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F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

defense.gov

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Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#71

Post by JumpCrisscross »

zx8080 wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> service records should be required to be made public We’re still talking about military aircraft?

Tax money spent on it. Does it effectively make every every taxpayer citizen a shareholder? Shareholders deserve to know project spending and efficiency.

> Shareholders deserve to know project spending and efficiency

One, shareholding is a bad analogy for democracy.

Two, shareholders—and voters in a republic—delegate responsibility, including the responsibility to protect secrets. Our spooks would kill for China or Russia’s air force service records, and for good reason: it lets you exploit patterns and limitations.

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#72

Post by nradov »

dylan604 wrote: post #62
CobaltFire wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the design brief for the F-35 is to be a battlefield C&C for drones in the future. So the pilot would be the controlling authority in the battle space for allowing weapons free, etc. No idea if that will come true, but it was absolutely one capability briefed. I'm not a project participant, but I was peripheral both during development and early operational stages .

Why? We already have AWACS that essentially serves as C&C for fighter squadrons. Although, I could see how it might proceed as you suggest. Allow AWACS to direct squadrons into areas of interest and keep the bigger picture in mind while allowing the squadron level pilots to C&C the drones and focus on the details of which targets to engage. All from a nicely air conditioned "cockpit" from Sunnyvale

The UCAVs produced under the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (aka "loyal wingman") program will eventually be controllable from a variety of manned platforms including E-2/E-3/E-7 AWACS aircraft. But in a potential conflict with China they will be forced to hang back out of easy data link range due to the escalating AAM threat.

https://www.twz.com/massive-pl-17-air-to-air-missile-seen-on...

Remote piloting generally isn't a viable approach for near-peer conflicts. The communication links are too vulnerable, and even when they're working the latency is too high.

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#73

Post by roenxi »

Retric wrote: post #70
roenxi wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is also a net creditor [0]. One of the largest. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_p...

Being a net creator means foreign investors are less interested in investing inside your country than your own population is interested in investing outside of it. In many ways it’s advantageous, but also a sign something negative is going on.

So I'm seeing

> Japan has a Debt to GDP ratio of 255% ... yet it is still doing reasonably well

and

> Being a net creator ... [is] a sign something negative is going on.

How do you synthasize these? Would the Japanese be economically better off if they just forgave the debts of all the people who owe them money? That seems suspicious to me. As far as I can tell the argument is that the US is doing better than Japan, Japan is different to the US and therefore the US is not broke.

I don't think that is a strong argument. If the US engaged in heavy war spending, they'd have to print like madmen and don't think their economy would cope well. Let alone where they'd get the money to prepare for a conflict without focusing on manufacturing efficiency; it isn't easy to outspend people from this starting position because they seem to be finding the limit of what they can borrow. The people they owe money to aren't going to get it back in real terms either, seems safe to say.

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#74

Post by Retric »

roenxi wrote: post #73
Retric wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a net creator means foreign investors are less interested in investing inside your country than your own population is interested in investing outside of it. In many ways it’s advantageous, but also a sign something negative is going on.

So I'm seeing > Japan has a Debt to GDP ratio of 255% ... yet it is still doing reasonably well and > Being a net creator ... [is] a sign something negative is going on. How do you synthasize these? Would the Japanese be economically better off if they just forgave the debts of all the people who owe them money? That seems suspicious to me. As far as I can tell the argument is that the US is doing better than Japan,…

Reasonably well doesn’t mean everything is great, just that the country is continuing to function. Japan’s GDP growth rate (total and per capita) has been terrible for years, but they are a long way from becoming a failed state.

In many ways Japan’s economy actually fits people’s perception of the US economy.

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#75

Post by credit_guy »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #54
leashless wrote: post #10

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/jet-fighter-costs-a-comple... In 20 years they'll manufacture just one plane, and it'll cost a trillion dollars, if current trends continue to hold. Also it'll the weight of an aircraft carrier.

This Much was made of the fact that, once modern western equipment arrives in UK, it will wipe the floor with soviet union relics that serve in the Russian army. Instead, it has hardly made a difference. The difference in price, even of simple non-mobile artillery pieces, is huge. Because they are so expensive, we cannot field as much equipment, and we've been telling ourselves that our modern equipment is worth mult…

In this context, by UK do you mean Ukraine? Because I can't see how the United Kingdom would make sense.

Anyway, assuming it was Ukraine, then, yes, the western equipment made a lot of difference. In the first months of the war it was the Javelins, and the NLAWs. Then it was the HIMARS. Then the anti-air defenses, like the Patriot. All these things absolutely made a difference.

The problem is that there was not more of those. But that was by design. You could say that not in a thousand years would Putin actually use nukes. But I bet you said he would not invade Ukraine until the day he did.

Right now Ukraine is still standing, and Putin did not use nukes. It could be better, but it could be worse, much worse.

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#76

Post by credit_guy »

lijok wrote: post #15

Can someone explain what purpose a manned fighter jet serves in the age of UCAV? I understand with the F35 specifically it’s turned into a jobs programme, but why not turn it unmanned?

Electronic warfare. Drones can be jammed. They can even be taken over, like Iran famously did in 2011 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid...

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#77

Post by longdustytrail »

curious_cat_163 wrote: post #2

> “Earlier today, the Milestone Decision Authority, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William A. LaPlante, approved the Milestone C / Full Rate Production (MSC/FRP) of the F-35 Lightning II aircraft with the signing of an Acquisition Decision Memorandum (ADM) after a meeting with the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB).” The language could very well be from some dark humor novel making fun o…

I see where you’re coming from. But it’s a fascinating window into the nitty gritty of managing a 20+ year, $1 trillion+ government construction project.

Some of those silly seeming acronyms, like MSC for “milestone C”, probably are included because people who actually work on and around this project have naturally adopted them. I bet there are senior level employees in and outside the government who's whole career has been spent on this one project.

To those people, MSC and ADM are like k8s and MVC

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#78

Post by jauntywundrkind »

zer00eyz wrote: post #21
bee_rider wrote: post #8

It is wild that they’ve turned this project around from the avatar of wasteful defense spending, to the jet that everybody wants.

>> jet that everybody wants. That was the f22. And we blocked international sales in favor of the f35. The death of the f22 should not be mourned, we will get 6th gen research to replace it. As for the everybody wants it bit, this is very true. Much to the ~~shargrin~~ chagrin of EU military industry. With one of our presidential candidates calling for us pulling out of nato, with us not backing Ukraine, I would expe…

F22's maintenance burden was vastly higher than the F35, which is still quite expensive.

Costs are also somewhat weirdly calculated, by just taking hours flown / cost. Maybe we could fly the jet a lot more for a modest increase in cost, & the numbers would look much better. But we don't fly that much, especially given the teething issues (such as the oxygen supply issues) we've had. There was a really great report I think based on GAO or maybe direct from GAO that covered f35 expenses very closely, comparing across services over time, that really was interesting to see; haven't found the link again though alas.

The F35 is also a far more advanced sensor & communication system, I believe. F22 was a more conventional stealth where the pilots got the mission, got on the air, & kept minimal emissions to the target & hopefully back; the f117 I think had similar characteristics. This isn't nearly as general purpose a role.

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#79

Post by amenhotep »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #54
leashless wrote: post #10

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/jet-fighter-costs-a-comple... In 20 years they'll manufacture just one plane, and it'll cost a trillion dollars, if current trends continue to hold. Also it'll the weight of an aircraft carrier.

This Much was made of the fact that, once modern western equipment arrives in UK, it will wipe the floor with soviet union relics that serve in the Russian army. Instead, it has hardly made a difference. The difference in price, even of simple non-mobile artillery pieces, is huge. Because they are so expensive, we cannot field as much equipment, and we've been telling ourselves that our modern equipment is worth mult…

This was mostly said about tanks, and by few serious commentators. In a static war like this, a tank is a tank pretty much regardless of how fancy it is. NATO does not expect to fight a static war. Partially because it has access to copious amounts of the real force multiplier, air power - vanishingly little of which has been given to Ukraine!

Re: F-35 Program Achieves Full Rate Production

#80

Post by dralley »

harshreality wrote: post #56
actionfromafar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price is starting to look right, too. I'm still shocked by this.

Cost per flight hour is still much higher than its slightly less capable competitors. I don't know what the argument is for that. Maybe that sim training will be a larger percentage of training in the future, and therefore operating costs don't matter so much? Take whatever jet has the best capabilities, period? I think what that misses is that maintenance of real aircraft will atrophy without constant pilot feedback…

> slightly less capable

What competitor is even close to "slightly less capable"?

The main driver of the cost is maintaining stealth coatings. On that front it has no real competitors.

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