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US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

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Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#81

Post by tokai »

starpilot wrote: post #38
3rdAccount wrote: post #21

Does anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area decently? I know in theory that there would be savings having one platform, but making one jet modular for 3 different roles is seeming to be more difficult than just designing 3 different jets. It can't beat the EuroFighter in a dog fight and can't match the stealth bomber…

Because of the theoretical cost savings, as you mention. The JSF was aggressively fashioned toward futuristic notions of distance warfare. Missiles today have phenomenal performance, versus Vietnam era seekers that would fly into the sun. This might have been premature with the unexpected turn into asymmetric warfare. Also, any internet discussion on the A-10 (or SR-71, or Concorde) devolves into uninformed fanboyism…

>premature with the unexpected turn into asymmetric warfare

This boggles the mind. The US military have had trouble facing asymmetrical opponents close to continually since the Vietnam war. It's not like they haven't had time to see it coming.

I think the embarrassment that was the Millennium Challenge war game[0] showed just how out of touch the top brass is.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#82

Post by captain_perl »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #59
starpilot wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the theoretical cost savings, as you mention. The JSF was aggressively fashioned toward futuristic notions of distance warfare. Missiles today have phenomenal performance, versus Vietnam era seekers that would fly into the sun. This might have been premature with the unexpected turn into asymmetric warfare. Also, any internet discussion on the A-10 (or SR-71, or Concorde) devolves into uninformed fanboyism…

> Vietnam era seekers that would fly into the sun Hehe. Have a link?

It was worse than that. The sidewinder worked fairly well, but the other missiles took 4 seconds to arm, so got many US pilots killed. Top Gun was created because the US was in a draw with the Soviet-advised N. Vietnamese air force.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#83

Post by AWildC182 »

starpilot wrote: post #38
3rdAccount wrote: post #21

Does anybody in the industry know why there was a push to move away from specific role planes that excel in one area to ones that can do any area decently? I know in theory that there would be savings having one platform, but making one jet modular for 3 different roles is seeming to be more difficult than just designing 3 different jets. It can't beat the EuroFighter in a dog fight and can't match the stealth bomber…

Because of the theoretical cost savings, as you mention. The JSF was aggressively fashioned toward futuristic notions of distance warfare. Missiles today have phenomenal performance, versus Vietnam era seekers that would fly into the sun. This might have been premature with the unexpected turn into asymmetric warfare. Also, any internet discussion on the A-10 (or SR-71, or Concorde) devolves into uninformed fanboyism…

Using the Navy as an example since their aircraft fleet is somewhat more simplistic than the AF, historically there were a lot of different airframes on carriers. The iconic 80s cold war fleet was a mix of the following:

* F-4 - older multirole fighter, SEAD/STRIKE/CAS

* F/A-18 (A/B/C/D aka legacy hornet) - replacement multirole

* F-14 - interceptor

* A-4 - strike, SEAD etc

* A-7 - strike, SEAD etc

* A-6 - strike, CAS

* EA-6 (significantly different from the A-6) - ELINT/EWAR

* E-2 - AWACS

* C-2 - COD

* S-3 - Anti submarine, Tanker

These were pretty much all replaced in the mid 90s leaving the following:

* F/A-18 (E/F, basically a different airframe) - multirole fighter, SEAD/STRIKE/CAS and Tanker

* EA-18G (basically the same airframe as the E/F) - EWAR/SEAD while retaining marginal A2A capability

* E-2 - AWACS

* C-2 - COD

That's a pretty drastic reduction in airframes to manage so it's understandable why those managing them want to try to maintain consolidation to an extent. Now whether this is the best way of going about it is an open question. The F-18 platform has shown that it's possible but it's also much more mature, having had many decades to work out the bugs. There's also the question of how they managed to talk the navy into a single engine platform but that's a rant for another day...

Note: the first list was never all deployed at the same time on the same carrier AFAIK. They travel as squadrons between carriers depending on the carriers mission. The second gets deployed together regularly as they comprise the bare minimum for an operational air wing.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#84

Post by wpdev_63 »

mr_overalls wrote: post #60
bradfa wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, some of the money has gone to a small number of rich people, but there's quite a large number of working class people designing and assembling these planes. To say that the money has been set on fire or that no value has been provided seems a bit harsh, much of the money is employing a large number of skilled people in the USA and in other countries. And it's not just the USA taxpayers who are paying for this,…

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 citi…

Thank you for sharing this beautiful quote.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#85

Post by Buldak »

kibwen wrote: post #26

Over a trillion dollars over 28 years. There are about 250 million U.S. taxpayers. That's $150 out of the pocket of every single taxpayer, every year, just to cover the cost of this one monumentally embarrassing failure. If you're a U.S. citizen born after 1974, you've been setting fire to this money annually for your entire adult life. No value has been provided other than as a government subsidy to military contrac…

I'm kind of baffled by the number of people here defending this. I can only imagine that Americans have an emotional investment in their military that inclines them to overlook waste that they would never tolerate in any other area.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#86

Post by cptskippy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56
maxander wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those skilled workers could have been building something useful , however. The waste of their time and skill is indeed burning resources, in an even more concrete sense than setting money on fire.

> those skilled workers could have been building something useful I wouldn't say the F-35 is useless . It contains a breathtaking integration of advanced technologies. There are benefits to that R&D. It's also an incredibly capable platform–the principle complaint is it's too capable, that we could have gotten more bang for our bucks with more less-capable planes.

> There are benefits to that R&D.

For Lockheed Martin. Are they obligated to publish their R&D findings for the Pentagon or anyone else?

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#87

Post by vkou »

tadfisher wrote: post #51
vkou wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could be, but if the program didn't exist, our economic system would not have allocated their labour to productive ends.

That's a fairly conclusive statement with no objective basis. Care to elaborate?

We have millions of unemployed people, and much work that needs to be done (Teaching, childcare, elderly care, infrastructure maintenance, construction, etc.)

Why aren't they doing it? Could it be because we don't optimize for 'overall value created'?

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#88

Post by maxxxxx »

dragontamer wrote: post #29
Faaak wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that someone would attack the USA if they hadn't air superiority ?

Power-projection is about using our resources to most effectively influence others. Its not about defense, but about offense. IIRC, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were supported by two Super-Carrier strike-groups stationed in the Indian ocean. Super-carriers, by themselves, can take on multiple foreign army bases. Super-carriers however, are very weak defensively. If any war were to seriously start vs the US, the supe…

"Anyway, the point of power-projection is that these bases are mobile. As we finish up our job in Afghanistan / Iraq, we can move these super-carriers elsewhere for support. Puerto Rico was serviced by a super-carrier Abraham Lincoln for instance (hospitals on board, + Helicopters delivered supplies), while the Super-Carrier Ronald Regan helped Japan clean-up the Fukashima Nuclear disaster."

I know that's reality but using aircraft carriers for disaster relief is an awfully expensive way to do this.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#89

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jchrisa wrote: post #75
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those skilled workers could have been building something useful I wouldn't say the F-35 is useless . It contains a breathtaking integration of advanced technologies. There are benefits to that R&D. It's also an incredibly capable platform–the principle complaint is it's too capable, that we could have gotten more bang for our bucks with more less-capable planes.

In some ways, the point of war is to burn resources for no reason. Solving the crisis of overproduction. So if we can do it with less war, maybe that's a step in the right direction.

> the crisis of overproduction

If something is overproduced, it accumulates and/or falls in price. There is no "crisis of overproduction," though there may be a "crisis of underinvestment in research" and "crisis of underemployment," both problems the American military budget addresses.

Re: US military grounds entire fleet of F-35 jets

#90

Post by JumpCrisscross »

imglorp wrote: post #80
ChuckMcM wrote: post #50

Most people reading will recognize that it is a standard procedure to ground everything until you understand the risk. In this case the risk is a faulty fuel line, and apparently there is a test that will let you know in the field if you have it or not so you can return the plane to service immediately if the test comes up negative. There is a remarkable amount of disinformation that is spread around about this plane…

That's an interesting theory, that there's a foreign disinformation campaign smearing the program, because they don't want it fielded against them. I'd argue against that theory though, on the grounds that a corrupt/greedy congress, military and defense contractor network will do more against the country than our opponents ever will. Remember that time we bankrupted the USSR in an arms race? This time we're doing it…

> there's a foreign disinformation campaign smearing the program

Do we have any evidence of this?

> Remember that time we bankrupted the USSR in an arms race? This time we're doing it to ourselves

The Soviets spent 25% of their national income on their military in 1980 [1]. Most years, it was above 10%. In contrast, the United States spends low single digits of its GDP on its military [2].

[1] https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet-union-military-spen...

[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS

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