Posted on 07/17/2021 9:14:07 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It outclasses pretty much everything else in the air save an F-22.
It is a strike fighter like the FA-18 and it outclasses the FA-18 in most ways.
The three main issues with F-35 are
- programmatic structure
- the introduction of new and novel high risk- high payoff technologies that are proving themselves and are in the normal maturation process. F-35 is blazing the trails on these technologies - coming up speed on how to field them in the real world and buying down risks and costs for follow on projects.
- the fact that the tech introduced on F-35 are taking the war fighters in directions they did not anticipate to fully exploit the aircraft's capabilities. The programmatic structure issues above are probably making this harder and more expensive than it needs to be.
The biggest problem the F-35 has is the fact that it is a strike fighter. It's capable in both air to air and air to ground but there is always the temptation to think - if only we had a pure air superiority fighter like the F-22 with the current and future growth capabilities of the F-35 and similarly, if only we had an optimized air to ground platform with the F-35 potential.
The success of the F-35 is one thing driving the replacement of the F-22 for just this reason. Another is that adversaries are finally fielding Gen 5 aircraft with capabilities similar to the F-22 and there is pressure to field a Gen 6 aircraft to maintain qualitative superiority
The fleet of only 160 or so operational F-22 make it very expensive and inefficient to maintain and it is becoming obsolete in some critical areas so the new F-35 driven tech is enabling a near term follow on air superiority aircraft
Our military can have it both ways and demands best in class in every application.
Countries like Switzerland who can only field one type and fly the F-35 off against the competition find they have a strike fighter that really can do it all.
Serious question: Does 30 F22s constitute a “large force?” Can they do significant damage to an enemy? (For example, a large unit sea battle such as those seen in WWII?)
Just read a decent article on the F22.
Without repeating all of it - yes it is a quantum leap over the F15 (or 16 for that matter).
One way of looking at it is kill ratio. Way, way back in the day the F15 had a kill ratio of 8:1 (which is a bit of a theoretical number because IIRC an F15 has never been shot down IRL). (Much of these numbers come from wargames).
But with the advances made by other fighter jets, that theoretical kill ratio has been brought down to 3:1.
With the F22 you get back to the halcyon days of 8:1.
The whole trick is to kill the enemy before he can even see you much less engage you. The F22 fulfills this mission (at least according to what I read).
““I want to moderate how much we’re using those aircraft,” the general said. “You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our high end, we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight… We don’t want to burn up capability now and wish we had it later.”
Doesn’t sound like a failure.
And the F-35 was not designed to engage dog fights, nor CAS. Those are secondary missions, at best.
It’s a penetrating strike aircraft.
And an acceptable air dominance platform as it’s sensor suite is the most advanced in the world, dwarfing that of even the F-22.
In the air-air role it is designed to detect and target enemy aircraft before it is itself detected.
The A-10 is still the best plane EVER for CAS. The F35 does not outclass that aircraft.
Folks talk about the cost of the F22. What about the cost of the F35s?
More and more talk that the military just wants basic aircraft to do basic jobs. Accurately drop bombs. Dogfight. Protect the troops.
Will the F35 be able to do that without it becoming a huge fundraiser for the politicians as was stated earlier or a complete disaster. Time will tell
How much Lockheed stock do you have?
Anything I write is based on conversations I’ve had with former USAF jet mechanics that I worked with on an overseas contract.
One of them was retired and worked on A10, 15s, 16s, 117s. Was like the shop savant on fighter jets.
Said the only thing that needs to be done with the A10 is to retool a plant to keep making them and upgrade its avionics package.
For a guy that did over 20years in and from what he knew about the F22, which wasn’t a whole lot because he never worked on them and it’s Ll classified, nothing beats it.
That's just reality.
The A-10 was designed from the ground up as a tank buster so it was intended to destroy high value targets. It is really not optimal solution even for shooting Taliban irregulars. There is a distinction between CAS and COIN missions.
It does a spectacular job, but it is expensive to do so and A-10s are often unavailable when they are most needed. What is best suited in Afghanistan like conflicts is a COIN aircraft that provides close over watch of troops and is on the spot in the critical first few moments of contact to either break contact or to break up the attack
For that you need a plane like an OV-10 Bronco
The unit cost of an F-35 is 78-80 million dollars range and the FA-18 and the F-16 are in the 68-74 million dollar range. It has very good mission availability and and it's operating cost, complexity and suportabilty are very low for a 5th Gen aircraft
The source you refer to does not say the F-35 is failure, it says they would not be playing a huge role in any envisioned future conventional weapons war on mainland China, primarily due to range limitations so that rules out other similar tactical aircraft as well. The source also said that the weapons they used to acheive victory in that simulation did not currently exist in inventory. The source you refer to did not say they want to replace the F-35 with a cheap, simple fighter. Instead they want it to complement the F-35.
Great comments. Yeah the A10 is quite the outlier - normally newer is better but the A10 remains as lethal and as useful as it ever was it seems.
I think the other thing about the F22 - not only is it good to have the “best of breed” fighter but ... if your pilots are not constantly training on them both individually and in squadrons it doesn’t matter. The machine itself is only one part of the equation. Equally important are training, tactics, integration with other weapon system. I have no idea how much of this is going on. However it seems that we only built a relatively small number of F22s so that would seem to limit training at least to some degree.
Also the training has to be constant - the skills can be lost as quickly as they are acquired.
“Love the A-10 but in serious war with a top tier military many will shot down before they even get to fire a shot in an area filled modern anti air defenses.”
All airplanes are goners in a top tier military. So are aircraft carriers, and subs.
Said the only thing that needs to be done with the A10 is to retool a plant to keep making them and upgrade its avionics package.
Easy peasy. That would take...what...a day or two?
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