic air superiority fighter ever made. It is still the gold standard. It was priced with the plan to produce over 700 of them. The development cost would be spread over 700 planes.

700 F-22’s would ensure superiority in several places at once if need be. Dims and Clintoons cut production immediately and destroyed the capacity for a different administration to ever build them again. We have less than 150, now. Decreasing with use as the airframe hours build up.

The F-35 has always been a weapons truck. It also has capabilities to see enemy activities and respond in ways that are not talked about in the article. USAF pilots are confident in its abilities and find it to be a fine aircraft in its role.

One additional issue that has complicated the life of the F-35, is Congress’s messing with it. It has been modified so many times to meet the whims of Congress (and their lackies in the Pentagon) that it does indeed need to meet the Formula 1, Mini-van, Off-road 4x4 requirements as stated by a poster above.

[daniel1212]

Then there is this little issue:

US put China-made parts in F-35 fighter program - CNBC https://www.cnbc.com › 2014/01/03 › us-put-china-ma... Jan 3, 2014 — The Pentagon waived laws banning Chinese-built components on US ... the F-35​, the U.S. military's next generation fighter, the documents show. ... may become dependent on parts made by a potential future adversary.

China’s growing stake in DoD supply chains:

New data from Govini, an artificial intelligence-driven analysis firm, shows China’s increasing presence in the Pentagon’s supply chain.

“From 2010–2019, the number of Chinese suppliers in the [Defense] Department’s supplier base in the sample Govini assessed increased by a total of 420%, to 655, across numerous critical industries. In comparison, U.S. companies grew 97%, to 2,219,” the company said in a new analysis. “Moreover, Chinese suppliers’ share of these critical industries grew to 9% in 2019, up from 6% in 2010. The prevalence of China-based companies across the Department’s supplier base will make it difficult to identify with certainty all of the cases where they are a single-source provider of a key technology or material.”

Chinese companies have increased their shares, particularly in “specialty chemicals, major

diversified chemicals, telecommunications equipment and electronic components,” according to Govini.

“China-based companies have the greatest share of the supplier base in Telecommunications Equipment (20%) and Specialty Chemicals (17%), and have over 10% of the supplier base in nine other critical industries,” the report states. “In the Semiconductors industry, the number of China-based companies has grown 364% between 2010 and 2019, to 65 companies, increasing China’s share to 13% from 7%; the share of U.S. companies (144 in 2019) dropped to 28% from 56% due to a surge of other foreign suppliers.”

While the Pentagon doesn’t directly do business with Chinese companies, they start appearing in the lower tiers of the supply chain. Here are some of Govini’s findings:

• “U.S.-based companies make up less than half of the supplier base starting at Tier 2 and stabilize at approximately 25% by Tiers 4 and 5; U.S. companies have the greatest share in the Data Processing Services (58%), Biotechnology (52%), and Packaged Software (48%) industries, - https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/08/global-business-brief-august-13-2020/167699/

  But maybe they can get them in on Ebay in a (God forbid) war