EDITOR'S NOTES AIR POWER
Comments (14)
Who would you rather be: a nation that goes "all-in" on a $1 trillion aircraft buy for uber-expensive stealth technology, with its unsustainable hourly costs or America's enemies who spend $10-20 billion to find a way to beat it with an upgraded S-400 or the like. Stealth does not make you invisible or invincible, it just gives you a small radar cross-section. We need the F-35, but in every war we have fought since 1991, the U.S. / NATO has eventually degraded the opponent's IADS and then used older generation / cheaper aircraft to carry most of the load. Unfortunately, older aircraft don't get USAF generals & officers promoted. We need a sustainable mix of new and old aircraft technology for the future.
Colonel Gregory Marston (ret) at 1:03 PM
Too often the US begins big expensive programs with high front end loaded R&D costs and then reduces the number of units. This results in huge waste and a loss of credibility.
Examples include the B-1, B-2, F-22, Littoral Combat Ship, the Zumwalt destroyer, etc. The US military needs to develop more reasonable cost and performance expectations on a program level and then deliver. Buying more F-15's, F-18's may make sense militarily and economically, but let's make sure we buy enough F-35's to improve our total unit cost and still get access to the features it offers. Will we pull the same with the coming B-21, the Ford class and the new Constellation frigate program?
Set realistic goals and needs for military procurement projects and buy the "right" number and stop promising to buy 1000 of something if realistically, we will only buy 250 in the end. It makes everybody look bad and it wastes money.
Let the military set up a list of desired traits and delivery timeline, the congress provide a budget and hire professional project managers to deliver or say it cannot be done with the scope, time and cost proposed. Our current approach is to deliver less scope in more time at more cost. This has to stop.
There is no 'value' argument for the F35.
The program has cost so much money that even if the F35 lives up to its promise, as the Osprey eventually did, it will still turn out to be a bad deal for the JSF development partners.
We could have done almost anything else with that money and gotten a better result. The F35 is no F22, nor is it an Osprey. Its a Lemon.
Country's that join the program now (and are used as 'evidence' of the programs success by this article.) are besides the point. The fact that we may someday have a functional fighter is not in question, the question is at what cost.
There is no F-35 "price tag" that means anything in this most expensive acquisition ever. The true cost of an F-35 prototype being manufactured in the still-developing program has never been audited by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which by the way has an office in Ft. Worth. The only "price tag" bogus numbers come from Lockheed (e.g. $80M). Attempts by F-35 critics (e.g. POGO) to come up with a better number ($115M) depend upon looking at budget numbers, but that's a waste of time. The Pentagon itself has never been audited, and we know that the OCO slush fund was used on F-35.
Don Bacon at 9:25 AMRegarding the bogus claims of F-35 performance, the still-in-development F-35 system has not completed operational testing so the jury is still out. Red Flag training exercises are not tests, so any USAF PR on Red Flag should be laughed at.
Don Bacon at 5:17 PM
Lemon??? Really?
Go ask the British, they set sail today with the most F35s on a flight deck so far. The future demands 5th generation aircraft. Ask the Israelis...
The Joint Strike Failure is a victory of the military industrial political Complex over common sense.
It's the world's most expensive "fifth generation" Brewster Buffalo.
This is a rather pointless discussion because the F35 value cannot be determined until the development program is finished and the F-35 capability's are known to meet, or not meet its requirements.
Today, over 20 years into the most expensive military program ever undertaken, and it still cannot pass basic tests for preparedness or enter mass production. Any argument on behalf of the F35 is foolish becasue we still dont know if it can even do the job it was built for. Today, it cannot.
If we had ignored the idiots years ago, we'd have three times as many F22s
Maaku at 10:10 PMThere is no substitute for the best fighter in the world. Why isn't Russia ever going to invade the Balkans? Because 100 F-22s and F-35s would be there a day later and even their vaunted S-400 missile batteries would pose little opposition.
noteatern at 3:03 AM
The F-35’s cost efficiencies must apply adult math, not kindergarten math. After all, if kindergartners were asked to choose whether a $3,000 gravity bomb was cheaper or a $30,000 precision guided munition (PGM), they would assume apples vs apples and choose the lower price tag. Adult math, however, factors in the average 35 gravity bombs necessary – $105,000 total – to ensure a bunker’s destruction from altitude (Gulf War analysis). Adult math shows the PGM exponentially more cost efficient, especially with fewer sorties, less fuel, maintenance and risk.
Most get it, but some look at the F-35 and revert to kindergarten apples vs apples comparisons between 4th and 5th gen production and maintenance costs and nostalgically choose that 1980s-era comfort food over the force multiplying F-35.
Meanwhile, adults in F-35 cockpits plainly see kill ratios as high as 24:1 at Red Flag exercises, and this while flying a plane designed for strike missions first, air-to-air second. Also, the Air Force has compared penetrating strike scenarios in which a pair of F-16s require up to 20 supporting aircraft (EW, SEAD, A2A) to match what a pair of F-35s can do alone after tanking up. Care to guess the costs of those 20 supporting planes?
Now adult math finds the F-35’s cost savings more than exponential, it’s parabolic. Haters are reduced to desperate ankle biting of these 24:1 and 20-for-2 test results while offering no alternative results of their own, perhaps suspecting the F-35 saves bundles even with watered down ratios. They simply don’t want to talk about it. Denialism gets them back to comfy kindergarten apples vs apples math.
Air Force Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr. flew F-16's, and therein may be the problem. If you drive a good ole' GMC dump truck, you relish its reliable brute force. If you need to make a u-turn in 36" high snow with no more space than the length of the truck, you'd want the Mercedes Unimog. You wouldn't relish the additional maintenance or cost of parts, but you'd relish it when you needed it to survive and didn't freeze to death. I love the idea of adding the F-15EX for a variety of reasons. It's a better pure interceptor for our borders due to speed, range and the 22 air-air missiles make a statement. It's a great addition to serve in lesser contested areas. But if we actually need to win a war? 4th Generation fighters not only won't win a war, relying on them is why we'd lose one. Add what you will, but don't subtract the winning part.
Tom at 9:17 PMAmong the satellite nations mentioned was not Norway and we do know about the armtwisting that was done by the american diplomats for buying the F35. There is also a common theme between the satellite nations. They all need US protection.
Tomas Nordstrand at 1:24 AM
Thank you for a very adult comment!
BS at 12:19 AM