AIR POWER
Comments (5)
Former Under Secretary of the Army and Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine foresaw these developments in his 1984 book "Augustine's Laws." Law XVI reads, "In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day."
Clark Irwin at 11:02 PM
The F-22 is VERY expensive, thus the few numbers of it produced to date. The F-35 was meant to be all things to all services. Great "interconnectivity" with other aircraft but poor reliability and apparently high maintenance costs are its Achilles heel.
So, let's subcontract it to the Japanese to produce. If they can produce such utterly reliable autos such as Lexus perhaps they can produce a reliable F-35!
As a former Hornet pilot I would certainly take the affordability/lethality of 2-3 squadrons of properly configured Supers (66 million per plane, $10,507 - $14,000 per flight hour) for less than the price of 1 squadron of F-35s.
Joe at 11:50 AM
Escalating costs is why I am a supporter of the USAF's F-15EX and F-16 Replacement. In day-to-day operations of NORAD CONUS Air Defense, the DoD doesn't need a stealthy F-35 to intercept old Tu-95 "Bear" bombers when conventional "Radar-friendly" Generation 4.5+ fighters will do for less cost.
The USAF will always need more newer fighters and honestly, they don't have to be the latest and greatest like the F-35 when F-15EX and F-16 Replacements can do for most conflicts because we're not (yet) battling aliens with out-of-this world technologies. Save the best for the NGAD Sixth Generation fighter, and if the US DoD needs to cut F-35 production numbers to save money, then do so. Money saved can buy more new plane numbers, and the DoD needs to have more planes than any other Air Force in the world...aircraft numbers and newness matters, often no matter if the planes are stealth or not....the DoD needs quality AND quantity...because there will be many instances for the need to put planes in the sky that carry more than four (or six with Sidekick rack) internal AIM-120 AMRAAMs. Carrying 10-12 AAMs per plane can make a huge difference compared to just four AAMs, and the ability for sustained Mach 2.0+ speeds compared to Mach 1.6 for a brief time.
There's a serious and very real credibility issue surrounding the federal government, the armed services and the F-35. We read stories, almost daily, with conflicting information about the costs and sustainability of the F-35. The Air Force just released a report on how the costs continue to drop, almost to the levels of other frontline fighter aircraft and with availability of 70%...that's very positive (and impressive). Now the GAO is telling us that the F-35 is not sustainable....somebody is lying...outright lying to the American people. Of course our totally worthless Congress won't get to the bottom of this...ever. We can't trust our government, we can't trust our armed services and we can't trust our Congress...a very sad state of affairs. Me personally, I trust the Swiss....I'm sure they did their homework and decided on the F-35. It's pitiful that the American public has to rely on a foreign government for the truth.
Brian Foley at 12:23 PM