AIR FORCE NEWS
Comments (3)
Wonder if the good Senator is familiar with the Curtis Wright Jenny- very cost-effective and a good fighter, to boot..... at least in it's day. No doubt the pilot could carry and drop a bomb or two from the cockpit, as well.
Frank Winkler at 5:12 PM
I think that the most damaging defect on ALL F-35s is the fact that F-35s can't sustain Mach speed for more than 60-90 seconds without damaging themselves in the stealth skins and antennas. There is NO FIX to that defect, says the JSF Office. No other supersonic stealth fighter-attack plane that I know of has to be regulated to subsonic speeds all the time. Heck, a drone, retired F-117A, "radar-friendly" legacy F-## aircraft, B-52, A-10, AV-8Bc, B-1, B-2, etc. can perform subsonic attack missions. "The Need for Speed" is important in the fighter-dogfighting CAS realm and having a stealth aircraft that can't "Bust Mach speeds" for long distances and stretches of time to get there quickly is a problem, especially when the DoD wants over 1,000 of them built. Sure, F-35 expenses and costs are a problem too.
That is why the F-15EX is important to buy for the USAF. F-15EXs CAN sustain Mach 2+ "clean and ferrying" for long periods of time without damaging itself, even if it lacks stealth shapes and coatings. Buying a new F-16 replacement with supercrusing engines, and the new 6th Generation fighter also makes sense to incorporate the best lessons learned from the F-35s' sensors and datalinking fusion into these newer planes and let the F-35 be replaced by the XQ-58A "Valkyrie" with its 2,500-mile range.
I used to work on the F-35 program. It is an incredible aircraft and is well-suited to the close-support mission that is critical to success in today's military environment - particularly the Short Takeoff-Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant (which is the most expensive version). But I also have said that the F-35 will be the last manned fighter aircraft; the next generation of aircraft, in my opinion, will be drones. Once you take the physical limitations of having a human being on board the aircraft capabilities are much greater; higher g forces, longer range for the same size aircraft, easier to make more stealthy, ...
Flint Webb at 4:29 PM