F-35 news roundup

[Antonov]

Aaaaaaaaaand, they're grounded:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/22/u-s-military-grounds-f-35-fighter-jets/?hpt=hp_t3

[GreyGhost]

That GE/Rolls engine is looking pretty good right now ...

Just kidding ....

-Gregg

[tosouthern66]

Sniff, Sniff I think the BBQ is done! Watch they will end up scrapping the project due to the money and the drop in orders around the globe.

[FAR148]

Watch they will end up scrapping the project due to the money

God, I hope so.

[TaiidanTomcat]

That GE/Rolls engine is looking pretty good right now ... :whistle:/>

Somewhere in the contract it says that if the PW engine has problems, the GE engine can return... one of the reasons PW will get this fixed faster than you can say "monopoly"

Sniff, Sniff I think the BBQ is done! Watch they will end up scrapping the project due to the money and the drop in orders around the globe.

based on?

God, I hope so.

why?

[Horrido]

[Antonov]

why?

Because the damn thing doesn't work. Because it's a bottomless money hole at a time of shrinking budgets. Because it was designed to fight an enemy that went out of business over twenty years ago. Because it isn't necessary when we already have as many as we need of a perfectly fine airplane that does more or less the same thing, which is, by the way, a mission that hasn't been important in forty years or critical in sixty years. Because the aerial MVP of the past dozen years of war has been a cheap, slow, prop-powered drone the size of a Cessna and not a supersonic air-superiority fighter. Because while, yes, anything is possible, and thus the next war could be of any type any require any kind of weapon, you can't spend unlimited amounts of money on astronomically expensive weapons systems in order to prepare for every possible contingency, and so any reasonable nation with a prudent military policy will spend the money it has on stuff that will work against what they face now and most likely will face in the foreseeable future. Because we're not going to war against China or Russia, which are the only nations we'd be likely to need these things against, and even if we did, it wouldn't matter because no one would care how many dogfights we won after the other side turned a few dozen American cities into radioactive slag heaps.

That's why.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Antonov

[TaiidanTomcat]

Because the damn thing doesn't work. Because it's a bottomless money hole at a time of shrinking budgets.

Which is why its important to see it through rather than throwing the money away and starting anew on multiple projects.

Because it isn't necessary when we already have as many as we need of a perfectly fine airplane that does more or less the same thing, which is, by the way, a mission that hasn't been important in forty years or critical in sixty years.

huh? the USN/USMC/USAF and US allies have already said their aircraft are well beyond the hours they were ever intended to fly already.

Because the aerial MVP of the past dozen years of war has been a cheap, slow, prop-powered drone the size of a Cessna and not a supersonic air-superiority fighter.

oh yeah IEDs and RPGs forever. We can scrap about 75 percent of our military then.

Because while, yes, anything is possible, and thus the next war could be of any type any require any kind of weapon, you can't spend unlimited amounts of money on astronomically expensive weapons systems in order to prepare for every possible contingency, and so any reasonable nation with a prudent military policy will spend the money it has on stuff that will work against what they face now and most likely will face in the foreseeable future.

You can see 30 years into the future? It saves money by equipping multiple forces at the same time with a logistically similar system that is cheaper to operate over the long term than multiple systems while bringing better capabilities than its predecessors, which in the big picture makes it so you can spend more money on things that fight insurgents.

Because we're not going to war against China or Russia, which are the only nations we'd be likely to need these things against, and even if we did, it wouldn't matter because no one would care how many dogfights we won after the other side turned a few dozen American cities into radioactive slag heaps.

Which is odd because we made the teen fighter series and A-10s when nuclear war was an even bigger threat than it is now.

There has to be a "middle ground" between small insurgencies and total nuclear war.

The F-35 exists to fill a role, not the other way around. As recently as just a couple years ago we saw the need for conventional airpower in Libya.

Edited February 23, 2013 by TaiidanTomcat

[MarkW]

So tactical aircraft only make sense against a Cold War style, near peer adversary with fleets of Flankers? You might want to check the settings on your way back machine--the USSR had ceased to exist before this program was even started. But let's ignore that historical inaccuracies, it gets in the way of heartfelt commentary.

Also kind of ignoring the last 25 years of warfare the U.S. has engaged in. First point. The JSF wasn't designed primarily to defeat an air to air threat. We know we pretty much have parity or better when it comes to offensive counter air. It was really designed to deal with the IADS threat that any **** ant dictator can throw together with the help of Russia or the Chinese.

Gulf War One took the best of the peak of the US Cold War arsenal, and still resulted in losses and took massive fleets of aircraft to prosecute. And who did the real damage? The F-117s that could drive downtown while the rest of the force was plinking tanks in the desert. Gulf War Two, and to a lesser extent Libya, were much easier because of the decayed state of the IADS in those two areas.

So while we are patiently waiting for North Korea to quietly implode, or for Iran to start being nice, we do have some real threats, and some real regional jackholes we realistically could run against. So let's stop running "Top Gun" on continuous play, step back from the "Battle of Britain" mindset that fighters can only be designed with a single air to air purpose in mind, and recalibrate the facts a bit.

As for it being a bottomless pit of not working, well the pit has a bottom. And for a developmental aircraft, it is working fairly well. Or perhaps we should have cancelled the worthless POS F-16 back in the early 90s when it had some engine issues related to low cycle fatigue? IIRC, the F-16 engine issues cost a few lives. This issue was discovered, as planned, during an inspection. So while a part may have had a failure, the safety checks in place worked and possibly prevented the loss of an aircraft or worse a pilot.

But hey, let's keep flying Spads.

[Jennings]

Hmmm... does the term "too big to fail" ring any bells? 130,000 jobs means we can't kill it. Yet we (the GOP) are happy to let the sequester happen, which will kill almost 800,000 jobs in the DoD ALONE!

Remember when America used to be able to govern itself? We're not much better than Somalia and Afghanistan right now from what I can see...

*********************

Flawed F-35 Fighter Too Big to Kill as Lockheed Martin Hooks 45 States

By Kathleen Miller, Tony Capaccio, & Danielle Ivory

Bloomberg

Feb 22, 2013

The Pentagon envisioned the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as an affordable, state-of-the-art stealth jet serving three military branches and U.S. allies.

Instead, the Lockheed Martin Corp. aircraft has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, too much weight, and delays to essential software that have helped put it seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. At almost $400 billion, it's the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history.

It is also the defense project too big to kill. The F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors that includes Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) and Kongsberg Gruppen ASA of Norway. It counts 1,300 suppliers in 45 states supporting 133,000 jobs -- and more in nine other countries, according to Lockheed Martin. The F-35 is an example of how large weapons programs can plow ahead amid questions about their strategic necessity and their failure to arrive on time and on budget.

"It's got a lot of political protection," said Winslow Wheeler, a director at the Project on Government Oversight's Center for Defense Information in Washington. "In that environment, very, very few members of Congress are willing to say this is an unaffordable dog and we need to get rid of it."

The Pentagon said today it suspended all F-35 flights after a routine engine inspection of a test aircraft revealed a crack on a turbine blade. The jet is also facing scrutiny as the March 1 deadline to avert automatic U.S. budget cuts approaches. The across-the-board reductions would take as much as $45 billion this year from defense programs, including the F-35.

Greatest Exposure

Among the contractors, Lockheed Martin has the greatest exposure to the F-35, said Richard Aboulafia, a military analyst with Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group. The program made up 13 percent of the company's $46.5 billion in revenue in 2011, according to a regulatory filing.

"Unlike much of their subcontractor base, they have no commercial market" to protect against hits to the F-35, Aboulafia said in a phone interview.

United Technologies Corp., which supplies the engine, has more diversity than Lockheed Martin, he said. Northrop Grumman, another key F-35 contractor, has a hedge because it builds 40 percent of Boeing Co.'s F/A-18E/F jet, which benefits if the F-35 gets cut, Aboulafia said.

About 5 percent of Northrop Grumman's $26.5 billion in new contract awards in 2012 were tied to the F-35, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Supersonic Jet

The supersonic F-35 was intended to transform military aviation. Three versions for the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps would be built off a common assembly line, permitting faster production, reduced costs, and compatibility among allied air forces.

About a quarter of the aircraft would be purchased by other countries. Norway, Canada, the U.K., Australia, Turkey, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the U.S. agreed in 2006 to cooperatively produce and sustain the F-35 jet. Israel and Japan later signed on to purchase jets and take part in their development.

Export Fighter

The F-35 will probably become the dominant export fighter for the U.S. aerospace industry, Gordon Adams, who served as the senior White House official for national security and foreign policy budgets under President Bill Clinton, said in a phone interview.

"This is the last U.S. export fighter standing and that has saved this program," said Adams, now a foreign-policy professor at American University in Washington. "There is a huge economic element to the F-35."

Members of Congress are hesitant to make deep cuts to the project in part because it generates work in their states, Wheeler said. The F-35 supports 41,000 jobs in Texas alone, the most of any state, according to Lockheed Martin's website. The company assembles the fighter in Fort Worth.

Even Senator John McCain, who has been a critic of the fighter, toned down his rhetoric to welcome a squadron of the Marine Corps' F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing jets to his home state of Arizona in November.

"Right Direction"

McCain said he was encouraged the program was "moving in the right direction" after years of setbacks. The jet "may be the greatest combat aircraft in the history of the world," he said at a ceremony at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.

The Republican senator had described the F-35's ballooning costs and delays as "disgraceful", "outrageous", and a "tragedy".

Brian Rogers, a spokesman for McCain, said the senator didn't request that the planes be located at the base and "continues to be seriously concerned about potential cost- growth and schedule-slips in the program." Still, Rogers said in an e-mail that McCain "is a staunch advocate of the unmatched training resources and decades-long community support that Arizona provides this vital mission."

The co-chairmen of President Barack Obama's deficit-reduction panel, former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, recommended in 2010 that Air Force and Navy purchases be reduced. They also suggested the Pentagon cancel the Marines' F-35, the most complex of the three models.

"Acquisition Malpractice"

That aircraft is "worth killing, particularly given its technical problems," said Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonprofit public-policy institute in Washington. The Marines' AV-8B Harrier is "quite capable for now," he said.

Blechman questioned the need for all F-35 models, saying they provide marginal improvement over existing F-16 jets, "but nothing compared with the amount the Pentagon is planning to invest." The Air Force is buying its version to replace F-16s. The F-35 will also replace the Air Force A-10 ground attack aircraft and older Navy F/A-18s.

The program's woes have been blamed partly on how it was conceived -- with the notion that small numbers of aircraft could be produced during development and testing.

"Putting the F-35 into production years before the first flight test was acquisition malpractice," Frank Kendall, then acting acquisition undersecretary, said in February 2012. He is now undersecretary for acquisition.

"Exceeding Expectations"

Thomas Burbage, Lockheed Martin's general manager for the F-35, said the program has made "very significant strides over the last three years". Structural and flight tests have improved, and the Bethesda, Maryland-based company delivered 30 aircraft last year compared with 13 in 2011, he said.

Lockheed Martin intends to deliver 36 to the Defense Department this year, said Laura Siebert, a spokeswoman.

"The jet has flown to every corner of the envelope and it's meeting or exceeding expectations in performance," Siebert said in an e-mail. "With any test program of this size and complexity, normal discoveries will be made."

Even so, the F-35 remains in development and tests that would allow the plane to go into full production aren't scheduled to be completed until 2019, seven years later than planned, Pentagon data shows.

On Probation

The total cost of the U.S. military's 2,443 aircraft is now estimated at $395.7 billion, up from $233 billion in 2001 in current dollars, according to a Pentagon report.

"In between those two numbers is, of course, 12 years and an awful lot of learning," said Michael Sullivan of the Government Accountability Office.

"They began the program before they understood the requirements," Sullivan, director of acquisition management, said in a phone interview. "They failed to do a lot of systems engineering early. They didn’t understand their technologies."

The program's life-cycle cost, which includes development and 55 years of support, is projected to top $1.5 trillion, according to the latest Pentagon estimates.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates instilled some discipline in 2010 when he fired the Pentagon's F-35 program manager and withheld from Lockheed Martin $614 million in fees. Gates put the Marines' version on "probation" in 2011 because of glitches in the jet's propulsion system. His successor, Leon Panetta, released it from probation a year later. Both secretaries postponed jet orders in their budgets, citing the need for more testing.

Sticker Shock

Overseas, the Pentagon's partners are balancing concerns about the F-35's cost with the amount of work sent to their companies.

Allies have agreed to purchase 721 fighters, yet the soaring price is painful for nations with shrinking defense budgets. The estimated cost of each plane has about doubled to $137 million since 2001, according to a GAO report last year.

All the original nations "remain important partners on the program, and five of the eight have placed initial orders," Lockheed Martin's Burbage said. Italy, Canada, and Denmark, however, have scaled back their planned purchases.

Italy announced last year it would reduce its initial goal of buying 131 jets to 90.

The F-35 has emerged as a campaign issue in the race to replace Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti after a center-left candidate, whose coalition leads in all opinion polls, said the next administration should continue to cut planned F-35 orders.

Canada Reconsiders

Canada had dropped to 65 planes from 80. In December, it said it was reconsidering its commitment to purchase any of the jets after a consultant said the price to buy and maintain them might reach about $45 billion.

The F-35 program isn't so easy to exit, though. A Lockheed Martin spokesman raised the possibility that Canada would lose its F-35-related business -- and jobs -- if it didn't buy planes.

"If Canada did pull out of the program, all remaining aspects, including industrial participation, connected to the program would most likely be reviewed," Michael Rein wrote in a Dec. 17 e-mail to Bloomberg Government.

Japan, which will increase its defense budget for the first time in 11 years, isn't likely to change its plan to buy 42 planes, said Chiaki Akimoto, a military expert with the Royal United Services Institute in Japan. It may even order hundreds more F-35 jets when it starts retiring its fleets of F-2 and F-15 planes, he said.

"Backbone" Aircraft

The partners' commitments should make the U.S. wary of making deep cuts to the F-35 program, said Dov Zakheim, a former defense comptroller who served under President George W. Bush.

"This program was advertised as a major collaborative program with a lot of allies," Zakheim said in a phone interview. "It was sold to our allies as such. What do we do now -- pull the rug out from under them at the same time we're complaining they aren't spending enough on defense?"

The new fighter is the "backbone of our tactical aircraft plans," Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in an interview. "The issue with F-35 is not whether it will work. The real question that we have been wrestling with now as we pass through the development phase is how to reduce costs."

The Pentagon may have provided some protection to the F-35 by awarding Lockheed Martin $4.87 billion in contracts related to the program on Dec. 28, just days before the first deadline to avert automatic cuts. The reductions were delayed for two months in a last-minute deal. If they kick in, defense officials have warned that as many as four of the requested 29 aircraft wouldn't get funded this year.

Eliminating the entire program is unlikely, said Adams, the professor.

"It is always hardest to kill a program when it is already in production and the services have decided it is truly important to finish it," he said. "Crib death is easier, when it's in R&D."

(This is the last of a four-part Bloomberg series examining Pentagon weapons spending. Part One [www.scalemodelworld.net/aekrjq7] reported on the mismatch between anticipated wars and the hardware bought to fight them. Part Two [www.scalemodelworld.net/bykzam9] showed how members of Congress, regardless of party, protect even unwanted programs to save hometown jobs. Part Three [www.scalemodelworld.net/b4ecodd] reported on a troubled Navy ship.)

[Antonov]

You can see 30 years into the future?

Did you even read what I said? No, I can't. But again, we can't spend astronomical amounts of money on every conceivable contingency. If we're going to spend an astronomical amount of money on an air-superiority fighter at a time when having one hasn't been a pressing need for decades, then the burden of proof is on those who want it to prove that us needing lots of them is a highly likely scenario in the foreseeable future. Sorry, but that case just isn't there.

huh? the USN/USMC/USAF and US allies have already said their aircraft are well beyond the hours they were ever intended to fly already.

I meant the F-22. We have as many air-superiority fighters in this class as we need. The nearly 200 F-22s we have could take out the IRIAF or any comparable Third-World air force many times over even if we didn't have swarms of Super Hornets and the like, which we do. As for Russia and China, again, we're not going to fight them, and if we did, fighter planes wouldn't matter.

It saves money by equipping multiple forces at the same time with a logistically similar system that is cheaper to operate over the long term than multiple systems while bringing better capabilities than its predecessors, which in the big picture makes it so you can spend more money on things that fight insurgents.

That's like the old 50s sitcom routine where a woman says she bought six new dresses, and when her husband complains about how expensive they must have been, she assures them that they were all on sale, so she actually saved money. Sorry, that was a laughable argument then (literally!), and it still is now.

Which is odd because we made the teen fighter series and A-10s when nuclear war was an even bigger threat than it is now.

And the idea that those would be useful in a US/Soviet smackdown on the Fulda Gap wasn't realistic back then, either.

We can scrap about 75 percent of our military then.

Have a look at the national debt. We're going to do that anyway. It's just a question of when.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Antonov

[TaiidanTomcat]

Did you even read what I said? No, I can't. But again, we can't spend astronomical amounts of money on every conceivable contingency. If we're going to spend an astronomical amount of money on an air-superiority fighter at a time when having one hasn't been a pressing need for decades, then the burden of proof is on those who want it to prove that us needing lots of them is a highly likely scenario in the foreseeable future. Sorry, but that case just isn't there.

Its a STRIKE fighter. It will throw more bombs than missiles by a wide margin.

I meant the F-22. We have as many air-superiority fighters in this class as we need. The nearly 200 F-22s we have could take out the IRIAF or any comparable Third-World air force many times over even if we didn't have swarms of Super Hornets and the like, which we do. As for Russia and China, again, we're not going to fight them, and if we did, fighter planes wouldn't matter.

Again you can't know what will happen in 30 years. in 1919 another war with Germany seemed impossible, but only 20 years later...

Between F-22s (the USAF wanted 400 and came up way short, the idea is the F-35 will help that small number) and Super Hornets thats around 800 aircraft total. Not nearly the amount needed for the reliance that the US has on Airpower. The USAFs request for 1700 JSFs doesn't come from the fact that they like the color, thats the bare minimum they need to complete their their role in US defense plans. And for the record the F-35 will be nuclear capable. So yes it does have strategic value, if it were to come to that. Remember too that the F-18E/F can't take off the smaller Amphib/Royal Navy Carriers, and yes even in small wars harriers have had their value, right down to supporting SF in Libya in 2011.

That's like the old 50s sitcom routine where a woman says she bought six new dresses, and when her husband complains about how expensive they must have been, she assures them that they were all on sale, so she actually saved money. Sorry, that was a laughable argument then (literally!), and it still is now.

actually buying in bulk is the exact idea. if you can think of a better way to equip mulitple nations and services with 3,000 fighters of equal capability for less I'm all ears. only stupid if she didn't need 6 dresses. If she does, then its called smart shopping. 3,000 fighters are what is needed by the US and international partners.

And the idea that those would be useful in a US/Soviet smackdown on the Fulda Gap wasn't realistic back then, either.

And yet the aircraft have been used extensively anyway...

Beyond the F-35 if what you say is true we can retire the F-18s, Av-8Bs, F-16s, and A-10s tomorrow. And that's not the case.

[Antonov]

Its a STRIKE fighter. It will throw more bombs than missiles by a wide margin.

A-10s do that better now.

Again you can't know what will happen in 30 years.

And if your guess is the one that's wrong, we end up having borrowed billions of dollars from countries that hate us and wasting it on completely unnecessary items at a time when budgets are shrinking and every dollar counts. Sorry, but the burden of proof is on you to prove that that money needs to be spent.

if you can think of a better way to equip mulitple nations and services with 3,000 fighters of equal capability for less I'm all ears

"If you can think of a cheaper way to buy these dresses, I'm all ears".

No, my idea is to not buy crap we can't afford and doesn't work to face a threat that there's no real reason to think is coming, and that wouldn't really help even if it did.

And for the record the F-35 will be nuclear capable. So yes it does have strategic value, if it were to come to that.

After the ICBMs start flying, nothing else will have strategic value. Sorry, but if there really was a US/China or US/Russia nuclear smackdown, by a month or two later, the most strategically important weapon out there would be a skinny rock fashioned into a makeshift knife. Your choice whether to use it to try to kill a squirrel to eat, or whether to take the easy way out and use it on your own wrists.

Say hi to Auntie Entity for me.

[code20photog]

The Air Force has said they'd like to have more F-15Es, and F-16E/Fs, but the latter is a LockMart product, and that's never going to happen.

[TaiidanTomcat]

A-10s do that better now.

Oh?

And if your guess is the one that's wrong, we end up having borrowed billions of dollars from countries that hate us and wasting it on completely unnecessary items at a time when budgets are shrinking and every dollar counts. Sorry, but the burden of proof is on you to prove that that money needs to be spent.

"If you can think of a cheaper way to buy these dresses, I'm all ears".

No, my idea is to not buy crap we can't afford and doesn't work to face a threat that there's no real reason to think is coming, and that wouldn't really help even if it did.

After the ICBMs start flying, nothing else will have strategic value. Sorry, but if there really was a US/China or US/Russia nuclear smackdown, by a month or two later, the most strategically important weapon out there would be a skinny rock fashioned into a makeshift knife. Your choice whether to use it to try to kill a squirrel to eat, or whether to take the easy way out and use it on your own wrists.

Say hi to Auntie Entity for me.

In the end your beef isn't even with the F-35 but with fighter class aircraft in general. You think the military will have enough, and the reality is they won't without the F-35. You say that fighters would have been pointless in the endeavors they were built for and yet for the last 30 years America has relied on its Airpower (namely fighters) to tip the balance in its favor-- I really don't care what job they were designed to do, I care about the jobs they can do, and they have done their jobs to the point where the US and its allies base all their combat strategy around them. There is no point in arguing with someone who thinks

to face a threat that there's no real reason to think is coming, and that wouldn't really help even if it did.

Thats quite the national security strategy there. The military doesn't get to just throw their hands in the air and say "oh well it doesn't matter" so even if we cut them to 25 percent of what they are now they will still want the weapons that give them the most bang for their buck and help them tip the scales more favorably even in the worst of circumstances (Thats also why they have things like Nuclear Strategy BTW)

If you want to start a separate thread on the value of fighter class airpower in insurgency, conventional warfare, and nuclear warfare by all means please do. even if the F-35 gets canceled tomorrow the need for its mission remains, and other aircraft will be pursued and developed (at greater expense or less capability) to fill that role. The F-22 getting the ax didn't mean that the F-15s went away, it meant they stayed on and we spent more money to upgrade them, and will spend more money to keep fixing them as they age to keep them serviceable.

The Air Force has said they'd like to have more F-15Es, and F-16E/Fs, but the latter is a LockMart product, and that's never going to happen.

Do you have a source?

Edited February 25, 2013 by TaiidanTomcat

[11bee]

A bit more info on the "Cuda" hit to kill A2A missile being proposed by Lockheed. If it's everything they claim (not optimistic based Lockheed's current track record of program management, which is well documented within this thread) AND the USAF finds the money to fund this program (not optimistic either for obvious reasons), it could be a game changer.

Sounds like it would double or possibly triple the A2A missiles carried by both the F-22 and F-35, offer 360 degree targeting, extended range over current AMRAAM versions, etc. The article seems to imply that this missile has the ability to impact it's target at a "selected point". If so, that is pretty impressive as well.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/details-emerge-about-lockheeds-cuda-missile-382670/

Fear the Cuda!

[MarkW]

Sorry to interrupt the opinionated group grope with news…

 

Worst case ruled out by Pratt:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/27/us-lockheed-fighter-pratt-idUSBRE91Q04020130227

 

JSF Chief slams Pratt, LM

http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/morning_call/2013/02/lockheed-slammed-by-pentagon-f-35.html

 

It’s always sunny in the land of the rising sun:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-27/japan-retains-confidence-in-f-35-fighter-defense-chief-says-1-.html

 

And the one guy in Oz who doesn’t HATE the program (but is still complaining):

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/defence/f-35-fighters-to-cost-90m-each/story-e6frg8yo-1226587211618

 

 

 

[11bee]

If the F-35 ever gets culled, USAF's Plan B is simple:

Refurb all those F-15/16's, reinstate the F-22 production line and purchase another 225 Raptors.

All this according to the head of Air Combat Command.

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Features/modernization/Pages/box022213beyond.aspx

For those that keep insisting that the F-35 can easily be replaced by Superhornets or Typhoons, Rafales, Gripens or whatever other 4th gen fighter is your favorite, take notice:

Hostage acknowledged that restarting the F-22 production line would not be cheap and could eat up any potential savings gained by cancelling the F-35 program.

However, this step would be necessary in order to maintain the fifth generation capability needed to ensure the US military's legacy aircraft fleets survive future threats, he said.

"The problem is that all those fourth generation airplanes that my sister services are buying will not survive the fight in the latter half of the next decade. They are not relevant," said Hostage.

Edited February 27, 2013 by 11bee

[TaiidanTomcat]

purchase another 225 Raptors.

Brilliant strategy. Make Plan B prohibitively expensive and politically unfeasable. The USMC should follow suit and say they would choose F-22s as well. Its a bluff that can't be called. Also Raptor Cough is here to stay (according to wired) :

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/stealth-pilots-coughing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WiredDangerRoom+%28Wired%3A+Blog+-+Danger+Room%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

http://defensetech.org/2012/08/27/did-raptor-cough-contribute-to-general-tinsleys-suicide/

JSF Chief slams Pratt, LM

http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/morning_call/2013/02/lockheed-slammed-by-pentagon-f-35.html

Thank god the government is 100 percent blameless in all this. Hey LM would you like to see what the underside of a bus looks like? room for you too PW!

More from Bogdon

http://australianaviation.com.au/2013/02/f-35-chief-bogdan-to-execute-not-cheerlead/

Edited February 27, 2013 by TaiidanTomcat

[MarkW]

"The problem is that all those fourth generation airplanes that my sister services are buying will not survive the fight in the latter half of the next decade. They are not relevant," said Hostage.

Oh Snap!

[GreyGhost]

With how much secrets China has stolen of late, how long will F-22 and F-35 be relevant ?

Not for long, I fear ...

-Gregg

[Kei Lau]

A Canadian CBC report on Boeing's effort to sell the Super Hornet to Canada.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin both say their plane is superior in various ways. Lockheed Martin's headline feature is stealth. Boeing's is price. The Super Hornet currently sells for about $55 million US apiece; the Pentagon expects the F-35 to cost twice as much — about $110 million. But only 20 per cent of the cost of owning a fighter fleet is the actual sticker price of the planes. Eighty per cent is the operating cost — what it takes to keep them flying.

"The current actual costs to operate a Super Hornet are less than half the cost that the F-35 is projected to be once it's in operation, just to operate," says Mike Gibbons, vice-president in charge of the Super Hornet program. Really? That sounded too good to be true — so CBC News dug into Boeing's figures to see how credible they are.

According to the GAO, the Super Hornet actually costs the U.S. Navy $15,346 an hour to fly. It sounds like a lot — until you see that the U.S. Air Force's official "target" for operating the F-35 is $31,900 an hour. The GAO says it's a little more — closer to $32,500.

CBC also asked Lockheed Martin to say if it had any quarrel with these numbers and it did not.

The next question is, though — is it a second-rate plane? Instead of the "Fifth Generation" stealth fighter that Lockheed Martin advertises, does Canada want to settle for a not-so-stealthy Generation 4.5?

You can read the report for the rest of the Boeing argument. The CBC reporter seems to be factual and objective enough in reporting the Boeng argument without sounding biased.

Of course, Boeing is biased, but seems to present a reasonable argument.

If Canada can afford the original budget of $46B, they can buy 65 Super bugs and 32 F-35. Wouldn't it give them the best defense for the money?

Edited March 1, 2013 by Kei Lau

[Devilleader501]

I guess that would depend on how many new supper stealth aircraft Iran produces. :)~ everyone seems to be concerned with china and russia making stealths and so on I'm wondering how a super bug would do up against a JSF if it had to happen. I'm not talking about performance here either. I am talking about protecting one's own 6. If we ever had tgo go against another country with stealth I think all of the 4 and 4.5 aircraft are gonna have a rude awakening in needing something and not having it rather that having it and not needing it. Just my .02 cents though.

[phantom]

One thing we can count on is Canada will not get both the Super Hornet and the F-35. Defence just took a 2 billion dollar hit.

"Think" if we are LUCKY we might get 65 planes of some type.

Just wonder if its a mix of 18Es and Fs.

[Kei Lau]

I guess that would depend on how many new supper stealth aircraft Iran produces. :)/>~ everyone seems to be concerned with china and russia making stealths and so on I'm wondering how a super bug would do up against a JSF if it had to happen. I'm not talking about performance here either. I am talking about protecting one's own 6. If we ever had tgo go against another country with stealth I think all of the 4 and 4.5 aircraft are gonna have a rude awakening in needing something and not having it rather that having it and not needing it. Just my .02 cents though.

I don't think that Boeing argued that SH can win in a BVR fight, nor even tried to argue. It boils down to radar + radar cross section. Whoever sees the opponent and fires first wins. JSF wins every time.

Boeing did argue about close range dog fight. But their main argument is the affordable operating cost

JSF may have an upper hand in solo long range bombing attach too due to better onboard electronic defense. But most ground attack mission are carried out in group with AWAC support. Boeing argue that the SH can carry a better variety of payloads.

The F-22 was supposed to replace all the F-15C. It did not happen when the F-22 became too expense to operate. Instead, the USAF upgrade the F-15C with more powerful AESA radar just now. That's another example of ideal vs. realty.

War planners do not make decision based on one-on-one aircraft comparison. They play different mission scenario with the purchasing resources they have. Boeing is hoping to win when all factors in winning a war are counted. On the US Navy side, the JSF and SH will fly side by side for another 20 years, but the later version of JSF will eventually start replacing the SH after 2025, if the JSF program survives. The mixed fleet make the most sense for US, but it may or may not for smaller armed forces. It is interesting to see how the Canadian decide.