Hitting a few comments with one post:
“What happened to the F-22?”
The F-22 is a better airframe, with air-to-air capabilities far beyond the F-35. It’s the F-15 to the F-35’s F-16. Shutting down the production line was a mistake, and the AF is now admitting that 186 of them is too few. There is talk of reopening the production line, as well as upgrading a few components to the more modern F-35 level.
“Every one that is lost is 330 million bucks down the drain.”
No. See the next response. You are including sunk engineering costs which are not affected by a lost F-35.
“Any idea what the price per plane is up to?”
The flyaway cost of the F-35A (cost to manufacture a plane) is around $100 million as of now. The current F-16 is around $60 million without stealth or advanced sensors/electronics. What the F-35 provides over the F-16 is the ability to strike heavily defended targets with few or no losses, and to fire at enemy aircraft before the enemy knows they’re around.
“The joke of a gun goes operational in 2017!
180 rounds. 3 seconds of 25mm. And it cant be used yet.”
It was quite premature to declare the gun obsolete in the ‘60s. In 2016, if you’re fighting a modern adversary the gun is only there as an absolute last resort.
180 rounds of 25mm is probably enough to shoot down five enemy planes, if push comes to shove, given that the software assisted aiming should be extremely accurate.
“180 rounds of 25mm is probably enough to shoot down five enemy planes, if push comes to shove, given that the software assisted aiming should be extremely accurate”
Huh? The gun is for ground support me thinks. In which case it is about 1000 thousand rounds short of an A-10. Of course in theory the F35 can take out missle defenses to allow it to go in for low altitude ground support whereas the Warthog needs to wait to go in while other assets do that.
Thank you. Most of the people that slam the F-35 don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. A quick search of YouTube is apparently very difficult.
Except it's being touted as the next great CAS platform, capable of and intended to replacing the A-10… which has a lot going for it in CAS.