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What’s Wrong with This Picture?
Is it just because I’m an aviation geek that this bothers me?
Go ahead and read the article if you want, it’s basically an advertisement for Lockheed-Martin that addresses none of the F-35’s myriad shortcomings — its exceedingly high cost, its propensity to spend most of its life in a hangar undergoing expensive maintenance on its delicate systems, or the way its performance lags that of earlier-generation fighters. It has routinely lost wargames against F-15s, F-16s, Chinese J-20s, and probably Japanese Zeroes. (And National Interest published another F-35 tongue-bath article later in the day, getting the right picture on the second try.)
This is what happens when guys with degrees in “Comparative Literature” write about military matters.
New build F-15s could carry out 80 percent of the F-35’s missions at a fraction of the cost. A license-built version of the Swedish Gripen fighter would also provide adequate air superiority in most scenarios at a savings of billions. And none of these aircraft require a $400,000 helmet custom-made for each pilot. But, as with most of the military-industrial complex, the F-35 weapon system is designed to be expensive and remain expensive and that’s how the contractor lobbyists want it.
Published in General
Do the engines run on snake oil too, or just the weapon systems?
It’s an odd match of great production values but really squishy content. I’m not saying they’re lying, but the frequently don’t know what they’re talking about. Which is too bad — great headlines! Facts — pukka pukka pukka “Reply Hazy, Try Again”.
I’ll clarify an earlier comment here: the F-35 is not a bad plane, as it can do several things to a moderate degree. Just like the Super Hornet, and the barely related Hornet before it, both of which are decent jacks of all trades, but neither of which really excel at anything.
The Hornets were so questionable that, in an act of federal sabotage, all the Tomcats were physically destroyed, so they could never threaten Hornet funding again. Budget superiority is a nasty battlefield. And so in a peculiarly twisted metaphor, the Navy was forced to burn its ships on the beach to save a turkey in the air: F-18s or nothing!
The F-18 was expensive, but not how the F-35 is. Even if you add the entire Hornet cost to the Super Hornet program, at least we had an interim plane for 20 years (or so, whatever), and like it or not, having a crap plane in the air beats having no planes in the air — and the Tomcats had all been chopped up. And strike was supposed to have gone to the A-12, about which the less said the better. So we got Super Horneted.
The F-35 has become so expensive that the USAF now referes to it as their high-end fighter, with Obama’s termination of the very expensive F-22 leaving that platform too small a population to build a war plan around. The Air Force is now looking for something to replace the F-16, which was supposed to be the F-35, which implies that they’re not going to buy the full run, which means the unit price (initial and lifetime) will soar, and the A-12 should ask for its sentence to be overturned at this rate. But we might as well pray for Tomcats to fall into the sky.
If costs can be contained, the F-35 might STILL be a good plane for allies, and as the low end of a high-low mix, but this is looking increasingly unlikely.
In my opinion, the F-35 will become the Taylor C602 ice cream machine at McDonald’s, and here’s why the damned thing is always broken — it’s too profitable to fix (go to 13:56). Imagine the money Lockheed will make fixing F-35s across the globe when people really really really need them fixed.
Unlike the Taylor ice cream machine, the F-35 does no particular job better than anything else. And unlike the miserable Hornet, it has become so expensive that it must eat other programs to survive. It punches above its weight only in Washington DC, not in the South China Sea.
A good deal of the criticism of the F-35 that reaches the media comes from the Congressional Representative from Seattle that has Boeing in his district. The F-35 costs less per plane than Boeing’s F-18 Advanced Super Hornet.
Got a source for that? To start with, you would have to compare the F-35C (not A) to the Super Hornet.
This suggests new build Super hornets are going for a bit over $50 million apiece:
https://news.usni.org/2019/03/21/42021
This says closer to $70 million:
https://aerocorner.com/aircraft/f-18-super-hornet/
You cannot seize territory with aircraft. Air superiority is a two-tiered process. Aircraft like the F-22, F-35, F-15, and the F-18 deny an enemy the ability to operate their aircraft over the battlefield. This allows the A-10, the AC-130 gunship, and Apache helicopters to support ground troops. It also allows some of the faster fighter aircraft to start ground support missions.
One of the interesting things about the Ukraine war with Russia is that Russia has not conducted airstrikes against Ukrainian positions. It has become trench warfare in eastern Ukraine that involves artillery, missile, and drone strikes. One reason for this might be that Russian airstrikes would paralyze their own commercial aircraft traffic, as well as European flights into Russia. Another reason might be that NATO would not have to enter Russian airspace to control the skies over Ukraine.
Link
So those are 2017 numbers for the F-35A when trump had negotiated a price cut and boeing was floating higher numbers for the Super Hornet. Not the more current numbers after Boeing dropped prices and not the F-35C so that we are comparing carrier aircraft to each other.
I have no intention of advocating for the Super Hornet which was a Navy Scam
https://amazon.com/Pentagon-Paradox-Development-F-18-Hornet/dp/1557507759
Tempted. That durned A-12 book is still around $200. That guy needs to learn about the KINDLE.
The best we can say about the F 35, is that its an unproven aircraft. Eventually someone is going to be proven wrong. I am betting on the critics, what has establishment press been right about in the last decade or two? I’ll take that record of failure to the bank.
The other problem is that the MIG 29, more than 1800 have been built, while 1 may not get through there are dozens more backing it up. Not to mention MIG 35’s, Su 30’s and in the future Su-57’s. Even if the critics are wrong, the F 35 has a limited supply of missiles a very limited supply of bullets, limited flight hours and flying conditions. There have only been 730 F35’s built so far.
Not to mention the deadly Mig-28.
No. No mentioning the MIG 28.
That’s … classified.