THIS is supposed to be our last ace in the hole against the Russians and Chinese.
We have seen this before. The Jap Zero was a superior maneucering aircraft even at the end of the war. But the Hellcat cleaned them out not because they were better at dog-fighting [they weren’t] but because of superior fire power and much better sruvivabiity. Hellcats came back from battle all shot up, but survived. Zeros didn’t come back.
And the Ukrainians have pulled all M1A1 Abrams tanks off the front lines because they’re “weak and vulnerable.” There’s footage of the Russians towing the blasted carcasses back to Russia to put on display.
I see them practically every day.
They are louder than F-15, F-16 and F-22.............
Political Nonsense. Not a plane in the sky can shoot it down.
You/rest can’t be this naive, as long as {X} gets {Y} in their district, it’s all good. I mean, it’s ONLY taxpayer $, they can tax more (a/o just add to the debt/deficit)
“ You will not believe what an insane waste of taxpayer dollars is going on here. Perhaps the biggest MIC boondoggle to date.”
The Navy’s LCS program is a runner up.
Sustainment costs $1.58 T??
It was designed to be a welfare program for white people.
The Pappy Boyington squadron of F-35s visited the Coeur d’Alene, ID airport summer of ‘22. Six arrived. Three hours later, five departed. Some exhibition.
But those that were flying were spectacular.
We have reached the point where our government is ready to collapse under the weight of its own corruption. A symptom of this is the inability to achieve anything because there are too many corrupt fingers in the pie. You can witness this on a smaller scale with state public works that never seem to end. To wit, the Francis Scott Key bridge will never be rebuilt to its former glory, if they even manage to rebuild it at all.
They are stealing money. Executing the top 10% of all defense contractors working and retired over the last 40 years could solve the problem.
Just my $.02 on this subject.
Gaetz seems to get dumb on occasion and he’s dumb on this one. The F-35 is an amazingly capable aircraft. Although I have been out of the contracting business for nearly 10 years, I did have the privilege of directing the creation of F-135A, B, and C transition training for both pilots and maintainers. Part of the problem in mission capability is the fact that Congress and the Services expected these three variants to be largely interchangeable regarding parts and avionics. They are not. As development and testing proceeded it became obvious (as it should have been from the beginning) that even though these aircraft shared many mission capabilities, each was a very different aircraft. As I’ve been out of the business for a long time, In my opinion only, the mission readiness issues stem from there actually being a multitude different parts that may perform a unique function on each of the three variants. That coupled with the fact that the aircraft was sold internationally and that the international versions all required different parts and mission requirements only add to the problem. We had some of the same problems with the F-14 and F/A-18 series aircraft but the F-35 problems are compounded but the numerous variants.
Irrespective of these issues, aggressor pilots usually lose during air-to-engagements, and the F-35 is a massive step up in air-to-ground employment with superb target recognition and stand-off capabilities. The bad guys on the ground will be dead before they see any evidence that the F-35 is anywhere in the area. Again, just my $.02.
A plane designed by political committee.
Sounds more like a combination of lack of spare parts and (lack of) quality maintenance crews.
I've seen mechanics working on aircraft I wouldn't let work on my lawnmower.
The DoD will “make” it work.
But, at a horrible cost to the tax payer. I’m sure someone is getting rich.
FYI- when the F22 was still being developed and fielded originally, Boeing had their folks gagged regards upgrades to the F15 which were possible. There was an F15 development —where at a fraction of the cost— of the F22, they got to (((near))) the same capabilities.
But is that really what you want? No, you want to sell all new F22s at $350 million a unit. Ironically, now after the F22 program was shut down (further procurement), they are going back and upgrading the F15 after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_F-15EX_Eagle_II (this is not the same as the experimental F15 they developed earlier which had even better signiture reduction and handling).
Defense contractors (the big companies: Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing...) are not the publics friend. They are about making money, and that’s it. It’s questionable how much of this war in Ukraine is driven by their profits, and there is no doubt that when afforded the opportunity to make a buck, they are willing to sell even to our enemies: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/world/middleeast/iran-boeing-airplane-deal.html
I've heard the entire Russian military budget is around $72B now. Since a fair chunk of that must be for things other than the SMO in Ukraine, that means the single "aid" package for the MIC - I mean, Ukraine, is more than the entire Russian expenditure on the other side, not even counting European aid and whatever Ukraine spends on itself. All so the West can fatten a lot of pockets, get a lot of people killed, and I'm quite confident they will still lose in the end (I call it the Western way of war now.)
That money would be far better spent on building fleets of Warthogs v2.0
Multiple attackers in a mission are more likely to succeed than a single unit.