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How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

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Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#31

Post by jacques_chester »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #10

Ultimately, this article has one point but makes it about ten times. The point is that the F-35 led to the U.S. losing the 2008 war game. All of the quotes (particularly from Australian military officials) are about the failed 2008 war game. It might seem like a valid point except that the war game deliberately crippled all the F-22s (the U.S. air superiority fighters) and instead pitched the F-35s (the U.S. jack-of-…

It's less academic for those of us in Australia, and that's why Australians are mentioned in the article. Australia is replacing its entire air superiority and assault capability with F35s and is contributing billions to the development program. We've already given up our bombers -- we were the last operators of F-111s.

We can't buy F22s. I'm pretty sure we would (and so would the UK, Japan, Saudi Arabia and a number of other close allies), but the US Congress has banned their export.

There is a constant undercurrent pushing for Australia to buy Russian fighters. They're cheap, they don't make design compromises we don't care about and you can actually get some, rather than seeing the delivery date receding like a desert horizon.

And more to the point: our neighbours are buying them. In a confrontation, they'd win. Which rather defeats the point of buying billions of dollars of air superiority hardware, don't you think?

Edit: Funnily enough, Lockheed has advertising spread throughout Canberra, our national capital. I mean everywhere. Especially in the airport, it's like a giant Lockheed showroom. I get the sense that they are feeling spooked.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#32

Post by antubbs »

runarb wrote: post #26
coldcode wrote: post #2

Having worked on the F16 at one point in my career it kicks the F35 is the ass every day and twice on Sunday. Plus you can buy 20 of them for every F35. It's all about money though, the F16 is too cheap to keep Lockheed in business no matter how much you upgrade it.

Can you elaborate a little more on which aspects of the 40 year old F-16 design you think is better than the F-35? After looking on the Wikipedia page[0][1] it looks for me that the F-35 outperforms the F-16 in all aspects: |------------------------|-----------|----------| | | F-16 | F-35 | |------------------------|-----------|----------| | Maximum speed | Mach 1.2 | Mach 1.6 | | Combat radius | 550 km | 1 080 km |…

Range, thrust, and power to weight are just a few performance parameters.

It's somewhat more difficult to get accurate turn performance and acceleration information about the F-35. If I understand correctly (again, can't really find anything but conjecture for performance charts) while the F-35 has more sophisticated aerodynamic designs, the large cross-section looks to be a disadvantage in turn rates and acceleration (especially trans sonic).

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#33

Post by greedo »

coldcode wrote: post #2

Having worked on the F16 at one point in my career it kicks the F35 is the ass every day and twice on Sunday. Plus you can buy 20 of them for every F35. It's all about money though, the F16 is too cheap to keep Lockheed in business no matter how much you upgrade it.

Current fly away costs estimates for the F-35 are in the neighborhood of 100-150M. Current fly away costs for Block 50+ F-16 are in the 100M range depending on electronics suite. It's been a long, long time since you could buy an F-16 for $5M.

Also, the F-35 is more maneuverable than the current F-16s which have to hang a ton of armament on pylons, as well as drop tanks to get range equivalent to the F-35. And try flying any F-16 into S300 range.

Now the criticisms of the F-35B (Marine STOVL variant) are semi-valid, and have affected some facets of the F-35A and F-35C. But other than cost overruns, the performance of the aircraft will be fine.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#34

Post by melling »

jkl32 wrote: post #9

$1 trillion; this is why the US has no health care. Does anyone realistically believe you will go to war with China or Russia anymore? It's time to stop the charade of war, and help your own citizens instead.

No, World War One was the war to end all wars.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#35

Post by greedo »

antubbs wrote: post #32
runarb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate a little more on which aspects of the 40 year old F-16 design you think is better than the F-35? After looking on the Wikipedia page[0][1] it looks for me that the F-35 outperforms the F-16 in all aspects: |------------------------|-----------|----------| | | F-16 | F-35 | |------------------------|-----------|----------| | Maximum speed | Mach 1.2 | Mach 1.6 | | Combat radius | 550 km | 1 080 km |…

Range, thrust, and power to weight are just a few performance parameters. It's somewhat more difficult to get accurate turn performance and acceleration information about the F-35. If I understand correctly (again, can't really find anything but conjecture for performance charts) while the F-35 has more sophisticated aerodynamic designs, the large cross-section looks to be a disadvantage in turn rates and acceleratio…

This is contrary to what the test pilots and others bringing the aircraft to IOC have reported. Granted, test pilots work for the manufacturer and might be biased, but regular aviators who have flown the aircraft are confirming its excellent performance.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#36

Post by VLM »

nkuttler wrote: post #16
dkhenry wrote: post #3

I understand the point the article is trying to make, but its not realistic. Having worked with the Navy for a few years I know that the biggest use of airplanes is not air to air combat ( which is what this article is complaining about ) It is air to land bombing. So why are we complaining about making an air force that serves our needs rather then one that might be useful for some other task. As a note he says this…

> the biggest use of airplanes [...] is air to land bombing But what happens to your bombers when you don't have air superiority?

A solved problem, you launch cheap cruise missiles until you obtain relative superiority.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#37

Post by jzwinck »

nkuttler wrote: post #16
dkhenry wrote: post #3

I understand the point the article is trying to make, but its not realistic. Having worked with the Navy for a few years I know that the biggest use of airplanes is not air to air combat ( which is what this article is complaining about ) It is air to land bombing. So why are we complaining about making an air force that serves our needs rather then one that might be useful for some other task. As a note he says this…

> the biggest use of airplanes [...] is air to land bombing But what happens to your bombers when you don't have air superiority?

They hang back while you launch ICBMs?

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#38

Post by caycep »

Honestly, for those who really know the battles within the Pentagon about the design and procurement of equipment, it's no surprise. Too much design-by-committee, and mission creep from difference parts of different services who want a piece of the funding pie. When the program is billed as "one plane for all 3 services," you know there's trouble brewing on the horizon.

It's telling that a lot of the quotes from this article comes from former members of the "fighter mafia" that pushed for focused designs from small groups done in "stealth" before the committees with their "mission creep" hit the design process. The F-16 and A-10, as a result, were widely hailed as revolutionary designs for the roles they were meant for (although in hindsight they followed the obvious path for air superiority and close air support aircraft). The F/A-18 was not quite as capable, but was nevertheless able to benefit from the design knowledge gained by these programs.

The managers/designers of the F-16 and A-10 programs include Chuck Spinney and Pierre Sprey, both heavily quoted here. John Boyd was one of the major figures, and is probably one of the most hated men in the Pentagon, but has since passed away.

The F-35 is succeeding brilliantly in its mission, though, which is to funnel taxpayer money to a nice fat cross section of the military-industrial complex.

Re: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World’s Worst New Warplane

#39

Post by protomyth »

You pretty much knew it was having some serious problems when the US Navy started talking about long term F-18 upgrades. They are currently testing conformal tanks (like the F-15 has). It seemed like the F-22 folks were solving their problems while the F-35 has been doing press.

Looking at it from the now, we probably should have built the full F-22 order and scrapped the F-35 for something far cheaper. I still think a successor to the A-10 and an evolved F-18 would have been better paths. Perhaps we also shouldn't award both contracts to the same company.

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