8 ms·

F-35 Delays Mean US Marines Are Pulling Old F-18s Out of Desert Storage

32 points by RachelF 10y ago

semi-extrinsic 10y ago
"poses significant affordability risks" - this is my new favorite euphemism for "bloody expensive".
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  It's potentially a real issue, if the F-35 consumes too much of the Marines budget they won't have money for the stuff they do need. Think NASA with the space shuttle.
x5n1 10y ago
So what. It's not as if the US government is fighting anyone with any real air capability. You could use Vietnam aircraft and still win against the threat.
- Gibbon1 10y ago
  Problem currently (Iraq and Syria) is the Air Force is being only able to run limited sorties against a large number of small targets like pickup trucks with 20mm cannons on the back.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    The way to hit an unsophisticated target like that is come at them out of the sun. They won't see or hear you coming.
    - Laforet 10y ago
      The problems is that the F-35's ground attack capacity is better suited to destory large hardened targets such as latest MBTs fielded by Russia and China, rather than the small, numerous and arguably unsophisticated technicals or the proverbial dude running with an RPG. It will cost several times more and does not work as well.
      - UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
        Frankly the 1963 B-52Hs are extremely effective at that mission. They can drop enough munitions to level a medium sized city WITHOUT nukes.
        icelancer 10y ago
        For sure. The "flying bomb truck" has looped back around to being extremely powerful for current engagements against insurgents. The F35 is indeed one of those... it just costs 100x more than it should.
    - 13of40 10y ago
      While you're doing that, everyone else (who aren't, incidentally, in line with you and the sun) should be firing full auto at a point in front of your aircraft so you fly through a cloud of bullets.
      - WalterBright 10y ago
        It's pretty hard to do a deflection shot against a target moving 500 mph that you have maybe a second or two to line up on.
        lmm 10y ago
        Sure, but how many trucks can you field for the cost of one F-35? It only has to work one time out of a hundred, or even one in a thousand.
        WalterBright 10y ago
        The main trouble with the F-35 is it is so expensive it can't be risked in actual combat.
        13of40 10y ago
        They'd be going slower than that for a ground attack. Also, "In the Korean War, our Air Force lost 259 jet aircraft and 285 other aircraft to combined small arms and air defense fire, which is nearly five times as many aircraft that were lost in air-to-air combat. In South Vietnam, we lost 410 fixed-wing aircraft and 2,100 helicopters. In the Mideast War, 36 coalition aircraft were shot down by ground fire." [1]. [1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/44-8/ch5.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...
        WalterBright 10y ago
        Sure, but the NK and NV armies did have good anti-aircraft setups, likely much more effective than relatively untrained fighters with a weapon designed to shoot at other people with. Richthofen in WW1 was brought down by a single shot from a rifle, but that is widely considered to be a freak shot. Nevertheless, you're right that it is never safe to get in range of small arms fire, hence the genesis of the A-10.
    - Gibbon1 10y ago
      F-35 has 180-220 rounds, that's it.
- tomjen3 10y ago
  Right, but the better planes are needed for deterrent.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    If the money was used instead in financial vehicles for the adversarial countries in question, the created economic codependence would very likely be more effective than this plane
    - siscia 10y ago
      Or on better education... In both sides of the conflicts...
    - rat87 10y ago
      Peace is nice but I wouldn't count on a large amount of trade to end all wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion > The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in the United Kingdom in 1909 > Angell argued that war between industrial countries was futile because conquest did not pay. J.D.B. Miller writes: "The 'Great Illusion' was that nations gained by armed confrontation, militarism, war, or conquest."[3] The economic interdependence between industrial countries meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved. Moreover, if a conquering power confiscated property in the territory it seized, "the incentive to produce [of the local population] would be sapped and the conquered area be rendered worthless. Thus, the conquering power had to leave property in the hands of the local population while incurring the costs of conquest and occupation."[3] ... He was partially right though > Angell said that arms build-up, for example the naval race that was happening as he wrote the book in the early 1910s, was not going to secure peace. Instead, it would lead to increased insecurity and thus increase the likelihood of war.
      - kristopolous 10y ago
        That's a pretty old framework. The idea of peace through codependency is AFAIK a bit newer. The biggest problem is that it looks like it could lead to sovereign insolvency which can backfire if it leads to economic calamity and the rise of a political group with an eye on conquest (see Europe 1930s) As an interesting aside, I'm no fan of wealth inequality. However, if it looks like it's the primary mechanism that is prolonging relative global peace (as in no biological or nuclear weapons being used), I may accept the tradeoff. There's a balance, to be a bit vulgar, between "alright we need to pay this" and "fuck this debt, we're storming the castle"
- mrweasel 10y ago
  The Danish government have the same issue. The plan is to buy 27 F-35s, but that's not really enough for anything. They are suppose to replace 60 F-16s. Even if the F-35 is as good as it's claimed, and the Russians are coming, I think you'd be better of with twice the number of some less advanced planes.
  - tehrei 10y ago
    At this point it's fair to say that anyone waiting on F-35 would have been better served by just ordering more Warthogs.
    - duncan_bayne 10y ago
      Serious question: at what point in the entire F-35 development process was that _not_ true?
      - Marazan 10y ago
        Right at the start the F35 programme looked like the sensible choice and the F22 was perceived as a ludicrous expensive pointless prestige project. Then the F35 got Christmas treed to death.
        icelancer 10y ago
        Well, the F22 is still fairly pointless, isn't it? The JSF/F35 is a joke, obviously as well.
        Marazan 10y ago
        The F-22 is the best high altitude air superiority fighter in existence. It's ludicrously expensive and it is ludicrously over capable for the actual missions it flies but it did completely achieve it's role specification.
    - mrweasel 10y ago
      Not it you need to replace F-16s and you're only able to afford to operate one type of fighter plane.
- spatulan 10y ago
  Because nations tend to avoid starting wars they'll obviously lose. If the US military falls behind technologically, other nations might start thinking defeat isn't so obvious any more.
  - NamTaf 10y ago
    South America isn't invading you any time soon and every other mob has a whopping great pile of water to cross and not much in the way of an active carrier fleet to support it, or they're already your allies. The only one that falls into your threat category is Russia. Is Russia really about to invade the US at the first sign of air supremacy weakness? You still have enough nukes to cause literal worldwide armageddon 20 times over.
    - rtpg 10y ago
      A lot easier to set up no fly zones (World Police) when your planes are a lot better than the competition. Why even leave a shadow of a doubt that the enemy could win in a dogfight? I think that's the rationale presented here
    - MagnumOpus 10y ago
      It's not about invading the US. It is about challenging their regional dominance. If the US isn't willing or able to commit to defending Japan, Taiwan or Philippines, then Mainland China will be happy to recreate a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under CCP leadership and to claim the Pacific and Indian Ocean for itself. While that wouldn't hurt the average American in the short run, the long-term consequences of it in geopolitical terms would be extreme.
      - saiya-jin 10y ago
        considering how much evil was done by US in last 15 years worldwide and how many millions of innocents died/suffer daily just because of lust for money and power, i am perfectly happy with Chinese taking banner of world supreme power for next few decades. side-by-side comparison of last 20-30 years leaves US in shame. I have more trust in Chinese party leaders rather than joke US presidency had become, with all those shady machinations behind the scenes. No, it ain't great either, but definitely lesser of an evil and US is spiraling down faster than ever. and it was once a beacon of democracy and free world... also, US has no greater claim to be the ruler of pacific region compared to China. in fact, if you look at the map, opposite is true.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  > It's not as if the US government is fighting anyone with any real air capability. The problem isn't air superiority (yet). Building a stealth aircaft isn't only about beating some enemy equivalent. The problem mainly, very simplified, is that advanced AA is getting better and more widespread at a faster rate than aircrafts are improving. In order to conduct operations in "denied airspace" you need a combination of stealth aircraft, drones, advanced standoff weapons etc that is becoming increasingly complex and expensive. Advanced long-range anti air like S-300/400 and similar are becoming so accurate and so long range, that anyone who can field them can effectively deny enormous (country-sized) bits of airspace. If not even 5th gen stealth aircraft are safe to fly in an airspace then the air superiority will require control of the ground. This changes the way the US can (or can't) project power abroad pretty significantly.
sevenless 10y ago
The 21st century belongs to whichever country first ditches the mentality of preparing to refight WW2, and builds a robotic air and submarine force.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  Totally, we could call it skynet! I know it will happen eventually, let's just hope we can survive it, or maybe have world peace by then as even conventional warfare becomes MAD.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  I agree entirely. Drone swarms are the future. And a lot of the existing thinking about solving communications blockage is backwards, swarms in the future will be self reliant, only receiving "big picture" orders from command and allowed to carry those out. The F-35 may be the last major manned aircraft to take to the skies. With drone swarms, it will be outnumbered, and won't have enough munitions aboard to take out a dozen or more drones. This is tech already in active development at the normal research institutions and other major nations seem to have similar development programs. The US might get a full life out of the F-35, but I doubt they'll build its successor.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    > swarms in the future will be self reliant I think the biggest issue is the size and power requirements of modern radars. You can't make tiny drones if none of them has a radar, so you need at least some of them to be big. If it's big and has a power hungry radar, then it also needs a big powerplant. The big powerplant drinks a lot of fuel to get any range etc. etc. If a small craft could be self reliant, then we would already be building homing missiles that provide their own radar. We don't because it makes them too big, slow, heavy and expensive! A BVR missile like the AIM-120 relies on the Radar of the firing aircraft for finding the target. So the drones will have to be launched from carrying aircraft. We'll definitely see groups of planes very soon where some are manned, and they may be simpler and cheaper than the manned equivalent, and another category of drone that is actually launched from the carrying aircraft to rely on its range. This will limit the number of big expensive planes needed, but in reality what they did then was replace cruise missiles and standoff bombs with drones, not the launching planes. > The US might get a full life out of the F-35, but I doubt they'll build its successor. I also doubt they will ever make a "joint" effort again. We'll continue to see large and expensive planes though, so long as radars are massively powerful and we haven't invented backpack size Megawatt-hour batteries or tiny fusion reactors.

32 points by RachelF 10y ago

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

"poses significant affordability risks" - this is my new favorite euphemism for "bloody expensive".

Gibbon1 10y ago
It's potentially a real issue, if the F-35 consumes too much of the Marines budget they won't have money for the stuff they do need. Think NASA with the space shuttle.

x5n1 10y ago

So what. It's not as if the US government is fighting anyone with any real air capability. You could use Vietnam aircraft and still win against the threat.

Gibbon1 10y ago
Problem currently (Iraq and Syria) is the Air Force is being only able to run limited sorties against a large number of small targets like pickup trucks with 20mm cannons on the back.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  The way to hit an unsophisticated target like that is come at them out of the sun. They won't see or hear you coming.
  - Laforet 10y ago
    The problems is that the F-35's ground attack capacity is better suited to destory large hardened targets such as latest MBTs fielded by Russia and China, rather than the small, numerous and arguably unsophisticated technicals or the proverbial dude running with an RPG. It will cost several times more and does not work as well.
    - UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
      Frankly the 1963 B-52Hs are extremely effective at that mission. They can drop enough munitions to level a medium sized city WITHOUT nukes.
      - icelancer 10y ago
        For sure. The "flying bomb truck" has looped back around to being extremely powerful for current engagements against insurgents. The F35 is indeed one of those... it just costs 100x more than it should.
  - 13of40 10y ago
    While you're doing that, everyone else (who aren't, incidentally, in line with you and the sun) should be firing full auto at a point in front of your aircraft so you fly through a cloud of bullets.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      It's pretty hard to do a deflection shot against a target moving 500 mph that you have maybe a second or two to line up on.
      - lmm 10y ago
        Sure, but how many trucks can you field for the cost of one F-35? It only has to work one time out of a hundred, or even one in a thousand.
        WalterBright 10y ago
        The main trouble with the F-35 is it is so expensive it can't be risked in actual combat.
      - 13of40 10y ago
        They'd be going slower than that for a ground attack. Also, "In the Korean War, our Air Force lost 259 jet aircraft and 285 other aircraft to combined small arms and air defense fire, which is nearly five times as many aircraft that were lost in air-to-air combat. In South Vietnam, we lost 410 fixed-wing aircraft and 2,100 helicopters. In the Mideast War, 36 coalition aircraft were shot down by ground fire." [1]. [1] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/44-8/ch5.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/f...
        WalterBright 10y ago
        Sure, but the NK and NV armies did have good anti-aircraft setups, likely much more effective than relatively untrained fighters with a weapon designed to shoot at other people with. Richthofen in WW1 was brought down by a single shot from a rifle, but that is widely considered to be a freak shot. Nevertheless, you're right that it is never safe to get in range of small arms fire, hence the genesis of the A-10.
  - Gibbon1 10y ago
    F-35 has 180-220 rounds, that's it.
tomjen3 10y ago
Right, but the better planes are needed for deterrent.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  If the money was used instead in financial vehicles for the adversarial countries in question, the created economic codependence would very likely be more effective than this plane
  - siscia 10y ago
    Or on better education... In both sides of the conflicts...
  - rat87 10y ago
    Peace is nice but I wouldn't count on a large amount of trade to end all wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion > The Great Illusion is a book by Norman Angell, first published in the United Kingdom in 1909 > Angell argued that war between industrial countries was futile because conquest did not pay. J.D.B. Miller writes: "The 'Great Illusion' was that nations gained by armed confrontation, militarism, war, or conquest."[3] The economic interdependence between industrial countries meant that war would be economically harmful to all the countries involved. Moreover, if a conquering power confiscated property in the territory it seized, "the incentive to produce [of the local population] would be sapped and the conquered area be rendered worthless. Thus, the conquering power had to leave property in the hands of the local population while incurring the costs of conquest and occupation."[3] ... He was partially right though > Angell said that arms build-up, for example the naval race that was happening as he wrote the book in the early 1910s, was not going to secure peace. Instead, it would lead to increased insecurity and thus increase the likelihood of war.
    - kristopolous 10y ago
      That's a pretty old framework. The idea of peace through codependency is AFAIK a bit newer. The biggest problem is that it looks like it could lead to sovereign insolvency which can backfire if it leads to economic calamity and the rise of a political group with an eye on conquest (see Europe 1930s) As an interesting aside, I'm no fan of wealth inequality. However, if it looks like it's the primary mechanism that is prolonging relative global peace (as in no biological or nuclear weapons being used), I may accept the tradeoff. There's a balance, to be a bit vulgar, between "alright we need to pay this" and "fuck this debt, we're storming the castle"
mrweasel 10y ago
The Danish government have the same issue. The plan is to buy 27 F-35s, but that's not really enough for anything. They are suppose to replace 60 F-16s. Even if the F-35 is as good as it's claimed, and the Russians are coming, I think you'd be better of with twice the number of some less advanced planes.
- tehrei 10y ago
  At this point it's fair to say that anyone waiting on F-35 would have been better served by just ordering more Warthogs.
  - duncan_bayne 10y ago
    Serious question: at what point in the entire F-35 development process was that _not_ true?
    - Marazan 10y ago
      Right at the start the F35 programme looked like the sensible choice and the F22 was perceived as a ludicrous expensive pointless prestige project. Then the F35 got Christmas treed to death.
      - icelancer 10y ago
        Well, the F22 is still fairly pointless, isn't it? The JSF/F35 is a joke, obviously as well.
        Marazan 10y ago
        The F-22 is the best high altitude air superiority fighter in existence. It's ludicrously expensive and it is ludicrously over capable for the actual missions it flies but it did completely achieve it's role specification.
  - mrweasel 10y ago
    Not it you need to replace F-16s and you're only able to afford to operate one type of fighter plane.
spatulan 10y ago
Because nations tend to avoid starting wars they'll obviously lose. If the US military falls behind technologically, other nations might start thinking defeat isn't so obvious any more.
- NamTaf 10y ago
  South America isn't invading you any time soon and every other mob has a whopping great pile of water to cross and not much in the way of an active carrier fleet to support it, or they're already your allies. The only one that falls into your threat category is Russia. Is Russia really about to invade the US at the first sign of air supremacy weakness? You still have enough nukes to cause literal worldwide armageddon 20 times over.
  - rtpg 10y ago
    A lot easier to set up no fly zones (World Police) when your planes are a lot better than the competition. Why even leave a shadow of a doubt that the enemy could win in a dogfight? I think that's the rationale presented here
  - MagnumOpus 10y ago
    It's not about invading the US. It is about challenging their regional dominance. If the US isn't willing or able to commit to defending Japan, Taiwan or Philippines, then Mainland China will be happy to recreate a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under CCP leadership and to claim the Pacific and Indian Ocean for itself. While that wouldn't hurt the average American in the short run, the long-term consequences of it in geopolitical terms would be extreme.
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      considering how much evil was done by US in last 15 years worldwide and how many millions of innocents died/suffer daily just because of lust for money and power, i am perfectly happy with Chinese taking banner of world supreme power for next few decades. side-by-side comparison of last 20-30 years leaves US in shame. I have more trust in Chinese party leaders rather than joke US presidency had become, with all those shady machinations behind the scenes. No, it ain't great either, but definitely lesser of an evil and US is spiraling down faster than ever. and it was once a beacon of democracy and free world... also, US has no greater claim to be the ruler of pacific region compared to China. in fact, if you look at the map, opposite is true.
alkonaut 10y ago
> It's not as if the US government is fighting anyone with any real air capability. The problem isn't air superiority (yet). Building a stealth aircaft isn't only about beating some enemy equivalent. The problem mainly, very simplified, is that advanced AA is getting better and more widespread at a faster rate than aircrafts are improving. In order to conduct operations in "denied airspace" you need a combination of stealth aircraft, drones, advanced standoff weapons etc that is becoming increasingly complex and expensive. Advanced long-range anti air like S-300/400 and similar are becoming so accurate and so long range, that anyone who can field them can effectively deny enormous (country-sized) bits of airspace. If not even 5th gen stealth aircraft are safe to fly in an airspace then the air superiority will require control of the ground. This changes the way the US can (or can't) project power abroad pretty significantly.

sevenless 10y ago

The 21st century belongs to whichever country first ditches the mentality of preparing to refight WW2, and builds a robotic air and submarine force.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
Totally, we could call it skynet! I know it will happen eventually, let's just hope we can survive it, or maybe have world peace by then as even conventional warfare becomes MAD.
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
I agree entirely. Drone swarms are the future. And a lot of the existing thinking about solving communications blockage is backwards, swarms in the future will be self reliant, only receiving "big picture" orders from command and allowed to carry those out. The F-35 may be the last major manned aircraft to take to the skies. With drone swarms, it will be outnumbered, and won't have enough munitions aboard to take out a dozen or more drones. This is tech already in active development at the normal research institutions and other major nations seem to have similar development programs. The US might get a full life out of the F-35, but I doubt they'll build its successor.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- alkonaut 10y ago
  > swarms in the future will be self reliant I think the biggest issue is the size and power requirements of modern radars. You can't make tiny drones if none of them has a radar, so you need at least some of them to be big. If it's big and has a power hungry radar, then it also needs a big powerplant. The big powerplant drinks a lot of fuel to get any range etc. etc. If a small craft could be self reliant, then we would already be building homing missiles that provide their own radar. We don't because it makes them too big, slow, heavy and expensive! A BVR missile like the AIM-120 relies on the Radar of the firing aircraft for finding the target. So the drones will have to be launched from carrying aircraft. We'll definitely see groups of planes very soon where some are manned, and they may be simpler and cheaper than the manned equivalent, and another category of drone that is actually launched from the carrying aircraft to rely on its range. This will limit the number of big expensive planes needed, but in reality what they did then was replace cruise missiles and standoff bombs with drones, not the launching planes. > The US might get a full life out of the F-35, but I doubt they'll build its successor. I also doubt they will ever make a "joint" effort again. We'll continue to see large and expensive planes though, so long as radars are massively powerful and we haven't invented backpack size Megawatt-hour batteries or tiny fusion reactors.