Posted on 10/11/2024 9:07:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Producing a new fighter jet is difficult, time-consuming, and always ends up costing too much. Don't even get me started on Lockheed-Martin's troubled F-35 Lightning II, which just resumed production after a year-long pause.
The Lightning's development problems are legendary, but after many delays and too much money, "Fat Amy" (as pilots call it) works. Lockheed has built more than 1,000 F-35s already, and customers are happy with it — including export buyers who weren't in on the fighter's lengthy development and weren't originally contracted to buy any. Nation-states with serious air defense needs seem to love Fat Amy.
Russia, on the other hand, is flying nowhere fast with its own stealth fighter, the oft-delayed Su-57 (NATO reporting name, "Felon"). Production of the 5th-generation stealth air superiority jet has reportedly been "all but crippled" by Western sanctions on Russia's technology sector, according to a report this week in the UK Telegraph.
"Sanctions put into place by Western governments in the 31 months since Russia widened its war on Ukraine have throttled the supply of this critical hardware," military analyst David Axe reported. "As a result, 'production of the Su-57 is in jeopardy,' Frontelligence Insight concluded."
"The delivery rate of new Su-57s has decreased sharply from 2023 to 2024," United24 reported on Wednesday, "a deviation from typical trends where delivery rates generally increase as production stabilizes."
But I wonder if sanctions tell the full story.
And Another Thing: Russia doesn't give its jets cool nicknames like Eagle or Falcon. So NATO assigns names to Russian/Soviet planes for easier communications. Bombers get B-names like Badger, Bear, and Backfire. Fighters get F-names like Felon, Fullback, and (for the 1950s-era MiG-15) Fagot. It was a more innocent time.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Some say that's because Moscow is holding its limited quantities of stealth fighters in reserve for a possible war against the West. But India dropped out of the Su-57 program in 2018 because "the plane’s Russian-designed combat avionics, radars, and sensors are not up to fifth-generation standards."
Fat Amy. I love it
Like their T14 Armata tank it’s too expensive too use ,LOL
for the 1950s-era MiG-15) Fagot. It was a more innocent time.
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Faggot is an old word meaning ‘a bundle of sticks’.
Like their T14 Armata tank it’s too expensive to use ...
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No the are fine, all dozen or so that were made - the problem was the combat tow trucks program was cancelled.
and later, little match stick.
[And Another Thing: Russia doesn’t give its jets cool nicknames like Eagle or Falcon. So NATO assigns names to Russian/Soviet planes for easier communications. Bombers get B-names like Badger, Bear, and Backfire. Fighters get F-names like Felon, Fullback]
I’m glad somebody has finally been paying attention.
New weapons, particularly new generation fighter aircraft, take forever to design, develop, and bug fix. It wasn’t always so. “The P-51 prototype was ready on September 9, 1940, and it first flew October 26, 1940. It was an astonishing accomplishment for North American: they had delivered a brand new, prototype aircraft in a mere 102 days and flew it weeks later.”
I remember sometime before I was a contractor for Boeing, and later a Lockheed Martin employee, the announcement of the F-35 fighter, in 1995. 26 years later, it finally began production.
Well it also blows up easy.
“The P-51 prototype was ready on September 9, 1940, and it first flew October 26, 1940. It was an astonishing accomplishment for North American: they had delivered a brand new, prototype aircraft in a mere 102 days and flew it weeks later.”
— Boeing & Lockheed-Martin can do similar things to this day using off-the-shelf parts. The Phantom Works & Skunkworks will hand-build an airframe, plug in a standard engine, modified flight controls and an ejection seat and have you flying in a year... sometimes less.
The time consuming stuff is the combat avionics and the tools, jigs & fixtures that you need to go into production. Those things are usually being purchased concurrent with flight & weapons testing. That’s where the snags come in. Snags as in delays and cost overruns. The more complex the aircraft, the more massive are the overruns.
The Su-57 is a Masterpiece!Millennium 7 * HistoryTech
24m:17s
The SU-75 Checkmate is also in development and, like the SU-57 Felon, it is waiting on the final development of the new engine AL51-F1.
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/commentary-now-is-not-the-time-to-go-weak-on-the-f-35/
Now Is Not the Time to Go Weak on the F-35Feb. 2, 2024 | By Douglas A. Birkey
The year 2024 will stand as a transformative year for modernizing the U.S. Air Force’s fighter force. Bottom line: the service needs to reset fast. That is why it was welcome news when Lockheed Martin recently announced the Tech Refresh 3/Block 4 variant of its F-35 are projected to join operational Air Force units by the third quarter of this year.
This much-needed injection of new airframes and their advanced warfighting capabilities comes at a time when the Air Force’s fighter inventory is too small and too old to meet real-world global demands. Yet even as Tech Refresh 3/Block 4 F-35s roll off the line, there are threats to fiscal 2025 airframe orders. Money is tight, leaders are frustrated over program delays, and Congress is facing spending caps. But slowing F-35 buys would be a serious mistake, posing grave risk to long-term Air Force readiness in the face of growing threats.
The Air Force must rapidly rebuild a fighter inventory that has grown old and weary to match the pacing threat—China—and that means buying as many of the Block 4 F-35s as it can at the fastest possible rate.
One need only look at Ukraine to see what happens when a nation lacks a strong fighter force. Friendly forces are vulnerable to enemy aerial attack and the inability to penetrate air defenses renders a nation unable to strike targets at a decisive scale behind an adversary’s lines. The result we see today was predictable: Ground forces dug into fixed positions as in World War I, locked in an incredibly brutal, grinding battle in which both sides suffer high casualties and neither makes progress.
This is a nightmare scenario U.S. forces could suffer as well, if our military cannot demonstrate an airpower advantage against a peer competitor. Adversaries like China will always win a numbers contest in a fight close to their homeland. They own the advantage in sheer size, would be closer to their supply base, and have local air defenses to shield their forces.
Preventing a mass-on-mass war of attrition demands a more strategic approach to combat—the ability to strike anywhere in the battlespace with decisive force, while concurrently protecting against the enemy doing the same. That requires a right-sized fighter aircraft inventory.
[...]
The F-35 is the only stealthy U.S. fighter in production with the mission attributes needed to succeed in modern threat environments. That’s why so many nations, from the United Kingdom and to Israel, Italy to Australia, and the Netherlands to Japan are all lining up to buy this airplane. It dominates fighter competitions in almost every international market.
Recent delays in the program are tied to comprehensive upgrades that will radically enhance the aircraft’s performance against top-end threats, especially those posed by China. They amount to one of the largest software upgrades ever tackled by the Department of Defense. These delays have frustrated the Pentagon and Congress, but they should not trigger moves to undercut the program. Mission imperatives must prevail.
[...]
The F-35 Navy and Marine Corps variants were said to have serious problems with supersonic flight, frame deformation, and loss of stealth. The thread article only addresses the Air Force F-35 variant.
I agree and by implication I am hinting that today’s government funded weapons appropriation seems to create such “cost overruns” as a matter of course. Dubious and a shame really. 26 years? Are we risking ironic obsolescence before the first plane leaves the production facility?
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