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F-35 and its future. Was the project an overall failure?


Hummingbird

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Short answer. No. The article that seemed to come out this week that has everyone abuzz is a bunch of old BS brought in to an article with an agenda. Any investigation with what is really going on with the F35 shows a whole other story. For example, check out 'Jello' Aiello's fighter pilot podcast and listen to the F35 episode(s).

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 The cost of each aircraft is definitely one of the main reasons I think Forbes came out with this article, not to mention the cost of the whole program. When you consider most modern conflicts have had juiced up 4th Gen aircraft dropping JDAM's on irregular fighting forces (cave dwelling jihadists) it seems crazy to think you need something like the F-35 to do that. I don't know the fine points on this topic I'll admit, but who's to say in 5 years radar advances won't make the F-35's stealth capability useless and you would have been better off developing a 4th Gen Plus low cost mass manufactured light jet like the F-16 and spent your development money on better jammers and 'bolt on tech' to make them effective in the off event you have to face a peer fighting force. Just my two lumps of dry dog shit...

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The F-35 ''issues'' have been greatly exaggerated and sensationalised over the years. All the same arguments made about it, were also made when the F-14 replaced the F-4, all the way back to the beginming of aviation whenever a generational shift occurs. If it was a complete failure, countries wouldn't be lining up to buy them. As for cost, people tend too much to focus on the notion of it being ''one plane'', which while admittedly the idea originally, it is in actuality three planes that retain a high degree of parts commonality.

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12 minutes ago, Mars Exulte said:

If it was a complete failure, countries wouldn't be lining up to buy them.

 

Countries are run by the bankers.... They do not make wise decisions what to buy or why to buy.

When the F-35 is already selected a winner in a competition program to find a next fighter for a country, it is not a fair competition to start with when the winner is already decided without any technical tests or comparisons. 

 

The weapon industry history is full of these, they just want money as usual in the whole banking world. 

 

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1 hour ago, Fri13 said:

 

Countries are run by the bankers.... They do not make wise decisions what to buy or why to buy.

When the F-35 is already selected a winner in a competition program to find a next fighter for a country, it is not a fair competition to start with when the winner is already decided without any technical tests or comparisons. 

 

The weapon industry history is full of these, they just want money as usual in the whole banking world. 

 

 

  Yep, nevertheless, there's plenty of competition out there, and plenty of other aircraft getting bought up. While politics is often a big factor in this, to say it's the only reason the F-35 is being bought up is to blindly disregard every source that isn't a sensationlist hitpiece. There is plenty it offers that does indeed work very well. It is its own plane, with its own design goals, which it has fulfilled. If ''works as intended'' is your idea of failure, then you must be a lot of fun.


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37 minutes ago, Mars Exulte said:

 

  Yep, nevertheless, there's plenty of competition out there, and plenty of other aircraft getting bought up. While politics is often a big factor in this, to say it's the only reason the F-35 is being bought up is to blindly disregard every source that isn't a sensationlist hitpiece. There is plenty it offers that does indeed work very well. It is its own plane, with its own design goals, which it has fulfilled. If ''works as intended'' is your idea of failure, then you must be a lot of fun.

 

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The media had lots of "concerns" about the F-16 program that turned out to be the result of ignorance and a general lack of understanding in the field of, then modern air warfare. Many at that time were suggesting that alternatives like the mirage F1 and viggen and what we today would say we're 3rd generation designs would be better decisions, and offer more value for money.

 

No one today would say that either of those aircraft come close to F-16 performance or overall systems growth or effectiveness. Picking one of those other aircraft over the viper would have been like picking a sopwith camel over a spitfire. 

 

It wouldn't surprise me, if the same kind of ignorance exists now regarding the F-35 and the realities of today's air warfare situation. Time will tell if the F-35 truly is successful but all real indications to date are that it's the best multirole fighter available and essentially represents a generational leap over it's competition. Just like the viper was for it's time.


Edited by Wizard_03
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2 hours ago, Wizard_03 said:

The media had lots of "concerns" about the F-16 program that turned out to be the result of ignorance

The same happened for the legacy Hornet as well as the Gripen. Military programs are always unpopular with the media, regardless of whether they are successful or not.

 

Honestly, the F-35 program was overly ambitious and realistically the Harrier/A-10 replacement should have been a completely different airframe, but that doesn't say much about whether the plane as it is today is effective or not. More F-35s have been built than Typhoons, Gripens, Rafales, Strike Eagles or Super Hornets, and that alone means the program is not a failure.


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15 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

The same happened for the legacy Hornet as well as the Gripen. Military programs are always unpopular with the media, regardless of whether they are successful or not.

 

Honestly, the F-35 program was overly ambitious and realistically the Harrier/A-10 replacement should have been a completely different airframe, but that doesn't say much about whether the plane as it is today is effective or not. More F-35s have been built than Typhoons, Gripens, Rafales, Strike Eagles or Super Hornets, and that alone means the program is not a failure.

 

Definitely, the A-10 mission requirements are completely different, and at odds with the F-35s intended roles.

 

Speaking of airframes, I also feel like the media also often forgets that the F-35 is actually replacing three separate aircraft, each of which is pretty much the back bone, of it's respective branch of service. So Its no wonder the total program cost is high. Looking at it that way IMO is deceptively simplistic. If they were to design and procure three completely clean sheet 5th generation replacements for the hornet, viper, and harrier add the cost of all of those programs up and compare that number to the F-35 Program cost, I guarantee it would be higher, a lot higher.

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4 minutes ago, Wizard_03 said:

If they were to design and procure three completely clean sheet 5th generation replacements for the hornet, viper, and harrier add the cost of all of those programs up and compare that number to the F-35 Program cost, I guarantee it would be higher, a lot higher.

Yeah. Considering that a lot of the trouble with the program came from the -B, I think that if they built one plane to replace the Viper and Hornet, and another to replace the Harrier and A-10, they would have saved a lot of money and ended up with better performing jets.


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22 minutes ago, TLTeo said:

Yeah. Considering that a lot of the trouble with the program came from the -B, I think that if they built one plane to replace the Viper and Hornet, and another to replace the Harrier and A-10, they would have saved a lot of money and ended up with better performing jets.

 

That would have made much more sense, and another issue is trying to estimate costs for designs that are still in development with countries changing political situations affecting procurement figures at the same time, two situations that are often co-dependant. but that isn't an F-35 specific problem. 

 

Too me that's like trying to figure out what dinner is gonna cost before you get hungry and don't know how many people are actually going to be eating. 

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7 hours ago, TLTeo said:

The same happened for the legacy Hornet as well as the Gripen. Military programs are always unpopular with the media, regardless of whether they are successful or not.

 

I don't think it's so much that the media dislikes these programs. It's just another facet of media as a business. The successes of a program aren't going to aggregate the clicks negativity well.

 

"MULTI MILLION DOLLAR FAILURE" is always an easy sell. It's just the nature of how WE consume media more than how media has any tilt or bias; they're just giving us what we want, really.

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12 hours ago, probad said:

what we need is a good old fashioned war to really show what works and what doesnt

 

That is the only thing that would really do it. 

Sad thing is that it would take lives and impact to lives.

 

It is easy to show on the paper that how great the F-35 is, but to actually put it through a war is another challenge. As if you suddenly are not in the clean hangars fixing the aircraft, your carriers are pushed to their range and time limits and under threats of attacks etc. Lots of things changes.

 

When a non-modernized militants cause havoc to much better equipped military, what will happen when it is equally highly equipped? When it is not anymore a MANPAD firing at you or a S-75, but something else much more modern?

 

 

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That video pushes three important points not discussed here:

- the availability of the aircraft: stealth means more maintenance that normal planes, so planes are less available. In a high-intensity fight, which is what the US seems to be gearing up towards, having 10 or 20% more availability can mean one more sortie here and there, and in fine help to win critical momentum. I don't think anyone expects the F-35 to be developed only to drop JDAMs on non-suspecting idiots with AK-47s.

- one plane type is easier to counter for an adversary than multiple ; for example if China develops a radar able to defeat the F-35's stealth, that party trick is completely gone. Having to counter multiple different jets, each with their own strengths, could be a much more difficult challenge for an adversary.

- some missions require the generals to consider a certain amount of units lost to the opposition. Sometimes that target is just too important, even if you know 30% of your guys could die. In such cases, are the US going to sacrifice F-35s, which would represent such a high financial but also propaganda loss? And if they are not, what would you send to execute that mission if 16's, 18's and such are all retired?

 

I do agree that the F-35 is obviously successful as it is, but it doesn't mean the strategy to have one plane type for everything is the correct one for the US to retain dominance in the 21th century. Same with their reliability on GPS, take out the satellites and suddenly most of their A/G weapons won't leave the rails. Wars are not only about having the most cutting edge tech as they are also about resilience, and a single plane type is not really aligned with that goal. To me it would make sense to keep F-35 and keep one type of multirole 4th gen++.

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just kind of illustrates the dangers  relying a single airframe its a bit of a flying LCS... a  good idea  that survives funding cuts but has all the missions of those things that were cut tacked onto it so eventually your sports car  or offroader  eventually becomes a minivan sort of contraption. The F-35 meets a lot of goals but it also completely defeats the original purpose of the program... which was to be cost effective. There is no incentive to be cost effective if you already know that you are the one game in town and there are no other alternatives. SEC NAV Lehman ran overlapping procurement programs because he could always say... hey we have other options.  

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15 hours ago, Hummingbird said:

Based on some of the responses I do wonder wether some of you actually watched the whole video. Might surprise you.

 

 

 

The F35 has a good future, there is a lot of tech coming to the F35 which fixes everything that David French did to it and makes it what they wanted it capable of in the first place. It actually will have more capability than what was originally intended and fly safer than ever before. 

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I don't agree that the USAF is admitting the F-35 is a failure by wanting to explore more cost effective solutions in 4++ 

 

I think force projections for potential adversaries for today were exaggerated when the JSF was in it's conceptual phase and the reality is F-35s high techology is not quite needed yet, and so it's not necessary to have the entire force 5th generation YET. So therefore US government does not need to dump money on it like it's going out of style. In other words the F-35 is so successful that they can relax and look at saving even more money.

 

If potential adversaries had indeed modernized their forces as fast as projected in the late 90s early 2000s this wouldn't be an issue because F-35 and 5th generation would be a requirement for modern air warfare. But the fact is it isn't yet and might not be until 2040. Many of these adversaries are just now looking at F-22 counters. Let alone 5th gen multirole. So is the F-35 a failure? Far from it, it's overqualified for it's job. 


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This kind of rhetoric isnt new, and happens at every new generation of A/C, and ultimately just fades away with time. They said the same thing about the F-14/15 after the conclusion of AIMVAL/ACEVAL, using its results to supposedly "prove" that high tech fighters were innefective and too expensive, and that we should ditch them in favor for F-5-Like dogfight optimized LWFs, like the F-20 that could, in their minds, do the job better and cheaper. In hindsight, I think we are all very glad we decided to push forwards with BVR technology rather that stay stuck in the WVR era. Going to wars such as the Gulf War vs opponents with WVR equipped aircraft lacking BVR armament... that would have been a very different outcome.

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Just saw the first few minutes OK I familiar with this story a bit, the general is being taken way out of context.

I suggest you look at the transcript from the Defense Writers Group interview with him and you'll see he's talking about another project and its follow ons that the USAF has been thinking about for some time already.

 

'So the question is what is the son of NGAD? Does it have to be a
kind of full-up 6
th Gen capability? Or can it be something we can
build from the same approach using digital engineering and
provide something that is capable, that doesn’t necessarily have
to be an F-16 or something "

That's what he's aluding to
son of NGAD/PCA

 

Key point here too people overlook when they clamor for more F-16s and reduction of the JSF fleet from its original intended 1800 number

"[relevant] not just today, but well into the future"

 

 

Who would be surprised by a 6th gen cutting down on the demand of 5th gen types, its almost like this happens every 30~40 years

 


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