One aircraft that can be all things for all situations will be heavy, complicated and very, very expensive........................Like putting 10 pounds of sugar in a 5 pound sack.................
Imagine if the money went to say...the F-22.
I wonder what the average return on investment is for defense contractors buying US senators, congressmen and service men?
They get back, what, $1,000 for every dollar spent?
How many modified F/A-18’s or F-22’s could we have built for the price of the F-35 MONEY PIT? The F-35 is just another conspiracy to SABOTAGE OUR MILITARY!
The F-35 is a 5th generation fighter/bomber with a multi service purpose role.
It is an attack PLATFORM for engaging targets at a long distance.
It was never designed to be a dog fighter.
I think it’s a pretty cool system, except for the price.
The F-35 was designed to do the job the F119 stealth fighter did - only any time , any place, any weather.
The F-119 was our silver bullet but it could barely maneuver, was pretty much defenseless, and could operate at night - preferably in pitch dark.
Our militarily success for the last 30 years was contingent upon the F-119 taking out enemy air defense , command and control, leadership and other high value targets.
The F-119 is the main reason we ran through Iraq twice and quite a few other operations and their stealth and precision weaponry pretty much destroyed our opponents ability to effectively fight back and won the war in the first 5 minutes of action.
Our losses would have serious if not for the F-119.
The F-35 is a supersonic ground attack plane with stealth and countermeasures that the F-119 could never even dream of and it is at rough parity with the most agile fighter out there - the F-16.
The only place the F-35 is at a disadvantage to the F-16 is in a one on one dogfight and it's a close thing even then.
More significantly, the close in one on one is just about the only chance an F-16 has to kill an F-35 with any currently existing weapons - a point few take into consideration.
An F-35 can kill just about anything out there before the enemy even knows it's at threat, much less under attack.
The primary limitation of the F-35 is it's short combat radius without aerial resupply of fuel. It s big one that will haunt he F-35 throughout it's service life.
The could ever replace the F-22 and it was never even intended to be a fighter at all.
It was intended to be a radically upgraded F-119 produced in large numbers (we never had more than 50 F-119) that could fight it's way onto and out of a target with minimal disadvantage to a dedicated air superiority fighter.
As a former Lockheed-Martian employee, I can attest to the culture of management that sticks it to the client, continues to under-perform, and general lack of ethics. Furthermore, they showed great disdain for the actual technicians that do the work, while promoting those that are less qualified but easy on the eyes (read: high heels). I walked the hell off a contract because of their lazy, fat-a$$ managers could care less about winning a fight: it was all about the money.
Where does government oversight fit it? The get co-opted by LM with the promise of a job when they leave military service.
They should be the subject of a RICO investigation for fraud: confiscate and sell off all of the company's assets. Bunch of cockroaches.
Yeah because I always get my aerospace analysis from ‘esquire’. *snort*
Leave it to GOVERNMENT and you get screwed
And yet look at the idiots that want to turn their entire Lives over to it... I’d say let them but then ... They want to
(1) Make me, my kids Pay for it
(2) Drag me, my kids into it as well
Rush Limbaugh did not get his Wish
Obama is succeeding
A10
P3C
B51
Just 3 AC that will work today as they did in the past, will work in the future as well