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I saw a story today on the USNI website that the SECNAV has stated that the F-35 should be and undoubtedly will be the last manned fighter the Navy will buy.

Personally, I think it is a bit premature to make that statement. Everything that I have read indicates that AI that is well developed enough to provided anywhere near the autonomy and flexibility of a pilot is WELL over the horizon, not to mention, if you are going to remotely fly the vehicle, the signal can be jammed. Better just to let someone fly it like always. Numbers of aircraft will be down from previous generations, so in terms of expense, I don't see what the concern is. I also do not see what is to be gained by taking a person out of the jet, except for perhaps a payload and slight range increase.

Looking at his bio, I see SECNAV Mabus served as a SWO on the CG-92 Little Rock (decommed 1976). In civilian life, he has mostly been a politician.

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Block 4 is pretty much limited to expanded weapons certification, CNI upgrades and a pre planned EW upgrade, and won't hit until the early 20's. Any block after that is pure fantasy. The content of IV kept changing up to the last minute to catch everything that was pushed out of 3. 5 and beyond are pure speculation and LM marketing. They will be haggled over by the U.S. and partners based upon emerging threats and any identified operational shortcomings.

I do recall closing the known Chinese exploit that allows them to track all F-35s secretly is block 6 at the earliest.

Edited by MarkW
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Hi Shane, I'm the original Shane

...and it might have paid you to go back a bit further and read what I actually said - you could have saved yourself repeating me

Shane

Hi Original Shane,

This is the Shane who (if my aching joints are to be believed) probably existed before you became original:)

Unfortunately I worded my reply poorly, I was attempting to agree with you and make you feel all warm and fuzzy with a validated opinion:) I tend to post during my breaks on night shift, so eloquence and context sometimes disappear between brain and fingers:)

Anyhow I agree that we won't be seeing B models wearing RAAF or RAN markings, and even if it was going to happen, I couldn't see what use the token force we could muster would be in any sort of conflict. They would be cool to see at Avalon, but thats about as useful as they would be to us.

Shane

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Forget all that...let's talk about important stuff. I heard a rumor that Hasegawa is to release a series of F-35 kits. Anyone else? 1/48 or 1/72...if '48 my Kittyhawk kits are eBay bound!

Cheeeese an' crackers jaw-dropping.gif !!!!!

That would be sweeter than sweet 271.gif !

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The more I read, the madder (as an American taxpayer) I get. This is the single biggest boondoggle in American history.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421473/f-35-defense-waste-danger

Not even the worst the last 15 years bro.

FTFA:

So where does that leave us? In business, there is the concept of a sunk cost. The idea is to disregard past investments, both financial and emotional, and make the decision on whether to continue with the project on the basis of what will yield the most value for the stakeholders going forward. Right now the F-35’s sunk cost is massive in terms of money, time, pride, reputations, and emotion. While it is likely that some of the technologies being incorporated into the F-35 are useful, incorporating these technologies into several superior platforms that optimally address the diverse requirements of the three jet-flying services has a much better net present value. Consequently it is time to pull the plug on the biggest threat to U.S military power — the F-35.

Pure stupidity.

If it makes him feel better we can Rename the B the F-36, and the C the F-37.

I don't know how you call for cancellation at this point with a straight face. None of that money comes back and the whole process begins anew to get notionally similar airplanes anyway, but without the benefits of commonality and at the additional expense of having to SLEP current airplanes until the multiple replacements (provided they aren't cut, curtailed, or outright canceled) arrive in 10 years or so. Its not even an issue of sunk cost, And its easy to say "well just cancel the whole thing" without addressing the serious consequences of that decision and the remaining alternatives of that decision.

Brazen claims of future F-35 dominance are legion, but real evidence to support such claims is nonexistent.

excuseme.gif

excuse me?

Nonetheless, the fact that such claims are being made by people with a lot of gold braid carries a lot of weight.

Its not just "gold braid" people advocating the F-35. Its a fun meme though. The guys with stripes and Gold WINGS are also saying some pretty complimentary things.

That it is politically expedient to believe such claims helps explain the F-35 program’s continued existence.

Ummm no.

This is just the stuff I've chosen to parse too, it would take too long to go over all the inaccuracies and fallacies here but suffice it to say its a conglomeration of a bunch of other articles, and then those same dubious articles are used as "evidence" At no point does the author bother to verify any of these claims independantly. I also want to know where he got this for example:

First, identify-friend-or-foe (IFF) technology — systems that enable forces to identify friendly platforms among potential targets — has not been reliable enough to allow our pilots to fire at blips on their radar screen without fear of committing fratricide. In other words, no matter how good our BVR technology, pilots still needed to get within visual distance before taking a shot. Progress has been made in IFF technology, in part because of better capabilities on our support aircraft, but it remains a problem.

I need to compliment the USAF pilots that have been able to get kills with some pretty superb vision, and at night as well!!

Where can other servicemen get these super human spider senses?

Did the Author not even bother to research the Gulf war or Kosovo? This doesn't even stand up to a simple google search. We have killed lots of stuff without visual ID. Namely F-15s doing their thing but some F-16s mixed in there as well. I know things on the F-35 are classified, but surely this is within grasp?

None of this matters though, the point is to make you mad. So how did it do??

Edited by TaiidanTomcat
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Having headed up the US Government team for over 10 years that provided intelligence support to the F-35 program (and still does), I can tell you that the referenced article has about as much accuracy as the dimensions of Eduard's Bf109G-6........ While there are still a lot of technical issues to be resolved, you will not want to be on the opposite side of an F-22/F-35 attack.

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I'm not sure who keeps banging the gong about requiring Visual ID to employ weapons. That's complete and utter horse hockey. Our BVR ID capabilities have advanced a long, long ways since even Gulf War I, and even then, most of the F-15 shots were taken BVR.

The rest of this article is equally laughable.

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I'm not sure who keeps banging the gong about requiring Visual ID to employ weapons. That's complete and utter horse hockey. Our BVR ID capabilities have advanced a long, long ways since even Gulf War I, and even then, most of the F-15 shots were taken BVR.

The rest of this article is equally laughable.

Waco - You obviously have a different perspective on this issue than most of us on this board. I'd be curious as to what your thoughts are on that recent report on the F-35 vrs F-16 "dogfight"?

There have been many articles thrown out there and opinions presented, so I'm not sure who is "banging the gong" on the need to visually ID a target. I think most folks (regardless of where they stand on the F-35 program) agree that the F-35 will hopefully be doing most of it's fighting BVR, unless things really go south for the pilot. The only question seemed to be whether the lack of maneuverability that was implied in that report is a true problem or a non-issue.

Edited by 11bee
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Waco - You obviously have a different perspective on this issue than most of us on this board. I'd be curious as to what your thoughts are on that recent report on the F-35 vrs F-16 "dogfight"?

There have been many articles thrown out there and opinions presented, so I'm not sure who is "banging the gong" on the need to visually ID a target. I think most folks (regardless of where they stand on the F-35 program) agree that the F-35 will hopefully be doing most of it's fighting BVR, unless things really go south for the pilot. The only question seemed to be whether the lack of maneuverability that was implied in that report is a true problem or a non-issue.

Aside from the obvious that it was a flight test mission, this logic proves that not a single Zero was shot down by a P-38 in WWII.

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Aside from the obvious that it was a flight test mission, this logic proves that not a single Zero was shot down by a P-38 in WWII.

OK Mark. I get it. I was just curious as to what Waco's take was, since he might have a slightly different viewpoint.

I think we know where everyone else stands on this issue.

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*shrug*

I think the report speaks for itself. It was a high alpha flight test mission, that explored the high alpha and transitory alpha handling qualities of the airplane with an F-16 thrown in as a maneuvering reference point. The author of the leaked report found some of the high alpha handling characteristics to be less than desirable, meaning they'll very likely be tweaked out as time goes by. There were numerous revisions to the FLCS software before IOC in the Raptor, and several that have occurred after IOC. I hardly find any of this surprising.

Then again, all of that is as written in the test report, and has very little to do with how you teach guys to fly the jet in an operational environment, or how you teach them to tactically employ the airplane at a merge. So....something, something, something....much ado about nothing.

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*shrug*

I think the report speaks for itself. It was a high alpha flight test mission, that explored the high alpha and transitory alpha handling qualities of the airplane with an F-16 thrown in as a maneuvering reference point. The author of the leaked report found some of the high alpha handling characteristics to be less than desirable, meaning they'll very likely be tweaked out as time goes by. There were numerous revisions to the FLCS software before IOC in the Raptor, and several that have occurred after IOC. I hardly find any of this surprising.

Then again, all of that is as written in the test report, and has very little to do with how you teach guys to fly the jet in an operational environment, or how you teach them to tactically employ the airplane at a merge. So....something, something, something....much ado about nothing.

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