6 ms·
Why the F-35 Isn’t Good Enough for Japan
- megaman22 9y agoWhat a frigging boondoggle that thing is. I'm disgusted that we've spent so much money fiddle-frigging around on it. At best it's a technological dead end - manned aircraft in the roles envisioned for it will seem increasingly silly in the coming years.
- sintaxi 9y agoUnmanned aircraft works as a strike fighter once air superiority is established but I don't see how it can replace a stealth air superiority jet at this time.
- greglindahl 9y agoIs it possible to have air superiority because of missiles fired from the ground? A bit less heroic than manned fighter jets in dogfights, but ...
- pietroglyph 9y agoIt seems difficult to create a platform which securely moves said missiles. Although ships somewhat fill this role, they're still huge fairly immobile targets. I think the high speed ceiling/mobility of the sky is what makes a flying missile delivery platform better than one based on land or sea.
- newnewpdro 9y agoDon't submarines fill this role?
- greglindahl 9y agoThe US already uses them that way, albeit mostly for submarine-to-ground missiles instead of submarine-to-air.
- riku_iki 9y agoSubmarines usually don't have good radar, so they can't lock on difficult air targets.
- newnewpdro 9y agoThat makes sense, I guess I assumed they just need to surface briefly then it's all the same.
- riku_iki 9y agoAnd how you will bring those missile on enemy territory? Also dogfight is not a thing for many years, modern jets can also use missiles..
- greglindahl 9y agoThere are missiles fired from the ground which have long range. Since they don't have to be carried by a plane, they can be bigger. Or if you really want missiles fired from a plane, they can be fired from an unmanned plane.
- riku_iki 9y ago> There are missiles fired from the ground which have long range. Since they don't have to be carried by a plane, they can be bigger. Current generation of US surface to air missiles has range of about 200 miles, which is not that much. > Or if you really want missiles fired from a plane, they can be fired from an unmanned plane. Maybe, but what exactly you propose? Remove pilot from F-35? Or build something completely new?
- greglindahl 9y agoMy suggestion is to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on longer-range SAMs and more fragile, unmanned, missile-carrying aircraft cheaper than the F35. Sorry if this isn't obvious, I've seen lots of other people (including people in the military) suggest the same thing.
- riku_iki 9y agoOk, let's assume your aircraft succeeded to gain air superiority, now you need to do actual bombing of enemy territory with air defense. What now? F-35 has some edge by being stealthy. It can track and target moving targets, it can do CAS. Will your fragile aircraft survive in such conditions?
- 9y ago
- megaman22 9y agoBut it's a shitty air superiority platform, compared to its specialized predecessors, as the article highlights. It's only a matter of time before anything manned aircraft can do, unmanned will be capable of. And likely more, since the unmanned won't have to keep the meat-bags behind the yoke alive or conscious.
- mrep 9y agoCannot drones be jammed which would effectively make them useless?
- manicdee 9y agoHumans can be blinded quite easily. Surely nobody would rely completely on a flight control system that can be completely disabled with a twenty cent laser operated by untrained personnel? Autonomous aircraft will be designed to operate with no communications, since they need to be able to land at an airstrip after a mission with potential damage.
- newnewpdro 9y agoThat may be true, but the linked article paints the F-35 in a pretty negative light as an air superiority platform.
- sintaxi 9y agoThe F-22 is no doubt better but the F-35 would still dominate against anything else. Quite effortlessly in fact. My take is the US Military wants F-22s back in production and they are working with Japan to help build a case so congress will pass it. "We already have a customer who wants 150 Raptors, yada yada yada American jobs." That's the way I read this. Japan is in no position to refuse the F-35 given its capabilities thats why I think the DOD is somehow behind this.
- sterlind 9y agoYeah, the article's predictions were pretty heavy-handed and curiously specific. The article hinted that Japan might be eager to share development of the F-22... perhaps if the production lines were restarted, Mitsubishi could do the assembly of surplus F-22 parts with less cost. Though, I'm not sure we'll have time to make any F-22s before Japan really needs them in the air.
- sintaxi 9y agoGood point. For sure Japan wants in on the development. Jobs is how politicians justify the insane price tag to tax payers. If Japan lowers the cost of F22 to below the F35 that would be a huge blow to the JSF.
- newnewpdro 9y agoIsn't the F-35 already more costly than the F-22 without Japan's involvement?
- captainmuon 9y agoI am mostly making this up, but it would seem to me that a fleet of autonomous drones would be far superior to any fighter. You could get many drones for the price of one fighter. They can carry more fuel and/or ammunition, and they could fly maneuvers that are impossible with human pilots. I could also imagine that if you have several planes in one area, you could better defeat stealth by having each plane "paint" laser targets for the others, or by using their radars together.
- sintaxi 9y agoAll that matters is which side has the superior platform. Ever seen hornets raid a hive of honey bees?
- throwaway000021 9y agoAustralia couldn't be more eager to spend tens of billions on this white elephant. But of course anything the U.S. says is good for Australia just has to be, right? We'd have been better off spending billions buying anti ship missiles.
- Trundle 9y agoNo you were right with the second sentence. We're better off spending our defence budget doing what the US says. Unless we're going to nuke up, our defence strategy is being an actual powers bitch. Solid relations with the US will go a lot further than some anti ship missiles.
- eksemplar 9y agoExcept right now, you may be paying for a lot of nothing because US relations change from tweet to tweet. I mean, I know politics is playing for the long run in these things, and Trump won’t be there in 10 years, but his voters might, and if the US is really closing up, then the powers at be near Australia just might end up being China.
- sjwright 9y agoIt would be worth reconsidering if and when the Trump influence proves itself to be durable, not before, not reflexively. The thing to remember is that Trumpism is a combination of cynicism towards prior experts/elites, and Donald’s extreme narcissism. The latter is certainly not durable.
- eksemplar 9y agoThere is no doubt that Trump is the temporary protest vote, but nationalism is on the rise everywhere. Before WWII America was perfectly fine minding its own business, and it might be dangerous to plan for their internationalism to recover post Trump.
- Trundle 9y ago
- sintaxi 9y agoI suspect someone within the US Military or Lockheed Martin is putting Japan up to this in order to build a case to get the F-22 back in production. I'm unconvinced Japan really sees the F-35 as inadequate.
- farseer 9y agoJapan would be better off with the F-22 but I don't believe Lockheed would want to restart production on that. Such a decision would disturb the perfect political engineering Lockheed has done by spreading out the F-35 logistics across all 50 states.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoI believe it would require Congressional approval at this point to sell the F-22 to foreign powers.
- dingaling 9y ago> As a single engine light platform with a small arsenal of just four air-to-air missiles It is quite the opposite, it is a lardy brute heavier than Japan's two previous top-line fighters: Maximum take-off weight tonnes / installed thrust tonnes / length F-35A 31.8 / 19 / 15.7 F-15C 30.8 / 22 / 19.4 F-4E 28 / 16.4 / 19.2 And for comparison: F-22 38+ / 32 / 18.9 Both the F-15 and 22 show their air superiority primary mission with higher thrust-to-weight ratios, which approach unity once transit field is burned off. But the F-35 is not a light fighter, it is a modern-day F-4. Maybe it should have been named Phantom III...
- riku_iki 9y agoI think they refer to the fact that only 4 AIM-120 missiles currently can fit F-35's internal bay. It is promised to be fixed in the future, with 6 missiles be places inside.
- LyndsySimon 9y agoMy understanding is that an F-35 carrying AIM-120s (AMRAAMs) is kind of a stopgap measure anyhow. The AMRAAM was designed to be deployed externally on the F-15 and F-16; the next-generation missile will be smaller and designed to be deployed in internal bays, therefore increasing the number that can be carried. My memory said that the new missile was called the "NRAAM" or something similar, but I can't find reference to it anywhere after a brief search. Maybe that idea was scrapped?
- riku_iki 9y agoI never heard about any planned AMRAAM successor.. Also those missiles would have shorter range if being smaller..
- apta 9y ago> The F-35 has less than half the range of the larger F-22 and lacks the Raptor’s advanced long ranged air-to-air missiles What long range missiles? I thought the longest range missiles carried by both fighters are the AMRAAMs.