The wargame scenario cited resulted in a 20 to 1 kill ratio. The problem with this is that some of our possible future adversaries have absolutely no qualms about throwing 21 or more of theirs against 1 of ours (think the Chinese during the Korean War). They have realized they can't win on a one to one basis, just like jackals against a lion. What they will do, just like the jackals, is swarm us with an overwhelming number of missiles, swift boats, diesel subs, cheap planes and drones, endless quantities of disposable manpower, IEDs, cyber attacks, suicide bombers, etc, etc.
1
So China IS an "adversary." Got it.
5
It seems that we are putting too many "eggs" in one "basket". Surely, whatever unknown flaw is eventually found by our adversaries in the F35 will leave us vulnerable across a large percentage of our air assets.
2
It is a myth that this program cost the taxpayer $1T or any other similar figure.
When the Pentagon pays Lockheed or the thousands of suppliers, they use over 70% of the money to pay their employees, and about 15% to buy raw materials and components, from other US or allied companies. Which in turn do the same, paying their employees, etc.
Then the government recover through personal income, payroll and corporate income taxes approximately 1/3 of the money paid out.
Then an entire economy exists around Lockheed's plants, military bases, supplier plants etc to support this program with everything from coffee to fuel to tires to hair cuts to meals. Again, more taxes are collected.
The net cost of a program like this compared to the economic activity it generates over decades is trivial.
This article is missing out on critical information.
How many thousands of Americans have a good job today because of this program? 200,000? 300,000?
How much has this program generated in pay over the past 20 years to those workers? $200B? $300B? How much more over its lifetime?
Military spending is one of the greatest middle class wealth generators in this country. Stop being so negative on success.
The F-35 is loved and praised by all who fly it. If you are a fighter pilot going into combat and had to choose a plane to go into harms way, you'd want the F22 or the F35.
That is success.
3
@Baron95 No, it isn't. None of us knows that the plane is "loved and praised by all who fly it." As for combat, the choice of plane also depends on reliability and the ability to withstand punishment--things as yet unproven with this aircraft.
As for the economic argument, the issue is whether the government would be better off spending all that money on something else, and whether such a large portion of US engineering and technological talent might more usefully work on something else.
Most fundamentally, the economic argument is a red herring. The US didn't dream up the plane primarily in order to boost the economy; the money got appropriated to help avert and win wars. We don't really know how effective the plane will prove to be. Some military planes with troubled development careers have worked out well; some haven't. If the F35 doesn't do well, nobody's going to say but, gee, we sure made money off it.
5
The military is always fighting the last war.
So while we spend a trillion on a Buck Rogers flying Corvette to confront villagers with an AK 47, our most serious threat keeps doubling in size on the horizon.
Aren't the scientists telling us that Climate Chaos will most likely kill more people than all the wars that came before it.
Capitalism uber alles apparently, or
until big money figures out a way to make more money saving us than killing us, we will continue on our merry scary way, lacking the leaders (excepting Bernie and Elizabeth) with the brains and courage to say:
"Stop making no sense."
7
Why worry?
Since wars always are fought under strict rules of “fair play,” if half our F35’s are grounded at any point in time, surely our opponents will give us the time to get the remaining up in the air.
I’ve seen soccer teams purposely kick the ball out of bounds when an opponent is injured. We should expect no less from our war time enemies. We should demand it. Fair is fair.
4
At only $44,000 per hour to fly I just don't understand why we don't just give the Pentagon aka defense contractors a nice round $2 trillion a year to spend.
It's been a few years since I read President Eisenhower's farewell message regarding the military-industrial complex. He sure was correct and our wonderful Congress and orange crud President help keep the dream alive for contractors and war-hawks everywhere.
6
A valuable perspective on this article:
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/06/the-pentagon-syndrome/
Andrew Cockburn's remarkably short summary of decades of Pentagon weapons-system budget growth "like a virus", forever expanding at a higher rate than inflation.
Jim Burton's 1980s book, "The Pentagon Wars" also details how fighter jets in particular bring out all the worst Pentagon failures. In particular, they have this bizarre addiction to creating "ultimate" aircraft that can do everything. Burton basically predicted the impossible design requirements of the F-35 decades before they happened.
The question for a battle is whether an F-35 could beat an F-16, the last aircraft to be lighter and cheaper than its predecessor, the last to be designed by engineers rather than politicians.
The question for a war is whether a billion dollars of F-16s could beat a billion dollars of F-35s, and the answer to that is always going to be "no". The F-35s will be outnumbered 3:1.
2
I think you have too many Generals and Admirals stuck in the glory days. Big big carriers, heavy bombers and superb dogfighters, when the course of tactical warfare appears to be veering in the other direction. Hence the bizarre images of B-52’s raining down bombs on phantoms and agile, fast jets like the F/A-18 (and now F35) flying in slow circles directing an LGB from miles away. A waste, no?
The A-10 however, now there is an aircraft perfect for insurgencies.
3
Every advanced program is treated the same way. Poor performance, too expensive, not as good as the previous generation... This is exactly what you want an adversary to think so that they will be more likely to make a less challenging fighter to oppose it. Anyway, is there anyone making a machine that comes close to this one? Well, that depends who you listen to.
1
Why don't we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it ? - POTUS Calvin Coolidge
. .. and the ghost of McNamara's F-111.
Buy more P-47s and P-51s to kill Toyota pickup trucks !
Dwight Eisenhower is turning in his grave. He foresaw this happening but likely never in his wildest dreams imagined it on this scale.
We can't put up with this nonsense anymore. McCain and Flake were right.We have been so corrupted by "Paid Patriotism" that the Defense Department feels it can run roughshod over a blind flag waving electorate and get away with anything they want.
6
I followed the development of the F-35 program from concept to actually performing static-mechanical material properties testing, through dynamic-fatigue testing.
This plane was designed to be built using primarily advanced composites, with far fewer fasteners and titanium hardware because drilling and placement of hardware requires precise measurements and quality control verification along the way.
Lockheed's solution was to eliminate brackets and fasteners at adjoining surfaces with a pre-preg pre-plug to be heated and cured into place. Just eliminate them; cut them out, no need for complicated, expensive hardware and inspection involved, if you could just get rid of it!
The pre-preg process for composites is comprised of a fiber and a matrix, of witch the matrix is an adhesive and cement, much like rebar and concrete.
One flaw I discovered while testing was someone who laid-up a test panel forgot to remove a plastic backing between plies during lay-up. Like how sliced cheese has a paper backing between slices so they don't stick together at the wrong time.
I dealt directly with LM in Dallas' engineering and program management and let them know of this issue and I hope they listened then.
When Silicon Valley makes chips and hardware, such as Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, etc. They usually engineer and test their newest product over and over to make it as perfect as possible before ramping up and producing millions of them.
With DoD purchasing, vendors sell them promises.
9
"....The Joint Strike Fighter program was conceived in the 1990s as the most ambitious aircraft development effort in the Defense Department’s history. ..."
How many times do I have to read such pronouncements like "the most ambitious" - before I know the next sentence includes a word, disaster.
I am no military guy but I spent over 4 decades in the oil patch - many of them in execution of complex projects.
Sure, we are a private industry where over expenditures means outright loss of a job or a big blow back from shareholders.
This idea that one aircraft can be "quickly modified" for 3 very different services who are notorious for not even talking to each other.
This would be similar to what we may try in our industry - same design for facilities in production, refining and transportation.
It is impossible to even imagine or even attempt - would surely end up in a disaster.
In our industry - project management is a rigorous specialty.
Folks like me spend decades honing skills - and some of our projects can take a decade if not longer.
I think this whole Pentagon acquisition is a joke - as it is none of their money. And punishments for zero performance are non existent or worse.
An officer is forced to take early retirement on fat pension - and then he or she joins the manufacturer as a consultant.
We know how this movie ends.
And tragedy is many of sequels of this movie will be out at theaters near you.
6
Regarding "In 2017, during the F-35A’s first outing in Red Flag, the Air Force’s largest training exercise for aerial warfare, the jet killed 20 aircraft for each F-35 shot down in simulated combat. In April, Air Force pilots took that training and put it into practice for the first time, using the F-35 in an airstrike against ISIS in Iraq.", does ISIS have an air force in the first place?
Seems odd that air combat training (aerial dogfights) prepares one to drop bombs (aka airstrikes).
6
Agile Software Development. Streamlined testing. This can work in many cases.
But the worry always is that over time agile software development turns into shoddy software development, and streamlined testing turns into limited testing.
The pressure to do stuff faster and spend less is always incessant. This is what causes the creation of likes of the Boeing MAX.
6
So what is new? The F-35 is just an F-111 for the 21st Century. For the younger generation, in the 1960's the Air Force Snake Oil Salesmen came up with a "multi-mission" (the Air Forces recurring fantasy) -- the F-111. This miracle plane would sweep the enemy from the skies while bombing them to hell and back. It would also be a world beating carrier based fighter. Just wonderful.
After years of delays and and few billions, the F-111 turned out to be too heavy to operate off existing carriers and all planned carriers. It was to clumsy for air to air combat or day attack missions. It ended up as night low level penetration fighter after they fixed its distressing habit of diving into the ground during level flight.
The F-35 continues the proud tradition of never producing a fighter for the the war the nation faced. Remember, the both the F-86 Saber and the F-4 Phantom were both navy aircraft.
Also, remember the Air Force has spent 30 years trying to dump the A-10 as not being a multi mission aircraft. It isn't. It just works. But that is not important.
9
Does anyone know how many fighter jets or anti aircraft guns the enemies in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria have ? We either have the most inept military ever or is all a big scam .
6
The F-35 is the US Air Force's Max 8.
4
@Speedo - That is called spreading the "genius", or maintaining the Industrial Base,
2
We have three distinct problems.
First, most of the military and nearly all of Congress and the public don't understand the F-35's capabilities (all aspect engagement -- you don't need to turn and burn to point the nose at adversary) and potential (especially with regard to integrated manned/remotely piloted operations.
Second, this flawed understanding allowed the truly insane decision to produce a a single airframe despite exceptionally diverse service requirements. Truly insane, because we had tried this before (TFX/F-111) with disastrous results.
Third, the F-35 was never intended to be produced or deployed without several hundred F-22 and FA-18 aircraft in the mix. The worst Secretary of Defense in our history, Robert Gates, idiotically stopped F-22 production with less than half of the planned number built. Gates effectively ended American air supremacy for decades.
7
Companies used to develop weapons systems out of their own pocket and win contracts based upon performance and price. That is how America got planes like the B-17 and the original Jeep that was used widely in World War II and after.
Somewhere along the way, things got all out of whack, got corrupted and each generation of weapons system is commonly less rugged, more in need of expensive maintenance, grossly more expensive and rarely meets the stated goals of the original program. Two of the best and most reliable planes developed in modern times were the A-10 and the F-16 and the other thing they share is that they were not wanted by the US Air Force. The A-10 was only taken by the USAF to keep the Army from fielding fixed-wing aviation (turf battle) despite the desperate need for such a low flying close ground support plane. The F-16 was built to be maneuverable, reliable and (relatively) inexpensive.
Over in the Navy Department, we have a new generation of Aircraft Carrier that is still not ready for prime time. The launch rail system is still a dumpster fire and the cost of these ships is scandalous. Another program- the Littoral Combat Ship- is a good idea ruined by the weapons development process and is in danger of being spiked by Naval brass who do not want small light, flexible and lethal.
We really need to be asking if we even should be building these weapons systems. The F-35 is probably unnecessary and the Aircraft Carrier's days are numbered.
4
@David Gregory
Does anyone know who we are fighting? Are we at war with Iran, fighting a proxy war on behalf of Israel and Saudi Arabia? Israel has fighter planes; they can attack Iran if they want to; they don't need the U.S. The Saudis are using our weapons against Yemen? Don't we have a military port there? Why should we get sucked into another ME war? Another Iraq? Bibi insulted President Obama in Congress and received a standing ovation, disgusting. Why is Kushner, a real estate heir, engaging in diplomacy? What are his qualifications? What was Ivanka doing barging into a private conversation between two world leaders? What are the business ties between Trump and the Saudis? What is this family doing on our behalf? So far, it looks like the Trumps are violating the Emoluments clause. What a bunch.
4
The federal government and Lockheed Martin absolutely discussed me. $1 trillion to get the unit cost down to $100 million for killing people more efficiently for us in other countries. We are a disgusting nation I guess the good news is that we are at least creating jobs in all 50 states due to this program
4
@Mike "I guess the good news is that we are at least creating jobs in all 50 states due to this program"
Nope. What we have here is corporate welfare, since this program is entirely financed by the taxpayers.
3
Very simple moral here: do not put all your eggs in one basket.
6
Meanwhile, Taliban riding on their 100 cc bikes, have forced almighty USA to come to the negotiation table.
6
While this article mentioned that Israel had used the F-35 in combat it failed to mention that one of the aircraft involved returned with undisclosed damage that caused the plane to be inoperable for an extended time. The damage was claimed to be a bird strike but there were also rumors that it was surface to air missile damage which put the stealth of the plane in doubt. The fact that Israel isn't publicly using the plane more often does make one wonder what the actual circumstances were.
5
@AreWeThereYet - In the Middle East pigeons might be cheaper than anti aircraft guns/missiles.
1
Ms. Insinna,
The decision to put a new aircraft design for air superiority, both the intercept and destruction of ground targets is extremely complex and the added requirements of taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier or vertical landing and take off from a simple clearing makes it very difficult so I am not surprised that the F-35 is obsolete before it goes into production. There are very few countries in the World that could afford to take these ventures. We are fortunate to be able to carry the load.
With all of that said I think we may want to rethink the requirements and decide if unmanned aircraft may be a more viable solution.
I have done this analysis for navy air and when you reduce the analysis to price per pound of explosives delivered on target adding in the cost of the protected aircraft carrier, the price per pound is astronomical and it would be very difficult for any of these F-35 systems to compete. It is not even close to UAVs but then there is the problem of presence and equipment each of the UAVs with the redundant guidance systems required for operating in a hostile environment.
My advice for the future is to avoid using war to resolve conflicts. It would be better to avoid destruction and collateral damage as a means to settle disputes. Our species has come a long way in its evolution and it is unwise to kill our own species and destroy the their pursuit of happiness.
I suggest competing with sports and other human skills. War is last.
3
If this is the crown jewel, how come we are selling it to a ton of other countries? I don't get it. This is "defense spending"? it
seems more like international arms selling. I see what Lockheed-Martin gets out of that, but what does the USA get out of that?
I just see a bunch of countries, all using US made arms, to start and prolong wars... basically since I was a kid...
Why do we sell all the stuff we paid to develop, to the whole world? This just seems like war profiteering. Please someone explain how this happened.
4
@togldeblox - Now your catching on !
2
The generals should read some military history. The Germans made very technically complex tanks in WWII but they were often out of service because they were over engineered. The Americans made the less complex Sherman tank which broke down less, was cheaper and easier to repair. The procurement system, as mentioned in the article, spreads the pork around to all Congressional districts so nobody stands up to stop these programs.
2
Every single dollar that is spent on this white elephant is one less dollar the US military-industrial complex has for carrying out drone strikes on weddings, bombing school buses and toppling democratically elected governments with CIA planned coups.
So I am a huge fan of the F-35.
6
Personally... I am tired of the tail wagging the dog.. Especially when the tail doesn’t pay any of the bills!
3
Doesn't anyone remember the fiasco of the F-111 Program, which tried to create a common multi-serviced, multi-use aircraft?
4
How was Lockheed Martin chosen over Boeing to produce the F-35? Did the Pentagon forget about Lockheed's disastrous failure of the F-104 Starfighter in the 1970's? Perhaps all parties involved with the F-35 should go back in history to understand why the F-104 was such a colossal failure and learn that the F-35 could be next - unless it's already Next - perhaps the best solution would me to purchase Russian Mig's - better planes - less taxpayers money wasted - Wise up
3
It has been reported that the stealth coatings on aircraft such as the F-35 come off during flight. Journalists should investigate whether this would result in atmospheric contamination with toxic molecules that will be absorbed by people, and food sources such as plants and animals.
2
What a massive boondoggle. Next up: appropriations for a Space Force.
4
Since we will be selling these F-35s all over the world it is only a matter of very little time before somebody sells one to the Russians. The Russians will reverse-engineer it and probably make improvements in the design.
This happened during WWII, when some B-29s were forced to land in Vladivostok instead of returning to bases in China. The Russians reverse-engineered them and starting building TU-4s, which incorporated some Tupolev-inspired improvements, and were in many ways better than the B-29. TU-4s were the Eastern bloc strategic bomber for many years.
So, after we let the Russians improve and debug their version of the F-35, we could start buying their product and save ourselves a lot of money and trouble.
4
I am very surprised that in this entire lengthy (but well-written) article and in the comments that I did read, there was not mention of a Defense project from the 1960's called the "TFX". TFX was the brain-child of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his "efficiency experts" who wanted a single aircraft that could be used by all three of the flying services and have the ability to land on a carrier (Navy), provide close-air support (Marines) and perform tactical and strategic bombing missions (Air Force), replacing 1950's era aircraft like the B-52 and B-58. The concept didn't work although the TFX eventually entered service with the Ai Force as the F-11. the Marines and the Navy went their separate ways and developed some ver fine aircraft that suited their individual missions.
2
Once again and has it always has been since the 1960s, the problem is 3-fold: both political parties, both political parties, both political parties.
3
So an hour of flying time of this turkey costs almost the average family income for a family of four, $44,000. Really?
“In 2010, the ballooning costs — which put the cost per plane more than 89 percent over the baseline estimate — triggered a breach of the Nunn-McCurdy Act, a law that forces the Pentagon and Congress to evaluate whether to cancel a troubled program. But because the F-35 was intended to replace so many legacy fighter jets, military leaders essentially had no choice but to keep going.”
No choice? A classic case of throwing a lot of good money after bad.
4
Remember the B-58? No? You won't remember the F-35 in 20 years either.
5
"Lockheed has begun fronting its own money to buy spare parts in advance, with the expectation that the Defense Department will repay the company later. "
Um, Ford Motor Company, to take one example, has warehouses full of spare parts for Escorts, Mustangs and Lincolns. I don't think they expect their customers to pay for them until they need them. Defense procurement is such rigged game.
4
So what is new. The F35 is just an F111 for the 21st Century. For the younger generation, in the 1960's the Air Force Snake Oil Salesmen came up with a "multi-mission" (the Air Forces recurring fantasy). This marvel would be a air superiority fighter, a low level nuclear bomber and a carrier based navel fighter. It ended up so grossly over weight that it was too heavy for even carriers planned, not to mention those in service. It was so clumsy it would have been dead meat in air to air combat. It ended up as a low level night penetration attack plane after they fixed its distressing habit of diving into the ground during level flight.
But both of these designs continued the proud tradition of never ever designing and building a fighter for the war the country found itself in that dates back to WWI. Remember, the F-86 Saber and the F-4 Phantom were both navel fighters.
5
I’m not sure what type of planes they were, but are used to see some modern jets cracking a sound barrier or doing loop de loop’s — in very short unimaginable high speed turns above my head in southern Monterey County
Will these most expensive toys protecc us against balistic missiles.
Will they protect us against terrorists bombs in the US
They surely would protect us against ennemy planes flying above the US, but is such an occurance even ever probable.
Or maybe we fear is that these ennemy planes would assist foreign boots on the ground, trying to occupy the US?
Let's be serious.
And as far as the program itself is concerned, what about not putting all your eggs in the same basket?
And finally, remember Eishenhower warning about the "military-industrial complex"!
3
In a recently published book and accompanying lecture/interview, Dan Pedersen, one of the founders of the Top Gun Navy Fighter Weapons School, said fighter technology is outpacing human abilities to fly them and for the teenage-to-early-20-year-old technicians in the military to maintain them. And these planes are getting hideously expensive. He stated that he'd rather have thousands of Northrup[-Grumman] F-5 Freedom Fighters, a small, simple, economical late 1950's design, than hundreds of the latest stealth fighters, and that he could train F-5 pilots to be the equal of those flying the F-35.
2
Reading through this more than once left me with the feeling that it's been heavily edited by multiple editors. There's a notable tone shift between the first half of the article, which describes the myriad of outrageous issues with the F-35 re: Lockheed's vertical monopoly play, procurement, management, oversight, political score-keeping, back-filling; and the second half, which is a glib dismissal of problems initially described as intractable and systemic.
Trump's executive summary would read: Big, big problems with F-35. Big, big problems with Lockheed in charge of everything. Pentagon totally shocked. Oh, wait. Everything is copacetic. F-35 can fly (barely). Suggest we sell to China and Russia as secret weapon to sabotage their military. Smiley face.
This seems a classic case of not repaying a small loan from a bank and losing your house; whereas not repaying tens of millions lent by a bank gets you another loan to pay off the first one. Small debt they own you. Big debt you own them.
Clearly the Pentagon is a wholly managed subsidiary of Lockheed.
A trillion here, a trillion there, and it adds up to real money.
Tell me again why we can't afford Universal Health?
7
Here is one example of the very human toll the F-35’s have exacted on the South Burlington, Vermont, neighborhood where they will be based. Much of the residential housing around the airport is genuinely affordable, a rare commodity in the pricey Burlington area. One couple I know took the buy-out offered to homeowners whose dwellings will be affected by the F-35’s noise. They are in their mid-sixties, and their home was paid for. When they looked for something comparable in a nearby community, they found next to nothing in their price range. Eventually, they settled on a home costing $100,000 more than the house they had sold. Now, at retirement age, they have a considerable mortgage where previously they had done.
Canadian sociologists term this preying on lower-income communities by powerful interests “domicide ,” and here in Vermont, many of the “predators” backing the F-35 are members of the local real estate cartel. Senator Leahy’s wife’s cousin, a prominent F-35 advocate, is a major developer; the mayor of Burlington, which runs the airport, is a developer; the BTV airport’s director is a former mortgage broker; and former Vermont Governor Shumlin, who vociferously promoted the F-35’s basing here, is a longtime real estate developer.
This sordid you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours culture proves the validity of what the late author Wallace Stegner wrote: Namely, the entire history of America is that of one continuous real estate transaction.
7
This plane is already obsolete, and in the long run, will have little impact on future battlefields.
So the F-35 flew missions in Afghanistan and Iraq? Woopie! Any 40 year old fighter-bomber could have carried out the same mission.
I do not rule out the possibility of conflict with Russia and/or China. But drones and robotics will probably tip the balance in such a conflict.
6
Perhaps we should scrap the F-35 and buy the French Rafael. It is both land based and carrier capable and could probably wax the F-35 in a one on one.
3
It sounds like the ghost of Robert McNamara is alive and well and walking the halls of the Pentagon. History repeats itself.
4
"the jet killed 20 aircraft for each F-35 shot down in simulated combat. In April, Air Force pilots took that training and put it into practice for the first time, using the F-35 in an airstrike against ISIS in Iraq."
Huh? ISIS has an air force?
This article could have been written about the F-22, the Osprey, the F111, the B-1 and on and on. Our defense budget is over-bloated with obsolete weapons, over-complicated weapons, the wrong weapons and too many weapons.
Eg., do we need 6,500 tanks? Those tanks--M-1 Abrams--use a complicated and high-maintainance turbine engine with horrible mileage. Nevertheless, they are America's Tank. Tank Warfare is utterly obsolete . Does the Pentagon envision a land invasion lead by waves of tanks anywhere?
I'm not against defense, but we need drones for ground support and self defense, cyber weapons, and a lot more support for our veterans' needs. We could have what we actually need for defense, and cut the defense budget by $150 billion per year. But Defense is a third rail for any politician that wants reform and smarter, cheaper weapons systems. Lockheed and the entire defense industry are the biggest Welfare Queens in history--like the Poverty Pimps we supposedly showered with Great Society $$$$--throwing money at the Defense Dépt. Fixes nothing and leaves us worse off.
4
Great reporting ....
3
Billions, if not trillions for Pentagon/Defense Contractor toys that don't work as advertised and break frequently? But we can't afford quality health care, child care or education? Time for new priorities.
5
Let me see if I have the numbers correct. At $80M each and say 150 produced every year that is about $12B a year.
I can build an outdated 75 year old design, the P-51 Mustang for $1M each in a cheap local hangar. With a $12B budget I could produce 1000 of them each year. In five years I would have 5000 of them.
Even if the kill ratio was 75 percent, the numerical advantage would win. Not to mention that fact that one or two mechanics can work on the thing and it can take off and land in the most hospitable places.
An absurd example to be sure. But the point is that a low tech high availability adversary will doom any so-called advantage the technology may provide.
At the end of the day it is the airplanes job to protect the advancement of the boots on the ground. If the aircraft is stuck being repaired and the adversary can harass the boots on the ground with thousands of mini-drone-aircraft, then we will have spent billions for nothing.
3
the primary flaw in the program is that manned combat aircraft are obsolete. The F-35 has no mechanical connections between the pilot and the aircraft; everything is carried by electronic signals, even the images that are projected in the helmet. The aircraft is a drone that happens to carry its drone operator along. Unlike the A-10 there is little opportunity for the F-35 pilot to actually acquire targets visually. Unlike the Battle of Midway the primary threat to capital ships are long range missiles that could flood any screen of defensive aircraft. In an era when the real combat involves irregular ground forces that are invariably mixed with civilians, "air superiority" in no way guarantees victory. The advantages of drones in turn radius, stealth, range, loiter time, and most of all in cost will only become more obvious with time. In an era when cars drive themselves the computer can handle the stick and rudder.
14
Blaming the military for the hundreds of deficiencies of this aircraft is misplaced. It is the defense contractors that ultimately decide what weapons systems the military services will get, and in what configurations. They control the acquisition process, from design to production to costs by its financial control of Congress.
The defense contractor lobbying groups funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in each national election cycle, which they must view as an investment for their financial bottom line, and it has paid off.
5
Sometimes an aircraft can perform multiple functions: the WW2 Mosquito is a good example, the North American Mustang and Republic Thunderbolt others. These were the result of planes well designed for one function where the second was an easy adaptation.
It is hard to think of any aircraft designed for such varied roles as the F35 was intended. At least, none that were successful.
7
I know it is so obvious, but just think what all this money spent on a weapons system; how that same money could have made life better for our so many citizens... It seems out of date and so out of proportion to the actual threat. I wish I knew how to challenge fear. We need to grow up and we need to believe in the importance of freedom of choice in all places and face down the foes of democracy.
7
@Phil Parmet
Agree. After paying interest on our national debt and funding entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security, the government is left with what is called the "discretionary budget." Most recently, military funding accounted for almost 60 percent of that budget. And, ostensibly, we are in peacetime.
Approving Defense Department budgets is something politicians love to do. It plays well with many voters. So, the Defense Department budget grows, and the only real question each time is by how much.
3
@Phil Parmet
Except this program (and others) provide thousands of jobs to skilled workers with nothing more than a high school diploma making 60-70K per year. Plus thousands more engineers making 70-100K. The type of jobs this country isn't making anymore. THAT's why politicians don't kill the programs.
1
@Phil Parmet
"I wish I knew how to challenge fear" .
Phil, you can challenge fear. As you are so obviously aware it permeates all aspects of our society because it is the easiest way of controlling another party. When you see or hear the work of the fear mongers, search for and be not afraid of the facts. Then speak the truth. You may not change society but I guarantee those around you will feel a lot less anxious.
$90 million each. Somewhere, right now, there is a country developing a drone, a remote-piloted aircraft that will out-fly the F-35 and cost 1/4 as much. Will the F-35 survive a fight with four of those? Just as companies become 'too big to fail' and get government bailouts, the F-35 is too expensive to quit... and is a dead-end fighter, the perfect weapon to fight the last war. Imagine how much better the military would be at fighting and winning wars if the $1-Trillion intended for this program was invested in developing the people of the forces, instead of the glittery hardware that funnels money to '1500 suppliers, located in every Congressional district...' Eisenhower was right, when he warned about a military-industrial complex. He didn't predict it would be the industry running the military around, though, but that seems to be what has happened.
12
@Jim Brokaw You are wrong! The drones will cost less than $10M per copy and will fly circles around the F-35.
2
I wouldn't think it's impossible to make a plane that does everything -- stealth, VTOL, supersonic. I would think it's impossible to make a plane that does all those things *well*.
Or maybe that's just hindsight.
6
A financial fiasco from day one to the end. A trillion here, another trillion there. Think about what the money used on this military extravagance could have done for healthcare, education, or infrastructure.
Over 15 years in Afghanistan and Iraq for what?
The Military Defense Budget is an endless black hole that sucks the good out of this country and replaces it an evil military-industrial-congressional complex.
Who is to protect the people from the US Military? Trump? McConnell? Republicans? The F-35 Program is an example of what's wrong with the USA.
14
" ...then called the X-35 — won against Boeing’s X-32 after both companies demonstrated working prototypes of a stealth fighter capable of hovering and vertical landings"
That's not exactly what happened. The X-35 was late and was already over-budget when the X-32 was operationally ready. The Defense Dept. kept moving the goal post so Lock Heed Martin could score, giving them extension after extension on time and money. And the X-32 was eventually rejected over trivial claims like - "It doesn't look scary enough!"
The project was a no-win situation for Boeing from the get-go. Moral of the story: Never underestimate the power of effective lobbying.
9
@Krish Pillai -- The overarching problem is that the US allows so much industry consolidation that there are now only two contractors available to bid on big projects. The government just alternates contracts between LM and Boeing so each gets something. It is not a formula for high quality or cost control. But heaven forbid they would open these contracts to European firms to bid on. Wouldn't want to get a better product through true competition would they?
8
@Stevenz - Remember Northrup/Grumman ?
1
@LouAZ I remember Northrop and Grumman as two separate companies competing to help us win WWII.
1
Too bad MacDonnell Douglas did not get this contract. Maker of the F15 & F18. Things would have gone much better with fewer problems and cost over runs.
Now that this program is started no one knows how to stop it and the taxpayer gets stuck with the tab.
6
Sounds like the F35 is the military equivalent of the 737Max.
8
I do not trust this newspaper which has always been hostile to our defense department to have fairly covered this.
1
After read this article, I want a ride on an F-35 before I kick the bucket. It would be awesome. Best government rocket ship for the money outside of the Space Shuttle. We should add F-35 to the Blue Angels team. Our best chance against any advance alien invasions.
2
Vermonters are agitated now, but I have on really great genius authority, that the next sham war for votes is going to be with Canada. Those F35s will be crucial, unless those alien Francophones have managed to buy some drones, or capture them from Amazon’s vast fleet.
5
I am at a loss to reconcile the author's overall optimistic assessment with the Defense News article she references here, which was decidedly more pessimistic.
In addition the author here doesn't mention the software/hardware problems that afflicted the first 100 or so planes that were so severe that Lockeed Martin actually suggested to the Pentagon that these "early" F35s not be upgraded to be able to run the revised software but instead these planes would be reserved for state-side missions where the missing software wouldn't be critical. These later "blocks" of software are required for deploying many of the advanced weaponry that makes the F35 lethal. I am happy to say that the Pentagon refused, but the taxpayer will end up paying hundreds of millions of extra dollars, due to pursuit of "concurrency"
As for the adoption of "Agile" software development practices, I read that with a sinking heart: any experienced software engineer knows the famous wisdom of Fred Brooks, who headed IBM's gigantic software project known as OS/360, that adding programmers slows a project down at least as often as it helped. My guess is that in a few years all mention of this will be quietly scrubbed from the F35 program office, Lockeed's websites, etc.
A famous airplane designer once quipped that an ugly airplane is a bad airplane. The F35 is a squat, ugly plane and I think it will be a latter-day F111, a snake-bit plane that failed to deliver on its promises while costing way more.
10
@dubbmann
As I remember, IBM also thought that 9 women could give birth to a baby in 1 month, if they all worked together.
1
A big thing the story missed was the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS). After a flight, the plane is plugged into a computer and any parts that had issues/time for replacement would be auto ordered. Also performance stats, flight logs, etc would be sent. At the same time updated database on enemy radars, defenses would be downloaded.
Sounds great! Except it doesn't work.
The sheer volume of data is like a terrabyte, a computer hard drive, that is to travel to and from Lockheed. Not the military, Lockheed because they own the system and won't give the military the source codes. All this data can't be sent from F-35's on ships because there isn't enough bandwidth. Its also an huge security risk because if its hacked into, viruses could be inserted into it. When Israel got their jets they refused to connect it in and dared LockMart into doing anything about it.
What USAF is trying to do is figured a system that takes the pieces that do work, put them into a usable form that techs can work worth, and get it out of the data pipeline mode it was designed into.
Can we all say LockMart has issues?
10
@Rocket J Squrriel Don't worry. Huawei will build a 5G network for the F-35 and all that data will be in Beijing in no time at all.
1
@Rocket J Squrriel Don't forget. All that data, going over the air is a large beacon for an enemy attack. What is the sense of landing vertically on a country road and hiding the plane in the woods if it immediately lights up the sky with radio transmissions
4
@John Goudge
Here's a piece of F-35 trivia: To reduce its heat signature, excess heat from the electronics/etc is dumped into the fuel tanks. That means the fuel should be kept cooled before its loaded into the plane. One way to do that: paint the fuel trucks white. Great camouflage if you're working in the Arctic.
1
Anyone remember what was wrong with the X-32?
Aside from homeliness.
3
@Steve Paradis It was crippled by insufficient lobbying.
2
@Steve Paradis. Names and image matter. That plane got obscenely called ‘Monica’ due to a similarity to the front of the Edsel, which was a perfectly good Ford. For domestic sales, Japanese automakers gave even the most macho models dainty names, but knew that wouldn’t fly in American culture. On the other hand, the Warthog was an affectionate nickname for a clumsy looking but demonstrably competent machine.
The F35 is intended to be called ‘Lightning’ although it’s relatively slow. Names and images.
2
Too bad the F-35 was obsolete before it was even on the drawing board because it needed a pilot. An underperforming, astronomically expensive, 20th Century boondoggle that happens to carry living organisms in the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed, when thousands of pilotless drones can overcome any target in 21st Century warfare without putting human beings in harms way by pulling 35 Gs.
7
@Maurie Beck
Of course, 21st Century drone warfare would still drain our federal budget, even if the unit cost of drones is an order of magnitude less expensive because we would produce three orders of magnitude more drones, raising our annual military budget to $80 trillion (3 orders of magnitude minus 1 order of magnitude = 2 orders of magnitude) instead of the current $800 billion. Seen from that perspective, the F-35 and all other high end 20th Century military technology (e.g., aircraft carriers, etc.) actually saves us $79.2 trillion.
So go ahead, build another 400 F-35s and throw in another 10 aircraft carriers, and whatever else on your wishlist. It will still break the bank, even if it is never used in active warfare.
4
@Maurie Beck Let's keep buying the hardware we need to win the last war.
2
Dear @Purity of Essence,
I can see why piloted aircraft might have their continued appeal, especially with a pilot like Major Kong flying a crippled B-52 to the target, then personally riding “Hi there” to detonation.
But I’m not sure you’re right on your timeline of unpiloted drones with far greater maneuverability supplanting F-35s. We shall see.
It might have been wiser to have Linda Shiner, who wrote an April, 2009 article for Air & Space Magazine:
F-35: What The Pilots Say
Firsthand accounts of flying the world’s most advanced fighter.
https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/f-35-faces-most-critical-test-180971734/
At the very least, the writer of this article might have mentioned referenced this article which interviews a number of pilots about the F-35.
The Israelis have been using the Israeli variant, the F-35I (Adir) in combat situations, yet there is only a single reference to Israel in this article. Interviewing the Israelis for the article would have been helpful.
The Israelis seem pleased with the capabilities of the plane in combat.
2
@David MD
Correct article date of Linda Shiner's article interviewing pilots who flew the plane (including a woman pilot) is *April 2019*
2
@David MD "The Israelis seem pleased with the capabilities of the plane in combat."
Considering that they're buying American war materiel with American tax-payer funds, I imagine that they don't find it especially difficult to say what they need to say, to keep the faucets open.
1
@David MD Excellent comment -- you might also refer to a July 18/19 2019 article by Jake Novak in CNBC, entitled "The F-35 has already freaked out Iran and changed everything in the Middle East."
It reports that 3 F-35s flew undetected to Tehran and back in July 18. This led to Khamenei firing both the head of the Iranian air force and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards.
Pretty big impact for a "failure" airplane.
Who's complaining? Not me. I paid around $88 for most of my LMT stock and it closed Friday above $370, not to mention paying a great dividend.
For me, the F-35 has been a huge success.
8
@camper
General Smedley Butler: "War is a racket". So, you are making money from a war racket product.
Where is Ralph Nader when we need him? His book unsafe at any speed should be reprinted.
4
@Areader
If you want to worry about the handling of the Chevy Corvair which, last I heard, was not much of a safety problem in the last 30 years. Why reprint, when there's nobody who wants to buy it?
Of course there are issues. The F-35 is a totally new aircraft and that always causes teething problems. Solving these problems is what pushes the state of the art forward in any industry. Before long the F-35 will be completely reliable and fully functional.
@Eric The dammed aircraft was conceived during the cold war. At the rate we are going the current pilots grand children will have real functioning aircraft. By time any possible enemy will be able to defeat the great stealth package.
2
Since when has the military care about these issues. They are a power unto themselves. The most interesting is the support the two US Senators give the basing and the plane. Makes them phonies in terms of doing the people' work. Hey Bernie, the cost of these planes would pay for a lot of health care.
5
Not a word here about the faults with the computer-driven helmets that the pilots of the F-35 have to wear. Last I read, the pilots could not turn their heads and therefore could not see an arc of airspace alongside and behind them.
I also wonder what the money spent here could have done for our public school systems nationally. One news source reported that the spending on the F-35s could have been used to re- build every high school in the US. If so, that's money very well spent indeed!
7
@Jack Shepherd -- "The jet’s cutting-edge helmet display, which melds imagery from the F-35’s multiple cameras and sensors into a single picture, didn’t work properly, with pilots experiencing a jittery, delayed video feed. And the jet’s software development had lagged behind schedule, leaving pilots stuck with an interim version that allowed only for basic training."
??
2
@Jack. Each helmet is north of $400,000. They are so expensive because, as you say, pilots can’t turn their heads to see the blind spots; not enough room. In exchange, the helmet inside display shows video images in all directions, sort of like VR goggles, except in infrared and mixed with other information. Golly gee whiz! Of course, once you go this far, there is no reason at all to have a pilot actually in the plane. Could be safely sitting elsewhere with a cup of coffee, like the drone jockeys in Nevada blowing up suspicious groups of people in the MidEast. Also might allow our fighters to pull more than the human limit of ten g’s or so, sans pilot. The software is flying the plane all the time anyway...
3
In an article full of numbers, one jumps out: $44,000+/hour operating cost. Notable to me because that's almost exactly the cost of providing a fully-qualified classroom teacher in the typical American public school system for a year.
So, every hour we operate one of these high-tech toys that can only encourage military and political leaders to venture closer to the edge in international conflicts, we're giving up cutting the teacher/student ratio by a meaningful percent in two classrooms somewhere in American.
Really good job guys. So looking forward to President Warren in early 2021.
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@KCox
You'll drive yourself crazy if you start making comparisons like that. A single F-35 probably costs more than the entire annual budget of a "typical American public school" district. The military-industrial complex (sorry for the cliche) lives in a different universe than the rest of us.
5
@JB
Not required that it be that way . . . Vote Blue!
4
A great multi role aircraft - does nothing in particular well. A friend of mine was involved in final development of the aircraft. When I asked him how the process was going, he just rolled his eyes. 'Nuff said....
8
This article does not mention that Canada is one of the partner countries to develop the F-35, but has not agreed to purchase any of them.
7
@Terry. Doesn’t mean they think the plane is bad, or that they can’t afford it, but more that they have no use for any of the versions, even for national defense.
4
Disturbing article. Great photos.
5
Nothing new.
The USAF always imagines it wants to be more in charge.
The USAF always blames the contractor.
The contractor takes it because it and the USAF knows the generals need to not be blamed so they can continue to be promoted.
The general in this case says things are bad so he can reset the bar down so he and only he can look good for fixing it.
Look up F-4, F-111, F/A-18 (change general to admiral).
5
The more foolish and unnecessary wars we start, the more enemies we make. The more enemies we make, the more money we pour into the military.
For all the weapons manufacturers, this is a wonderful thing. For the country, it is the road to disaster.
6
Why is when the Pentagon wants a new weapon, no one asks where the money to fund it will come from? Of course, if it's direct benefit to citizens such as Medicare, that question is asked all of the time.
6
the F-35 appears to be identical to the Mercedes-Benz C-Class running on Windows ME.
that reminds me, i once had two dogs named Recall and Patches. i had to sell them because after five years they still were not housebroken.
when 15% of your Category 1 faults are "anomalous" (which means, "we can't figure out why it happened, so we won't worry about it"), then a reasonable expectation is that 15% of the fighter force will never be fully operational. as it is, half of them are grounded, awaiting maintenance.
8
This program and how it's been carried out only makes sense from the point of view of maximizing Lockheed's profit over as long a period as possible.
8
A $1 billion dollar project? Sweet. Who cares whether it works or not. Just keep the money flowing into the contractors' pockets. That's all that really matters.
10
@woofer $1 trillion dollar project!
4
@woofer A $1 trillion project !!!
2
@jsobry
You're right, of course. A nickel used to buy a Baby Ruth candy bar. Time flies.
2
“ There will always be new threats to face”.
Right. The Military Industrial Complex boondoggle has to make it so...have to keep all those corporate executives happy. Meanwhile, we could cut the trillion per year “ defense” budget in half and meet some of most pressing domestic needs.
12
Are we having wars, almost continuous since the Korean Police Action, so that we may tryout weapons, in this case tryouts under fighting conditions ?
6
”maintainence” technicians? really?
4
Afghanistan? ISIS? These are the places and targets you're using these flying white elephants for? Cut me a break. Millions and millions of dollars worth of equipment and pilots to do what?
10
The grounding rate was mentioned a few times. What was the rate for the well received F15 and F16 when they launched?
4
Eglin AFB is near Ft Walton Beach FL not Pensacola FL.
3
A dysfunctional creation? WOW! It clearly suggests it was designed and built with the approval of the ignorant fellow!
3
Unless you are developing cutting edge military technology to defend against aliens, I don’t see the point in any of this. Where exactly is the invading army encroaching on our borders that necessitates such a resource-intense technology? Canada? Mexico? The abundantly wealthy North Koreans and the technologically advanced ISIS?
We all inhabit this one planet, so do us all a favor and put away your antiquated machismo and your anachronistic tribal impulses and learn to live with everyone else on this planet without having to go to war with them. Grow up. This is 2019 not 1819.
21
At Taxpayer Expense!
47% of this country think" the end of the world war" will be organized by our own federal government. That being the case, let's keep dumping our money into the F-35 !! It will never fly
5
I know this plane is quite the quantum leap in the world of fighters and attack planes that it is lauded to be. And it might be perhaps the most beautiful plane ever built. Take that from an aging Air Force brat obsessed with aircraft since I was a kid. Just wished we put that kind of money into steps towards peace, education and healthcare.
I know, I know - some will say, "we spend 3 times that on those things!" But this is just one weapons system. We spend even more on Aircraft Carrier battle groups, Amphibious ship battle groups, cruse missiles, bombers and basic and advanced military communications and spy technology.
We coulda been somebody. We coulda lead the world toward peace. Instead we lead in the old adage of "peace through superior firepower". A slogan that just makes the other key players scramble to catch up. Not very peaceful.
23
Toward the end of World War 2, the B-29 was rushed into production, to enable long-range bombing missions over Japan. There were multiple problems, causing delays and significant loss of life. There was one good outcome: We won the war, without having to send Americans to invade the Japanese homeland. That would have cost up to 1 million American casualties, one of whom might well have been my father, Dex Ford, a Navy patrol bomber co-pilot. As wwell as multiple millions of Japanese casualties, including millions of women and children.
2
@Dexter Ford "We won the war, without having to send Americans to invade the Japanese homeland."
Because we had The Bomb, _not_ because we had the B-29. And The Bomb did kill women and children.
I remember reading that the plans for the F-35 copied/stolen by Chinese operatives some years ago, and used to build their own stealth fighter plane. Maybe our spooks could check if they (the Chinese) solved those problems, and how. At least that would save us some money. What would save us even more is to stop throwing good money after bad, and gracefully walk away from this. It's literally a plane designed for an era that is no more, and we incur great opportunity costs by not directing resources to unmanned drones and better anti-missile defenses. The latter would come in handy when Trump's new pal, Kim, decides to send nuclear-armed missiles to Hawai'i and the US mainland in his next temper tantrum.
12
I have no background in aircraft design and engineering but it does seem likely that it was not wise to design this plane to fulfill so many different requirements...
Stealthy, fast, VTOL, carrier catapult launch and hook recovery, as well as the requirements of the Air Force for a conventional jet. Just too many capabilities in one platform.
The F-22 is colossally expensive (per aircraft) but it does seem to do what is was designed to do.
4
The big mystery which this article doesn't address -- Many sophisticated think the Israelis have the best air force in the world -- certainly the best pilots -- and the Israeli air force seems to love the F-35. They use it for edge of the envelope missions against hotly-defended places like Iranian installations in Syria.
So why would the best air force in the world love this terrible, too-expensive fighter plane?? Is Israel better at flying and maintaining aircraft that the US Air Force? We aren't getting the full story here.
1
One reason that the F35 is working for Israel may have more to do with how they’re using it. It was promised as a do all aircraft, able to do everything but a master of nothing.
YouTube has great information on the F35; Pierre Sprey’s reviews are a must. Mr Sprey was involved with the design of the F16 and A10 Warthog and was an early critic of the F35. He calls it nothing more than a big waste of taxpayer money, as he explains why different military jets are designed differently for different jobs, and why that works better in both performance and cost.
5
Dave, Dave, Dave.. Fake news. If I was given a Ferrari to play with for nothing, I wold enjoy it also.
4
Israel didn’t like the rather monumental software that actually flies the plane (and also reports back to us!) so the wrote their own. They’ve done this with other planes. Seems they care more about results than we do.
5
“The technology to bring all of that together into a single platform was beyond the reach of industry at that time.
Lockheed Martin thought otherwise.” I bet they thought otherwise: One Trillion dollars-worth of otherwise....
7
Not to worry.
Someone is getting very rich.
6
The one trillion dollar cost of this plane is a crime against humanity.
8
The article is a little un-nerving actually. My concern is with supply chain problems during a time of actual combat. Beyond that -- I haven't found that air to air combat and air to surface combat can be done successfully by one airplane design alone.
Although cost prohibitive, there isn't an adversary in the world that would want to deal with a combination of F-22s and F-35s simultaneously, assuming adequate typical air mission support.
I think moth-balling the F-22 program was a mistake. That plane is a monster and we don't sell it to any other governments either. ( A good thing - lets keep some stuff to ourselves)
The combo of stealth drones, mini-AWACs, and these two fighters would be a devastating combination. And if this is it for the next 60 years -- so be it.
The rest of it is Cyber-security and EMD defense anyway.
3
@Mark
number of weapons carried in each plane plus the number or F22s vs number of adversary craft/swarm. Look at old Soviet tactics.
2
Without a dramatic change in military thinking, we have already lost the next war to China. China is investing hundreds of billions in AI with the goal of fully autonomous ground and air weapons systems. Unmanned Chinese fighter jets will fly circles around every manned US or Russian jet. Meanwhile, the dirty little secret at DoD is that it's latest big push into AI is 50% re-labeling of non AI R&D as AI, 30% building "demos" that are one step away from the famous "man behind the curtain" scene in the Wizard of Oz, 15% philosophically interesting but ultimately impractical research, and at most 5% in creating true autonomous weapon systems. The US won't wake up until we loose a major conflict to the China, such as when it takes Taiwan by force.
3
The very slight advantages this aircraft has over Russia's sums up America's mindset about defense.
Whereas the Russians mass produce simply but effective, unophisticated weaponry, America thinks that superior is superior. It isn't. If one of these aircraft is outnumbered, which it easily is by several cheaper Russian MiGs, the battle is lost.
The AK47 sums up the Russian attitude to defense: it's cheap, reliable, and though it doesn't have the range American weapons have, it doesn't jam, parts are easily available, and there are literally millions of them produced over the world.
It's the same with Russian tanks. The sheer number of them outweigh the better performance of a fewer number of US tanks.
When a product is vastly more expensive, the very slight advantage it has over the competition can't be justified.
8
@Jack Lee
10 Shermas to one Tiger, and simple to fix in the field. Numbers are one form of superiority.
2
The Air Force has just released its draft Environmental Impact Statement evaluating five sites for an F-35 squadron including Truax Field here in Madison, Wisconsin. The EIS says the F-35 jets will be 4 times louder than the current F-16 jets and fly 47% more often. It says: "There would be significant disproportionate impacts to low-income and minority populations as well as children." With 60,000 people living within 3 miles of the airport, our city will have the greatest environmental impacts of all five sites. That hasn't stopped our politicians, including Senator Tammy Baldwin, from falling over themselves to show their love of these new boondoggle jets.
153
@steve
Coal rollin' trucks, cancelled car emission lowering, less wildlife protection, louder jets... that's the way things are going. You'll be accused of being unpatriotic.
24
@steve,
Boondoggle jets ... are you in the high performance military jet business? National security policy?
2
@George
Nope, S. is a Biologist!
6
While clearly a technical marvel, especially once al the issues are dealt with, it is ultimately pointless as a more traditional military philosophy of using the correct tool for the job is still relevant. Some functionality can and should be combined such as the ability to engage ground and air targets, but making it so versatile that it can land anywhere (though it likely won’t have the munitions to do much) makes it a trophy plane. I foresee it being used by special ops groups and no more than that- imagine a war where thousands of these are lost on the front lines; If supply issues are already apparent, then during war time keeping these things maintained will be unthinkable. Also, drone technology is already good enough to start phasing our traditional pilot-plane combos for ‘operator-drone’ combos. This allows for operators to handle several drones by themselves without having to exit the battlefield and find their way home to rejoin the fray. One drone destroyed, jump to the next one.
90
@Waleed Khalid The only version that can land anywhere is for the Marines and that's replacing the FAR less capable Harrier. The Air Force and Navy versions take off and land conventionally and can carry a lot of weapons. Of course the real advantage on all of the versions is the ability to detect the enemy long before they can detect you. That's a war winning advantage and it's the reason for the aircraft and why so many other countries are buying it.
9
@Waleed Khalid
I believe they working on ways the F-35 can team with drones.
Hunter, do you really believe these planes can detect the enemy before it is detected? And then do something about this advantage? Today, big maybe, tomorrow, NO
8
This plane is destined to be based right in the middle of my residential community in October. Behind its basing in a totally inappropriate VT Air National Guard airport shared with our regional international airport is none other that Sen. Patrick Leahy (reported this powerful Senator twisted the arm of the Air Force) and, to a lesser extent, because they also supported this basing, none other than Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch. In addition to its enormous fiscal cost, this plane is costing our community its relative peace (many homes have already been raised and many will need noise mitigation because of the F35) and, according to noise reports, the hearing and brain development of our children (an elementary school sits directly in the path of the"noise zone"). These planes will eventually have the capacity to hold tactical nuclear weapons (though the military will never tell us if they are actually so armed) and contain toxic materials. Whenever we ask "why here?", the answer is always "jobs". Nobody has told us what and how many jobs. Three City Councils sitting in the immediate area have signed a resolution against the F 35's nuclear possibility as has the Vermont House of Representatives. The majority of my community and Burlington citizens have voted against basing this plane here to no avail.
137
It’s a pretty simple concept. Get over it. You have no say in the issue. There no noise concerns. That’s just something that people made up. The airplanes are coming regardless if you like it or not.
13
@Karen Ryder Why would the army store the nuclear bombs elsewhere? Seems to me they would be right there with the planes!!
We have Leahy to thank for this disaster. too bad.
7
@R Is this sarcastic? If not what about the nuclear aspect? I thought our legislature voted to have a goal of nuclear free Vermont. Jobs, ?
14
As anyone with a lick of sense knows, it is requirements that drive design, not the other way around. Be it IT systems, equipment or military hardware, the concept of all encompassing design always fails because different interests call for different requirements.
The scope of this differences is just amazing. Just think about the care difference of vertical takeoff versus carrier take off. That alone should have told the Pentagon that is was not feasible. Yet they drank the cool aide anyway. And what do you get? Yes, three different airplanes probably with total costs above what it would have been to do three.
138
@Mike And those three aircraft would have been optimized for their specific roles (attack for Marines & Army (Air Force) requirements) and fighter roles for the Navy & Air Force. The Air Force / Navy plane likely could have utilized many of the same systems, but their design would be driven by their usage and carrier basing.
16
@Mike
And don't forget the old adage from IT (though applicable to nearly any project): You can have it done fast, well, or cheap -- pick any two. As it is, they're managing to achieve none of the three.
46
@Mike That's a fair criticism. It's taken longer and cost more than originally forecast, but all 3 aircraft have been developed and have or are entering service.
The Marine version, VTOL, is the one that really drove some of the compromises. Thing is, it may well prove to be the version that makes things the most difficult for potential enemies. It is FAR more capable than the Harrier which it is replacing. Greater range, greater payload, advanced sensors and stealth. And due to its VTOL capability, it's allowing small amphibious carriers to have the kind of offensive punch that was previously reserved for conventional carriers. The Brits have built a couple of large carriers for theirs. But Japan, Korea, Italy and likely others will all be using them on much smaller ships. The US alone has 10 amphibious assault carriers that will carry them. This distribution of strike capability will be a tremendous advantage to the US and our allies.
12
A giant waste of money. Unmanned drones and stealth missiles are the weapons of the future. We are not going to be flying manned fighters into airspace we don't control and engaging in dogfights. There are alternatives which could have been bought for less than a third the cost. This was pork to keep elected officials in office.
457
Correct. The F35 is today's Battleship -doomed obsolescence.
Unfortunately, the pilot dominated, manned-centric Air Force, Navy, and NASA remain completely blinded to this. Manned "warships"
of all and any type are nothing but expensive coffins at this point.
What's needed is an Autonomous Robotic Vehicle-based combined and coordinating ground, air, space, and sea Arm to supplant them all...
17
@Michael Green Yes, it's ironic, isn't it, that the air force General Mitchell begged for after WW1, when he clearly foresaw the air as being the next battle ground, is now the one that's failing to see that it, now, is becoming redundant.
8
@Michael Green
The Taliban have fought us to a standstill in Afghanistan with barefoot, illiterate farmers riding donkeys. Drones are not even required!
32
I wonder how long it would take to replace combat losses when we finally face an adversary who can actually put up a fight? How long does it take to train an F-35 pilot?
Nice airplane as long as we don't need to replace combat losses expeditiously. Remember that Japan lost most of their experienced pilots during the early years of WW2 and never could regain the expertise lost in time to avoid defeat. I reckon that for the US, no need to contemplate combat losses, we just assume we will have none.
3
It is a tragedy that there are billions for these projects while the enlisted service members who service these expensive fighter jets are forced to work 12 - 16 hour shifts because of the lack of trained staff. Poor pay, poor living conditions (barracks with rats and roaches), and untenable shifts that servicemenbers must endure while supporting the mission are simply unconscionable. Why re-enlist when servicemembers with these skills can demand $60 an hour in the private sector? I fear for America.
4
Let's examine what else we could have done with that money.... fully fund healthcare for all, revamp our public schools, infrastructure. Time to end the strangle hold that the military industrial complex has on our budget. We do not need this huge, expensive, and ineffective military.
5
Former cold war Army type here (FOBBIT; Never worked below Corps HQ) (NOT a supply clerk...)
The Author missed at least one important point, which highlights the absurdity of the developers position. The Airplane was NEVER going to be able to conduct the missions of the A-10 like an A-10; The Contractor insisted the F035 could substitute for the A-10, thus allowing the Air Force (Which never found the A-10 mission of direct support for the Army particularly congenial) to retire the A-10 and put the money into the (drumroll) F-35 account. Even of the cost per flight hour when this "decision" was reached was (already) three to five times what operating the A-10 cost.
Of course, the Air Force has never sought a true replacement for the A-10, so the 1970's system (A-10) survives. The A-29 "Super Tucano" we are buying (from Brazil!) for the Afghans is the best the Afghans might be able to successfully operate. For us, it would not be the same, different problems.
But every "New & Improved" fighter jet has been, well, more expensive and more trouble the contractor promised.
10
To day that all the weapons malfunction and those that fly can't get off the ground.
2
Fighter planes became irrelevant after the Korean War, when Russia finally built up a nuclear arsenal to match the U.S. Since then, the air-war arms race has been an exercise in fantasy. The weapons are real enough, but the mission is not. What nation is going to challenge the U.S. and its allies to aerial dogfights? Russia and China are the only candidates. If their fighter planes engage with ours in actual combat, nuclear weapons will have destroyed the planet before the fighter planes have time to land and refuel.
It's past time for us to quit this warfare nonsense and address the serious global environmental problems that threaten us all.
3
A Trillion dollars for a couple of planes? A Trillin dollars and Lockheed is in control of the contracts? A trillion dollars?
3
No mention at all in this lengthy article about how some good, caring people, like those in the area of Burlington, Vermont, fear the F-35 program for lots of reasons: Noise pollution being just one of them.
2
Rather than Lightning II, I suggest naming it a more fitting Friedman's Teaspoon, based on the story about Milton's tour of an Asian canal project where he suggested giving the workers bulldozers instead of the shovels and wheelbarrows he saw them using. Upon being told the project's primary goal was to generate jobs, the Nobel laureate responded, "Then why don't you give them teaspoons?"
3
Been on the planet long enough to remember a similar aircraft touted for use across our armed forces. F-111. Interservice rivalry and a very complicated design led to similar stories in the papers. The armed forces ended up with an aircraft that didn’t quite fit anyone’s needs. And ultimately the USAF was the only US Service who operated it in limited numbers.
Anyone remember the B1 bomber? Political football that ended up with a short service life. It was so unreliable that there were often 2 sent to airshow flybys so in the likely event one had a maintenance down the other could do the flyby.
How about the B2. When it was first deployed its external coating couldn’t be flown thru clouds! It’s deemed a national level asset which can’t be based outside the USA forcing aircrews to endure 24-36 hour missions.
And in this generation we have the F-35 and it’s enormous impact on defense spending.
These are just the aircraft which come to mind. Search the web for problems with the newest generation of USN aircraft carriers. Even President Trump mentioned one of the largest technology issues facing our fine men and women serving in the Navy. It’s all very well documented.
In aggregate these weapons systems represent an enormous drain on our national treasury which if a non military project would have resulted in a mass firing of all involved.
And still our infrastructure crumbles. America deserves better. Get off your seat and vote!
8
This airplane represents everything that's wrong with our military industrial complex - the biggest republican socialism program in US history. It's time to completely rethink this folly.
4
Software issues on an airplane?
No wonder they are forging ahead ...what could possibly go wrong?!!??
1
The F-35 brings to mind the famous comment: A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
2
I'll bet the Death Star was also a Lockheed Martin contract.
2
M maybe we should spend the money on new water pipes for Newark instead.
4
The problem is that the West, America and our allies, have been engaged in some pretty unethical/immoral stuff all over the globe for over a century and a half. Western businesses (primarily oil, but other industries as well) have been supported by US intelligence and military operations during this entire time. We have been destroying democracies and installing puppet dictators whom the US further supports with more of the same, plus training for secret police, selling weapons to their military’s, and outright funding. We also have manipulated governments into war, expanded existing conflicts, and for all of this, we have a long list of enemies to show for it. The cost for all this has been borne by US taxpayers and the lives of thousands of dead young soldiers.
However, until such time as we stop enabling and supporting these businesses to r___ and pillage the rest of the planet and the people in it, we need the biggest, most technologically advanced military we can afford (and then some) or we will suffer a long-deserved reckoning.
The F-35 and the previous F-22 are part of that, an integral part. If the F-35 isn't working, we need to go back to the F-22 and just suck up the higher cost. There simply is not presently any other choice....
2
As long as the US will spend as much on the military as China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK and Brazil combined, this is not only bound to happen, it is going to happen. And there will be no money or no will to spend it for secondary needs like health, education, infrastructure, public transportation etc.
2
I love engineering, I love technology and I love airplanes, but the rational part of me has to admit that this was a gigantic waste of money and intellectual resources that could have been put to far better use.
And besides, as much as I love to see these airplanes fly, this is a technological dead-end. Future wars will be increasingly fought by unmanned and automated systems, which will have capabilities far superior to what any human-controlled can achieve.
7
This harkens back to the TFX, a joint AF/Navy aircraft project from the 1960s. That too was an effort to build one aircraft to fit the needs of two services. In the end, it satisfied neither of them.
This project which is supposed to simultaneously satisfy the demands of even more military services was misguided since day one. The record of the F-35 to date is proof. and it will continue to cost American taxpayers billions for an aircraft with suboptimal performance for the life of the program.
4
Fine, explanatory writing by Valerie Insinna. One of the detriments to the JSF was an unchecked optimism that the approach would work, and an unchecked optimism fueled by tax dollars.
Many of the subsystems were optimistically envisioned, notably the VTOL, which is VSTOL, security functions, and the entire logistics effort that Valerie mentions which was scaled back over the years because one of its requirements couldn't be reached, and, definitely its cost benefit couldn't be reached: It was overly expensive to run a system that reduced logistics costs.
General Bogdan's remark reflects the difficulty with the errant optimism of letting the private sector do everything:
“I had a sense, after my first 90 days, that the government was not in charge of the program,” said Bogdan, who assumed oversight as the program’s executive officer in December 2012. It seemed “that all of the major decisions, whether they be technical, whether they be schedule, whether they be contractual, were really all being made by Lockheed Martin, and the program office was just kind of watching.”
The GAO had reports on this, but no one is accountable to the GAO, evidently.
And also, evidently, through its own inertia, the JSF program will continue to function. It's one of our modern-day pyramids, as it puts money into the economy. What was that famous quote from Eisenhower about the military-industrial complex?
1
Lack of accountability and huge piles of money to spend with little genuine oversight — recipe for disaster.
The F-35s are coming to the Burlington International Airport in Vermont next month and will take off and land in the most densely populated area of the state. This is despite overwhelming objections to the airport hosting this and other military aircraft. More than 2,600 people will be exposed to noise levels deemed unhealthy, but little is being done about it. The military cannot be overruled. This big business exists and flourishes and appears to be unstoppable. Our congressional leaders are all fully on board. Capitalism at its finest.
8
@D Tayeby: I imagine that the Pentagon wishes that its noise level were the worst problem with the F-35.
2
Too Big ($$$) To Fail. Lockheed and the entire military complex cannot afford to have the F-35 become the Edsel of military aircraft. The one size fits all model may get all the glitches out someday. Then again it may not. One thing is for sure; nearly 2 decades after the wizards promised the Mother of All Fighters; the gremlins are still having a field day in costing the American people megabucks paying for the shiny new toy.
5
Why do we accept waste like this in the military. Instead of accountability we just trow more money onto the military industrial maw. Ask for accountability and you are labeled a traitor.
5
Scrap the whole f35 program. I’d rather have some health care
2
Hmmm? Seems the article forgot to mention the real Chinese threat here and not just that they are going or have gone stealth.
According to one article and a guest on NPR during some report a month or two ago I heard, the Chinese had slipped a serious virus into Lockheed's F-35 design base years ago and just somehow magically created a very similar plane recently.
Do our NYT reporters know anything about this; what would most certainly be a mega-disaster from a Pentagon, national security and a taxpayers p.o.v.?
6
@Clearwater
COTS systems in the computer systems built in China. The American Academy Of Science has addressed this issue in NETWORK SECURITY and Naval Systems. I addressed this even before in a short story, and True tech analysis here: https://ccdcoe.org/publications/books/VirtualBattlefield.pdf
2
In engineering, the kernel of the best design philosophy always turns out to be : keep it simple. The more complicated the design, the lower the reliability of the machine, the higher the cost of maintenance and the lower the likelihood of building something that works.
What this article describes is a 1950's Dick Tracy watch or a one man band. Seems like the people who specked it out tried to cram the cosmos of all fighter jet functions into one airplane. The designers who worked to those specifications should have raised the red flag about a trillion dollars ago.
7
@Iman Onymous
well no - as any engineer will explain to you the only 'kernel' is to meet the design spec - no matter how complicated - in the simplest and most robust way.
If everything were kept simple we would still be going down the highway in horse and buggies.
@SteveRR "If everything were kept simple we would still be going down the highway in horse and buggies."
And, no doubt, under a spreading chestnut tree in Harvard Square, the village smithy would still stand.
"... the Pentagon is wondering how it can continue to give F-35 technology a competitive edge against America’s adversaries."
Who are these adversaries? Where are the dog fights happening? We are not a war with anyone else who has such sophisticated aircraft. Why are we, why is this article, implying there are adversaries (of course China and Russia are always the go-to adversaries-in-waiting) against whom we need to be developing a trillion dollar weapons system?
And as we prepare for some mythical and unthinkable war of the superpowers, our 'adversaries' use our ramp-up to promote their own military-industrial complexes and new weapon systems -- "we have to keep up with the Americans ...."
It's a never ending cycle of trillions and trillions of dollars going down the drain while the odds that these nuclear-capable weapons might actually get used are increased.
It's a lose, lose equation repeated over and over again.
Yikes.
12
@QuakerJohn
Yup. Sooo much money thrown at a machine of war. Very sad our nation's priorities are not as committed to initiating and maintaining peace around the globe. Capitalism posing as national defense, with a huge dash of arms sales. Is this the mark of patriotism? Why are our leaders incapable of learning: did they not study history?
2
$241 million per plane and they don't work right. We ordered 2,424 of these. What a horrible waste of money. That money could be better spent elsewhere and we an rely on our present state-of-the-art fleet of fighters. You mean we couldn't use an F-15 to drop bombs on the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Cancel this program. Spend the money elsewhere AND give US a real tax cut.
Do the math, 2,424 multiplied by $241 million. The number is astronomical. How could our politicians who are employed by us be so stupid! At the very least cut this program back. Four of these planes cost about a billion. Can't we live with a mere 1,000 of these over-priced lemons? What have Al Queda and ISIS got to counter our present fleet of fighters?
5
@MIKEinNYC
You could use a Cessna 152 to run airstrikes on the Taliban.
4
@MIKEinNYC
The current unit cost is about $87 million so you should divide your numbers by 3. The total is still astronomical, but one thing is sure: Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban, combined, don't have enough money to match us in aircraft.
1
@MIKEinNYC
In the most recent Red Flag exercises, the F-35 had a 20 to 1 kill ratio against all comers.
So - they kinda do 'work right'
1
In engineering, the kernel of the best design philosophy always turns out to be : keep it simple. The more complicated the design, the lower the reliability of the machine, the higher the cost of maintenance and the lower the likelihood of building something that works.
What this article describes is a 1950's Dick Tracy watch or a one man band. Seems like the people who specked it out tried to cram the cosmos of all fighter jet functions into one airplane. The designers who worked to those specifications should have raised the red flag about a trillion dollars ago.
1
You want an example of waste and stupidity?
Take a look at the history and cost of the V-22, aka "Osprey"!
This contraption can be seen and heard for miles.
As a Vietnam vet, I can say with certainty, that had the V-22 been available in Vietnam, 100% of them would have been destroyed by the enemy or mechanical failure.
Few remember that in Vietnam we lost over 5200 Hueys, a much smaller and maneuverable chopper.
5
@Rich They fly over my house occasionally. Look like a ridiculously easy target for anyone with decent shooting skills and a big enough gun.
3
@John Harper
I live near Prescott, AZ. For some reason they are around here, too. I hear them long before I see them---and that is before they go into their helicopter mode.
In combat these things would be a deathtrap. But, since we have a "Volunteer" military nobody cares. Money is being made. This is the Marines new primary delivery of troops.
Parents of Marines should be very afraid; many marines have been killed already because of this horrible aircraft.
2
"An important measure of the cost, sustainability and value of the new jet is its total operating cost. In 2018, flying an F-35A cost about $44,000 per hour on average "
And flown by brilliant courageous pilots who make $60,000 a year.
Think about that!
The smartest most competent loyal people in America are in The Military.
6
Lobbyimng and bribery by the aerospace industrial complex is so rampant that I doubt we will ever know if this machine is a curse or a blessing. One thing is certain: it made a LOT of money for certain people, and they weren't US.
If the F-35 had been developed privately (but for what reason other than to prevent a tyrannical rule here) by people like Bezos or Musk, it would have already been old hate, cost a fraction of what it is costing US and would have been much better. Granted, our AF/Navy personnel are great and are trying, but the complexity of the issue and the graft involved in payoffs and delays would stupefy anyone. Our best can only do as much as our worst (like Trump) let them. Mr. Bone Spurs can't even figure out how to tie his shoes.
2
@RealTRUTH
It would be an eye-opener to see how many in the military who have worked on this program are now happy Lockheed Martin employees.
1
...and yet we can't pay for healthcare, infrastructure,college and education needs...all while spending trillions on a jet fighter, that even if it could fly, would never have meaningful use - ever hear of cyberwar??? no one is going to fly jets, they will just cripple our computer systems....
15
Thank you Valerie Insinna for bringing to the public's attention the most worthless and corrupt government defense program in history. Where has the media attention on this TRILLION dollar boondoggle been for the last 25 years. All education, infrastructure and healthcare programs in the U.S. could have been funded if this completely worthless decades old project had been scraped long ago. As pointed out in the article, in 2016 before his death, John McCain called the F-35 "a scandal and a tragedy....". . By the time Lockheed Martin completes the fleecing of the U.S. taxpayer this worthless project will likely cost between 2-3 TRILLION dollars. Where has the media been all these decades? Focusing on diarrheal tweets by Trump. Anyone who is familiar with defense contracting knows that we could reduce defense spending immediately by 50% and increase U.S. security by 100% at the same time. It is called smart, honest and innovative defense systems.
5
You may be under-estimating the ability of the F-35. Yes it is costly and there are many cost overruns. However, this plane is more than a jet fighter. These jets are part of a sophisticated battle ground platform that will be able to communicate and be aware of the complete battle front. It is designed for continual updates of software and communication ability. It will be able to project power at least 100 miles or more beyond its patrol. Eventually it will be able to command drones to knock out radar sites and to shoot down incoming weapons. It takes time to develop all these offensive abilities and integrate them with technology. Stay tuned
1
@Rod We can do all of that by multiple means across multiple platforms already.
They age of manned combat aircraft is over, face the future and deal with it.
2
I believe we have finally created an aircraft that is too complicit actually use.
The country that could best to answer questions about the F-35 is Israel. They're using them in combat in real world environments against up to date anti-aircraft environments. The Israelis for good reason don't discuss their air operations so getting a real life assessment won't be for years . One early indication though of the F-35's performance, the Israeli air force asking to modify their order of F-35's for more F-15 Strike Eagles instead. That story died quickly & it appears the F-35 is starting to do what is asked of it.
The Pentagon & the fine Men and Women of our armed forces aren't going to speak freely about the planes performance given as the article states, the complexity and the sheer size of the order, and all that's riding on the plane to succeed. The cost to maintain operational F-35's is alarming.
Question: If half the planes are down at any given time and they can't get the parts they need how does that justify the cost of building them?
6
@Dean M.
Who are the Israeli's fighting in the air in that part of the world? Anyone can drop bombs or fire missiles at a stationary target. Big deal, proves nothing.
2
"As with all stories involving the tangled web that is the Pentagon bureaucracy, it’s tempting to try to look for a hidden root behind all the problems..."
It's right in front of your eyes, Bunky.
To summarize:
A one trillion dollar program with a thousand problems where 50% of the planes can't fly, and when they do, it's $45,000 an hour in order to make ineffective air attacks in Afghanistan and on Isis, where our alleged enemies might have, at best, $10,000 invested in weapons.
Our spending billions and them spending hundreds is not a sustainable strategy.
Three Good Questions Congress should consider before another dollar is given away to these birds.
1. Has the US military gotten anything right since the Korean War?
2. Didn't some guys in pajamas kick our technologically gee whiz rear ends in Vietnam?
3. Have we yet managed to extricate ourselves from the briar patch of Iraq and Afghanistan?
Wake up and smell the outhouse, people.
Our military only works for the people making money off it.
Endless War is just endless revenue for the Military Industrial complex.
And we Americans are its first and most reliable victims.
It's catch 22 insane, especially since the greatest threat to America and the world is not some third world patriot but global warming.
What's coming:
Billions of climate refugees and Florida under the sea...
And that's just for starters.
8
Sorta reminds me of Abba's hit song, Dancing Queen. Just change the title and lyrics and it seems apt in describing the F-35: Hangar Queen.
See that plane, Hear it roar
Most of it's life behind hangar doors, Oh yeah
Once in the sky, It can work fine
If only so often it wasn't red-lined, Oooh
Once again, back on the ground
Stores of spare parts just cannot be found, Oh my-y-y-y
Earthbound again, waiting for green
Living her life as a Hangar Queen
Living her life as a Hangar Queen
Living her life as a Hangar Queen ....
9
The F-35 is too big to fail. Its well known that too much money allocated to the Pentagon turns up missing. The Congress seems to care less. So F-35 has been confronted with ever changing challenges to its supposed prowess. The US likes to show its huge Pentagon budget as a sign of its unmatched military strength. Then one looks at the F-35 and sees the waste and inability to put a functioning aircraft out. It is quite simply beyond the tech abilities of the US to produce the plane as advertised.
3
@c harris Intentionally putting subcontractors in all 50 states is the greedy guarantee that keeps all but the most public-service folks from criticizing this trillion-dollar mistake.
1
The article states that the F-35 will replace, among other aircraft currently in service, the A-10. The "Warthog" is an attack aircraft designed to take out enemy tanks and provide support to army ground forces. I fail to see how a supersonic, stealth fighter is going to be an improvement on the old A-10.
2
A farewell warning that coined the term "military-industrial complex" from the outgoing 34th president of the United States and supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces that led us to victory in WWII Europe - Dwight D. Eisenhower:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyBNmecVtdU
Russia, currently fielding the SU35 (arguably the most feared fighter jet in the world (out-running, out-gunning, and outmaneuvering the F35 at half the cost) and China, the biggest purchaser of the SU35 and country who outspends all other nations by far on infrastructure—have clearly taken his advice to heart.
We entered WWII with humility, gumption, moxie, and elbow grease. Today, self-deluded with the arrogant notion that we have the "greatest military in the world" stand by as our infrastructure and industrial capacity atrophies.
Democracy is an ideology. History has proven it is not a guarantee of superior intelligence, capacity or determination.
5
So we should feel guilty about flying to another country for a vacation (see NYT article “How Guilty Should You Feel About Your Vacation?”) when our country continues to build ridiculously expensive flying weapons of war instead of finally learning how to negotiate and play fair with other human beings?
The NYT and every other news source should be reporting daily on how the military-industrial complex and their bought and paid for political leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere are destroying the earth and turning people against each other for short term profits, while shifting the blame and guilt onto the average working person.
Please report more often on the positive forces fighting to end this corruption of democracy so that we know how to make a difference individually and can begin to feel some hope. That would be better use of the Top Stories space than the latest antics of the insane attention seeker in the White House.
1
Besides at the Pentagon, the only other place I know of where the Red Baron style dog fight mentality still exists is with Snoopy in old Peanuts reruns. We really need these trillion dollar planes to fight our war on terror and trade wars? Corporate welfare, big time.
1
From a local radio show here in Los Angeles (Dark Secret Place, KFI 640, Sat 8:00 pm) I learned that F-35 pilots can 'turn their heads' and see clear blue sky, and whatever other planes might be in that rear-view. Of course, the pilots cannot actually see -- the confines of the cockpit limit actual side-angular sight to fewer degrees than anyone would like. But, a series of video monitoring sites on the exterior of the plane deliver the full 360 view to the pilot's helmet. That is an amazing software achievement! But, why the 'include all requirements for all branches' as the guiding design of the plane? I say, do take this amazing software to a plane somewhat unique to each service branch, as it has always been. But, opt for the leanest plane for each class. Make pilot safety and ejection the primary focus. We can build far cheaper planes, and acknowledge they are more expendable than we would like. But, we will get more, better planes at less cost. Protect the pilots (as best as can be done).
1
Ok, maybe the Defense Department, Military, and the Government in general are completely incompetent and children are dying at the Border because the Government doesn't know what to do and doesn't have enough money to help them, the EPA is being killed off as well as Endangered Species, but the good news is that someones stock portfolio is doing great!
3
The F-35 is the world's most expensive 8-tack player. We're told it's "cutting edge" but it's already old tech. Supersonic stealth fighter drones will come along negating the need for this boondoggle. Stealth bomber drones armed with thousand mile high speed cruise missiles will replace manned aircraft. The military industrial complex is trying to put itself out of business but keep drawing its fat paychecks. The Russians and the Chinese will figure out how to shoot these down and designing planes without humans will be smaller, faster, pull man killing G's, fly further and be cheaper. We may never have unmanned cars chauffeuring us around but we can kill people remotely very well.
9
A thought that HAD to be part of this text: "Boeing 737", especially given the ominous sentences: "Winter worked to cut that down to a single validation flight, to test just the software and the systems it affects, rather than retesting the performance of the whole aircraft. A trial program staffed with a team of Air Force and Lockheed coders proved that the method works and doesn’t put pilots at risk, and Winter’s rapid software development strategy is now being implemented. " - Updating software and testing it like this... well... we saw what it did to the new 737, which is FAR simpler than the F35ABC... Good luck with that.
3
Consider the previous multi-billion dollar waste-project, the V-22 Osprey.
Takes off like a helicopter, flies like a plane.
Also called, the Twin-Roter Coffin. No gun ports, no crew operated weapons. Can't fight it's way in, can't fight it's way out.
Any teenager with an antique Com-Bloc weapon can kill it.
1
The root cause of the F-35 problem has been around since this 71 yr. old retired military guy can remember — a political system defined by legalized bribery.
No weapons project or outsourcing effort dies because our country's systems of legalized bribery is a perpetual motion corrupt political machine. The parts change — politicians, flag officers and corporate executives come an go — but the wheel of legalize bribery keeps turning to the benefit of the few and the detriment of the many.
I love my country and believe in a real defense, not our current system of legalized bribery that corrupts our democracy and sustains the highly lucrative military-industrial-complex at the expense of people needs — healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc.
1
All the Chinese need to do is to remotely turn on the hacked F-35 software and enable the WWI era bi-plane fighter mode - or worse, "to brick" the entire fleet of F-35 right before a conflict.
After such a long development cycle, no doubt the Chinese have also had plenty of time to develop cheap counter-weapons, hacks and strategies to nullify any F-35 advantages. Indeed, didn't they already steal a good portion of the digital design perhaps allowing them to plant malware and worse on American systems before leaving?
Wow - $482,400,000 for two aircraft - Beta versions, no less, and $160,000,000 for the improved version - you still need two in order to cannibalize parts to keep one flying! Kind of like software makers, the most expensive version of the product is also the most buggy. As customer's beta-test the expensive products at their expense and peril, they get to pay a bit less for subsequent patched versions.
1
Tax payers should be given the right to veto use of their taxes for programs they don’t agree with like this enormous boondoggle which is basically a Cold War relic.
Our misguided foreign policy of creating proxy states that collapse, then become adversaries (i.e., Iran during the Shah’s reign, the shoot down of the drone; and Turkey and their purchase of Russian anti-aircraft missiles that will be able to shoot down our stealth planes), results in unintended transfers of US military technology. Thus, the US is creating its own arms race - the dog chasing its own tail. Of course, no doubt this is an example of Eisenhower’s admonitions about the Military Industrial Complex.
Instead of spending money on these weapons, the money could be spent to foster trade, cultural exchanges, and the like - Diplomacy.
My history professors in college always discussed how trade wars and scarcity of essential resources lead to war. Why not invest in avoiding war?
But of course Trump has gutted the State Department, supported regimes that violate human rights with US military hardware, and started economic wars when the wind blows his hair out of place.
Moreover, the US Supreme Court permits corporations to be considered persons for purposes of speech.
We need to get rid of Trump and change how corporations influence US military policies.
2
How many roads in the US could be repaired or built with a trillion dollars?
1
40% corruption and failure to explain use of funds. Most officers going into the industry they are supposed to police. Congress members afraid to say no to any funds due to pressure from lobbyist. Powerful influence by hundreds of lobbyist with lots of cash. No oversight of the cost overruns. Weapons that we do not need and probably ill never use. Imagine 400 planes, how many will ever actually be needed? Most will rust on a airfield. We dump thousands of Humvees in the desert, leave many weapons to rust in middle east.
Its welfare on a grand scale.
1
The key to any sustained conflict is cheap, reliable arms -- their sophistication is secondary. The US found its fancy, expensive rifles jammed in difficult Vietnamese conditions and its servicemen preferred swapping them for the cheap ones used by adversaries. Over sophistication is even more obvious with aircraft -- throwing lots of them into the sky will always win out over a very fancy, finicky rival. Moreover, planes stuck on the ground are just money and manpower wasted. Super sophisticated, pricey aircraft are great for single or limited encounters under good conditions -- bombing a village of hapless civilians, for example. But it's difficult to see how they will work in any sustained, real world conflict. And we should be wary: software dependent flight is what is killing Boeing's civilian aircraft program at the moment. Mostly a boondoggle, I suggest -- an enormous waste of taxpayer money.
1
One could mention the F-35 program being forced into the Burlington International Airport despite a city referendum in favor of ending the program and condemnation against the program from surrounding communities.
It is thanks to Mayor Weinberger and Senator Leahy that residential districts (in a city yearning for affordable housing) must be converted to commercial areas because of the F-35 nois, which is four times louder than the F-16. This will raise property tax of Burlington residents.
One of the founders of Ben and Jerry’s was arrested for playing F-35 jet engines out of the back of his truck while driving through downtown Burlington.
Save our skies. We don’t want these expensive, thunderous, nuclear-capable weapons in our neighborhoods or at all.
1
Meanwhile, an enemy will stand off 3 or 400 miles away and fire a state-of-the-art air-to-air missile and the pilot will turn around and head for home while the F35 struggles to evade something three times as fast as his plane that doesn't have to worry about protecting a human occupant.
WWII is now almost three-quarters of a century in the past and Top Gun is a Hollywood movie. Time to move on (hopefully, at considerably less cost).
1
I think the general perception is the F-35 program has turned the corner and, for what it is designed to do, it is far and away the best tactical multicombat fighter in the world.
When these guys talk about upgrades, imagine a single F-35 penetrating enemy territory undetected flanked by multiple (and expendable) loyal wingman drones carrying additional munitions.
I think one challenge remains how to effectively base and utilize the F-35 to defend against a myriad of daunting scenarios involving Russia in Europe and China in Asia.
I guess these unknowns are what the B-21 is for (and why we need a lot of those too).
They transitioned to Agile development *last year*? It’s been an industry best practice for at least ten years.
Modern fighter planes are software platforms. Get some competent development management for God’s sake.
1
Nice ad for Lockheed. "Sure they had problems, but now a half trillion dollars later they are on it!" Why is it necessary to have another weapon system? Mostly these things are effective against civilian targets.
1
Do we expect ennemy planes to attack the US?
Is spending trillions on such a weapon worthwhile, and would not the money be better spent on roads, schools, hospitals, drug assistance programs, and for the actual benefit of the american people?
1
My fear is that while we've dithered with ultra expensive manned aircraft, the era of manned aircraft has expired. Either we prepare to fight the NEXT war, our enemies will do it for us. Even if we are not ready to implement large scale drone warfare, our enemies, Russia and China, are. For $50,000 you can put up a drone that can pull 15 g's repeatedly, enough to kill any human pilot. China is working to deploy swarms of these systems, more than enough to pursue an area denial strategy against U.S. aircraft carrier battlegroups. More big ticket legacy platforms aren't designed to counter such a threat.
2
The F-35 'program' is and always has been not about air superiority but rather about maximized shareholder value. It's about Wall St. greed. And for a fraction of the F-35 costs, consider the hoards of unseeable, unstoppable stealth drones that could've and should've been produced. The Pentagon cannot build a good aircraft, but it can construct endless boondoggles that steal our money and do not make us any safer from our enemies. Like the F-35.
1
An article that has been well researched and written. A detailed witness to the weaknesses of the military industrial complex that may eventually engulf the US and partners.
Trump may be correct, eventually. A truly invisible plane.
1
On the surface.. it sounds like a giant disaster. However....
These sorts of teething pains for completely new aircraft platforms are actually historically normal for the Defense Department. The more complex, the more the teething pains... but also the better the operational capabilities once the issues are resolved.
The history of new prototype aircraft approvals and moves to production in the US is littered with such problem child aircraft platforms. Some survived growth to full production, and others failed and were cancelled.
The only thing different is things cost more and supply chains are more fragile in the modern era to some degree. That said.. spare parts and flight availability has always been poor in the US aircraft inventory in my view. It varies by platform, but they all are very delicate in terms of maintaining full air worthiness to fly, and spare parts has ALWAYS been a problem with military aircraft... which is why some percentage are literally parked for long periods of time and used for parts until actual spares arrive.
The one clear outcome illustrated though with the F35 is that more complex aircraft have much longer time spans from first prototype flight to full scale production. This is the nature of complexity in anything.. not just military aircraft.
The one big surprise though is how quickly unit costs are falling for this aircraft.. and they appear to actually be within reach of cost parity with the F18 Super-Hornet.
2
@Chuck "spare parts has ALWAYS been a problem with military aircraft"
And that makes everything... all right.
I don't think there is any doubt we have the most powerful military in the world. Ships, airplanes, submarines, drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, nuclear devices, etc. etc. Yet we have been fought to a standstill in Afghanistan by a ragtag army which appears to be armed mainly with AK-47s, machine guns mounted on the back of pickup trucks, and suicide bombs. Are these super expensive, super sophisticated weapons systems really what we need to win the conflicts we are actually fighting? And I'm really afraid to even think how these weapons systems will perform in the event of a successful cyberattack.
16
It looks to me the F-35 was one giant feasibility study based on the assumption there would be a never-ending flow of tax-payer money. If people had been held accountable they would not have started this three-planes-in-one debacle and they certainly would not have started with the easiest part.
I propose that cost overruns result in salary decreases of the people who are supposed to be responsible for cost control. That'll teach them to think twice before they make questionable decisions.
6
I'm not going to pretend that the way these systems are purchased is not flawed, but in my opinion it is the rules that govern the acquisition process that mandate that things happen this way. That said, the point I wanted to make was do people really believe that drones would be cheaper? Are people actually suggesting that you can take the most expensive part of the plane, the software, make it 10x more complicated, and the cost will go down? Please don't suggest that 100 drones with police radars can be as effective. It also doesn't seem reasonable to suggest that the technical understanding to eliminate the pilot exists. The comparatively simple problem of self-driving cars has yet to be adequately solved for widespread use. Yes, comparatively simple because of the comparatively minuscule amounts of information involved and the 2D nature of that problem. Anyway, for the next couple of decades, the pilot needs to be there, either physically or remotely, and the remotely cannot be guaranteed. Yes, decades. AI was going to replace humans in the '70s, in the '80s, and so on. Still waiting on something not trivial in that field.
1
@John "for the next couple of decades, the pilot needs to be there, either physically or remotely"
Drones show that remotely actually works. What has the 3-in-1 F-35 shown, other than that it's expensive beyond understanding?
It would be impossible to list all of the advances, technological and otherwise, that would actually help American citizens: a rational health-care payment system; better educational outcomes; a real effort to improve mental health...oh, and that old bugbear, "infrastructure." If you wonder why all of these programs will never actually happen, this article tells you why. It's a question that might best be addressed to the suppliers thoughtfully salted throughout the various states and who have veto-power over a plane that is, generally speaking, a bomb-carrier that will probably never meet another fighter in actual combat.
10
Meanwhile, the F35 can't be used on the newer Gerald Ford-class supercarriers, which is just as well, as the USS Gerald Ford cannot be deployed two years after commissioning due to problems with its catapults, landing systems, weapons systems, and of all things, propulsion system. Things have gotten so bad with these advanced weapons systems that there's serious talk of extending the life of the USS Nimitz, which will require another expensive overhaul and refueling to extend its life beyond the year 2025.
14
“Quantity has a quality all its own”
Build 50 thousand Sherman tanks vs 1200 Tiger tanks,
guess who wins.
We need to rethink out weapons systems.
28
@maguire
poor choice of comparison on your part.
Generally speaking.... Tigers would clear a battle field of Shermans anyway... because of much longer and more accurate guns as well as very heavy armor that was impervious to all but the biggest of guns on Shermans (something only a limited number of Shermans ever had). It point of fact.. is was not Shermans outnumbering Tigers that carried the day.. it was air superiority and aircraft known as tank killers that put the Tigers down in most cases... which now takes us back on topic.. air power and air superiority.
The F35 and it's older sibling F22 are modern platforms for a modern battlefield. Air superiority is key and it is not numbers based in the modern era, it is technologically based. As noted even in this article, the F35 routinely performs successfully with a kill ration of 20:1, that does not include the distributed command and control systems that US air operations perform under, not to mention counter-command&control systems and platforms.
1
@maguire we need to rethink our government contracting system that has become nothing but a corporate welfare program wherein corporations get paid to provide shoddy unusable weapons systems and other goods and then get paid more to figure how to fix them. It’s appalling.
1
@maguire
What you really mean is 80,000 T-34's.
Same difference, though.
A bit of trivia.
During the original competition between Boeing and Lockheed, each aerospace company designed a prototype.
Lockheed’s winning design became the F-35.
Boeing’s design, which many engineers thought was far superior, featured a gaping wide-open mouth, better to gulp in the massive amounts of air needed for optimal performance.
It didn’t have such a beautiful appearance. It was nicknamed, “Monica.”
And many people believe that the unusual design and racy nickname killed its chances, and we got the boondoggle Lockheed design instead.
11
@David G
Quite willing to believe every word of that. Boeing serial disasters with the 787, the new tanker, and the 737 max imply it would all have just been a different flavour of fiasco though.
@David G
That big gaping hole you refer to... inferior in terms of stealthiness, and probably other parameters as well.
I'm not going to drink you kool-aid on this one. :)
I think what actually hurt the X-32 most was it featured a delta wing design. However, eight months into construction of the concept demonstrator aircraft, the JSF's maneuverability and payload requirements were refined at the request of the Navy and Boeing's delta wing design fell short of the new targets. Engineers altered the aircraft's design with a conventional canted twin tail that reduced weight and improved agility, but it was too late to change the aircraft for the fly-off against the X35. In other words. a JSF change in spec caught Boeing flat footed at a critical moment in the competion.
1
@David G: I think the SU-34 would win the beauty contest.
I can't really imagine whom these would get used against. Iran? Venezuela? Certainly not Russia or China. Sounds like a trillion dollar joke. What a punchline.
15
@RT
In point of fact.. they are designed first and foremost to control the air against any aggressor.. and for that you have to include the two majors in airpower, China and Russia.. and their satellite nations under it's influence.
That said.. the platform design is also a bit compromised in terms of pure air superiority due to the demand that it be a multi-roll aircraft (air-2-air, air-2-ground, air-2-ship, with VTOL thrown in for the Marines requirements). And in fact.. it's combat deployments so far have been air-2-ground in limited engagements.
1
@Chuck "they are designed first and foremost to control the air against any _aggressor_"
So, its true, primary purpose is defense and not offense?
Sounds like we should be building a back-up fleet of P-51's and Warthogs.
15
Face facts, Lockheed's F-35 is not only trouble-prone, it is stealing vast amounts of money from the taxpayers. Unfortunately, both America's politicians, Lockheed and the military are so corrupt that the F-35 is unstoppable regardless of efforts to stop it.
21
@dbsweden
The entire defense budget is the issue here, not simply the F35.
I would argue that the continued investment in aircraft carriers present a much bigger drain on taxpayers then the F35... but US doctrine dictates the ability to deploy airpower at great distances.. and as such... it also dictates that said aircraft be extremely good at what they do since the total quantity available from an aircraft carrier is limited. Hence.. the Navy flys one of the most expensive aircraft (the F18 Super Hornet) as it's go to multi-role aircraft now days, with the F35 slowly replacing it over time, and at a comparable unit cost to a super-hornet.
1
A 1 Trillion dollar fighter airplane program. And yet paying for kids' college is "free stuff"?
45
@John Leonard
Yes.. expensive. Context however is important.
As noted in the article.. 70% of that trillion dollars will be maintenance and flight costs over the ~ 50 year life of the platform in the US military. In other words.. it's really no more expensive over the full life of the aircraft then the current modern inventory of F-15s and F-18s in current operation.
Now.. are we as a nation spending just too much money on defense (more like offense in my view)? Yep... but the sin of this rests with Congress, not with any specific aircraft of other combat platform.
2
@Chuck: I know that the F-35 program cost is spread out over decades. I was pointing out that people will swallow this bill and other DoD expenditure without blinking, yet choke on the cost for things that are of direct benefit and deride them as "free stuff".
No it's not one single program breaking the bank. It's our unquestioning attitude towards defense spending. And that's not just Congress' sin - *we* let them get away with it.
3
How long until the next “greatest fighter jet” is conjured up?
5
@SXM
Probably already on the drawing boards. HOWEVER.. as can be seen with the F22 and F34 programs.. time from drawing board concept to flight operations now spans decades.
You don't just wake up one day and say "oh.. the F35 is so yesterday, we need a brand new fight NOW".
Take the F15 and F18 as examples.. first concepts in the early 70s, and flight operations in the 80s, and they continue as primary platforms decades later, only now coming to a point of replacement by better aircraft.
I imagine the F35 of 30 years from now will be a very different beast then todays F35... due simply to incremental evolution of the platform.... and this particular platform was designed from day one with that in mind (and I'm sure lead to a lot of teething pains in movement to production).
'It won't fly, Orville!'
2
The F-35 can't run, can't fight, can't fly at night or in inclement weather, can't fire its gun, the special helmet designed for its pilots is too big for the cockpit and it costs $65,000 dollars per hour to fly. Other than those minor quibbles it's a fantastic plane.
16
@Raven Sounds like it can't reliably run its engines at idle on the tarmac either.
2
I hope China stole the diagrams and specifications for it.
6
@Polyglot8
They have only they got rid of the "mid-engine" hover model that keeps the other designs flawed.
1
@RL
Yeah, that sounds about right...
$trillions on death and war, to make the greedy war profiteers rich, inadequate healthcare for millions of Americans. That's the American way!
40
@Robert M. Koretsky
War planes?
Really?
We are in well into the 21st century with access to the most advanced surveillance technology and cybersecurity military capabilities and our government is wasting trillions of our hard earned taxpayer dollars on "war planes"?
We have the capability of target a devastating missile on a single hut in a tiny village in the middle of the Syria from a remote military base in Nevada... yet our brilliant leaders are futzing about "warplanes".
Sounds like some super rich private war plane contractors are really conning the relics running our country?
2
Let's just hope that the Chinese and/or Russians don't develop a better and cheaper fighter while we gorge the profits of Lockheed!
4
And I have some great swamp land down here in Florida that you will love to buy. Our massive and corrupt military industrial complex will always declare victory and our bought off and corrupt politicians are always happy to oblige. McCain was an exception, but only a small one. And do not think it is any different in China or Russia. Plenty of Chinese and Russian generals and defense companies are getting rich off this perpetual war that we seem to live in. It is the way the oligarchy keeps us scared and malleable. Think about the money and lives we have lost because of our supposed leaders and the whims of the rich. Incredible. This program is just one more folly like the B-1, the B-2, the F-22, etc, but hey, they look great at the air shows..
15
We in Israel are very grateful to the US for selling us the F-35 program. The plane has performed admirably as advertised. The billion dollars Israel receives yearly from the US was used to purchase these fighters and the data from their operations were transferred to the US. This long-standing symbiotic relationship between the US and Israel is critical to the safety and security of both countries. Kudos to both parties.
3
@cmbsmith Thanks, Jared, for the update.
The F-35 is as useful as a WW1 biplane in fighting the war we’re already in. Russian is actively engaged in interfering with our elections. $700 billion annually for “defense” and 17 intelligence agencies and we have no answers.
Solve the problem, stop looking for imaginary wars.
19
I wish the same problem solving attentions had been applied to the ACA (Obamacare) shortcomings, rather then the “slash & burn” tactics of the new republicanism.
9
Does this make anyone safer in the 50 states or the outer parts of the empire?
3
My wife and I chipped in 100k for this piece of junk this year. I know Amazon chipped in nothing, I strongly suspect that The Chose One chipped in nothing as well.
19
@Rick
Yeah, I needed a new car but I had to help fund this underperforming war plane instead.
1
What is missing from this evaluation is the pilots’ feedback, both good and bad. What are they saying?
4
@Paul O
Classified for the most part.... because just about everything about the aircraft is highly classified.
Not unlike prior combat aircraft platforms, it will be many years before we the public see the real capabilities of the aircraft.
1
The American military-industrial complex is built upon bringing home the bacon aka jobs primarily in the former Confederate States of America.
In the beginning was the F- 111 swing- wing bomber and the SB- 70 supersonic bomber and in the end is the F-117 stealth bomber B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit. Boondoggle war planes that were mostly useless against non- state actors and nations without any air forces but with significant anti- aircraft missle capabilty.
6
@Blackmamba
The F-117 Stealth Fighter was designed and built in California. It was designed to take out the Soviet command structure in (then) East Germany (DDR), in the event the Russians decided to attack the West. The Warsaw Pact had overwhelming ground forces, and East Germany had the most formidable air defense in the world during the 70s & 80s. The 117 was the only maned aircraft that could have accomplished that mission.
@Perplexor
American troops were stationed in West Germany so that when Soviet tanks came rampaging through the Fulda Gap American blood would insure that America would not stand aside and look at Europe as it did from September 1, 1939 until December 7, 1941.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was a KGB agent stationed under diplomatic cover in East Germany when the Soviet Union fell. Putin speaks fluent German.
American success against Russian covert penetration of our national security apparatus and theft of our most closely guarded technological and scientific secrets has been a pathetic failure. Aldrich Ames at CIA and Robert Hanssen at FBI were exposing Uncle Sam's most private parts and secrets.
Your delusional notion of what success the F-117 would have done in the DDR was exposed with the survival of Saddam Hussein and sons.
1
The GAO said that it would have been cheaper to develop 3 separate airplanes. The only winner in this is the Marines who got a plane they could never have afforded to develop on their own. The bigger question is why we have a separate Marine Corps with its own aviation wing at all. The Marines’ time has come and gone. Amphibious assaults are over on the age of missiles. The F 35 program should be shut down and Navy and AF allowed to rethink their needs in the age of autonomous weapons systems. The Marines should be merged into the Army, the seals into Delta force. We can’t afford these separate ground forces in a time where we are running Trillion dollar deficits during the best economy in years. Air support can come from the AF and Navy and cheap missiles.
3
@John Smith
It would have probably been cheaper to develop 3 separate aircraft platforms, but it would also result in much higher final unit costs, not to mention much more complex and cost supply chain management as well.
70-80% of the cost is actually in life cycle management and supply chain for spares... and this is precisely where most of the money ends up being spent.. and this is also where a single platform shines and overshadows the "development cost" argument. The US military actually learned this the hard way back in the 80s.. when they were proliferating special purpose aircraft for roles, rather then multi-role platforms. Just look at the Navy and all it's various aircraft needed until recently. There were half a dozen different aircraft platforms in their inventory, each with only one or two roles. Now days... almost all their role requirements are handled with the new generation F18s.. and it saves the Navy a lot of money and logistics issues. As the F35 replaces F18s over time.. the same result will occur.
1
@John Smith "the Marines who got a plane they could never have afforded to develop on their own."
Yes, the Navy has its own Army and that Army has its own Air Force.
A Japanese Air Force F-35 crashed earlier this year. The pilot was killed. The cause has not yet been determined.
1
Is this really the best use of our money ?
5
Bigger Peace Corps. Smaller military. Stop making enemies. Start caring.
15
“One size fits all” rarely does.
4
What would benefit more people more of the time? A vast high speed rail network or this fighter?? Sad...
5
The U.S. ranks first in military spending, just a tad under $700 billion a year. Lot's of bang for the buck. Keep the Air Farce and those propaganda air shows flying.
Education? Health Care? Infrastructure? Debt? Never heard of 'em.
13
@george eliot
Total defense spending is more than double that. Of course we aren't allowed to know how much. It's a secret.
1
Maginot Line redux: manned aircraft will be obsolete in 5 years. Why are we still doing this other than for the benefit of the M-I Complex?
18
@KBD
Donald Trump wants something flashy for his parades next year.
@KBD
Unmanned aircraft will play a bigger and bigger role over time for sure, but not in a 5 year time span.
There are in fact drones in secret development now in the US that are actually designed to co-fly in coordination and control from F35s. In other words.. the next evolution of F35s life cycle will be to make it wing leader for a cluster of drones all working together in their defined role.
By the way... this new doctrine planned by the US also means these drones will be very expensive as well, since they too need to be stealthy, networked, and capable of both autonomous and controlled actions on the battlefield.
@Chuck "these drones will be very expensive as well"
I'm shocked, _shocked_!
This complete waste of money could educate ALL the college kids in our country, and eliminate college debt, all by itself.
5
Yes, think about the number$ in this article the next time some bean-counting republican tells you it is Social Security that is bankrupting our nation.
6
i see all this in the context of having no credible enemy with the power or suicidal tendency , to attack USA.
1
Well, I guess at one end of the "Continuous Waste of Money to Destroy Social Security and Medicare (CWMDSS&M ) Spectrum we have the F-35 and at the other end we have the Trump - Kushner Tax Cuts for the Rich. And, of course, there is everything in between.
4
One airplane for all the services. Been there, done that. F4 Phantom.
It DOESN'T WORK. Stop wishing it would.
This time it's different, except it isn't.
8
@exmilpilot
Yet the air force has been moving more and more to the latest versions of the F15 for multi-purpose and quite successfully, and the Nave has done the same with the newest versions of the F18. Both forces have been retiring single role aircraft and moving F15 and F18 squarely into the multi-role model for years now... while they awaited new multi-role aircraft in the form of the F22 and F35.
The Phantom and it's era is a poor equivalency, even though the Phantom did in fact do pretty well in a multi-role model over it's life span. It had it's faults and issues, but to say it failed as a multi-role platform simply ignores history.
@Chuck Multi role is different than multi service. Get back to me when the Navy buys F15's to fly off of carriers or the Air force buys F18's for ground attack.
Replace the warthog for close air support? That’s not funny, it’s criminal. I used to be fascinated and patriotic of our Air Force. The SR71 still is the coolest plane conceived, in the 1960’s for gods sake. In my humble opinion the F35 exemplifies what is wrong with America, greed and hubris. Pilotless vehicles are the future, I doubt I’m wrong.
5
@Harry B
The warthog served a very specific role... close combat support with a high linger time on the battle field and the ability to take brutal punishment and still fly.
This fit the US doctrine during the cold war very well.. because they were expected to work closely with ground troops in Europe against an Soviet incursion. This never happened.. and the Air Force was on the verge of scrapping them until the first Iraq war, when the US face it's first real post-Korea large scale ground operations of armor and air.
Today.. the US lacks the capability to fight a large scale ground war like it did in Iraq-1, as evidenced by a generation of smaller brigade style operations in lighter armor in Afghanistan and Iraq-2. Hence the purpose and use of the Warthog is largely diminished.
New era of needs = new requirements specified.. and in this modern era.... it's all about multi-purpose, multi-role fighter platforms... something that the F16 actually taught the US military over the years with it's multi-role success.
As for the SR-71 you worship.. it was indeed a rare pedigree of it's time.. but if it flew today... it would be easily detected and knocked down by the newer generation anti-air systems. It has been replaced by a family of drones that serve the same purpose, as well as other purposes... at a much more cost effective price point per unit and mission.
This isn't a new issue, and is the result of the bizzare and corrupt way DOD procures major systems. See https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/03/opinion/a-runaway-pentagon.html?searchResultPosition=8 . See also DDG-1000, Ford class carrier, Osprey... F-35 is an expensive and underwhelming product, and the unrealistic idea that this plane would be a jack of all trades leaves the US without a close air support aircraft. Net net is planning process keeps piling on future technology, claiming that the technology is a force multiplier, while assuming opponents are dim enough to keep charging into the teeth of what we build. The result are expensive difficult to maintain systems that do not function as well as intended, and whose purpose would be better served by cheaper and more reliable alternatives.
4
It's some consolation to assume the Russians and Chinese have military and industrial systems that are just as corrupt and inefficient as ours.
2
$80+ millions to buy one, $44,000 an hour to fly, up to 50% unable to fly at one time and all those people working to make a killing machine, when there are so many other needs to which they could devote their talents. Something is out of whack here.
2
@Brian
Note to Brian: Very similar cost actually for the navy's current premier multi-role aircraft --> F18 super-hornet.
@Chuck When and where has the Navy used the Super Hornet in combat?
Has there ever been a major defense program that was delivered on time; on budget; and performed as promised.
I don't think so. That is not to say the fact the F-35 is over budget; over time; and under performs is acceptable because all other programs have had similar outcomes, but rather to say just how stupid we the people are to keep believing anything politicians, military planners, and the defense contractors say.
Think of it as the military weapons program equivalent of the Banking Industry's "too big to fail". Make the project big enough, important enough, and costly enough and once it gets started it is all but impossible to stop.
You may recall McNamara tried the "one plane fits all" approach in the 60's, and while the F-111 ultimately proved to be an effective weapons system, it was never able to meet the needs of the Navy and went wildly over cost.
Don't we ever learn anything from our mistakes? Apparently not.
1
@zb
F15 and F18 on the other hand have done quite well over their life spans in a multi-role model.. and represent the evolution of the defense department from wanting (and failing) multi-role to actually having multi-role platforms.
It is apparent in so many story lines throughout the coverage of virtually every institution of our country that America is broken. It’s beyond a crisis. It’s become a fundamental characteristic, our unaccountability, rationalizations, neglect, denial, our insistence of our righteousness and exceptionalism. Oye! Humpty Dumpty in spades and around every corner.
2
It's hard for citizens and politicians to constructively criticize the military industrial complex because its defenders wrap themselves in the flag in a knee jerk reaction to any scrutiny by the public. Conversely, military-friendly politicians will do anything they can to curry favor with the military while strangling the nation's other needs to make those other protective social programs so small "they can be drowned in a bathtub" as republican guru Grover Norquist puts it.
2
This is just the weapon we need to fight middle-east wars where the enemy lives in caves. It is a perfect companion to the USS Ford aircraft carrier where the elevators to bring materiel to the flight deck don't work.
3
While several f16s and f18s have been lost to sams over their lives only one has been shot down by an enemy jet. The Israelis and we have dominated soviet jets when they've met. As the largest, most advanced air force on earth is the USAF and the second largest most advanced air force is the US Navy it seems this program is needed if one of our wings decides to revolt? The b52 has been upgraded and improved for ~60 years and is till going strong. Why arent the same concepts used on our already proven platforms? The f35 sounds like a greater danger to itself and our pilots (and the taxpayer) than the potential enemies of the present or future.
3
@Al
The F35 will replace the F15 Eagles and the F18 Super-hornets. Both the F15 and the F18 have had outstanding track records over their life as true multi-role fighters. They have been continuously upgraded since they went operational in the 80s.
The F35 is specified to follow suit... with multi-role capabilities and for both navy and air force for a life cycle and continued evolution of capabilities for ~ 50 years of life.
Nothing better than unlimited taxpayer-funding for the best, useless fighter ever to take to the skies for WWIII, which will be over as soon as the first nuclear-armed missile leaves the launchpad, mobile launcher, underground bunker or submerged submarine somewhere, everywhere...
2
Well, tell you what. The military is the only federal government agency that, in poll after poll, is trusted by a majority of Americans. If there's a problem they'll figure it out with Valerie's keen, unique, insight.
This obscenely expensive flying (sometimes) boondoggle has been deployed to drop bombs on third-world countries. The results of those missions were declared a stupendous success. Full speed ahead on production!
The missions over countries that have neither an air force nor a ground-based air defense could have been successfully performed by a C-47. The F-35 program is another example of war being too important matter to be left to generals.
3
I dare to wonder: who is performing all that maintenance? Who will perform it in the future? Do the military services have a secret program to boost enlistments? And who will fly these beasts? Didn't I just read that the Air Force, at least, is short of pilots?
Or do we just subcontract to Lockheed for maintenance -- and combat operations?
4
What you end up with is the do-everything for everyone Windows 2.0 of fighter aircraft - generating astronomical wealth for it's creators - bugs and all with the most modern version Windows X ever more inefficient filed with bloatware, vulnerable to hacks, spyware and even ransomware.
The industry can't even get a simple system like the MCAS "App" to work without crashing airliners full of civilians into the ground - twice! Having end users pay for and do the Beta testing for them, no less. And they want to convince us that a more complicated system used to keep an F-35 in the air will be better and more secure from hacks, bugs and ransomware-grounding the fleet for a small Bitcoin fee?
Who knew NATO members could each purchase a single F-35 - with a couple more F-35s as backups sitting on the ground for inevitable maintenance and repairs - to reach their 2% commitment. Indeed, isn't that the whole point of the trumpian badgering of allies to increase their budgets - to buy American weaponry to subsidize the obese American military industrial complex?
Our Chinese and Russian foes merely need to look at the F-35 to defeat it as it spontaneously burns! I'd give the edge to 1000 cheap but armed mass produced Chinese drones over a single F-35 for the same cost. Indeed, 1000 drones are easier to maintain and keep flying than an F-35. For $1 trillion you could have a million capable and armed drones worth $1 million each for the price of the F-35 program!
1
I went to the NY Airshow yesterday and witnessed an F-35 Lightning demo. It is, beyond debate, an astounding technological achievement. Awesome power, surprising grace - a master of the skies.
But it seems to me that unless the US is to be subjected to an attack by a manned squadron of warplanes wherein a superior manned aircraft is needed to meet that attack, the F-35 is less necessary to our defense goals than the public's generally lead to believe it is.
With attack drones, recon drones, satellite networks, AWACs, stealth bombers and who know what other manner of unmanned attack and defense methods at our disposal, could the idea of the F-35 itself be obsolete?
5
@stevek155
I've been wondering the same thing. What's the pilot for? What can a fighter do that an unmanned aircraft or missile can't do?
1
@stevek155 All manned fighter planes designed for air to air combat are as obsolete as the 1930s battle ships that were designed to destroy enemy fleets in surface engagements. How many times did that happen in WWII ?
1
@Tom Woods A fair question, indeed. I suppose an argument for the plane is that in close range, little compares to the human eye for observation. Yet, is $1T of investment worth that?
1
What's the point of trillion dollar fighter planes and billion dollar aircraft carriers when the real problem is SHOE-BOMBERS, and the like.
3
No money for infrastructure.
No money for education.
No money to support health care for all.
No money for food stamps or Head Start.
No money for environmental studies / improvement.
No money or study allowed regarding gun violence.
No money or study allowed regarding domestic terrorism.
But........Unlimited funds to support all-war-all-the-time.
These are the priorities of Congress in 2019 America.
The time is now to remove every member of Congress who cannot see why these priorities are 100% upside down. The alternative is to see our nation slowly disintegrate in our lifetime.
5
@James
Thank you for the terrifying summary. This content should be on a backdrop screen at every town meeting, debate, political rally, and party/candidate website.
1
Programs like these serve a purpose for acceleration of innovation,investing in homegrown talent and keeping an important industry afloat. Millitarily they serve little purpose as i would argue no technically superior army has won a war since WWII.
Ex Afghanistan 2001, Taliban rule and safehaven for terrorists. Afghanistan 2019 300+ B + 3000 US Soldiers gone, Taliban still there and safe haven for terrorists.
Motivation always beats class!
3
And not a word about how Lockheed-Martin stock has performed since the inception of this program. I guess if only the super rich pay federal income taxes as is so often stated... then it's right that LMT stock should continue to rise in price -- astronomically it seems over a five year period nearly 4 times if I read the chart correctly.... but one commenter referred to this phenom as socialism -- I prefer predatory capitalism -- esp. predatory when one considers that many better off people do not go into the military these days, thus would not be test pilots.
This -- with the snippet on the stealing of wreckage from downed military aircraft, etc. by foreign nationals (what happens when it's in their territory) and reverse engineering to learn the various "secrets" -- including a downed F-35...
Time to elect women, for women to stand up to power driven men, to stop "wars" of any sort (mine's bigger than yours: bank account, army, navy, country). I would hope that a President Warren might say "no" to new and expensive war toys, but maybe not.
Maybe we need a pacifist movement? Frankly, why should anyone pay taxes so the administrators at LMT get raises and bonuses and the stockholders, dividends .. while the FED makes sure savers get as little return as possible?
Yes, it's all related. (It's beyond what one commenter called money laundering for campaign contributions and beyond.)
2
Wow a trillion dollar welfare program for one company! Meanwhile the government of the rich is cutting food programs for the poor. God Bless America! I hope the rich aren't expecting any mercy when the revolution comes.
7
$44,000 per hour to operate. This when available for service.
1
This is an excellent article, well analyzed and written. Thx!
2
Should have stuck with the excellent F-22 Raptor and retrofitted more advanced systems as they become available and affordable.
3
It seems that the Pentagon has failed to learn from history. 55 years ago another supposed do everything warplane, the F-111, failed miserably at some of its assigned roles. Pushed by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as a fighter and bomber for the Air Force and Navy, the F-111 failed in its projected Navy roles, and failed in its projected Air Force fighter role. Ultimately it was relegated to service as a low level bomber. The Navy and Air Force went on to adopt separate aircraft for different roles which performed brilliantly. The F-15 has a perfect combat record for all air forces, and the F-14 was an unparalleled fleet defense interceptor. The A-10 was a superb ground attack aircraft. All of this seems to have been forgotten, and as our armed forces face new strategic challenges they will be saddled with a warplane that is a mediocrity at a variety of tasks. Could it be time to pull the (admittedly very expensive) plug, and go back to separate aircraft for separate missions?
5
I'm no great admirer of the "flying credit card" approach to combat aircraft in any form, but this plane was designed to take on three very different roles? It's supposed to be a stealth fighter AND a Warthog, AND a short-range tactical fighter? What, no juggling act, kazoo, and funny hat?
You've got a plane that can do some things and probably shouldn't do others. The focus has to be on delivering specific capacity, and that focus is obviously lacking.
3
Good article - but someone has the impression that the jets make a sound which is 75 decibels. This is far from the truth. The only such numbers are based on "24-hour averages." The planes make a roar of 140 decibels. If they pass over 8 times a day, the average may be 65-75 decibels, but that number is meaningless (like the average family having 2.2 children). A loud rock and roll band is 110 decibels. A truly loud band is 120 decibels - damaging to hearing. You can easily research how decibels are calculated - it's an algorithm. 120 decibels is Twice as loud as 110. 130 decibels is twice as loud as 120. So 140 decibels is four times as loud as loud fireworks (120s). The jets, at 100 feet away, are 32 times louder than a lawn mower, or chainsaw 3 feet away from your ear. They are amazingly loud, and that is not detailed in this article - but you can look it up. According to the Air Force itself, a 24-hour average decibel level is unlivable - harmful to health. They are Not placed in population zones, except for in Vermont - next month.
1
Why does the government keep going to Lockheed for fighter jets? McDonnell Douglas in St Louis (F-15, F-18) bid accurately on F-22 and F-35 and hence lost to the inaccurate low bidder. And was forced to merge with Boeing as a result.
Do government folks who evaluate and then administer contracts shade their evaluations to sunny places like Lockheed California and Orlando? Boeing just moved their defense HQ from St Louis to DC. I guess to play golf with decision makers like their competitors already there.
1
How did the most geographically isolated large nation on Earth get so bogged down in "defense"?
4
Thinking about bridges that are falling down, rotting away water supply systems, crumbling schools, poorly paid teachers, dysfunctional and expensive health care systems, unaffordable higher education....the list goes on...and we drop a trillion here and trillion there are Pentagon wish lists.
4
Prime example of wasteful government programs that no one understands or is held accountable and few turn wealthy taking advantage of all the mismanagement. Yet food stamps take the brunt.
2
Been there; done that. Many of the issues surrounding the F-35 were experienced over 50 years ago with the F-111 program. Initially dubbed the TFX (Tactical Fighter Experimental), it was to be the airplane that met the needs of the Air Force and Navy while eliminating several other aircraft types. In execution the plane was delayed, grew heavier and more expensive as it developed, and couldn’t perform many of the tasks it was conceived to. The Navy ultimately rejected it in part because it was too heavy for the carriers’ elevators that moved it from the hangar deck below to the flight deck. It was no more a true ‘fighter’ than a zeppelin: the weight reduced maneuverability and side-by-side seating in the cockpit reduced visibility. Reliability was abysmal. I flew this airplane in the ‘70s and spent considerable time in holding patterns past midnight so the airplane could be counted as ‘operational’: if it was flying the next day it was considered ‘combat ready’ despite many ‘write-ups’ for maintenance staff that would have precluded it taking off in the first place.
Eventually the F-111 found its niche as a long range, large payload, under-the-radar (the stealth of its time) tactical bomber and enemy radar jammer (by converting existing planes to the task). Interestingly, the plane only acquired its official nickname late in its operational life: the Aardvark (due to the long nose housing three radar transmitters). Those of us who flew it dubbed it McNamara’s Folly.
6
Thank whatever god that might exist that today's DOD generals, today's industry executives and today's congress people were not in charge of our country's well-being during 1941 through 1945.
We'd all be speaking German, Japanese or Russian if that were to have been our fate.
Just to be able to fire the lot of them. Imagine.
4
As our government spends untold trillions on weapons of war, I can't help but wonder what the world would be like today if we used those resources to address the root causes of conflict. Tragic.
2
We now spend nearly 2 billion a day on the military, yet there are no signs that care is taken to make sure this money is really needed or well spent. That is a lot of money(!), and our government has many other important responsibilities that are neglected. Compare for example, the chance of a citizen dying of heart disease, cancer or diabetes to the chance of him being killed in a military assault by some foreign foe. Yet the entire annual National Institutes of Health budget for a year is outspent by the military in just a couple of weeks. And what ever happened to infrastructure repair, shoring up of social security, making sure school children get a chance to eat lunch, etc.? It's time we relaxed the choke hold that the military industrial complex has on our budget.
3
The primary mission of the F-35 is profits for Lockheed and subsequent "donations" (i.e. bribes) for congress.
Hmmm...reminds one of the health insurance industry, no? And the pharmaceutical industry. And the fossil fuels industry.
When the only motivation for congresspersons and presidents is to get re-elected (so as to ensconce oneself in the cash-flow river spewing from corporate "lobbyists"), and the only way to get re-elected is incalculable mountains of cash, we get a system of unhidden, obvious legal bribery and co-dependency between corporations, legislators and presidents.
Add fear-mongering, jingoistic tactics to keep citizens from questioning the boondoggles that inevitably result when unlimited, unaccountable guarantees of planeloads of cash that get distributed to the players and even the victims of the fleece, waving flags and carrying crosses, are eager to keep the grifters in power.
2
As a vet, who served in the Air Force:
We do not need new fighter jets. This is a government handout to conservative defense contractors.
5
Can someone explain to me why we are building trillion dollar fighter planes whose sole job is to protect bombers from other fighter planes in a era when the biggest threat to bombers is ground based missiles? Then again bombers ar obsolete too.
California spends about 100 million dollars a year on Elementary education. The cost of one fighter plane can fund childhood education in California for decade. The cost of one new fighter plane could radically improve the education of every student in the South. or the poorer midwestern States.
3
It looks like this plane can be easily defeated by a few well-placed strikes on its supply chain, or the assassination of a few programmers.
It’s also worth thinking about the reasons why Turkey rejected the aircraft. What use is a weapon that can be disabled at the whim of its supplier? Especially when that supplier is part of an erratic and self-destructive government that refuses to cooperate with its historical allies.
2
This article is full of facts and commentary but one sentence is alarming, "The department has a plan to fix all but two of the issues — the two have occurred only once during flight tests and are considered anomalous — and according to Winter, the problems will not affect the Pentagon’s plan to move to full-rate production".
Wait, what?
The article is a more or less continuous showing of problems then fixes, more problems, more fixes, but now there are still Category I (serious) problems with the program. Is this not simply a "too big to fail" situation that we have seen all to often since the dawning of the present century?
3
Remember the F-35 when your social security check drops by 35% in 10 years time. Our military budget is obscene and unsustainable, and our enthusiasm for waging destructive and unnecessary wars abroad is fueled in part by a desire to see these expensive military toys in action.
2
The CBC's (Canada Broadcasting Corporation) documentary on its "Fifth Estate" investigative news program, entitled "The Runaway Fighter", viewable online, is an excellent look at the status of the F-35 in late 2012. It includes very sharp criticisms from the design manager of the F-16 program, along with improper conduct in the contract bidding process.
In this era, the compelling question is why the next gen fighter is even manned. Why not a super sonic drone that can pull more G's and avoid the weight and cost of all the systems needed for the pilot? Are radio communications still so easily disrupted that fat guys in basements in Russia or China will be able to jam them?
3
The US Military-Industrial-Complex shafts the American taxpayers once again.
I pay more taxes for National Security, Law Enforcement, and Intelligence services and feel LESS safe, LESS secure, and LESS free in my 75 years of life.
It is time for MAJOR changes in America.
3
Why are manned Fighter planes needed any more? Millions to train the pilots, gone in a second. Dog fights are a romantic concept left over from WW1. Drones can do any task much better at a fraction of the cost. For sure, long before these planes reach the end of their useful life, they will be obsolete, except for terrorizing the defenseless in places like the undeveloped countries we will sell them to at a cost that will keep them impoverished permanently.
4
The military-industrial complex on display with the latest of their numerous money eating projects. Rather providing a continuous money stream for war machines which don't work now and may never be fully operational, we might try giving some of the Pentagon money to peace initiatives, food, medicine, and NGOs to those countries now harboring refugees from the wars around the planet. Some of them as a result of our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
As long as cost over-runs are guaranteed to be reimbursed by the Defense Department (your tax dollars) the fleecing of America will continue.
No wonder we spend 750 billion a year on defense.
1
Some questions:
(1) How vulnerable are the computer systems to hacking?
(2) How long is it before manned fighters are made obsolete by swarms of armed drones, which can be produced more cheaply at larger quantities and with accelerations that would kill a onboard pilot?
4
It's just absolutely absurd and heartbreaking to me the amount of time, world-class brain power, resources, and the unholy amount of money we spend on developing ways to threaten and kill each other. Imagine if we could push ourselves like this to eradicate cancer, or cure addiction, or find a solution to homelessness.
I am in no way anti-military or anti-defense. I grew up in a military town with family members that were either employed by contractors or were in the military. One of my favorite memories as a kid was sitting with my dad just off base at the end of the runway, watching the jets take off. That was back in the sonic boom days. I loved it.
At some point, though, it just becomes absurd.
1
The nation’s future and treasure are being squandered by programs like the F-35. The Defense Department is fighting the last war. The physical limits of humans constrain the performance of piloted aircraft. Much cheaper and more agile missiles will destroy them effortlessly.
Their performance is further crippled by trying to meet the conflicting requirements of the Navy, Marines, and Army. Hence optimal design is lost.
Finally, these compromises make the plane’s reliability so poor that most will be grounded in desperate attempts to maintain them should a conflict arise.
Doubtless, those within this program know it is a failure of massive proportions but fear to stop it. It is perpetuated by an obscene lack of courage by all involved.
2
The 737 Max used agile software. Agile means you do whatever you get paid for and see if it needs another rev later.
Like lifetime employment. Except the latest rev crashed twice.
So, every time it is done, you need more money and more time.
How can you possibly tell when it works, if that wasn't in the specifiction?
Endless scope creep; lifetime employment.
2
The defense of the Artic is going to be a key issue in the coming decades. So operating at very low temperatures, and capability to scramble from far away bases to chase after intruders without refueling will be required, certainly for large geographical entities such as Canada, as will be the speed to match the best Russia and China have. Is the F-35 the right plane for those tasks?
Still, they assure the public that nothing will prevent the program from moving forward.
That is as long as taxpayer money keeps pouring into the program.
3
“It turns out when you combine the requirements of the three services, what you end up with is the F-35, which is an aircraft that is in many ways suboptimal for what each of the services really want,”
Sounds like a lot of money for something that could have been resolved by a newer version of the F-16 and F-18 at a much cheaper cost.
By the way, for $80 million do they even have a VHF radio? It`s amazing in the world of Air Traffic Control how often UHF fighter aircraft near commercial airports step over the frequencies of civilian aircraft and impact safety. Or how many of these aircraft can not fly an RNAV approach in bad weather because they don`t have the equipment on board. Apparently your Cessna can but the $80 million wasn`t enough for some of these fighter aircraft to fly a modern day approach or communicate in the civilian word where most of the training takes place.
4
The fact that the supply chain is split across enough states and congressional districts to make the project impervious to congressional oversight is certainly not a coincidence. I wonder how much that spread contributes to the problems with spare part availability.
4
@Jim
It's also spread out across 14 countries one of which make not be in it much longer..
1
I was a young lieutenant at Edwards AFB when we were still shaking out problems with the F-15 in the early 1980s. (I was in rocket development on Leuhman ridge at Edwards.) My friends flew back seat as test engineers.
Spare parts were in critical shortage as the F-15 was deployed. A close friend's job was to solve that problem. He made progress but never really solved it. I heard later, changes he made improved the situation and the F-15 was ready for the Gulf War.
A regular conversation among our gang of young lieutenants was how the Air Force was continuing to plow research into improvements even as the F-15 was being deployed. This is typical of new weapon systems and one of the reasons the Air Force, and Navy succeed in mastering the air worldwide.
I am happy to see Chuck Yeager wrong about the F35. I do agree with him that the F15 can do the job but we can never stop improving our weapons. However, I do agree with commentators here: we need to assess our enemies capabilities matching our smaller forces against their greater number of inferior aircraft and missiles. Perhaps we should stop with the F35 for now.
4
President Eisenhower warned about the power and influence of the "military industrial complex." Congress seems to have all the money in the world for a handful of giant military contractors, who can't seem to get it right. At the same time govt. revenues are shrinking and our roads + bridges need repair.
22
@Mark McIntyre - Did you ever hear that Ike's original draft spoke of the "Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex". It's said a speech writer removed it.
2
@Nicole
Thanks, I did not know that. Palmdale, Ca., just north of L.A., is where a lot of that money goes. Lockheed-Martin (who builds the F-35), Northrup-Grumman and others have highly secured plants there. I admit it's all been good for California, but we need to re-think our priorities.
1
My 80-year old aunt said: "The more complex a system, the more likely it is to break down".
19
@Robert Marcos
And along those lines: No system is any better than its weakest point. How many tens of thousands of "points" are on the F-35?
1
@Robert Marcos
She could give Trump a few (or a thousand) lessons. It's disgusting to have a 5-year-old fake president.
1
The Pentagon and defense contractors never seem to learn. The F15, F16 and F18 were designed for different services and different uses. Why wasn't the F35 treated the same way? Why does it go to full production before all the bugs are worked out?
Where are the Republicans who complain about wasteful Government spending?
15
@Bob
They are getting paid off like the rest of our politicians.
1
@Bob You ask " Where are the Republicans who complain about wasteful Government spending?" They're holding hands with all the Democrats, such as Bernie Sanders, who also support this program.
"Excessive military spending played a major role in the Fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman government was spending more money on the army than needed. Military spending left few resources for other vital activities such as providing housing and maintaining public roads. The military had to share resources with Rome's other needs including roads. This meant there was not enough money to go around. The government found it necessary to rely on hired soldiers. Street mobs and foreigners, who served as soldiers, were not as well trained as the Roman Legion. Eventually, the payed soldiers abandoned their loyalty to the Roman Empire and Rome payed barbarians to fight on the Roman side. Emperors were then forced to raise taxes frequently. Farms and business men mostly paid for these taxes, which greatly hurt the economy. Citizens quickly lost their pride and no longer did things for the good of Rome." -Olivia Hanley
29
@Sebastian
Yup, that sums up our situation very well.
1
Challenges for the F-35's is very prominent with scope creeps on requirements. Albeit to say Lockheed Martin and Pentagon seems to have changed approach that will offset the errors from the past. In my experience the root issues are usually supplier chain management. Having suppliers deliver to specifications consistently. Hopefully congress and the defense department together with LockHeed Martin should be held to task to continue with the Agile strategy and address Category 1 issues as they are recognized on time without too much paper work. Sounds like there is a chance we can benefit from the program.
1
I don't understand this obsession with creating a "super" aircraft that can replace a variety of more specialized aircraft. You are bound to end up with a plane that does a number of different things but none of them well -- an all-in-one tool that never gets used. There are, in theory, cost savings to be gained but that never happens. And what is it doing in Afghanistan that other planes can't do?
15
@David
Agreed. Couldn't an advanced warplane be swamped by larger groups of less advanced cheaper warplanes?
1
Yes .Not much of test since Afghan rebels have no airforce.
2
@David
Ultimately,if such a multi-function aircraft could be developed, it would be wonderful. A Swiss Army Knife platform could be deployed everywhere and be available to almost any task instantaneously without having to be "brought in" from somewhere across the world at great delay and expense.
I think it is worth trying, but at a substantially lower cost. This would most likely involve a revolutionary type of propulsive force and not convention jet tech or its spin-offs.
Hello Groome Lake.
Imagine if Boeing or Airbus built a plane that was out of service 30-60% of the time because of maintenance issues.
A lieutenant authorizes technical changes by the manufacturer, my brother worked on a DOD project where a sergeant approved any engineering changes. A sergeant could halt production. Think about that.
Also consider the Lockhead F-114, by my personal account by people who worked on the manufacture of this airplane, a pile of junk that was in service for what, 20 years tops?
There is something seriously wrong with the development and use of these military planes that too many people, with no idea of what is required to design and build a sophisticated aircraft are given tremendous power in their design.
I personally worked on the X47B prototype, a plane that cost billions, flew a few times and was scrapped.
These aircraft are nothing but cash cows for Boeing, Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed.
What about the F-22, a plane that cannot even provide the pilot with air to breath?
They sure sound cool on paper, too bad that in the field they are useless. 60% failure rate, that sounds reassuring as the enemy is dropping bombs on us using old, unstealthy airplanes that can actually fly.
13
@Paulie
Facts matter and help inform this important discussion. To wit:
There is no such aircraft as an F-114 made by Lockheed. Perhaps you are referring to the F-117? That is the aircraft that was very effectively used in the initial attacks on Iraq in 1990.
The X-47B was not intended as production aircraft. It was a technology demonstrator -- an "X plane." The program did not cost "billions" -- total program costs are about $800 million.
3
@Paulie
Facts matter and help inform this important discussion. To wit:
There is no such aircraft as an F-114 made by Lockheed. Perhaps you are referring to the F-117? That is the aircraft that was very effectively used in the initial attacks on Iraq in 1990.
The X-47B was not intended as production aircraft. It was a technology demonstrator -- an "X plane." The program did not cost "billions" -- total program costs are about $800 million.
@Paulie
Oh, wait. Boeing did build a plane that is out of service for, what, 100% of the time. Max something or other, I believe. It was a long time ago.
1
"to test just the software and the systems it affects, rather than retesting the performance of the whole aircraft. ". After 40 years in information technology I've heard the immortal phrase "I only changed one line of code" more times than I can count. With the F-35's abbreviated regression testing it won't just bring a web page down or tank a batch program it may well get someone killed. The massive increase in complexity in new combat aircraft and it's dependence on incredibly complex coding makes the test that much more critical. As this kind of testing is advocated to save time and money (as it always is) I'd ask how many of those pushing this shortcut will also be in the cockpit of that aircraft after the install of the software?
12
Slowing down production of F-35 may be the best approach we can take now. New and more effective weapons such as unmanned drones are getting more attention these days.
Trade war with China will further complicate the production of F-35. With many parts in short supply, a restricted supply of rare earth minerals which are vital to make critical parts would further delay the manufacturing, not to mention the tariff effect on importing goods.
Time will solve many problems. This F-35 problem is no exception.
4
@Usok
Since when does time solve many problems?
(Irony noted).
1
Turkey made the best tactical choice in favoring the capable Russian S-400 missile over the F35 Albatross. As described in this balanced article and in many comments, the F-35 is compromised by design trade-offs for multiple roles and complex maintenance that keeps a high proportion of planes on the ground. Air worthiness is also an issue for the more focused F-22 that lost a battle with climate change when 17 planes were damaged at Tyndall Air Force Base when they were unable to fly out of harms way as hurricane Michael approached.
5
@Harvey
Turkey still wanted F35 as do many other countries that could have bought Typhoons or Rafales or Super Hornets.
There is an international market for warplanes even if it is often complicated by politics, and that market has demonstrated increasing enthusiasm not only for F35 but also for small aircraft carriers because of what the F35 has shown.
2
A product with a 2 decade lead time to deploy followed by a 5 decade useful life is an enormous challenge. Of course it will look imperfect by the time it is in use.
The alternative would be to buy updated versions of several older planes at approximately the same time and hope they will not be completely obsolete. That is not much of a strategy and trades cost risk for performance risk.
Other countries are buying these things when they could have walked away, and the unit cost is getting near the cost of buying updated older aircraft. These facts are evidence that the plane is not a failure.
The 3 in 1 approach makes much more sense when the STOVL version's constraints on weapons are only slightly more constrictive than the constraints imposed by storing weapons internally to keep stealthy. The 3 in 1 approach makes far more sense when a huge share of the expense is software common to all versions. Updating 3 distinct software systems to, for example, incorporate a new missile in 2040 would have be labeled absurd in the press. Several allies are building small carriers to fly the F35, without that plane being built they likely would skip building such ships, leaving us alone in fielding sea-based strike aircraft in the near future.
Too big to fail projects have cost overruns and other problems and should largely be avoided in all spheres. This does not mean they should always be avoided, and we need the wisdom to tell the difference and the courage to act on that wisdom.
6
Informative, well-balanced article.
But it would have been even better if it had explored the development challenges in other major weapons programs.
For example, the V-22 Osprey had a very troubled development phase, both financially and technically. Many considered it a hopeless boondoggle. But now it appears that the problems have been resolved and it is much-loved and much-used aircraft.
Similar development concerns were raised with the F-16 in the late 1970’s, and it emerged as an effective, reliable fighter plane.
Will the F-35 ultimately be a success? Nobody knows for sure.
But we should at least acknowledge that every complicated undertaking is likely to have an extended, problem-filled implementation phase. The key to success isn’t in the design, it’s in rapidly solving the unexpected problems that emerge.
15
I can't believe they fell for the one fits all idea, that never works and has been proven over and over again. I used to work in Aerospace and the GAO guy I met on this program gave me the impression that the cost overruns don't matter. It's all socialism. In fact all military spending is socialism because the Government thinks the greatest multiply for spending is through the defense industry. That is why Congress will always pass defense no mater what the costs.
9
@Astralnut McNamara & co. had the same idea in the early 1960's, the TFX, which became the F-111, again to be the do-everything aircraft for all the services. In the end, it became a bomber and electronic warfare aircraft, most loved by the Royal Australian Air Force. The one-design-for-all idea really does not work.
2
In the age of 3D printing a unique design for each individual customer, the idea of a single jet to solve all military flight needs is as antiquated as the mainframe computer of the 70s.
7
@LiberalNotLemming
We are not yet in an age when 3D printing would make any significant difference in building multiple configurations of an aircraft. A turbine blade, yes...but not yet an engine, wing or fuselage, piping or canopy.
Relative to 3D printing the F-35 is still an old-school project with old-school challenges, and old-school solutions:
-Do the hardest work first
-Prove what works and keep it stable once proven
-Don’t standardize what has not been proven as a common solution; the hoped-for organizational and logisticsl cost savings become a mirage
-Manage complex systems as intersecting sets with well-defined interaction rules, not top-down structures.
That last one may sound too abstract to matter, but it’s the core change that made US automotive world class again. Lockheed never learned it.
4
@LiberalNotLemming
3D printing is nice. But materials matter. Cannot print all materials.
1
It’s too bad that you can’t 3-D print software, the F-35 has a few million lines of code that operate its various systems.
1
The whole point of our policy of continuous warfare around the world, is to spend money for the contracting monopolies and the well-placed. This, in turn, causes money to flow to campaign funds for politicians. And the cost can always be put on the national debt. What's the problem??
126
The F-35 shares the fundamental flaw in many weapons systems: bloat. As more and more operational capabilities and weapons systems are grafted onto this platform its cost and vulnerability to mission failure or catastrophic failure increases.
Just as the US Navy's biggest threat to the fleet of nuclear supercarriers may come from the smallest of adversaries, a small boat swarm in constricted littoral waters, even at US$80 million a copy, an OPFOR willing to sacrifice pilots could field 40 F-5 fighters against each F-35. All the computing power in the world cannot fight when all of its defensive armament has been expended. Even more problems could face it if an adversary developed a massive swarm of sacrificial drones.
Building more and more sophisticated weapons systems when more non-state actors are moving into terrorism and cyberwarfare prepares us to fight a war which we are increasingly unlikely to need.
And now we are on the cusp of funding the Space Force, representing an astronomical (the appropriate term) increase in cost to fight who? Aliens?
65
@Douglas McNeill
Back when we bought the old Garmin mapping system for our cars. They were outdated before we got them out of the box.
You're right. It's all about the money. Isn't it always?
1
@Douglas McNeill...Absolutely correct..the swarming strategy can take down vastly superior military hardware. The Russians defeated Hitlers Tiger tanks by manufacturing a vastly simpler & cheaper tank and deploying it in huge numbers in combat against each Tiger, & simply overwhelmed the German tank's ability to defend & respond.
4
@Douglas McNeill >And now we are on the cusp of funding the Space Force, representing an astronomical (the appropriate term) increase in cost to fight who? Aliens?
I challenge you to find one Leftist who denies the strong possibility that Trump has been replaced by an alien reconaissance clone.
So I am sorry but I do not like the idea that one plane can do it all. That means if a country finds a soft spot our whole fleet is in danger. The preverbal eggs in one basket.
40
@oscar jr yes, but can the one plane do it all scenario also deliver adequate healthcare to the millions who are without it?
4
@oscar jr. Seems you are right. Over time the "do it alls" haven't worked as well as specific planes like dog fighters and ground attack planes. Pilots have complained about this since ww2.
1
The Air Force is taking some matters into their own hands, particularly on the software front, with the Kessel Run initiative. (Also by the author)
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/02/27/how-the-us-air-forces-kessel-run-team-plans-to-solve-one-of-the-f-35-programs-biggest-headaches/
2
@Robert "to-solve-ONE-of-the-f-35-programs-biggest-headaches"
How many "biggest headaches" does it have?!
A plane that happens to be a computer that happens to be a Swiss Army knife that happens to spend a lot of time in the repair shop that happens to be the most expensive money can buy to date. What could go wringer?
63
Next week...a similar article on the Ford class carrier. The design process for military hardware is dysfunctional but the Pentagon and congress and the military contractors refuse to admit or address the issues.
29
Having worked on the F35 program, I wonder why the Logistics and Maintenance isn't the sole point of this article. This is not a performance aircraft.
The plane is NOT designed to be the best weapons system, it is designed to be the cheapest and most logistically superior flight system. The engine is under-powered and the logistics supports three variants now with much less overlap than originally conceived. It was supposed to be the fastest turn-around fighter ever -- by a lot!
You want performance? Look to the F-22, at $150 million each on delivery.
Compare all this to the B-52s still flying and expected to fly for another quarter century.
42
@Louis J the biggest problem with your assessment is that the lives of our aviators and the support teams are put at greater risk, in war and training. we have been wasting the precious lives of our military for far too long.
yes those brave women and men know the risk of combat and go forth into the fire, but should we take that chance with shoddy equipment built , as you said, NOT meant to be the best.
4
@bohica
There's nothing shoddy about the F-22.
@bohica
Hm-mm, illogical much? If crew losses were the issue we'd be jumping to drone platforms as front-line systems. Or, maybe --just maybe-- realizing that the USA can't shoot itself to our objectives in international affairs.
1
“Frustration that the tremendous scope of the program keeps them from being able to do more to fix it; and a wounded sense of pride for the impressive technological advances they have achieved,“
They can always quit their jobs and put their technological expertise to work somewhere else. I’ve heard of this problem called “ global warming”, for example. Maybe we could use a few advances in making aircraft more fuel efficient, for instance.
15
Now explain to me again how basic health care for every American is "too expensive."
597
@Avenue Be
Exactly ....how come no one asks "how are we going to pay for this" when talking about military spending. We should have heeded Ikes warning.
38
@Avenue Be
Easy - no money in it for the politicians or their friends-- rephrase .. not enough money for... and remember high drug prices were mandated by Congress which won't allow Medicare/Medicaid to negotiate-- possibly private insurance companies can do this?
12
@Avenue Be
Okay, I’ll try. We can’t afford basic health care for everyone because we spend all our money on War and tax cuts for the rich.
73
Too big, too expensive to fail.
Eisenhower warned us.
167
@Blue in Green.
Sounds like the bail out of the banks after 2008.
1
Two key issues about this indefensible program, something that very smart senior Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps officers know well: 1. The unit cost has dropped significantly. This is not reassuring because the early unit costs were so staggeringly high, they had nowhere to go but down. 2. Any warplane that can do everything the F-16, A-10, AV-8B, and F/A-18 can do, can't do any of them well enough to be useful. Military examples of this are plentiful. An armored vehicle that goes fast is not well-armored enough. If it's well-armored, it's too slow or too thirsty. No engineering degree needed.
Discontinuing the program was not an option. Isn't that the same as a bank that's too big to fail? And now we are "concerned" about a trillion $ deficit. This is not rocket science.
119
@JS
Amazing! Too big to fail. Isn't that donald trump's business model?
@KC
No, his is Hyuuuge, Offload, then Fail.
2
The military industrial complex, corrupt generals ,etc.
1 trillion in cost so far and the plane still bursts into flame
Before it takes off?Thank God the pilot was not killed!
Do you think ,preparing for war in every administration may
Contribute to this latest dump of money down the toilet?The exposure of this kind of waste AFTER 1 trillion is spent and now
We hear of it.Humanity deserves more consideration then how we can kill each other now or later.People are starving as the Amazon burns .No oxygen ,the soil destroyed, no food can grow
There.Our priorities are garbage.
32
The aircraft is schedules to be active for over 50 years, but conventional warfare technology is likely to change in that time. It may have already changed, but it is just not recognized because we haven't fought a conventionial war since perhaps Korea, or maybe even WWII. The obvious threat is our expensive manned weapons being overwhelmed by swarms of cheap unmanned weapons on a one way trip. Manned aircraft don't make that much sense under such a scenario.
My fear is we're heading for Battle of Trafalgar type of debacle with our modern day Galleons (Expensive aircraft carriers and aircraft) against a more nimble force.
It won't help that the US abandoned manufacturing - whatever parts are hard to get now will be impossible in wartime.
It doesn't help that US military mindset can't see beyond the Middle east and perpetual insurgent style wars.
28
@Craig H. The USAF with the Kratos Defense XQ-58A Valkyrie 'loyal wingman' and the Navy's Northrop Grumman X-47B are the programs worth watching.
2
@Craig H.
Trafalgar was fought in light winds at roughly 3 m.p.h. Nimbleness had very little to do with it.
1
Several years ago, one of the Marine Corps versions of the F-35, after completing use in testing the vertical takeoff and landing capability, was installed in the Air and Space Museum at the Udvar Hazy center near Dulles Airport. First plane to be in a museum before being used in operations.
3
@Dr. D
From the museum's website: " This aircraft is the first X-35 ever built. It was originally the X-35A and was modified to include the lift-fan engine for testing of the STOVL concept."
So it's a test item used for testing and to develop equipment, the 1st aircraft used. It underwent extreme testing and so many changes occur during development, it's not really possible to bring it up to delivery standards. Many aircraft in museums come from the test aircraft used during development.
9
@Mike Depardeaux
Yes, but read the last sentence of my post. The development and testing (and fixing) period was so long that a copy of the plane was in a museum before the plane was used in operations. That never happened before.
2
@Dr. D
Now I see how my post was misread. I didn't mean the test airframe was never used in operations. I meant the test airframe was in a museum before any copy of the F-35 was in operations.
Also, normally test airframes are kept by the service, or manufacturer, for further testing. Unless Lockheed had built so many test airframes they could give one up for a museum piece. Maybe with a tax writeoff.....
6
One essential problem the article does not really address is the question of whether it is better to build one multi-purpose aircraft to perform all roles, or to build a number of different aircraft, each designed to perform specific roles.
The single purpose aircraft is simpler and cheaper to design and build, but requires either pilots be cross trained on multiple types or a larger pilot force of personnel each trained on a single type.
It is the aircraft equivalent of the decision to carry a Swiss Army knife or a bunch of individual tools optimized each for a single task.
2
@michaelscody Why not a multitude of single purpose drones. Think of platforms devoted to a particular mission and not burdened with extensive life support systems to support a human pilot. No downed pilots, killed or held captive. They could be updated more frequently and produced less expensively.
4
@John Warnock
In retrospect. Drones didn't exist when this program originated? Not sure.
The US is wasting money on expensive weapons platforms, thinking they are going to be fighting WWII again. Numbers matter, and overwhelming force is not achievable with the F35.
You guys are going to lose the next war.
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@KxS The wargame scenario cited resulted in a 20 to 1 kill ratio. Wars never absolutely resolve the political and social issues that underlie the people's willingness to suffer to conduct a war. But being on the victorious side of a war buys the victor time to be able to dominate the terms of the peace. Ultimately, the purpose of war is to determine who in a dispute will be dominate.
2
If America loses the next war, Canada will be quaking in its boots since it’s our military who covers their backs.
2
@LivesLightly "The wargame scenario cited resulted in a 20 to 1 kill ratio."
And, of course, there's no difference between a war-game scenario and actual warfare.
No one wishes an air war with the US. However I wonder what a few well placed hypersonic EMT pulses would do to a computer that flies? The aircraft also appears too share the same single point of failure, complexity. We should be building autonomous aircraft whose flight characteristics exceed the limitations of the human body. Flying is fun until you have to reboot and your control and wing surfaces fail to be aerodynamic. Since i’m a Clueless tax payer, right on brothers...
24
@Jim Not sure what you mean by hypersonic EMP, but the Navy is already fielding some very high power microwave systems in anticipation of (massive, multiple) drone attacks. On the physics side, radar stealth, which is one of the F35 features, means that the radar energy is being absorbed, not reflected, which is a good recipe for utilizing electromagnetic weapons against them. Plus, of course, the stealth designs are really only useful with one range of radar frequencies, which means the planes can be ‘seen’ at others, and targeted.
2
@Jim Those aircraft already exists - they are called missiles. Aircraft carriers and jets usefulness comes in when you attack someone who doesn't dare to shoot back.
1
Google "USA loses war games". A new dirty secret of the Pentagon is that their own simulations show the US losing any war it enters with any nation beyond a small third-world country. Outlandishly expensive weapons mean that there are very few of them available. In a war, accidents alone will claim many planes, ships etc. When your paltry fleet of trillion dollar planes are gone, no amount of gee-whiz press releases will save you. Cheaper planes bought in much vaster quantities flown by pilots who are allowed to train properly because flying the plane doesn't cost the moon are what's needed. (As is, of course, not getting into a war...)
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@Ryan VB
Exactly correct. Every war in the history of humankind has been won by the side with the most men and machines it was willing to squander.
5
@Ryan VB 20 to 1 kill ratio in the war games. And air superiority isn't the only aspect of conducting a war. Many other weapons systems and theaters of operation are part of the conduct of a war, e.g. drones, robots, space based intelligence.
2
@LivesLightly
War games -- great fun for gamers.
1
I read some of the comments. No one has addressed the issue of quality vs quantity. When the Chinese send up aircraft that outnumber the weapons capability of the F-35 then what? It's hard to imagine an F-35, with all of its maintenance needs, cost per aircraft, going into combat against an adversary that has a significant number of modern combat aircraft. I am reminded that Germany had technically superior armor in WWII, but the allies trumped that with numbers and a willingness to throw numbers against quality. The allies lost a lot of vehicles and lives, but triumphed in the end. Sort of like Gen. Grant in the Civil War and overwhelming the South with numbers irregardless of the losses.
41
@wjh Good comment but the F35 is supposed to be a cheap, high numbers fighter. It is designed to be flown often with short maintenance periods. Very high-end logistics was the selling point.
So, THIS is our 'kill them with high numbers of less sophisticated aircraft'.
You want sophisticated...F22, B-1B, B-2 .....and some too expensive to fly ( and lose) helicopters.
Drones will change a lot of that as there are no 'pilot safety issues'.
4
@wjh
Your view of Grant is way off the mark, actually he was a pretty nimble campaigner. Study the Vicksburg campaign and his crossing of the James. Or the speed of the final Appomattox campaign. His greatest victory, Chattanooga, was won with low losses.
Remember too that when Grant came east his main instrument was the Army of the Potomac, an army inferior in speed and leadership to the Midwestern armies,, the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland, he'd used in the Western Theater.
2
Germany did not have the best armor in WWII. That title belongs to the USSR. The T-34 is pretty much agreed to be the best tank of the war. The German Panzers and Tigers were superior to American armor, though!
1
I seriously wonder what the requirements for this program were and whether they remain relevant today? This plane doesn’t sound like it has seen a lot of action and with modern warfare and engagement changing would the military have created a Swiss Army Knife that is capable, but doesn’t excel at any one job, while costing the earth to run.
2
@Zack Well, what do you want? Starting a war with a seriously capable adversary to "get value" from the F-35? The vast majority of military is developed and retired without ever being used in challenging combat. And that's the way it should be. Would your prefer to collect on catastrophic fire insurance on your home to receive value for all the premiums you've paid?
A trillion US dollars used for peaceful and beneficial purposes could avert almost any war before a plane like the F-35 could ever stop it. But then, the military industrial cesspool would not be in control of the USA, and the fascists that benefit from this mountain of waste would start to lose their grip on middle class American taxpayers. Can't have that now, can we?
230
@WR there is more political support to fund "national security" and sporadic war than to fund social programs that strengthen others. The goal of national security is domination of others and prevention of them challenging our domination.
16
@WR
Ah. But we only spend .2% of our GDP on foreign aid. You propose an increase to 10% in an effort to buy peace and stability in the world? People are much more inclined to spend $1000000000 on border walls than outreach. Largess implies weakness. Not a good deal for US. Cold hard steel, lead, depleted uranium armor piercing ammo symbolizes American greatness. We can sell those things. Can't sell kindness we give away.
2
"One solution favored by Winter during his recent tenure was so-called agile software development. ... Coders generate software upgrades or patches in a matter of days or weeks, pass them along to users to test and then push out the update more widely if the changes are successful."
In the Agile model, bugs are expected; this is supposedly OK in commercial applications, but what happens when such a bug causes an F35 to dive into the ground?
Winter doesn't seem to know much about software development, but he does have an affinity for buzzwords.
13
@spindizzy Part of what they're trying to do is separate functions that don't affect flight controls. Adding or updating a sensor shouldn't impact the flight laws.
4
@Hunter - yet the latest Boeing 737 model are all grounded because of the interface between a single sensor and flight control software.
14
@b fagan Flights safety risks unacceptable for commercial aviation are often acceptable(and desirable) in military aviation. for example military fighters are often aerodynamically unstable, unflyable by humans and require continuous active automated flight controls. Many many more commercial aircraft fly carry many many more people than fighter jets. There have been tens of thousands successful B737Max flights that transported millions of people. Successful military aircraft acceptably crash at a much higher rate.
2
A completely obscene waste of money - mostly directed to those already super-rich.
6
@William Yes, but it's hardly an exception. Your comment applies to almost ever other thing the world economy produces
1
The design of the F-35 is fundamentally flawed. There's a reason we don't use racecars as pickup trucks or minivans as off-road vehicles- it's silly to expect that any platform can be all things to all people.
59
The design of the F-35 is fundamentally flawed. There's a reason we don't use racecars as pickup trucks or minivans as off-road vehicles- it's silly to expect that any platform can be all things to all people.
Within ten years stealth drones will lead the missions with F 35, and F 15s 100 miles to the rear.
Drone strikes
Drone dog fights
Drones firing air to air and air to surface missiles
Who know what the Russians and Chinese are up to. We can only hope our military intelligence systems are up to the task of anticipating and developing the new drones.
The F 35 and follow on aircraft will be far to the rear.
The F 35 has never been used in peer to peer combat so who knows how it will perform.
One trillion dollars of military industrial welfare
We sat on sand bags in Vietnam in our jeeps for IED protection. Same in the first part of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hill Billy armor per Sec Def Rhummy Rumsfeld.
We have been in Iraq and Afghanistan for 18 years. So much for the thinking of the generals while the air forces has its trillion dollar toys.
Vietnam Vet
131
@Michael I think you'll always need and want a "man in the loop". The F-35 is actually designed with that in mind. You don't want to be controlling drones from bases thousands of miles away. The stealth capability of the F-35 allows it to be FAR closer to the action than legacy US fighters or non-stealth designs from other nations.
1
@Hunter
"I think you'll always need and want a "man in the loop"."
No. Our space program is very successful with a human.
"The F-35 is actually designed with that in mind."
The F35 is corporate welfare.
"You don't want to be controlling drones from bases thousands of miles away."
We do now. The drones in Afghanistan are controlled in Nevada.
"The stealth capability of the F-35 allows it to be FAR closer to the action than legacy US fighters or non-stealth designs from other nations."
The stealth capabilities of the F35 were defeated by the latest Russian radar that was almost put into Turley.
5
Hunter
AI is advancing so rapidly that a drone designed for self controlled dogfight combats with speeds so fast they would kill a human piiot might be a problem.
3
A trillion dollars? Could have bought Greenland for that money 🤣
168
@jamesjenmd Greenland isn't for sale at any price. But using the F-35 in a war against Denmark could result in Greenland becoming US territory.
1
@lives lightly. Don’t forget that Denmark is one of the builders of said F35. I don’t know which components are theirs, but in today’s unstable politics (who, in particular?) I would not be surprised if the Danish components have a secret backdoor built in; to be used if, for example, the US gets to be a problem. With over 10,000,000 lines of code, there have to be some nice hidden bits.
4
@LivesLightly I'd say that the Danes would seriously consider a bid of a trillion dollars, regardless of legality. But going to war with a Nato ally and the European Union sounds fictitious at best and disastrous at worst.
1
If you really want to know how the jet is flying and what 30 pilots currently flying the F-35A think of it/how the program is doing, follow the link below to an independent assessment by the Heritage Foundation. The graphics alone are telling. Same Foundation recommended cutting USAF F-35 acquisition from 1,762 to 1,260.
https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/the-f-35a-fighter-the-most-dominant-and-lethal-multi-role-weapons-system-the-world
3
Interesting to see that mismanaging the development of sophisticated weapon technology is not a German specialty. A lot of the procedural problems sound a lot like the difficulties that we encounter here in both military and civilian procurement.
That being said, the German airforce's leadership brought up the F-35 as a replacement for our ageing Tornado fleet. However, this has effectively been ruled out over political concerns: there is too little transparency in the software used.
5
A few observations:
The Air Force has an aging fleet that will have to be replaced by something. Whatever that something is, it will likely be around for decades, given the expense and difficulty of developing a new aircraft design.
Every new aircraft has teething troubles; translating prototypes into production aircraft always has problems - and the real world provides additional lessons. The Boeing B-17 went through a lot of evolution, and was nearly canceled initially after a crash brought charges "it was too complex an aircraft for humans to fly." B-52's are expected to be around for decades yet, as will the C-130.
Has the F-35 program been mishandled? Have there been expensive blunders? Yes and yes. But it's now the only game in town and looks like it's getting on track.
As I type this at 9:31 am, 8-22-19, F-35s are flying up the Hudson River in NYC along with the Thunderbirds, the Blue Angels, and the Red Arrows. The Blue Angels, the Red Arrows, and the F-35 will both be at Stewart Airport this weekend for an airshow.
We will be putting brave men and women into the F-35 for years to come. Let's make sure they get the program where it needs to be.
17
Brave men and women who will be passing out under the g-loads trying to keep up with 10x as many cheaper, more manoeuvrable fighters designed explicitly to defeat the F-35? This programme is a sick joke at a time when the world is literally on fire. Anyone who isn’t incensed at the ‘leadership’ behind this programme needs their brains testing. Ridiculous. Literally worthy of nothing but ridicule.
2
Instead of wasting paper and ink on a rehash of previously reported facts and opinions, it's too bad The Times didn't opt for an in-depth look at some of the organic issues that plague the defense procurement process. For example:
1) Is the concept of "joint" military systems really impossible, or does the desire of each service to be in complete control prevent the sort of collaboration that could yield significant economies and savings?
2) How do technical requirements imposed by the military - and often modified or expanded after contracts are awarded - affect cost and performance? One famous example is the VH-71 presidential helicopter program, for which the U.S. Navy imposed thousands of additional requirements - some requiring redesign of what was supposed to be an off-the-shelf helicopter - almost immediately after contract award.
3) Does the military's system of rotating program managers every few years harm performance and cost by providing incentives for PMs to kick the can on problems to ensure their next promotion?
4) Is it possible to penalize contractors for poor performance given that there are so few companies capable of working with milspec requirements and the Pentagon's procurement policies? Lockheed Martin has the F-35, Boeing the KC-47, Raytheon the just-canceled EKV and Northrop Grumman the Webb Space Telescope, to cite just a few procurement fiascos.
In other words, it's a tough business. The Times could do a better job of exploring root causes.
15
For decades now, Americans have been enthusiastically consuming the militaristic propaganda pumped out by the Military Industrial Entertainment Complex .
Sadly, there's no critical thinking happening in government. There are effectively no limits on military spending, because no politician will agree to cut military spending in their own districts. Look at what happened the last time rationalizing military bases was attempted.
It's high time for a revolution in thinking about how resources get allocated in this country.
Some presidential candidates get this.
49
After the F-35 program ran into its initial technology problems, several defense contractors submitted unsolicited alternative proposals.
One of the more realistic was Boeing’s F-15 Silent Eagle, which took an existing airframe, light-weighted certain structural elements with composite, new engine controls, new radars, new computers, and a new EW suite. The F-15, like the A-6 before it, has a huge advantage in range and payload over its successors.
This is certainly not the first time this happened. When the costs on the Global Hawk spiraled out of control, unsolicited proposals were put forward to extend the life of the venerable old U-2. Even one that put an R2D2 in the cockpit, eliminating a huge amount of weight for pilot life-support, and extending both mission range and duration.
DoD didn’t even look at any of the unsoliciteds, can you say F-22?
In support of my point, I’ve cited the two examples above, but this is hardly new. Many questioned the wisdom of building multi-role platforms like the F-4 Phantom, back in the day. The decision to build variants of the F-18 as tankers, EW platforms and ground based interceptors, disregard fundamental tenets for military equipment design. Military handgun programs. Elimination of the A-10 from the USAF operational inventory, without any other credible close air support. The Army’s Crusader, which was too heavy for most bridges, on and on...
We don’t have a F-35 program problem, we need to completely reform DoD procurement.
189
@Dr. Ruth
Amen!
Shout this from the rooftops.
PORK! It's not just for dinner anymore. It's crucial to keeping the military/industrial complex alive.
1
All great success stories begin with failures along the way.
2
@Nils: So do all great failure stories.
8
@teburke It's inevitable that people contest each other for dominance, have disagreements, some of which will escalate into conflict. Is it better to save expending effort to anticipate conflict by doing nothing, thereby ensuring failure or expend effort doing something and risk the effort won't be successful? Most people would say if you don't try, you won't ever succeed, and that's not desirable.
A mismanaged mess continues to be a mismanaged mess. Since only other people's money finances the mess, we should content ourselves with a Times puff peace about the plane on behalf of the Pentagonians fencing for Lockheed.
Not a word about the Chinese version based on details borrowed from their American friends a few years ago? False news is it? Or the kind of news the F-35 friendly treat with hostility?
American yearns for bi-partisan political action. Both parties love love this $1 trillion flying pork operation.
What a shameful story of incompetence.
24
The American military-industrial complex annually spends as much on arms as the next 10 nations combined. Including 10x Russia and 3x China.
And al Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, al Shabaab and Boko Haram are not deterred nor detected nor defeated.
China hacked into American's government employment records and has stolen American military arms weapons technology.
While Israel and Russia hacked and meddled in the 2016 American campaign and election.
44
@Blackmamba That comparison on military spending isn't accurate. The Chinese for instance are spending as much or more than the US is. The comparison you're using is based on exchange rates which don't reflect the true cost differences between countries. China is buying as many or more sophisticated aircraft and ships as the US is for instance. They just don't pay their soldiers anything like what we pay ours.
4
@Hunter
Duncan Hunter can't count nor figure.
How many nuclear aircraft carrier battle groups does China have?
How many nuclear weapons and delivery systems does China have?
How many military bases does China have?
How many military alliances is China part of?
Same questions for America?
5
@Blackmamba Since when are nuclear aircraft carriers groups the only measure of military power? Why do we have them? Because we'll be fighting thousands of miles away from our shores. In their sphere of influence, China will be flying land based aircraft that are as big or a bigger threat than our carrier aircraft. But in case you're unaware, China already has one operational carrier with two more under construction.
Are we going to be fighting a nuclear war with China? China seems to be pretty smart about not wasting too much money on weapons they don't plan on using unless they have to.
A global military footprint is an advantage to the US, but it's not cheap to maintain. When fighting China though, much of it wouldn't be used. We would be using a fraction of our total military power vs all of China's.
See how much closer that comparison is getting?
1
A typical strategy used by defense and NASA contractors is to bid low but charge huge amounts for any subsequent design changes, including the costs for the approval process (including new bids perhaps) to develop new designs. Wonder how much Lockheed made from the taxpayers by using this strategy.
9
With the exception of stealth, the F-35 is inferior to almost any fighter currently in use by the US: it’s slower, less maneuverable, limited in the amount and variety of munitions it can carry, plus it costs significantly more to operate. We do not need the F-35's stealth capabilities to attack the Taliban and ISIS, any war plane with smart munitions would have worked equally well if not better. The primary target for the F-35 are enemy nation states with modern air forces and air defense capabilities. That said, stealth is not a battle proven technology and there are some concerning data points, such as the Serbs shooting down a US F-117 back in 1999 and more recently Syrians taking out an Israeli F-35 with the S-200 (never mind the S-300 or S-400).
A key motivation for the F-35 program was the export market, as highlighted in this article from Foreign Policy: F-35 Sales Are America’s Belt and Road. This was no doubt one of the key reasons US was so upset by Turkey’s decision to purchase the S-400 at the expense of F-35.
One of the rumored reasons Turks were willing to walk away from the F-35 was that it is a “flying computer" which is connected and constantly monitored by the US Air Force. The Turks were apparently concerned that this capability could give US insight and ultimately veto power over how Turkish planes were being used; arguing that US could remotely disable a Turkish plane if it were planned to be used for a mission not supported by the US.
43
@Voice Couple of things. They Syrians did NOT shoot down an F-35. And stealth has been proven in battle MANY times. We flew gen 1 F-117s during the Gulf War, B-2s have flown many times in combat as have F-22s and now F-35s.
Not every mission needs an F-35. The military has slowly woken up to that fact. We'll continue to operate significant numbers of F-15s(including newly purchased F-15EXs), F-16, F-18s and A-10s.
The F-35 can carry significant payloads of weapons internally & therefore stealthily which isn't an option on non-stealth aircraft. But, it can also have wing pylons installed and carry weapons loads FAR greater. They call it Beast mode, typically to be used after air superiority is won. And new weapons are being qualified all the time on what is still a newer aircraft in service. That's a very normal thing with new programs.
Turkey's decision to buy S-400s is a strategic disaster for them. They were going to play a key role in F-35 production and maintenance. That was all thrown about because of their leader's strategy of trying to play off West vs East. So they've flushed Billions in business over the vanity of one man, Erdogan.
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@Hunter If you noted I said the Israeli F-35 was taken out, not shot down. The plane in question is said to be so badly damaged that it may never return to active service. After the Syrians stated that they tracked and shot an Israeli F-35, Israel published a statement that one of their F-35's was damaged after striking birds. It might have been birds, but that stretches my credulity.
Since you seem to know much about the F-35, I'd be interested in your take on whether or not US can remotely monitor and potentially change the planes software.
"Jack of trades and master of none".
Apparently no defense contractor or Pentagon official had ever heard that old cliche when baselining the design requirements of one "unified" plane for all 3 services and their conflictingly disparate requirements?
And now as a result, we have an overpriced and underperforming fighter jet that puts the pilots and our country (and other ally countries) at risk because of this (willful?) lacke of foresight.
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Hit all the failures and all the reasons this beast is too big to fail. The operating costs is the unheralded smoking gun of the story for me. A responsible taxpayer partner would not accept the jump to full production until that cost is in line with what was promised (equal to or less than the hornets). Unfortunately, the Pentagon is not, and never will be, a responsible partner to taxpayers.
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A pitiful waste of misdirected funds. The next war will be decided by unmanned craft. Modern jet aircraft began bumping up against limitations imposed by the monkey in the can when pilots began passing out during high-G turns. When was that? the 60s? The 50s? In any case, long ago. The solution ever since has required designers to either cripple the aircraft or isolate the pilots from directly interacting with it for their own good.
This is not a new problem, but AI is a new solution that many others already grasp. The next war will not put monkeys in cans; not in the air, not under the sea in subs, and not on the ground in tanks.
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@Jon d'Seehafer
Thank you. Best comment here in my book. Future wars will not be big set-piece battles between uniformed troops, with ships and planes supporting them. The enemy of the future will hide among civilian populations and fight with IEDs, drones, and cyber warfare. AI will develop to the point where weapons systems will be partially or even fully autonomous. In that environment, hardware needs to be cheap enough to be disposable, maneuverable enough to operate in urban environments, and numerous enough to operate in swarms. This is exactly the opposite of what we're getting in the F-35, a manned craft too expensive to lose and very difficult to maintain. Our military should be focusing on cyber warfare, inexpensive semi-autonomous weapons, and intelligence gathering. All this boondoggle will be is a very big target.
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Jon d'Seehofer!
Wow! What have you seen, read about in your career?
Bravo. You’re post on UAVs was well crafted, knowledgeable and insightful. We’ll see, real soon now, whether the impact maybe a little further in the future. And I only say that, because when I read UAVs, my mind see Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles, not remotely piloted drones. I’ll leave it to others to make the distinction.
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@Jon d’. Exactly. The bias for human piloted weapons is old and established. Even the Apollo crews were (it turns out, properly) suspicious of ground control and their spotty flight computer, and without flyboys, the romance attached to fighter pilots wouldn’t be the industry that it is. The F35 is particularly slow, and even though a human can’t control it in the air, and is limited to less than 10g turns, it is pretty clear that the pilot is not really in the weapons delivery loop: the machine is.
We can make a lighter, faster, more maneuverable aircraft without a pilot. What’s more, it is not as important that it come back after a mission, which doubles its range. As current thinking suggests that any of our supercarriers have a projected lifetime in serious combat of less than half an hour, there’s nothing to come back to anyway.
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The US Air Force made devastating admissions of injuries the F-35 will inflict on thousands of Vermonters when it brings F-35 jets for basing in a city in Vermont.
The Air Force admits that cognitive development of 1,300 children living in the F-35 noise danger zone will be impaired: “Reading, attention, problem solving, and memory appear to be the most affected by noise … There is increasing awareness that chronic exposure to high aircraft noise levels may impair learning.”
The Air Force also admits that the extreme F-35 noise can permanently damage hearing of 593 people who live in 260 households where average noise level is especially high.
The Air Force also admits that it anticipates a high crash rate for the F-35. That means thousands of Vermonters will be exposed to highly toxic, mutagenic and carcinogenic combustion products when its 10,000 pounds of carbon composite materials and stealth coating burn in the 2,700 gallons of fuel it carries before firemen arrive at the scene.
The 2018 Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review states that the F-35 will soon be a delivery vehicle for the B-61-12 low yield nuclear bomb. Thus the basing amidst Vermont cities and towns will turn 127,000 people into human shields for the F-35.
The positioning of such dangerous military equipment in a populated area violates military law. No honorable commander would order or permit the basing of such equipment in a city. Those responsible should be prosecuted and incarcerated.
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@James Marc Leas
Please - what a hyperbolic and overblown post. This is another false narrative like the one employed by folks claiming contamination, etc., while protesting the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii. Vermont children are not going to be irrevocably damaged or become human shields. You clearly don't appreciate the value and service the military brings to the US and VT.
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@James Marc Leas
What's with all these people from Vermont? All hype, twisted arguments, false logic, and no direct facts. Their arguments sound like the Trump administration's DHS arguments.
Your paragraph on the "high noise levels" and its effect on children is fine, BUT you offer up NO evidence showing that the F-35's being stationed there will cause any of it!! You say the "Air Force admits" noise damages. Where are those quotes and facts? A boiler plate statement that extreme noise causes problems is not evidence that that the F-35's are guilty. What are the projected decibels levels, how often, and how does that compare to the existing airport?
Yes, an F-35 crash will cause pollution. So will a crash of a commercial or general aviation aircraft flying into your airport. So will an automobile crash. So does a house fire!! Talk to your local fire department for verification.
The fact that the F-35 is nuclear capable does not mean nuclear weapons are moving to Vermont. It is highly unlikely that the Air Force is going to deploy and store any nukes on Burlington for your Air Guard squadron.
Finally, your last paragraph is absolutely ridiculous. I guess you want to revert to the 1880's practice of putting the Army out in the remote, undeveloped west where they would not distrub the civilized people back east. Those days are long gone. (Plus, all the elected officials would scream bloody murder if these bases near cities were moved!)
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@James Marc Leas
Burlington's F-16s are equivalently able to carry the B-61. They are replacing B-61 compatible planes with B-61 compatible planes. There are also no sites qualified to store nukes in the Burlington area, and the planes would only be equipped with them elsewhere, unless we get in a nuclear conflict with Montreal perhaps. If Burlington is a target far having nuclear-capable planes, it has been so since the 80s and getting F-35s will not change that.
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The great P&WA F135 engines had a couple teething issues quickly solved. Were there indications of warnings in instruments missed earlier by the lucky pilot or ground crew?
Another perspective of the F35 jets:
www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/05/02/pratt-whitneys-f135-fighter-engine-is-poised-to-dominate-for-decades-to-come/
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I don't see any future for the Air Force with drone technology advancing so quickly. You can bet there black programs out there to replace the B-2 and B-1 bombers and fighters with stealthy drones. The F-35 is the best argument for DoD waste and corporate welfare. Drone technology will fly faster, further, stealthier and pull higher G's without humans in the cockpit.
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@markd There's actually an expectation that F-35s will be able to control drones. Their stealth capability means that they can get FAR closer to enemy defenses than conventional fighters and especially airliner based AWACS aircraft. Humans will always be needed for both control and dynamic decision making.
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Sadly, the troubles of the F-35 program means that this will be the last manned USA fighter plane developed. The cost effectiveness of drone technology will just replace manned flight.
The F-35 reminds me of the Luftwaffe's disaster with the ME-210 fighter. They asked too much of it (fighter, dive bomber, etc)and and the final design was a disaster.
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@Vincent Solfronk The F-35 is a little bit like the CIA, you're only hearing about its shortcomings(some of which have long since been solved) and none of it successes. You might have missed it in the article, in large scale excercises, the F-35 achieved kill ratios against enemy aircraft of 20-1. That's the kind of failure we can use more of.
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@Vincent Solfronk
When i was stationed in Erding, Germany right after WWII there was an Me 210 amongst the other German planes in the junk yard and they were all thrown into holes and covered up on orders of the base commander. Out of curiosity recently I looked up as to why the first jet plane to fly in a war was a failure in WWII. As it turned out none of the high temperature alloys were available then and the jet engines had a very short life before parts melted..
1
In 2003 Nova aired a show called BATTLE OF THE X-PLANES. It described the design competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the Joint Strike Fighter now known as the F-35
Boeing’s approach was to locate the engine near the front and, then, for the Navy version, provide a thrust vectoring assembly similar to the Harrier’s that could provide lift at the center of gravity. This had the advantage of mechanical simplicity. But, since the air intake also had to be in the forward area, it created a short, squat shape that some people said looked like a hippopotamus.
Lockheed created a design that was visually attractive by using a technically challenging concept called a lift fan. Someone compared the design problem to “taking the propulsion system in a Navy Destroyer, shrinking that down into a smaller package and putting it into a jet fighter airplane”. Furthermore, it had to be possible to modulate the ratio of vertical to horizontal thrust.
It was clear that the lift fan was going to be an engineering nightmare. The Boeing design was, by far, a more reliable and cost-effective design, but, it looked awkward and in the short time allowed for the tests the functional advantages couldn’t be made apparent.
Of course, the sexy Lockheed Martin design won.
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@Jerry Brown You left out the part about how the Boeing X-32 couldn't actually demonstrate the capability you say was much easier with its design, the ability to take off and land vertically. They had to remove pieces of the aircraft just to be able to attempt such flights. So it utterly failed in demonstrating that is was a better design.
There has rarely been a design competition where one design was so clearly better than the other. And your conclusion is 100% wrong. The X-35 trounced the X-32 in every category. That's the entire purpose of a fly-off, to actually see which design performs better. Btw, as part of that competition, Boeing submitted a redesign of their aircraft since its actual design had performed so poorly.
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@Hunter What's your position at Lockhead? Or Air Force? 20-1? War "Games" the structure and rules of which are controlled by the military. Hardly a realistic assessment.
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Great article Valerie. A lot of insight into something too big to fail, that somehow keeps failing. Development of military equipment and aircraft in general is difficult, why make it more difficult? Keep up the great work.
2
Thanks for such a thoroughly researched and provocative story, Ms. Insinna. I hope for all our sake the Pentagon doesn't stop working on these problems until they're solved -- we've let some of the flightline age and degrade while waiting for it. Over sixty years, perhaps this will end up being the step forward we've been counting on.
1
As Matt Taibbi has bravely documented in Rolling Stone, limitation of military spending in the US is nonexistent. Even lobbying for military spending has gone down, because it isn't as necessary any more. Vietnam, Iraq - "Thank you for your service"? Nobody served to enhance my freedom. We glorify insanity.
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@Emory Hill
The politicians and military make sure there’s lard in every Congressional district...which is why less than ten senators vote against these obscene “defense” budgets every year.
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@Emory Hill
This is America. The status quo is by definition great. We are a country of optimists who love the flag and the military heroes who die for it on foreign soil. Insane? What makes common practice insane when it's done over and over countless ways. Wait a min...
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Typical US military plane trying to do too many things with one aircraft. It does them all but does not do anything great. Too heavy, not enough fuel onboard. Great when your fighting Yemen. Not great if you fight China.
Congress loves it because it can be sold to foreign countries. The F22 is a good airplane that can't be sold to other countries.
China has caught up to our fighters. They don't have to convince a Congress to pay up.
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We go to a full scale war the first thing they'll do is build specialized aircraft they can afford to lose and replace in volume, in short time frames, not these super expensive hanger queens when the missles & rockets start flying. @DA
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@DA Not enough fuel on board? Compared to what? It has 18,500 lbs of fuel vs the 13,500 lb that the much larger F-15 has and nearly 3 times the capacity of the F-16. And since it can carry its weapons internally, its practical range is even greater.
Stopping production of the F-22 was a huge mistake. As was the Congressional mandate that it couldn't be sold to other countries. They were worried about stealth secrets getting exposed.
China has made a LOT of progress with their military. And they have a good strategy for what they want to accomplish, namely keeping us from interfering in their sphere of influence. But the US still has a broad technical advantage. The F-35 is FAR beyond China's fighters and they're being deployed in large numbers by both the US and our allies in that area. China has a BIG advantage in surface to surface missiles though and that's something we were excluded from deploying because of the INF treaty. That's something we should address quickly.
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These planes are being brought to Burlington, Vermont against the vote of the city residents. 2700 homes will be damaged by noise above 75 decibels. The Times' Valerie Insinna does not mention that these planes will carry nuclear bombs, That makes the Burlington area a target. Thank you for questioning this project. Many of us Vermonters are disappointed that all three of our Federal Senators and Representatives are for the project. I hope it somehow will be cancelled as well as merely questioned.
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@Marjorie Kramer
Noise level above 75 decibels damaging homes?!? That is normal in any city. Most office have a 70 db level. No home will be damaged by a 75 db noise level, unless your building contractor is one of the three little pigs.
Yes, the F-35 has the capability to carry a nuclear payload. That doesn't mean it "will". Many Air Force planes have that capability.
As far as this making Burlington a "target", there are thousands upon thousands of such targets in the USA. Any major military installation is a target. I somehow doubt that Russia & China are busy revising their nuclear strike plans because an Air National Guard squadron is upgrading to F-35's in Burlington, VT!
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@Marjorie Kramer So you should check out the noise level chart available on line. 75 decibels or even 80 decibels are equivalent to a vacuum cleaner and other various home appliances. If you are one of those homes I believe there are programs that allow for assistance in replacing your windows with more efficient sound barrier ones.
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@Marjorie Kramer
The F-35 will be equipped to carry the B-61, but that does not mean there are going to be nukes stored in Burlington. They merely have the capability to be equipped with them, which would not happen in Burlington in any foreseeable scenario.
You know what else has the capability to be equipped with the B-61 bomb? The squadron of F-16s that has been based in Burlington for decades.
This is a scaremongering tactic to make residents feel as if there are actively nuclear-armed planes being placed in Burlington, when there are no nukes being housed there, and the capabilities of the F-16 and F-35 in that regard are equivalent.
If Burlington is a target for having nuclear-capable planes, it has been so for decades.
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Totally successful in delivering military pork on target. Same for $13B aircraft carriers (which can be neutralized by cheap weaponized drones and antiship missiles).
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I agree with your stance on the planes, but aircraft carriers are a vital strategic component for a country as they act as mobile command centers and a versatile attack/defense unit. Yes, they are big and perhaps easy to sink, but are absolutely vital to control and stretch of territory over the oceans and coasts during war time.
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@NJ Keith Aircraft carriers are NOT easy to sink. They're not invulnerable, but it would take a LOT to sink them. And they're not sitting ducks, each one deploys a sophisticated air wing that is more powerful than most country's entire air force.
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@Hunter
"Not easy to sink"? Even using WWII technology, the Japanese carrier fleet was annihilated. The US carriers did not escape with impunity either.
Sure, carriers are now far more advanced and better protected (physically, weapons systems, and by software), but the advances have been even greater in offensive, anti-carrier weapons.
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"Since McCain’s death last August, no other lawmaker has exacted that level of scrutiny. That’s by design, said Dan Grazier of the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog organization that has repeatedly criticized the aircraft. “It’s no accident that there are more than 1,500 suppliers for the F-35 program, and they’re spread out to almost every state,” he said. “That means that there’s basically a veto-proof constituency bloc on Capitol Hill for the F-35 program, so it becomes very difficult for members of Congress to really criticize this program.” "
We should have listened to Eisenhower's warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
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@John Williams The article failed to mention the biggest critic of the F-35 out there, the one with the power to actually stop the program in its tracks, President Donald J Trump. I'm not a fan, but he criticized the F-35 all during the campaign and well into his Presidency. He publicly called on Boeing to provide an alternative, namely an updated version of their Navy fighter the F-18 Super Hornet. Whether that was the catalyst or not, Lockheed Martin progress on lowering the cost of the F-35 within the last 3 years has been remarkable. At $80 Mil it's actually cheaper than the Boeing F-15 which is still being produced and dates back to the 1970s.
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@Hunter
He would lose all GOP Congressional support and lose in 2020 if he stopped the program.
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@Hunter
Seeing the way DJT changes his mind every other
moment, I would not base much on what he said
years ago in the last Presidential campaign...
9