Fifteen Percent of US Air Force F-35s Don't Have Working Engines (thedrive.com) 163
Areyoukiddingme shares a report from The Drive: Atotal of 46 F-35 stealth fighters are currently without functioning engines due to an ongoing problem with the heat-protective coating on their turbine rotor blades becoming worn out faster than was expected. With the engine maintenance center now facing a backlog on repair work, frontline F-35 fleets have been hit, with the U.S. Air Force's fleet facing the most significant availability shortfall. At a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services' Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces yesterday, Air Force Lieutenant General Eric T. Fick, director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, confirmed that 41 U.S. Air Force F-35s, as well as one Joint Strike Fighter belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps, another from the U.S. Navy, and three that had been delivered to foreign air forces were grounded without engines. Those figures were as of July 8. The exact breakdown of how many of each F-35 variant lack engines is unclear. The Air Force and the Navy only fly the F-35A and F-35C, respectively, but the Marines operate both F-35Bs and F-35Cs and various models are in service with other military forces around the world. With regards to the Air Force specifically, as of May 8 this year, the service had received 283 F-35As, which means that around a little under 15 percent of the service's Joint Strike Fighters can't be flown due to this engine shortage.
All normal then (Score:2, Insightful)
For the F35 this is just more business as usual.
Shrug.
Re:All normal then (Score:5, Informative)
For the F35 this is just more business as usual.
Shrug.
Unsurprising. Half of the F22's are unavailable too [cnn.com]
Re:All normal then (Score:5, Informative)
Half of the F22's are unavailable too [cnn.com]
That is, more or less, the problem that F-35s were built to solve. They are supposed to be the cheaper, somewhat less capable, more attack oriented multi-role replacement for buying lots more F-22s and other bombers. If the F-35s have anything like the maintenance requirements of the F-22 then you might as well have built a load more F-22s and updated the existing ones with new electronics. Then you could buy something like a Saab JAS 39 Gripen [wikipedia.org] with updated electronics as the cheap, single engined update for the F-16 and probably saved trillions of dollars.
Re:All normal then (Score:5, Insightful)
Or you could spend the money on biomedical research instead, and actually save lives.
Re:All normal then (Score:5, Funny)
Stop making sense! It's unamerican!
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Because it's an either or, right? That's why we always have a balanced budget every year.
Re:All normal then (Score:4, Insightful)
If 5% of the war budget was redirected to the NIH, it would effectively double (yes, double) the NIH budget, which would allow for much more research to be done. Our lab is currently between grants, and we are stuck waiting for funding to come through on cancer research. The granting process is slow, so grants we just submitted won't be scored for 6 months.
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Get your priorities straight!
Which is more important: Killing people or saving people?
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Depends. Are they Telemarketers ??
Nuke **them** from orbit, it's the only way to be sure. . . (evil grin)
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Why won't someone think of those poor orphaned bombs?!
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Yep, Thank you.
The entire NIH budget, as of 3-4 years ago, was $30B. Note that that money funds 60%? 80% of all the biomedical and biological research in the us - all the university grants, etc.
No, phucking pharma did not do it, they take discoveries, larger tests, and monetize.
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"Don't forget your billion dollar Phase III trial!"
Pharma: Fuck it.
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How do you expect anyone to argue with you if you're going to be so reasonable and logical?!
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my bad! :)
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One would hope that this would reduce the chance of us starting another war but that is probably wishful thinking.
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Or you could spend the money on biomedical research instead, and actually save lives.
I agree with that, but there is the point that military hardware does not need to be so sophisticated and expensive that it sucks money from more worthy projects, such as health care. In WW2, the Russians won tank battles against the Nazis' superior (and presumably more expensive) technology. The AK-47 rifle is not at all sophisticated, but it is the weapon of choice in many conflicts, because it keeps going in the worst of conditions, and a village blacksmith can fix one if need be.
I think you need to look
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Or you could spend the money on biomedical research instead, and actually save lives.
Naa, acting ethical? We do not do that! Got to kill others we do not like first!
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Your not being counter-intuitive, just non-sensible. Do tell us how saving lives, for example, by curing various cancers, puts us all at risk, this should be really entertaining. to hear.
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"Save lives" my behind — whether the government spends on "biomedical research" or on weapons, the money is going to be misspent. At least, maintaining capable military is the government's actual direct responsibility, according to the Constitution, whereas "biomedical research" is not...
Poor ignorant troll.
The US Constitution actually does all it can to prohibit the maintaining of a capable military by the Federal Government.
That is why the we can't fund the military for longer than 2 years at a time.
Whether that wisdom be wise, or unwise in today's context is a matter of opinion, but it is still a fact that their intention was for armies to be raised as needed, not maintained, as a standing army was the greatest enemy to liberty.
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Yeah, reading about the arguments around the creation of the Constitution is interesting. I remember the antagonism towards a standing army (especially since the colonies couldn't afford one), and reflected on what the Founders would have thought of today's military.
The Feds were generally quite incompetent at the beginning of most/all wars upto and including wwii. With the development of nuclear delivery systems since, we may have a few weeks to prepare to wage a hot war, not a year or two. If/when the hot
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The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States
So it seems pretty clear there that both defense spending, and spending on research and biomedical research are allowed.
But unlike the common good, there is a strict prohibition on any funding of the military lasting more than 2 years. This automatic sunset was provided for a reason.
This reason is spoken about in length in the Constitutional Convention debate notes.
As the greatest danger is that of disunion of the States, it is necessary to guard agat. it by sufficient powers to the Common Govt. and as the greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies, it is best to prevent them, by an effectual provision for a good Militia.
There's one example for you.
The good Militia they are speaking of, is of course individual State militaries.
... On the question to agree to the "reserving to the States the appointment of the officers." It was agreed to nem: contrad: On the question on the clause "and the authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by the U. S.-"
With the overall regulation o
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Re:All normal then (Score:4, Informative)
Re: All normal then (Score:2)
That's assuming Northrop would have sat on their hands for the last 45 years and never updated it....
Also, outdated compared to what? The Taliban air force? The Iraqi air force? The Grenada air force? The Somali air force? Which conflict the US has been involved in since the Tigershark was developed has needed anything more than a Tigershark or equivalent?
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Not s bad analysis but you left out the need for carrier-capability.
Which is more or less what the F-35 program should have done to be successful. The F-35A is crippled by the demands of the other two models, especially the B.
Overall USAF readiness rate: 70%. Race car rate 40 (Score:5, Informative)
15% down for maintenance sounds pretty bad if you compare it to a commuter car. These aren't Camrys. For race cars it's not uncommon to rebuild the engine after each race. Fighter jets are more like race cars than F-150s.
In fiscal 2019, the F-22 had a mission capable rate of 50.57 percent. The F-35A had a rate of 61.60 percent, F-15Cs at 70.05 percent, F-15Es at 71.29 percent, and F-16Cs at 72.97 percent. The A-10 attack jet had a rate of 71.20 percent.
They do need to figure out how to make this coating more durable. It's something that wears out more quickly than other parts.
On the other hand, the F-35 is designed to go 2,000 km/h without being spotted, it's not designed to be zero maintenance. Heck, even something like a Piper Cub (top speed 87 mph) gets a engine rebuild every 1,500 hours. You can read that as every 50,000 miles if hours are unnatural for you.
Lose the auto analogies, forever. (Score:5, Insightful)
All those MC rates suck. Retired career fighter fixer here.
The fleet has been insufficiently supported for years and fixing that is obviously not a priority. The F-35 rate is abysmal but the rest are poor. Engines are rather durable but lack of spares is what drives MC rates and the posted rates are the OVERALL aircraft rates driven by multiple systems. (I also had the joy of updating MC rate slides for the daily maintenance meetings of various fighter units.)
The US is in its second Hollow Force era but this time procurement is utterly broken. We'll pay for it dearly in the next war. While we can afford to laugh off losing/Pyrrhic wins in constabulary wars of choice against opponents with no air force, the next war may not be a NeoCon hobby project. This time the military is beyond reform because reform requires an empowered autocrat to TELL people what to do, not ask them, and PUNISH fuckups. Accountability died many years ago. Fortunately we don't need our conventional military for national defense but to police the fading empire.
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The US is in its second Hollow Force era but this time procurement is utterly broken. We'll pay for it dearly in the next war.
In the recent history the US airforce has been used mostly to bomb weddings and destroy civilian infrastructure while holding total air superiority. It can do that just fine.
And all the potential adversaries that can seriously try to contest the US for air superiority also have nuclear weapons.
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> And all the potential adversaries that can seriously try to contest the US for air superiority also have nuclear weapons.
While that's true, China and the US aren't going to Nike each over Taiwan, the Philippines, and all of these other areas.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13... [cnn.com]
China starts pushing into these areas; the US Navy conducts Freedom of Navigation operations to let China know that the need to back off. Or, the US doesn't. How that plays out depends on the relative strengths of the two countries.
Another example: China/Russia in the middle east (Score:3)
As another example, China is now the world's number one importer of crude oil. Meaning they are more dependent on Middle East oil than anyone else. Russia obviously also has a keen interest in the middle east. Either country would like more influence in the middle east.
On the other hand, neither country is going to nuke the United States to get control of Kuwait. When there is turmoil in the middle east, whichever super power has the best air force will send their air force to control the skies over there.
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I see the same facts but reach the opposite conclusion - why pay exponentially more for emergency fixes at a time when these high-end fighters really exist for a contingency that currently does not exist? We should sustain the fleet in the most economical way that meets peacetime requirements (training, mainly), with plans to ramp up prod
Re:All normal then (Score:5, Informative)
ah, thats why the Joe signed a treaty with the Taliban saying "we(the taliban) will not allow any terrorist organisations in afghanistan" .. running out huh ? stiff upper lip but basically flat broke with half the coast crumbling into the sea while amazos and microtter divide whats leftover ... its been looking ... euhm like no comment lately from overhere ... especially the "WE ARE BACK!" and "WE STAND WITH YOU!" right after tail between legs ... i have no idea who overthere would fall for that but from what i gather its more like the divided states atm ...
Trump. That was Trump's agreement with the Taliban in 2020.
https://www.state.gov/wp-conte... [state.gov]
Also, you are babbling incoherently. Have someone read your post aloud to you.
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Trump would've enforced that"
would've enforced? What is wrong with you?
The section you quoted implements the March 10, 2020 meeting. That has already happened, so yes, Trump enforced it.
Try to remember what I was responding to was KingBenney saying "ah, thats why the Joe signed a treaty with the Taliban saying "we(the taliban) will not allow any terrorist organisations in afghanistan""
KingBenney is wrong, plain and simple. It wasn't Biden's agreement. Biden gets no credit for this.
Trump should get the credit because he did all the wor
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But that doesn't fit with the narrative that people are trying to sell of:
1. Biden is a doddering old fool who is just undoing anything the Trump administration did, good or bad, because "Trump Bad" and the Democrats would rather play to their left flank by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
or
2. Trump is a completely incompetent narcissistic fuckbucket who did nothing right and should be immediately imprisoned or banished from the continent, Napoleon-style, and anything he touched should be burned t
Supplier Diversification (Score:5, Informative)
The engines of a jet are a most critical component.
The common wisdom for those is to diversify supplier, just as IBM wanted two suppliers for the CPU of their upcoming personal computer, the PC. IBM being no stranger to monopoly power and extorsion, they didn't want to be on the receiving end. Hence, AMD got to make and supply the CPU together with Intel.
There was the same thing with the F-35 Engines, two competing suppliers were scheduled.
But of course it ended being scrapped in the name of "saving money", and the same company got to hog on all the pork on the F-35 Engine.
Quoting Wikipedia "An alternative engine, the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136, was being developed in the 2000s; originally, F-35 engines from Lot 6 onward were competitively tendered. Using technology from the General Electric YF120, the F136 was claimed to have a greater temperature margin than the F135.[200] The F136 was canceled in December 2011 due to lack of funding"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Supplier Diversification (Score:3)
Resiliency and redundancy always cost more upfront than efficiency, but the benefits are almost always diffuse in space and in time. Sometimes they are not even noticeable. You don't really pay attention when the power stays on or the grocery store stays stocked with food.
Our military is composed of men and women under 40 and lead by men and women under 60. They grew up in a rich country in a time of peace and prosperity. The costs and consequences of no redundancy or no resiliency are foreign abstractions
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Re: Supplier Diversification (Score:2)
The one that came after WW2 where there hasn't been an attack by a foreign military on American soil for the past 76 years.
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I guess you have to pick your words carefully to come up with a definition of 'period of peace.' I mean, if you're talking invasions, you'd have to go all the way back to the wars with the British/Canada & Mexico. If you're talking about attacks on 'US soil,' since embassies & the 800-ish military bases technically count, you'd have to include some more recent events than WWII. The 'foreign military' part is also a bit slippery because no country would dare to openly attack the "greatest purveyor of
Re: Supplier Diversification (Score:2)
Pick every nit you want and split as many hairs as you can spare. You're still going to have to recognize the distinction between wars conducted entirely abroad and entirely at will and wars initiated by oh idunno a carrier task force sinking a good chunk of the Pacific Fleet anchored at a major naval base on incorporated American territory.
thank you (Score:4, Informative)
Re:thank you (Score:5, Informative)
It is not like we can all see how really bad the F-35 is as in https://www.machinedesign.com/... [machinedesign.com]. Ohh look they are building old models to actually do the job. They are continuing to build F-15s because they have to and do not forget the Australian Government and the Australian Military, knew exactly how bad it was and did not care, it's called corruption. All the right bank accounts in the tax havens were created and filled to pay for luxury holidays in retirement.
You seriously do not think the F35, got so bad by accident, now it took corruption to create a aircraft that bad on purpose, SO THEY CAN CHARGE FOR ITS REPLACEMENT, double plus profits. Corruption kept that whole process going.
Re: thank you (Score:2)
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Thank you for being dumb enough to buy them, I guess?
I guess you should use that domestically-built Australian 5th generation air-superiority fighter instead, yeah?
(Don't get me wrong; I think the F35 and the F22 and the LCS, the FCS, the Comanche, even something ostensibly as simple as the JTRS - have been pork-laden, political boondoggles sucking the lifeblood from NECESSARY military spending. I just think it's ridiculous that you're blaming us for being as stupid, in effect, as we were in investing in t
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Remember the cunts that made the purchase too.
Re: thank you (Score:2)
John Howard [michaelwest.com.au]. Same cunt that had the AWB bribing Iraq. Same cunt that got ethanol in our fuel for his mate in the business. Same cunt that lied about WMD. And children overboard. The corrupt cunt should be in jail but he's running around on taxpayer funded flight's. From the link: "... where does all this leave Australia and its purchase of the F-35, which has been plagued for decades by problems ever since then prime minister John Howard chose it in 2002 when it was just a sketch on paper. Howard locked
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On behalf of Americans, thank you for buying weapons systems you didn't need before you knew whether they were worth a fuck, you've encouraged my government to build more of the same kind of shit you empty-headed numpties.
the Windows 8 of the Sky (Score:2)
Why don't they just pull the plug? Maybe swipe China's stolen redesign of it back, and manufacture that one.
It's like flying cars and cold-fusion, "Fixing" the '35 is perpetually "just around the corner". After enough corners, can't they get a fokking clue?
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Rushing into production before testing would have been an *improvement* to the program, which rushed into production before finishing the design. Something like 1/3 of the USAF's F35-As are "concurrency orphans" -- planes delivered before the fully operational design was complete. In theory design changes were supposed to be retrofitted to them, but given that the program is barely meeting it's probably more economical to scrap them.
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Re:thank you (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it is all drone warfare now, so yeah, most everyone is redundant, as long as you can make more drones than the other guy you win. Think a kamikaze twin jet engine vectored thrust drone, a flying fuel tank, the electronics negligible mass, it's purpose to fly as fast as possible into a opposing forces F35 for example. More than twenty five times it size, one quarter of it speed and agility, the F35 tries to look as small as it actually is on radar and then it is stealthed. The F35 pilot will not even know it is there until it is in the cockpit with them, exploding. The hardest thing in a dog fight is to not ram the enemy when trying to shoot them down, ramming is all to easy, faster and more agile, guaranteed. If the Fifty drones that get sent up after five F35s for example do not ram their target, likely 45 of them, they come back, some might stay out on patrol before coming back but all 45 eventually come back ready to ram the crap out of any hostile aircraft at hypersonic speeds. They are all working on it, fighters are so yesterday. So stick with the ones that work and cancel the crap and replace them with flying fuel tank drones KISS principle and you can make hundreds of times as many as any fancy drone and the flying fuel tank will totally outperform them and mate with the target. Fighters will be totally out numbered ten to one, not chance at all, even hundreds to one. Why the hell not, you can call the drones back and refuel them and send them up again and again and again until they mate with a target.
The F35 is far bigger loss, totally redundant even if it worked, yesterdays technology to be made tomorrow and it doesn't even work properly. Time moves on drones are the new killing machines, in every single sphere of combat and kamikaze ones, KISS principle, keep it simple stupid, dominate the battle field, they just update the electronic suite, detection, tracking and homing. Swap the nose cone sort of thing.
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Those are called missiles, not drones. To my knowledge no drone has ever shot down a manned fighter even though they carry air-to-air missiles. RPV pilots have substantially less situational awareness than their manned counterparts. Most of the current ones are designed to loiter for as long as possible which is an opposed design goal to fast and maneuverable.
In their current incarnation, they're only used to attack/patrol over ground targets in areas without anti-aircraft capability as they are exceptional
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Technically correct that no drone has shot down manned fighters.
But an Israeli drone was credited with an air to air kill when the pilot maneuvered low to evade a Syrian fighter that then tried to follow and hit the ground..
But yes, we are still few years away from proper air to air drones. I would expect that the first ones would be in use late in this decade.
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Yeah, seems to me they would have to be semi-autonomous too (scary) because their communications for command and control could be scrambled.
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An aspect-tracking missile is in effect a single-use drone.
They are indeed semi-autonomous already, and have been for decades
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To my knowledge no drone has ever shot down a manned fighter
The total amount of combat losses of manned fighters after 2005 is ....drumroll... 0! Not a single fixed-wing aircraft was lost to the enemy fire. The last war where the US faced a somewhat armed adversary capable of inflicting actual losses was the first Iraq invasion in 1991.
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Re: thank you (Score:2)
we all know aussies can't read or write, so... Good luck. Applause, sir! How did you conceive of such humour? I will endeavour to use such wit and pith in my own comments. But I reckon I will fall short.
That's Pratt&Whitney for you (Score:5, Informative)
Their engines have been problematic for years - uncontained engine failures on PW4000, a shitload of all kinds of problems on PW1000G, reliability issues with the JT9D that forced P&W to design the PW4000 from scratch instead of simply updating the JT9D design, low reliability of the TF30 engines that forced the DoD to replace them with GE engines on the F-14 and so on and so forth.
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Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
I think all their F-22 Raptors are working fine. If only they had more of them ... ;-)
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Nope. more than half of them are unavailable... down for maintenance.
Good thing the Swiss decided to purchase them (Score:5, Interesting)
"Switzerland plans to spend up to 6 billion Swiss francs (U.S. $6.5 billion) to buy 36 F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing models to replace its aging Hornet fleet, the government announced Wednesday.
In a news release announcing the decision, the Swiss Federal Council stated that the F-35 promised the highest performance for the lowest price, with Lockheed’s proposal coming in at $2.16 billion less than its nearest competition over a 30 year forecast.
Meanwhile, the F-35 scored better in effectiveness, product support and cooperation than the Rafale, Super Hornet and Typhoon. The Federal Council pointed specifically to the Joint Strike Fighter’s survivability and situational awareness as selling points that were seen as advantageous for the Swiss Air Force’s air-policing mission."
https://www.defensenews.com/ai... [defensenews.com]
What do the Swiss know that everyone else seem to not know. The F-35 is considered by almost everyone as one of the greatest money pits ever created.
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For all the armchair commentators on here and other online forums there certainly isn't a consensus amongst defence staff and independent analysts that the JSF is a poor choice based on performance and capabilities. Certainly it has cost a fortune to develop, however given that this was funded by the US I doubt the Swiss particularly care about that. I've seen
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To give some context an airline might expect to pay $60m or more (well below list price) for a relatively small passenger jet like the Airbus A320.
Well, for starters an A320 generates revenue for its owner (or is supposed to) so regardless of how important you think the military is and how many resources you think a country should devote to it, you have to take that into account when looking at the price tag.
The other thing is that Switzerland is a very small country: unless they are participating in some joint exercise, F-35s (but the same applies to every other fighter out there) just have the time to accelerate to supersonic speed before they have
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Re:Good thing the Swiss decided to purchase them (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're going to to provide a citation for that $15 million figure. I don't think anyone is getting them anywhere near that cheap. Most of the figures I can find are between $78 million and $120 million.
Re:Good thing the Swiss decided to purchase them (Score:4, Informative)
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That seems more like it since I'm seeing purchase prices of $78 million and up and per hour costs of around $36K. It's hard to say how many actual hours they will operate per year, but that should definitely be tens of millions of dollars per year just to operate. For aircraft, it is pretty typical for the operating costs to be higher than the purchase price over the lifetime, but it being more per year to operate isn't that typical. Of course, that's for commercial planes, military planes might be expected
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Yep. The F-16, which is a very low cost fighter, already had a $20 million purchase price in the early nineties and its engine was nowhere near as expensive.
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Yep. The F-16, which is a very low cost fighter, already had a $20 million purchase price in the early nineties and its engine was nowhere near as expensive.
And as long as losing wars and dead pilots don't cost anything, then you save money. Brilliant. Or you could pay for better planes and then not have to replace them (or their pilots) every time shooting breaks out. The only thing more expensive than winning a war is losing a war.
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While there might be some reasons to complain about costs, you're on the wrong thread for that. A previous poster up the thread had placed the cost of the F35 at $15 million. That was clearly a mistake, so we were discussing what the actual cost is. The poster you were replying to was simply saying that the F15 was more than $15 million dollars over 20 years of inflation ago, so the the $15 million figure was highly unlikely. The original poster who stated $15 million has already provided a correction, so w
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15M to 500M ... what's couple of orders of magnitude between friends? In fact, I guess you did better than the people predicting the cost of the F-35 program.
Re:Good thing the Swiss decided to purchase them (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the single most disgusting, intentionally misleading comparison I've seen being made by F-35 propaganda accounts so far, and I've seen a lot of their activity ever since Lockheed Martin spent north of a billion in PR on them after all the bad press.
You're comparing a hangar queen that needs almost two full days of nonstop maintenance to stay an hour in the air (and that's when something isn't just broken, like in this case), and comparing it to a much larger aircraft capable of hauling almost 200 passengers and will spend most of its lifetime conducting flight operations.
And then you're still giving a number that is utterly absurd, and in the base case scenario missing a zero at the end for lifetime costs of F-35. And so far, nothing has gone to the best case scenario with F-35 program.
The aircraft is called "Fat Amy" by the actual pilots for a reason. It's of little value an air to air superiority aircraft as it carries almost no missiles in its stealth configuration and cannot perform high speed interceptions without literally blowing itself up by cooking its own ammunition. And its A model's gun is still useless, as attempting to fire it creates massive amount of drag on the gun's side of aircraft, pulling it off target. It's of low value as a strike craft because of its extremely poor air time to maintenance time ratio and extremely low payload capacity in stealth configuration. It's sole area of actual expertise is as stealthy heavy reconnaissance and light strike aircraft. And at that, it's actually very good. Just ask Israelis, who use it exclusively in this exact role. For heavy strike they use F-16 and for air to air work, they have F-15 which are far superior to F-35 in those niches.
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I'm absolutely shocked that this level of false and misleading information has ben modded up to a 5.
The F35 is not and has never been a dedicated air superiority fighter. The F22A is an air dominance designed to clear the skies of enemy aircraft. The F35 is called the Joint Strike Fighter. A strike fighter is multi-role aircraft for both air-to-air and ground attack.
Sure the F35 can only currently carry 4 missiles, but when your opponents can't detect you and your first warning is a BVR in terminal acqui
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Here you have a classic propaganda account/propaganda victim. Their post template is almost universally the same.
First, they make a point you didn't make:
>The F35 is not and has never been a dedicated air superiority fighter.
Then they proceed to make a point you did make, as it's not your point, and you didn't address it above:
>A strike fighter is multi-role aircraft for both air-to-air and ground attack.
In this case, it's a "strike fighter" that as noted above cannot fight air superiority battles (co
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For all the armchair commentators on here...
Guilty as charged. I am engineer, not a soldier.
I wonder if some actual expert on military strategy could tell us whether high technology hardware actually wins battles. I have my doubts. The military history I have read indicates that getting a good mass of forces in the right place at the right time is what wins battles. It does not matter how clever your guns are if you are simply swamped by your opponent.
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It's likely a case of horses for courses.
One of the big problems with the F-35 is the complexity of sustainment in the field. This is particularly a problem for the Marine Corps, which plans to operate them from austere forward bases. The logistical burden of keeping F-35Bs flying is going to be a huge burden on those makeshift bases.
Likewise, the limited range of Air Force F-35As mean they has to be refueled on long strike missions, and the lack of stealth *tankers* is a vulnerability.
Switzerland, on the
More particulates in the air? (Score:2)
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
When you have an air force that's ten times the size it needs to be, 15% not working is probably a saving since they're not flying around wasting fuel.
100% of Canadian F35 have no engines (Score:2)
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Re: 100% of Canadian F35 have no engines (Score:2)
US military spending (Score:2)
I'd say that the F35 is the product of a massive flow of money to contractors and the bureaucracy setup to manage them. Seems that easy money drives up prices and drives down quality. Get the project started, change the requirements a lot, demand everything be tested to the nth degree by 3rd parties in the name of quality, set unrealistic deadlines for all of that to happen. This is how we get parts installed on vehicles before they are tested and end up with a mess. And we let the contractors keep the
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They designed a program that, if abandoned, would do catastrophic damage to three US military service branches, as well as to a number of key allies. The UK would end up with two aircraft carriers and no aircraft to fly from them.
The consequence is inevitably a money black hole that eventually works to some degree.
Good Documentary on JSF Selection (Score:2)
There was a really good documentary produced by PBS Nova about the JSF selection process (Web Site [pbs.org], Video [youtu.be]). Another Canadian documentary exposes what a dog this fighter is (see what I did there?) and how the US State Department sabotaged the sales of other company's fighters to other countries (Video [youtube.com]).
The first problem with the Lockheed plane is the concept that it is supposed to be able to do everything when there are no planes that can everything. But aside from that, it seems the Lockheed designed plane
Before we get all panicky ... (Score:2)
Do you think we could take a moment to notice that a billion spent on a new massive drone swarm technology would be more effective?
Why someone has not been held accountable (Score:2)
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The F-35 program has been such a disaster; why has no one been held accountable for this mess?
Because it isn't actually a disaster. The F-35 is a highly effective plane for which there is currently is no counter-measure. The problem here is that the F-35 has become political and so facts have left the building. So let me explain some of what is happening here.
A stealth aircraft can't carry external fuel tanks or missiles and still be stealthy. So the missiles are carried internally but that means it can't carry much. A F-15EX can carry up to 16 missiles, a F-35 can only carry 4. Now, this
Downtime equals increased cost. (Score:2)
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Actually that sounds familiar. . . (Score:2)
. . . .in my B-52 days . . . 30+ years ago. . . about 1 in 6 bombers was in maintenance and unflyable, generally due to parts shortages.
Of course, the BUFFs had left the assembly lines 30+ years previous to **that**, and had been through a war. . . .
General problem, NOT F35 (Score:2)
This is part of a general report on the poor quality of ALL aircraft maintenance. The F35 is not particularly worse than the others. https://www.thedrive.com/the-w... [thedrive.com]
Of the approximate 50 aircraft, on two of them met their mainance goals more than 2/3 of the time (Good job EP3 Anti-submarine and UN1N Huey helicopter).
Two of the met their goals more than 1/3 of the time.
24 aircraft NEVER met their goals. Not one year.
The other 20 odd aircraft met their goals at least one year, but not more than 1 out of ev
F-35: spend money on parts and training (Score:2)
I've been trying to figure out the F-35 for years. I've read a lot about it.
What seems clear to me is that the USA really needs the F-35 to work, and it basically does work, so the best thing we can do is order more F-35 planes and get a whole bunch of spare parts and training.
Some people hate anything military; other people hate the F-35 specifically; and these people make a bunch of wild claims about how awful the F-35 is, how expensive it is, etc. However, from my reading, the people who actually fly t
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Look at the upside (Score:2)
Re: Atotal (Score:5, Funny)
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15%+ of Air Force Generals don't have working ding-dongs.
Be careful about what you say about Gen. Buck Turgidson.