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The U.S. Air Force Has Doubts About the F-35

69 points by noyesno 5y ago

laydn 5y ago
Ah yes, yet ANOTHER fighter jet program. I am sure this time, they will get it right (on time, on budget). /S
btilly 5y ago
Never worry, if the F-35 remains the mess that people expect, Russia is happy to sell its aptly named Checkmate in answer..to everyone except the USA. https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/334416-russian-checkmate-fighter-jet https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/334416-russian-checkma...
- Giorgi 5y ago
  Russians are well-known of selling half-baked low quality junk to it's partners. Also Russian economy is same as of Spain, they lack both know-how, technology and expertise in developing of high-end weapons. Soviet Union days are long gone and it's successor Russia is a mafia-run state. That article is just a Russian propaganda of some mockup that Russia can't make.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    Just like those so-called "hypersonic missiles", 3D-rendered on Mosfilm, and even poorly rendered at that!
  - Stranger43 5y ago
    People were saying the same doing soviet days, it seems to be some kind of jingoistic fantasy that have never really played out in the real world i.e. every time nato/us supplied forces encounter competently operated Russian kit they have had to fight it out based on numbers and logistics rather then depend on the technological inferiority of the opposing forces weapons. The same goes for say French, Swedish or Indian planes who does tend to hold up a lot better in real world conditions then the derision they get from the pentagon propagandist doing procurement suggests. The truth is that the technologies involved is so mature that any largish economy can put out reasonable effective platforms the reason nobody else then the US is making stealth have more to do with the limitations of stealth then the fact that it requires secret knowledge only possessed by the US.
    - Joker_vD 5y ago
      The image of the enemy has to be self-contradictory: it has to be both scary and fearsome ― to justify the defence spending ― but also feeble and laughable ― again, yo justify the defence spending: the intended mindset is "the victory is inevitable", not "let's just surrender immediately". You can see it everywhere, everywhen, it's a universal propaganda tactics since the dawn of mankind, rediscovered independently and I'd say even subconsciously. And it's applicable even in non-military spending: a month ago some US newspaper (Bloomberg? WP? Don't recall exactly) managed, in the same article, accuse Russia both of a) it sells to much gas to Europe too cheap to make it dependent on Russia; b) Russia doesn't sell Europe enough of gas, it should ramp up the sales immediately. Yes, in different paragraphs, but it still kinda funny when you notice it. Or that one time when Biden simultaneously called everyone to double down on transfer to green energy, battling the climate change, and also demanded from OPEC to increase oil output and then even released 50 million barrels of oil from the reserves, because expensive oil is bad for economy, you know.
      - drran 5y ago
        > accuse Russia both of a) it sells to much gas to Europe too cheap to make it dependent on Russia; b) Russia doesn't sell Europe enough of gas, it should ramp up the sales immediately a) RF increased its share in EU market for natural gas too much. Everybody worried that RF can decrease supply rapidly to skyrocket price. b) RF decreased supply of natural gas rapidly to skyrocket price.
        Joker_vD 5y ago
        Well, RF (30% of market share) did not decrease the supply, it was the demand that rose "unexpectedly". Well, why did the US not rescue the EU with additional supplies of LNG, for example? The gas terminals were built several years pretty much for this reason, to be able to buy LNG from the US and Qatar to diversify the supplies. Why did Norway with its 35% market share not increase the supply via its pipelines? Nope, it is Russia that must increase the supply, apparently to the level of having about 50% of market share, but that would be fine this time because... reasons? Also, RF resisted until the very last from switching from the long-term contracts to the spot contracts, it was forced to do so by the court decision in 2019, sued by Poland that argued that the spot market price is fairer (it also got $2 billion refunded to the boot). Two years later, this November, Poland tried to sue again, arguing now that the spot market price is unfair, and Gazprom should only take the previously negotiated price, and refund whatever was overpaid to it (about $5 billion IIRC). I understand that all this is pretty much how haggling looks like when the hagglers are nation-states who have to sell the deals to their population somehow: selective reporting, overstating some circumstances, understating other, selective application of arguments, etc. But the end result is still exorbitant heating/electrical bills and cold houses all over the country but you also get to feel outraged at the other side, as a bonus.
  - Atatator 5y ago
    I wonder, why e.g. S-400 then is so popular. Even Turkey, a NATO member purchases them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system#Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system#Turkey Why India has signed an agreement to produce over half a million AK-203 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/deal-for-ak-203-rifles-between-india-russia-finalised/articleshow/88118637.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/deal-for-a... ? Even if we take nominal GDP, Russian GDP is roughly 17% higher than Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... If we take GDP by PPP, then it's more than twice that of Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Russia is a mafia run state, true, and they're severely behind in many areas. However, they have very capable military hardware, and in many types of it, quantity has a quality of its own. It doesn't matter much that an M1 Abrams is technically superior than a T-14 Armata if for the same budget you can get three times more Armatas. That, and ease of maintenance and support, is among the reasons why Russian military hardware is very popular and sells extremely well, even if it might not be the best objectively compared to the competition. And sometimes it is better, like the S-400 SAM which is objectively better than the Patriot, or some types of missiles ( e.g. BrahMos). Or BMPs/BTRs that are even popular with very US friendly Gulf states which don't care about budgets. Regarding Spain, they have literally developed a (small) aircraft carrier, frigates, supply ships, submarines that were successfully sold abroad. Airbus Military is based in Spain, and they're working on a future stealth 6 gen fighter with Dassault Aviation, Thales and Indra ( which are fully Spanish). Don't shit on smaller countries just because they don't have the same budget as the US.
    - Giorgi 5y ago
      Except every these example have huge issues: 1. T-14 Armata never entered into serial production, Russia lacks resources to actually make it into product, they just built cardboard prototype and left it there. Abrams is being produced like hot cakes. It's just Russia's claim that T-14 is superior but there is 0 proof. 2. Maintenance and support of junk is still junk 3. It's Russia's claim that S-400 SAM is better, but nobody knows the truth, in fact S-300 only proved itself in battle by shooting down civilian aircraft over Ukraine when Russia invaded it, killing innocent children in the air. 4. BMP/BTR lack sufficient armor to the point that soldiers prefer to go marching on their own foot because it is basically death trap to be inside BMP/BTR APC. Yes, Spain is doing way better than shithole Russia, after all Russian people is being ruled by Tzar Putin and they like it.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        Did you misread 3/4 of what i said and add a bunch of outright wrong statements? I never claimed the Armata is superior, and it doesn't matter. Swap Armata for the T-90, T-80 or heck T-72, the same logic applies. Lower quality arms of certain types, such as tanks, at sufficient numbers can easily overwhelm even much better equipment. Easy maintenance of not great hardware is better than complex maintenance of magnificent hardware. Just ask the Germans, Americans and Russians during WW2. The Sherman tank was a piece of shit on paper, but was easy to maintain, and could be produced in huge numbers. The Tiger sounds scary on paper, but it didn't matter since there weren't enough of them, and the few that existed broke down easily. S-400 is probably better. The Patriot system is old, and doesn't even have 360 field of fire. Turkey went as far as getting kicked out of the F-35 programme over the S-400, so it's not only the Russians' word. Furthermore, it's an improvement over the earlier S-300, which is widely deployed and understood, and is generally a good and well liked system. (And note: it wasn't an S-300 that was used to shoot down the civilian airliner in Ukraine, it was a Buk, which is a mobile AA system, unlike the S series, which is (mostly) static for defense of specific areas). BTR isn't supposed to protect from more than small arms fire, being a light armoured vehicle and all. BMPs aren't APCs, but IFV. Do you have a source on your ridiculous claim that infantry prefer to march on foot? BMPs were used in Yemen and I've heard of no such thing. Spain is doing decently, and so is Russia. ( In terms of armament, in terms of civil liberties and all that stuff Russia is far behind).
rado 5y ago
Same.
Gravityloss 5y ago
Finland is deciding on its biggest national purchase ever this year, new fighters to replace the F/A-18 Hornets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Program . It seems every fighter has had its share of scandals, though the local press of course doesn't report of a lot of it. The lift fan space in the B variant has forced a "fat" design on all the three variants, with resulting aerodynamic penalties. To me, it seems it would have been relatively easy to just design a new airframe ignoring any commonality in airframe, because - the airframe is not the expensive part. Maybe it was in the fifties still. Instead use all the systems like the engine, avionics, sensors, software etc where the cost anyway is nowadays. Even aerodynamic design can be done with computers nowadays so you don't need so much calendar time in costly wind tunnels.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  The Ryan Vertifan was a cool design but I imagine how F35's is done has advantages. Wonder what the Russians thought about their Yak 141.
- CapricornNoble 5y ago
  Pretty sure I heard a USAF general make a similar argument for the way ahead / 6th gen aircraft development: that airframes need to be iterated faster, with sensor and weapon packages being much more plug-and-play. So we should be able to stuff the same AESA + Distributed Aperture Sensors in a single seat/single engine fighter, a tandem-seat strikefighter, and a side-by-side seat penetration bomber. You replace the airframes as your materials science improves and your desired flight envelopes/mission profiles change. You replace the internals as your electrical & software engineering improves. Alternate between the two, like Intels old "Tick/Tock" cycle. Far better than doing clean-sheet designs that need to debug EVERYTHING new simultaneously.
  - Stranger43 5y ago
    SaaB have been putting this philosophy into production planes for close to a decade, and it's been talked about a lot within the eurofighter consortium. We don't hear much about how say India or Israel does thing but both have a record of performing significant modifications/improvement to existing airframes.
ardit33 5y ago
This is slightly old news: TLDR: F-35 is too expensive to maintain and operate, therefore the USAF wants a 4.5Gen Fighter (non stealth, but with updated electronics) to replace the older F-16 that will be retired soon. This is similar to the strategy that the russians did with the unveiling of their 'Checkmate' light weight fighter last month. So the USAF wants more funds to build yet another fighter. (it has already a 6gen fighter in development). I feel it is going to be another waste of money. It wont be much better than an updated FA-18 or an F-15EX with more advanced electronics. The best thing it can do is to accelerate the development of the 6gen fighter, and mass produce a cheaper 'non-stealth' version of it as the cheaper version, but with the same electronics. The best way to do cost saving by scaling up production of the same internal components/avionics.
- xvector 5y ago
  Non-stealth fighters seem kind of pointless in this era. In any real mission won't a beyond-visual-range missile just shoot you out of the sky?
  - croes 5y ago
    Fighters with on board pilots seem pointless. Mass beats intelligence
  - albertopv 5y ago
    Not at all. Radars are advancing too and what today is a stealth fighter might not be in 10 years. If the fighter has poor handling characteristics it could be useless in much less time than predicted.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    Not at all. Almost all of the bombs being dropped are against people armed with whatever rocks are laying around on the ground. Until a beyond-visual-range rock throwning champion emerges there is little risk to conventional, non-stealth, airframes.
  - msh 5y ago
    Depends a lot on who you are fighting.
AndyMcConachie 5y ago
Everyone who wasn't a shill for the defense industry has been pointing out the uselessness of the F-35 for over 10 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI It's purpose is not to conduct war effectively. It's purpose is to transfer public wealth into private hands.
- Pelic4n 5y ago
  >unironically quoting Pierre Sprey https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense
quiffledwerg 5y ago
These are the planes that the military builds when in peacetime controlled by vested interests. In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes. The US is focused on building complex overly technology focused boondoggle machines that take far to long to design and build and cost too much and underperform. It’s a robot war future anyway.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Realistically the US is never going to fight a war with an equal adversary. When they did WW3 simulations in the cold war it always ended with mushroom clouds.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    I dunno, what happens if China decides it's going after tsmc?
    - quiffledwerg 5y ago
      Can I just say “China going after TSMC” is one of the silliest ideas I’ve heard. I know people discuss it as plausible in some way, but you only need to think for a microsecond to work out it’s not. There’s so many reasons why they’d end up with zero that there’s little point even starting to articulate them.
    - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
      Like I said: mushroom clouds. And I am sure Chinese military staff knows it.
- remus 5y ago
  > In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes. I think this is partly because if you are not currently at war then you don't know who or when you will be at war with and what exactly the threats will look like so you end up designing for a range of scenarios. If you're currently in the midst of a big war than the requirements are clearer (but certainly not clear!)
jonathankoren 5y ago
Recent article on the proposed 5- generation aircraft, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41138/the-air-force-might-make-two-distinct-versions-of-its-next-multirole-stealth-fighter https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41138/the-air-force-mi...
nowherebeen 5y ago
The F-35 is a prime example of Sunk Cost Fallacy.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Also of the perils of design by committee
  - gherkinnn 5y ago
    It also violates the single responsibility principle.
    - choward 5y ago
      And if it ain't broke don't fix it.
      - Woodi 5y ago
        Also implementation is not what client had in mind :)
    - mcv 5y ago
      Feature creep. It's got to be able to everything and then some.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I’m still crossing my fingers half our budget for this plane was diverted to secret research - perhaps into something rather tic-tac shaped… was the blackbird and nighthawk development reported in the open like the F35? or were they developed within black budgets diverted from other, apparently wasteful projects? disclaimer: I get all my info from “Independence Day”
- devoutsalsa 5y ago
  You don't think they actually spend 20K on a hammer, 30K on a toilet seat, or 1.7 trillion on a fighter jet program, do you?
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Is it not 1.7T over it's whole lifetime? As far as I'm aware it is.
    - devoutsalsa 5y ago
      Yeah, it is. Hence "fighter jet program". Why use the cost of just one jet when you can use the cost of the entire program? Never ruin a "good" joke by being moderate.
  - andbberger 5y ago
    too bad we don't get any special access trains when we spend billions more than the rest of the world on transit projects.
  - chrisjc 5y ago
    Not discount your assertion, but wasn't the $20K cost of the hammer due to the material it was made from? Something about having to work in a spark free environment?
  - Symmetry 5y ago
    The hammer and the documentation associated with proving that they weren't spending excess money on the hammer and providing a chain of responsibility if that hammer breaks. Plus cost-plus contracting encourages companies to find clever ways to spend more money on everything since their profits are a fixed percentage of their costs. Seriously, yes it is actually that screwed up, that money is going into salaries for stupid makework and profits rather than black budgets.
joosters 5y ago
Are manned fighter jets obsolete by now? Surely we can produce drones that are just as capable, if not more so, and they would be vastly, order-of-magnitude cheaper than the planes that have to protect squishy human beings. Being cheaper means you can have more of them, which then could mean you don't even need to worry about the expensive stealth features. So what if the enemy detects one and shoots it down? The four other drones can carry on with the mission.
- Stranger43 5y ago
  The drones have a big problem in that they can be knocked out of communications with the ground support infrastructure using fairly cheap portable ECM equipment so have a limited scope for usage limited to friendly skies or roles that is being filled efficiently by current-gen missiles as it is. The days when manned bombers played any role in the first strike against an capable foe ended decades ago, today's fighters are used when you need on the spot decision making whether it is to interdict errant civilian planes or provide close air support to infantry.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >The drones have a big problem in that they can be knocked out of communications with the ground support infrastructure using fairly cheap portable ECM equipment What about autonomous drones? Can't you have AI piloted drones with ML models trained on thousands of hours of combat missions, where you just punch in the mission objective and the acceptable outcome/casualty levels, and it can decide for itself how to carry it out if communication is lost? That feels terrifying but it does sound like where the future is going.
    - Stranger43 5y ago
      yes for missions that does not change underway or where the objectives don't contain loosely defined objectives with moral ambiguity, and for the vast amount of those you don't really need anything beyond and 80ies computer system running relatively conventional procedural code, which is why they have been performed using cruise missiles or artillery for decades. The problem is that the missions flown requires a lot more judgement then modern machine learning is capable of providing, or that we are likely to entrust solely to an computer anytime soon. Yes the skynet scenario is increasingly likely but it's also something military planners are aware of especially doing periods of diplomatic tensions like the ones we are under now where you really don't want an trigger happy automated defence system in charge of fully armed missiles. There is also the issue that all we know is that the next war will have it's own entirely new politically defined strategic constraints, where the most effective tactical strategy is might be blocked out due to long term diplomatic/political consequences.
LatteLazy 5y ago
It's interesting that people seem to have such black and white views of such a huge, complex, long term, international programme...
piokoch 5y ago
F-35 has a few very strong points. For instance it has best available radar and other sensors, so for a country that does not have dedicated AWACS plane, it can serve as (not so) poor man AWACS. Being somewhat stealth and being able to carry JASSM/JASSM-ER missiles it is useful for the not so great army that want to attack the opponent on the opponent's territory (not really US army use case...). F-35 sounds like a good solution for, say, Poland, since Polish F-35 (Harpias) maneuvering unnoticed near Belorussian border will be able to attack Russian forces, supply lines all the way to the Smolensk Gate (50-mile-wide territory between the Dzwina and Dnieper rivers), which is a main attack direction for Russian army. Similarly, planes operating in the middle of Poland can attack targets in Kaliningrad - another crucial strategic ability for Polish defense. Note, that dogfight capabilities (in which F-35 is worst than F-16) does not matter here, Polish or Finnish army will always avoid confronting Russian air forces in the direct air strike, as they will be outnumber by Russians. Strangely, it seems that F-35 is much more useful for other armies than US army so no surprise US army wants something different. Another thing is that F-16 Viper has sensors almost at the level of F-35, can carry JASSM missiles, but it is way, way, cheaper to buy and maintain...
- Arnt 5y ago
  I'll bite... how long can an F-35 maneuver unnoticed near the border? And if they have weapons that can hit Kaliningrad usefully from the middle of Poland, what benefit do these weapons derive from the F-35?
- jcun4128 5y ago
  Was curious the F35 design is like the PakFa where it's stealth from the front but the exhaust is not like an F22. I don't know offhand if the F22 design is for thermal reasons more than thrust vectoring. B2 I think is definitely thermal since it's inside/above the wing.
- trasz 5y ago
  In case of a shooting war all those F-35 would get destroyed by cruise missiles before they could take off. The only reason for Poland getting F-35 is trying to please the US and to participate in NATO missions.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
Again?
sc68cal 5y ago
County's infrastructure is falling apart but we had plenty of money for that piece of shit
- dkdk8283 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on what infrastructure is falling apart?
  - sc68cal 5y ago
    https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ We are depending on infrastructure that was built by the WPA during the great depression and right after WW2. The rot is deep.
    - dkdk8283 5y ago
      Isn’t it sensational to say all of our infrastructure is falling apart when the emphasis is just on bridges?
      - LinuxBender 5y ago
        They probably could have also mentioned the power grids that were not designed to last as long as they have and certainly not designed to scale to everyone having EV's. That will have to be addressed sooner than later. Then there is the topic of methane gas distribution and water distribution. Some cities have aging pipes or worse have lead components in their drinking water pipes. This gets tricky because the budgeting for some of this is partially local and partially federal with a smattering of multi-agency bureaucracy. There is also an aging PSTN telco network that probably should have been replaced by a much more modern and high capacity network to support modern data protocols and rural internet connectivity.
        sc68cal 5y ago
        You can also take a look at our country's airports. They are all worn out. I spent a lot of time in airports and they are all aging. There's been work to rehab some of the insides but many of them are too small, and what money there is to spend has been spent building new and ridiculous security barriers. Things like parking, shuttles, and baggage handling have not been invested in. Same with our roads. I drive up and down I95 and the roads are full of road snakes and patches.
KingOfCoders 5y ago
I like: "If you were to go back to the year 2000 and somebody said, ‘I can build an airplane that is stealthy and has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and can go supersonic,’ most people in the industry would have said that’s impossible" How anyone thought they get a cheaper plane which at the time was "impossible" is beyond me.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Here is the clip of the British F-35 failing take off and instead crashing into the sea: https://twitter.com/sebh1981/status/1465351592018956295 https://twitter.com/sebh1981/status/1465351592018956295 No doubt a technogical marvel but maybe too complex for practical use.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Bad comment. Ignoring that it's a new aircraft on a new carrier, the only thing close to a hypothesis at the moment is that an operator fucked up which could happen with any aircraft.
- codeduck 5y ago
  to be fair this was not the fault of the F-35 but rather most likely due to a rain cover that was supposed to be removed before flight. So human error rather than mechanical.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    That was the story at one point.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  Was the root cause of that incident not that the ground crew and the pilot all missed a “remove before flight” cover in their pre-flight routines? I.e. it was multiple humans making an error in their trained & checklisted pre-flight duty, rather than a failure of the aircraft.
throwaway4good 5y ago
A question to ask is: As long the west (the US) only goes to war with nations whose military is vastly inferior (like Iraq or Afghanistan). Then why do we need the F-35? An F-16 will do just as well against someone armed with an AK-47.
- FairlyInvolved 5y ago
  I think that's well-understood and the existence of the F-35 evidences the perceived threat from nations with more advanced militaries.
- codeduck 5y ago
  Not when the person next to the person with an AK-47 also has access to a modern man-portable surface to air missile.
- romwell 5y ago
  1. The air force is (one of the reasons) why the US has only been going to war with vastly inferior nations. 2. Go ask Ukraine about fighting rebels with AK-47s... who might occasionally get Buk missiles from a friendly slav on vacation. That's not to say anything about F-35, or F-16; just about the reason why keeping the birds up to date makes sense.
  - throwaway4good 5y ago
    The west is explicitly not going to war in/over Ukraine. Because as you implied it would be a war with Russia and that would be too much. And Ukraine does not have F-35s and will never have.
    - paganel 5y ago
      Not the OP, but it would have been interesting to see how well a plane like the F-35 handles ground-to-air missiles. My bet would be on the missiles, but maybe that's just a subjective take on my part (certainly not based on any concrete facts as I'm not an expert in this domain), but I'm thinking that if the Serbs of the 1990s managed to bring down a F-117 then the Russian technology of today (in theory much better up-to-date compared to what the Serbs had) should be quite a match for this plane.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
In my country we've had doubts about it for decades but in order not to offend America it was considered politically prudent to buy quite literally any crap the US makes at whatever cost. It's not like we're ever going to war anyway.
- mcv 5y ago
  I think in my country it was also driven by blind trust that whatever the US built was undoubtedly the best in the world.
- cipher_system 5y ago
  This also has to do with it making it easier to get military assistance from the United States in the case of war or conflict.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  Buying US hand me down weapons at inflated prices is basically paying for the US SaaS subscription fee: Security as a service. It was the same in Romania when joining NATO. They bought a bunch of retired F-16s at inflated prices which pissed off the Romanian taxpayers and the Frech and Swedish governments, since for that kind of money, the Romanian air force could have bought more modern and brand new Dassault or SAAB fighters while also supporting the local EU economy, but instead, they spent the money to buy themselves tickets at the US-ally table (possible corruption and bribes involved as well, but that's pretty much the norm in all defense related purchases)
hetspookjee 5y ago
Any country still investing in airplanes that hold pilots are wasting there money and should get their shit up to date. The days have been long gone that any pilot would be able to judge if their target is a yay or nay. The distances vastly overreach the capabilities of even the best person's eyes, and the added cost and complexity of putting a human in a jet are not worth it.
- quiffledwerg 5y ago
  Yeah but long range missions require people cause latency is a xitch.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I wonder how many nations need long range for defence? Of course offensive wars such as invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are different, but most uses for defence should happen relatively near to border.
    - burmanm 5y ago
      Defence is not that different from offence. An offensive task such as destroying enemy artillery behind their borders or their service routes is an effective way to defend. If the enemy has nothing to attack with, then defending is a lot easier.
  - gspr 5y ago
    If you want human control, those humans could just tag along in a cheap transport plane and linger at a safe distance close enough for low latency.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Symmetry 5y ago
      I think that would make sense for some missions like air superiority but not others like a deep strike into enemy territory. For the former we already have AWACs that perform nearly that role while also being big flying radars. For the later I think something like the F-35 might actually be the best solution, though with a number of robotic subordinates.
mrtksn 5y ago
Does anyone knows what's the argument to use manned planes over drones anyway? Turkey, which is kicked out if the F-35 program for political reasons, demonstrated huge success in battle through it's home grown drone programs. F-35's were supposed to be the stealth weapons who were to be able to penetrate Russia made air defences etc, but Turkey proved in Syria that relatively cheap drones can do just that. Before the Turkish drones, only Israel was able to hit a Russian made air defence system and that was done when it wasn't operational at that moment. During the conflicts between Azerbaijan-Armenia, Syria, Libya the Turkish made drones hunted down multiple such system and provided very impressive footage of the action. Again, Turkish drones are suspected to be used in first ever AI based attacks, where for the first time machines decided who to kill and who to spare[0]. Though Turkey has a sizeable engineering capacity, it's not a rich country. Budgets used to develop these drones are nowhere near the F-35 or similar projects. One wonders, what's the argument to invest so much in planes when there's low hanging fruits in the drones business. It seems to me, the 5th gen plane projects are like trying to breed the next gen horses instead of developing the automobiles. [0]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a36559508/drones-autonomously-attacked-humans-libya-united-nations-report/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a36559508/...
- ncmncm 5y ago
  The "investment" is the whole point of the F-35 program. Any military capability it provides is a distant second. We are lucky that it can (often) take off and land at all. F-35 has subcontracts let in every state, making it organizationally impossible to de-fund. Another similar program is SLS.
  - gameswithgo 5y ago
    The Saturn V was also built this way.
  - ggm 5y ago
    This is definitional for "the military industrial complex" -the most vivid example I have ever seen is manufacturers plates on the (now upgraded) Buenos Aires subway. The cars were made by an Argentinian airforce factory. It's also one of the principle theses of "monopoly capital" by Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran
rwmj 5y ago
Also in the news, the F-35 that fell into the Mediterranean has been pulled out: https://archive.md/GX7na https://archive.md/GX7na Video of it originally falling off the end of the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59470276 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59470276
mcv 5y ago
> This new fighter would not replace the F-35, but would instead be used in place of 4th generation fighters like the F-16 Fighting Falcon. But wasn't the F-35 already meant to replace the F-16? As well as the F-15, F-18, A-10 and a whole slew of other planes? I guess this means they finally figured out that was unrealistic. > The Air Force has already begun purchasing a slew of new old fighters in the 4th generation F-15EX, which will replace aging F-15 Eagles in the branch’s inventory. So they're buying new F-15s now? That's a plane from the 1970s, right? That sounds like a testament of good those designs were, and how little has effectively improved in the 40+ years since then. I mean, obviously this new F-15 will have all the best new high-tech computer, radar, targeting gear that will probably also end up in the F-35, but the airframe is apparently still a solid design, as long as you don't need stealth and VTOL.
deleted 5y ago
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jussij 5y ago
Here in Australia the ABC raised doubts about the F-35 back in 2013. Here's their analysis of that aircraft: https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/reach-for-the-sky/4526982 https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/reach-for-the-sky/4526982 In particular they ask is fairly obvious question: It's billed as the smartest jet fighter on the planet, but could the JSF be a massive waste of money? The Australian Government purchased these massively expensive F-35s even when basic logic told us they would be duds. I would say this analysis shows governments are not good at making simple decisions as they struggle with basic logic.
flohofwoe 5y ago
> This new fighter would not replace the F-35, but would instead be used in place of 4th generation fighters like the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Wasn't the whole point of the F-35 to be exactly this F-16 replacement? E.g. the F-22 was supposed to replace the F-15 as specialized air-superiority fighter, while the F-35 would replace the F-16 and F-18 as cheap all-purpose fighter). Now the F-22 is no longer produced and the F-35 is so expensive that the search for a cheaper alternative begins, and the cycle can start anew... Suddenly the much more pragmatic Su-57 design doesn't look so silly anymore.
curt15 5y ago
An air force general had this to say about the F-35 a few years ago[1]: "If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22" Have things changed since? [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-the-f-35-fleet-will-be-irrelevant-2014-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-the-f-35-fle...
hunglee2 5y ago
"the price of operating the aircraft. Thanks to state-of-the-art stealth technology and radar-absorbent coating that needs frequent touch-ups, the F-35 costs around $44,000 per hour of flight" - that is absolutely crazy, especially during times of non-war when these machines are essentially up there for patrol and training.
- jrs235 5y ago
  Hmm. Why don't they have some planes for training (when stealth isn't required) that don't have the special coating on them/maintained (and that might be applied in times of need)?
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    I don't have an official answer but I can chime in a little. The military do have training aircraft but will always keep armed aircraft in the skies to protect the country from domestic threats. Every single week one of them is called down to intercept a general aviation aircraft that didn't read NOTAMs and violated a TFR. We only hear about those because the communication is on ATC frequencies. I'm sure there are many other things they do that we don't hear about.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      I don't get how your answer applies to the specific question of why not have some of them without maintained stealth coating. That's different from armed and has nothing to do with check-ups on general aviation and commercial planes violating airspace restrictions, or having set up their transponders wrongly, or failed in the air. How is working stealth relevant for that?
dirtyid 5y ago
Whatever one thinks about F35 capabilities, it's a massive successful export program that's ensnared / locked in dependencies all over the world. Of course that's dramatically undermined the second a F-35 gets shot down with Russian/PRC missile tech. Which will then be proliferated everywhere. Who knows the entire platform could have been "cracked" already and majority of operators (read western world) are sitting on duds. There's something to be said about diversity, especially in defense.

69 points by noyesno 5y ago

Ah yes, yet ANOTHER fighter jet program. I am sure this time, they will get it right (on time, on budget). /S

Never worry, if the F-35 remains the mess that people expect, Russia is happy to sell its aptly named Checkmate in answer..to everyone except the USA. https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/334416-russian-checkmate-fighter-jet https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/334416-russian-checkma...

Giorgi 5y ago
Russians are well-known of selling half-baked low quality junk to it's partners. Also Russian economy is same as of Spain, they lack both know-how, technology and expertise in developing of high-end weapons. Soviet Union days are long gone and it's successor Russia is a mafia-run state. That article is just a Russian propaganda of some mockup that Russia can't make.
- Joker_vD 5y ago
  Just like those so-called "hypersonic missiles", 3D-rendered on Mosfilm, and even poorly rendered at that!
- Stranger43 5y ago
  People were saying the same doing soviet days, it seems to be some kind of jingoistic fantasy that have never really played out in the real world i.e. every time nato/us supplied forces encounter competently operated Russian kit they have had to fight it out based on numbers and logistics rather then depend on the technological inferiority of the opposing forces weapons. The same goes for say French, Swedish or Indian planes who does tend to hold up a lot better in real world conditions then the derision they get from the pentagon propagandist doing procurement suggests. The truth is that the technologies involved is so mature that any largish economy can put out reasonable effective platforms the reason nobody else then the US is making stealth have more to do with the limitations of stealth then the fact that it requires secret knowledge only possessed by the US.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    The image of the enemy has to be self-contradictory: it has to be both scary and fearsome ― to justify the defence spending ― but also feeble and laughable ― again, yo justify the defence spending: the intended mindset is "the victory is inevitable", not "let's just surrender immediately". You can see it everywhere, everywhen, it's a universal propaganda tactics since the dawn of mankind, rediscovered independently and I'd say even subconsciously. And it's applicable even in non-military spending: a month ago some US newspaper (Bloomberg? WP? Don't recall exactly) managed, in the same article, accuse Russia both of a) it sells to much gas to Europe too cheap to make it dependent on Russia; b) Russia doesn't sell Europe enough of gas, it should ramp up the sales immediately. Yes, in different paragraphs, but it still kinda funny when you notice it. Or that one time when Biden simultaneously called everyone to double down on transfer to green energy, battling the climate change, and also demanded from OPEC to increase oil output and then even released 50 million barrels of oil from the reserves, because expensive oil is bad for economy, you know.
    - drran 5y ago
      > accuse Russia both of a) it sells to much gas to Europe too cheap to make it dependent on Russia; b) Russia doesn't sell Europe enough of gas, it should ramp up the sales immediately a) RF increased its share in EU market for natural gas too much. Everybody worried that RF can decrease supply rapidly to skyrocket price. b) RF decreased supply of natural gas rapidly to skyrocket price.
      - Joker_vD 5y ago
        Well, RF (30% of market share) did not decrease the supply, it was the demand that rose "unexpectedly". Well, why did the US not rescue the EU with additional supplies of LNG, for example? The gas terminals were built several years pretty much for this reason, to be able to buy LNG from the US and Qatar to diversify the supplies. Why did Norway with its 35% market share not increase the supply via its pipelines? Nope, it is Russia that must increase the supply, apparently to the level of having about 50% of market share, but that would be fine this time because... reasons? Also, RF resisted until the very last from switching from the long-term contracts to the spot contracts, it was forced to do so by the court decision in 2019, sued by Poland that argued that the spot market price is fairer (it also got $2 billion refunded to the boot). Two years later, this November, Poland tried to sue again, arguing now that the spot market price is unfair, and Gazprom should only take the previously negotiated price, and refund whatever was overpaid to it (about $5 billion IIRC). I understand that all this is pretty much how haggling looks like when the hagglers are nation-states who have to sell the deals to their population somehow: selective reporting, overstating some circumstances, understating other, selective application of arguments, etc. But the end result is still exorbitant heating/electrical bills and cold houses all over the country but you also get to feel outraged at the other side, as a bonus.
- Atatator 5y ago
  I wonder, why e.g. S-400 then is so popular. Even Turkey, a NATO member purchases them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system#Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-400_missile_system#Turkey Why India has signed an agreement to produce over half a million AK-203 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/deal-for-ak-203-rifles-between-india-russia-finalised/articleshow/88118637.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/deal-for-a... ? Even if we take nominal GDP, Russian GDP is roughly 17% higher than Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... If we take GDP by PPP, then it's more than twice that of Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
- sofixa 5y ago
  Russia is a mafia run state, true, and they're severely behind in many areas. However, they have very capable military hardware, and in many types of it, quantity has a quality of its own. It doesn't matter much that an M1 Abrams is technically superior than a T-14 Armata if for the same budget you can get three times more Armatas. That, and ease of maintenance and support, is among the reasons why Russian military hardware is very popular and sells extremely well, even if it might not be the best objectively compared to the competition. And sometimes it is better, like the S-400 SAM which is objectively better than the Patriot, or some types of missiles ( e.g. BrahMos). Or BMPs/BTRs that are even popular with very US friendly Gulf states which don't care about budgets. Regarding Spain, they have literally developed a (small) aircraft carrier, frigates, supply ships, submarines that were successfully sold abroad. Airbus Military is based in Spain, and they're working on a future stealth 6 gen fighter with Dassault Aviation, Thales and Indra ( which are fully Spanish). Don't shit on smaller countries just because they don't have the same budget as the US.
  - Giorgi 5y ago
    Except every these example have huge issues: 1. T-14 Armata never entered into serial production, Russia lacks resources to actually make it into product, they just built cardboard prototype and left it there. Abrams is being produced like hot cakes. It's just Russia's claim that T-14 is superior but there is 0 proof. 2. Maintenance and support of junk is still junk 3. It's Russia's claim that S-400 SAM is better, but nobody knows the truth, in fact S-300 only proved itself in battle by shooting down civilian aircraft over Ukraine when Russia invaded it, killing innocent children in the air. 4. BMP/BTR lack sufficient armor to the point that soldiers prefer to go marching on their own foot because it is basically death trap to be inside BMP/BTR APC. Yes, Spain is doing way better than shithole Russia, after all Russian people is being ruled by Tzar Putin and they like it.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      Did you misread 3/4 of what i said and add a bunch of outright wrong statements? I never claimed the Armata is superior, and it doesn't matter. Swap Armata for the T-90, T-80 or heck T-72, the same logic applies. Lower quality arms of certain types, such as tanks, at sufficient numbers can easily overwhelm even much better equipment. Easy maintenance of not great hardware is better than complex maintenance of magnificent hardware. Just ask the Germans, Americans and Russians during WW2. The Sherman tank was a piece of shit on paper, but was easy to maintain, and could be produced in huge numbers. The Tiger sounds scary on paper, but it didn't matter since there weren't enough of them, and the few that existed broke down easily. S-400 is probably better. The Patriot system is old, and doesn't even have 360 field of fire. Turkey went as far as getting kicked out of the F-35 programme over the S-400, so it's not only the Russians' word. Furthermore, it's an improvement over the earlier S-300, which is widely deployed and understood, and is generally a good and well liked system. (And note: it wasn't an S-300 that was used to shoot down the civilian airliner in Ukraine, it was a Buk, which is a mobile AA system, unlike the S series, which is (mostly) static for defense of specific areas). BTR isn't supposed to protect from more than small arms fire, being a light armoured vehicle and all. BMPs aren't APCs, but IFV. Do you have a source on your ridiculous claim that infantry prefer to march on foot? BMPs were used in Yemen and I've heard of no such thing. Spain is doing decently, and so is Russia. ( In terms of armament, in terms of civil liberties and all that stuff Russia is far behind).

rado 5y ago

Same.

Gravityloss 5y ago

Finland is deciding on its biggest national purchase ever this year, new fighters to replace the F/A-18 Hornets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HX_Fighter_Program . It seems every fighter has had its share of scandals, though the local press of course doesn't report of a lot of it. The lift fan space in the B variant has forced a "fat" design on all the three variants, with resulting aerodynamic penalties. To me, it seems it would have been relatively easy to just design a new airframe ignoring any commonality in airframe, because - the airframe is not the expensive part. Maybe it was in the fifties still. Instead use all the systems like the engine, avionics, sensors, software etc where the cost anyway is nowadays. Even aerodynamic design can be done with computers nowadays so you don't need so much calendar time in costly wind tunnels.

jcun4128 5y ago
The Ryan Vertifan was a cool design but I imagine how F35's is done has advantages. Wonder what the Russians thought about their Yak 141.
CapricornNoble 5y ago
Pretty sure I heard a USAF general make a similar argument for the way ahead / 6th gen aircraft development: that airframes need to be iterated faster, with sensor and weapon packages being much more plug-and-play. So we should be able to stuff the same AESA + Distributed Aperture Sensors in a single seat/single engine fighter, a tandem-seat strikefighter, and a side-by-side seat penetration bomber. You replace the airframes as your materials science improves and your desired flight envelopes/mission profiles change. You replace the internals as your electrical & software engineering improves. Alternate between the two, like Intels old "Tick/Tock" cycle. Far better than doing clean-sheet designs that need to debug EVERYTHING new simultaneously.
- Stranger43 5y ago
  SaaB have been putting this philosophy into production planes for close to a decade, and it's been talked about a lot within the eurofighter consortium. We don't hear much about how say India or Israel does thing but both have a record of performing significant modifications/improvement to existing airframes.

ardit33 5y ago

This is slightly old news: TLDR: F-35 is too expensive to maintain and operate, therefore the USAF wants a 4.5Gen Fighter (non stealth, but with updated electronics) to replace the older F-16 that will be retired soon. This is similar to the strategy that the russians did with the unveiling of their 'Checkmate' light weight fighter last month. So the USAF wants more funds to build yet another fighter. (it has already a 6gen fighter in development). I feel it is going to be another waste of money. It wont be much better than an updated FA-18 or an F-15EX with more advanced electronics. The best thing it can do is to accelerate the development of the 6gen fighter, and mass produce a cheaper 'non-stealth' version of it as the cheaper version, but with the same electronics. The best way to do cost saving by scaling up production of the same internal components/avionics.

xvector 5y ago
Non-stealth fighters seem kind of pointless in this era. In any real mission won't a beyond-visual-range missile just shoot you out of the sky?
- croes 5y ago
  Fighters with on board pilots seem pointless. Mass beats intelligence
- albertopv 5y ago
  Not at all. Radars are advancing too and what today is a stealth fighter might not be in 10 years. If the fighter has poor handling characteristics it could be useless in much less time than predicted.
- blitzar 5y ago
  Not at all. Almost all of the bombs being dropped are against people armed with whatever rocks are laying around on the ground. Until a beyond-visual-range rock throwning champion emerges there is little risk to conventional, non-stealth, airframes.
- msh 5y ago
  Depends a lot on who you are fighting.

AndyMcConachie 5y ago

Everyone who wasn't a shill for the defense industry has been pointing out the uselessness of the F-35 for over 10 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI It's purpose is not to conduct war effectively. It's purpose is to transfer public wealth into private hands.

Pelic4n 5y ago
>unironically quoting Pierre Sprey https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense https://www.reddit.com/r/NonCredibleDefense

quiffledwerg 5y ago

These are the planes that the military builds when in peacetime controlled by vested interests. In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes. The US is focused on building complex overly technology focused boondoggle machines that take far to long to design and build and cost too much and underperform. It’s a robot war future anyway.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Realistically the US is never going to fight a war with an equal adversary. When they did WW3 simulations in the cold war it always ended with mushroom clouds.
- boppo1 5y ago
  I dunno, what happens if China decides it's going after tsmc?
  - quiffledwerg 5y ago
    Can I just say “China going after TSMC” is one of the silliest ideas I’ve heard. I know people discuss it as plausible in some way, but you only need to think for a microsecond to work out it’s not. There’s so many reasons why they’d end up with zero that there’s little point even starting to articulate them.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    Like I said: mushroom clouds. And I am sure Chinese military staff knows it.
remus 5y ago
> In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes. I think this is partly because if you are not currently at war then you don't know who or when you will be at war with and what exactly the threats will look like so you end up designing for a range of scenarios. If you're currently in the midst of a big war than the requirements are clearer (but certainly not clear!)

jonathankoren 5y ago

Recent article on the proposed 5- generation aircraft, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41138/the-air-force-might-make-two-distinct-versions-of-its-next-multirole-stealth-fighter https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41138/the-air-force-mi...

nowherebeen 5y ago

The F-35 is a prime example of Sunk Cost Fallacy.

raverbashing 5y ago
Also of the perils of design by committee
- gherkinnn 5y ago
  It also violates the single responsibility principle.
  - choward 5y ago
    And if it ain't broke don't fix it.
    - Woodi 5y ago
      Also implementation is not what client had in mind :)
  - mcv 5y ago
    Feature creep. It's got to be able to everything and then some.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

I’m still crossing my fingers half our budget for this plane was diverted to secret research - perhaps into something rather tic-tac shaped… was the blackbird and nighthawk development reported in the open like the F35? or were they developed within black budgets diverted from other, apparently wasteful projects? disclaimer: I get all my info from “Independence Day”

devoutsalsa 5y ago
You don't think they actually spend 20K on a hammer, 30K on a toilet seat, or 1.7 trillion on a fighter jet program, do you?
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Is it not 1.7T over it's whole lifetime? As far as I'm aware it is.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    Yeah, it is. Hence "fighter jet program". Why use the cost of just one jet when you can use the cost of the entire program? Never ruin a "good" joke by being moderate.
- andbberger 5y ago
  too bad we don't get any special access trains when we spend billions more than the rest of the world on transit projects.
- chrisjc 5y ago
  Not discount your assertion, but wasn't the $20K cost of the hammer due to the material it was made from? Something about having to work in a spark free environment?
- Symmetry 5y ago
  The hammer and the documentation associated with proving that they weren't spending excess money on the hammer and providing a chain of responsibility if that hammer breaks. Plus cost-plus contracting encourages companies to find clever ways to spend more money on everything since their profits are a fixed percentage of their costs. Seriously, yes it is actually that screwed up, that money is going into salaries for stupid makework and profits rather than black budgets.

joosters 5y ago

Are manned fighter jets obsolete by now? Surely we can produce drones that are just as capable, if not more so, and they would be vastly, order-of-magnitude cheaper than the planes that have to protect squishy human beings. Being cheaper means you can have more of them, which then could mean you don't even need to worry about the expensive stealth features. So what if the enemy detects one and shoots it down? The four other drones can carry on with the mission.

Stranger43 5y ago
The drones have a big problem in that they can be knocked out of communications with the ground support infrastructure using fairly cheap portable ECM equipment so have a limited scope for usage limited to friendly skies or roles that is being filled efficiently by current-gen missiles as it is. The days when manned bombers played any role in the first strike against an capable foe ended decades ago, today's fighters are used when you need on the spot decision making whether it is to interdict errant civilian planes or provide close air support to infantry.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  >The drones have a big problem in that they can be knocked out of communications with the ground support infrastructure using fairly cheap portable ECM equipment What about autonomous drones? Can't you have AI piloted drones with ML models trained on thousands of hours of combat missions, where you just punch in the mission objective and the acceptable outcome/casualty levels, and it can decide for itself how to carry it out if communication is lost? That feels terrifying but it does sound like where the future is going.
  - Stranger43 5y ago
    yes for missions that does not change underway or where the objectives don't contain loosely defined objectives with moral ambiguity, and for the vast amount of those you don't really need anything beyond and 80ies computer system running relatively conventional procedural code, which is why they have been performed using cruise missiles or artillery for decades. The problem is that the missions flown requires a lot more judgement then modern machine learning is capable of providing, or that we are likely to entrust solely to an computer anytime soon. Yes the skynet scenario is increasingly likely but it's also something military planners are aware of especially doing periods of diplomatic tensions like the ones we are under now where you really don't want an trigger happy automated defence system in charge of fully armed missiles. There is also the issue that all we know is that the next war will have it's own entirely new politically defined strategic constraints, where the most effective tactical strategy is might be blocked out due to long term diplomatic/political consequences.

LatteLazy 5y ago

It's interesting that people seem to have such black and white views of such a huge, complex, long term, international programme...

piokoch 5y ago

F-35 has a few very strong points. For instance it has best available radar and other sensors, so for a country that does not have dedicated AWACS plane, it can serve as (not so) poor man AWACS. Being somewhat stealth and being able to carry JASSM/JASSM-ER missiles it is useful for the not so great army that want to attack the opponent on the opponent's territory (not really US army use case...). F-35 sounds like a good solution for, say, Poland, since Polish F-35 (Harpias) maneuvering unnoticed near Belorussian border will be able to attack Russian forces, supply lines all the way to the Smolensk Gate (50-mile-wide territory between the Dzwina and Dnieper rivers), which is a main attack direction for Russian army. Similarly, planes operating in the middle of Poland can attack targets in Kaliningrad - another crucial strategic ability for Polish defense. Note, that dogfight capabilities (in which F-35 is worst than F-16) does not matter here, Polish or Finnish army will always avoid confronting Russian air forces in the direct air strike, as they will be outnumber by Russians. Strangely, it seems that F-35 is much more useful for other armies than US army so no surprise US army wants something different. Another thing is that F-16 Viper has sensors almost at the level of F-35, can carry JASSM missiles, but it is way, way, cheaper to buy and maintain...

Arnt 5y ago
I'll bite... how long can an F-35 maneuver unnoticed near the border? And if they have weapons that can hit Kaliningrad usefully from the middle of Poland, what benefit do these weapons derive from the F-35?
jcun4128 5y ago
Was curious the F35 design is like the PakFa where it's stealth from the front but the exhaust is not like an F22. I don't know offhand if the F22 design is for thermal reasons more than thrust vectoring. B2 I think is definitely thermal since it's inside/above the wing.
trasz 5y ago
In case of a shooting war all those F-35 would get destroyed by cruise missiles before they could take off. The only reason for Poland getting F-35 is trying to please the US and to participate in NATO missions.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

Again?

sc68cal 5y ago

County's infrastructure is falling apart but we had plenty of money for that piece of shit

dkdk8283 5y ago
Can you elaborate on what infrastructure is falling apart?
- sc68cal 5y ago
  https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ We are depending on infrastructure that was built by the WPA during the great depression and right after WW2. The rot is deep.
  - dkdk8283 5y ago
    Isn’t it sensational to say all of our infrastructure is falling apart when the emphasis is just on bridges?
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      They probably could have also mentioned the power grids that were not designed to last as long as they have and certainly not designed to scale to everyone having EV's. That will have to be addressed sooner than later. Then there is the topic of methane gas distribution and water distribution. Some cities have aging pipes or worse have lead components in their drinking water pipes. This gets tricky because the budgeting for some of this is partially local and partially federal with a smattering of multi-agency bureaucracy. There is also an aging PSTN telco network that probably should have been replaced by a much more modern and high capacity network to support modern data protocols and rural internet connectivity.
      - sc68cal 5y ago
        You can also take a look at our country's airports. They are all worn out. I spent a lot of time in airports and they are all aging. There's been work to rehab some of the insides but many of them are too small, and what money there is to spend has been spent building new and ridiculous security barriers. Things like parking, shuttles, and baggage handling have not been invested in. Same with our roads. I drive up and down I95 and the roads are full of road snakes and patches.

KingOfCoders 5y ago

I like: "If you were to go back to the year 2000 and somebody said, ‘I can build an airplane that is stealthy and has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and can go supersonic,’ most people in the industry would have said that’s impossible" How anyone thought they get a cheaper plane which at the time was "impossible" is beyond me.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Here is the clip of the British F-35 failing take off and instead crashing into the sea: https://twitter.com/sebh1981/status/1465351592018956295 https://twitter.com/sebh1981/status/1465351592018956295 No doubt a technogical marvel but maybe too complex for practical use.

mhh__ 5y ago
Bad comment. Ignoring that it's a new aircraft on a new carrier, the only thing close to a hypothesis at the moment is that an operator fucked up which could happen with any aircraft.
codeduck 5y ago
to be fair this was not the fault of the F-35 but rather most likely due to a rain cover that was supposed to be removed before flight. So human error rather than mechanical.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  That was the story at one point.
CraigJPerry 5y ago
Was the root cause of that incident not that the ground crew and the pilot all missed a “remove before flight” cover in their pre-flight routines? I.e. it was multiple humans making an error in their trained & checklisted pre-flight duty, rather than a failure of the aircraft.

throwaway4good 5y ago

A question to ask is: As long the west (the US) only goes to war with nations whose military is vastly inferior (like Iraq or Afghanistan). Then why do we need the F-35? An F-16 will do just as well against someone armed with an AK-47.

FairlyInvolved 5y ago
I think that's well-understood and the existence of the F-35 evidences the perceived threat from nations with more advanced militaries.
codeduck 5y ago
Not when the person next to the person with an AK-47 also has access to a modern man-portable surface to air missile.
romwell 5y ago
1. The air force is (one of the reasons) why the US has only been going to war with vastly inferior nations. 2. Go ask Ukraine about fighting rebels with AK-47s... who might occasionally get Buk missiles from a friendly slav on vacation. That's not to say anything about F-35, or F-16; just about the reason why keeping the birds up to date makes sense.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  The west is explicitly not going to war in/over Ukraine. Because as you implied it would be a war with Russia and that would be too much. And Ukraine does not have F-35s and will never have.
  - paganel 5y ago
    Not the OP, but it would have been interesting to see how well a plane like the F-35 handles ground-to-air missiles. My bet would be on the missiles, but maybe that's just a subjective take on my part (certainly not based on any concrete facts as I'm not an expert in this domain), but I'm thinking that if the Serbs of the 1990s managed to bring down a F-117 then the Russian technology of today (in theory much better up-to-date compared to what the Serbs had) should be quite a match for this plane.

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

In my country we've had doubts about it for decades but in order not to offend America it was considered politically prudent to buy quite literally any crap the US makes at whatever cost. It's not like we're ever going to war anyway.

mcv 5y ago
I think in my country it was also driven by blind trust that whatever the US built was undoubtedly the best in the world.
cipher_system 5y ago
This also has to do with it making it easier to get military assistance from the United States in the case of war or conflict.
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
Buying US hand me down weapons at inflated prices is basically paying for the US SaaS subscription fee: Security as a service. It was the same in Romania when joining NATO. They bought a bunch of retired F-16s at inflated prices which pissed off the Romanian taxpayers and the Frech and Swedish governments, since for that kind of money, the Romanian air force could have bought more modern and brand new Dassault or SAAB fighters while also supporting the local EU economy, but instead, they spent the money to buy themselves tickets at the US-ally table (possible corruption and bribes involved as well, but that's pretty much the norm in all defense related purchases)

hetspookjee 5y ago

Any country still investing in airplanes that hold pilots are wasting there money and should get their shit up to date. The days have been long gone that any pilot would be able to judge if their target is a yay or nay. The distances vastly overreach the capabilities of even the best person's eyes, and the added cost and complexity of putting a human in a jet are not worth it.

quiffledwerg 5y ago
Yeah but long range missions require people cause latency is a xitch.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I wonder how many nations need long range for defence? Of course offensive wars such as invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are different, but most uses for defence should happen relatively near to border.
  - burmanm 5y ago
    Defence is not that different from offence. An offensive task such as destroying enemy artillery behind their borders or their service routes is an effective way to defend. If the enemy has nothing to attack with, then defending is a lot easier.
- gspr 5y ago
  If you want human control, those humans could just tag along in a cheap transport plane and linger at a safe distance close enough for low latency.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - Symmetry 5y ago
    I think that would make sense for some missions like air superiority but not others like a deep strike into enemy territory. For the former we already have AWACs that perform nearly that role while also being big flying radars. For the later I think something like the F-35 might actually be the best solution, though with a number of robotic subordinates.

mrtksn 5y ago

Does anyone knows what's the argument to use manned planes over drones anyway? Turkey, which is kicked out if the F-35 program for political reasons, demonstrated huge success in battle through it's home grown drone programs. F-35's were supposed to be the stealth weapons who were to be able to penetrate Russia made air defences etc, but Turkey proved in Syria that relatively cheap drones can do just that. Before the Turkish drones, only Israel was able to hit a Russian made air defence system and that was done when it wasn't operational at that moment. During the conflicts between Azerbaijan-Armenia, Syria, Libya the Turkish made drones hunted down multiple such system and provided very impressive footage of the action. Again, Turkish drones are suspected to be used in first ever AI based attacks, where for the first time machines decided who to kill and who to spare[0]. Though Turkey has a sizeable engineering capacity, it's not a rich country. Budgets used to develop these drones are nowhere near the F-35 or similar projects. One wonders, what's the argument to invest so much in planes when there's low hanging fruits in the drones business. It seems to me, the 5th gen plane projects are like trying to breed the next gen horses instead of developing the automobiles. [0]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a36559508/drones-autonomously-attacked-humans-libya-united-nations-report/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a36559508/...

ncmncm 5y ago
The "investment" is the whole point of the F-35 program. Any military capability it provides is a distant second. We are lucky that it can (often) take off and land at all. F-35 has subcontracts let in every state, making it organizationally impossible to de-fund. Another similar program is SLS.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  The Saturn V was also built this way.
- ggm 5y ago
  This is definitional for "the military industrial complex" -the most vivid example I have ever seen is manufacturers plates on the (now upgraded) Buenos Aires subway. The cars were made by an Argentinian airforce factory. It's also one of the principle theses of "monopoly capital" by Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran

rwmj 5y ago

Also in the news, the F-35 that fell into the Mediterranean has been pulled out: https://archive.md/GX7na https://archive.md/GX7na Video of it originally falling off the end of the HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59470276 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59470276

mcv 5y ago

> This new fighter would not replace the F-35, but would instead be used in place of 4th generation fighters like the F-16 Fighting Falcon. But wasn't the F-35 already meant to replace the F-16? As well as the F-15, F-18, A-10 and a whole slew of other planes? I guess this means they finally figured out that was unrealistic. > The Air Force has already begun purchasing a slew of new old fighters in the 4th generation F-15EX, which will replace aging F-15 Eagles in the branch’s inventory. So they're buying new F-15s now? That's a plane from the 1970s, right? That sounds like a testament of good those designs were, and how little has effectively improved in the 40+ years since then. I mean, obviously this new F-15 will have all the best new high-tech computer, radar, targeting gear that will probably also end up in the F-35, but the airframe is apparently still a solid design, as long as you don't need stealth and VTOL.

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jussij 5y ago

Here in Australia the ABC raised doubts about the F-35 back in 2013. Here's their analysis of that aircraft: https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/reach-for-the-sky/4526982 https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/reach-for-the-sky/4526982 In particular they ask is fairly obvious question: It's billed as the smartest jet fighter on the planet, but could the JSF be a massive waste of money? The Australian Government purchased these massively expensive F-35s even when basic logic told us they would be duds. I would say this analysis shows governments are not good at making simple decisions as they struggle with basic logic.

flohofwoe 5y ago

> This new fighter would not replace the F-35, but would instead be used in place of 4th generation fighters like the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Wasn't the whole point of the F-35 to be exactly this F-16 replacement? E.g. the F-22 was supposed to replace the F-15 as specialized air-superiority fighter, while the F-35 would replace the F-16 and F-18 as cheap all-purpose fighter). Now the F-22 is no longer produced and the F-35 is so expensive that the search for a cheaper alternative begins, and the cycle can start anew... Suddenly the much more pragmatic Su-57 design doesn't look so silly anymore.

curt15 5y ago

An air force general had this to say about the F-35 a few years ago[1]: "If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22" Have things changed since? [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-the-f-35-fleet-will-be-irrelevant-2014-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-the-f-35-fle...

hunglee2 5y ago

"the price of operating the aircraft. Thanks to state-of-the-art stealth technology and radar-absorbent coating that needs frequent touch-ups, the F-35 costs around $44,000 per hour of flight" - that is absolutely crazy, especially during times of non-war when these machines are essentially up there for patrol and training.

jrs235 5y ago
Hmm. Why don't they have some planes for training (when stealth isn't required) that don't have the special coating on them/maintained (and that might be applied in times of need)?
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  I don't have an official answer but I can chime in a little. The military do have training aircraft but will always keep armed aircraft in the skies to protect the country from domestic threats. Every single week one of them is called down to intercept a general aviation aircraft that didn't read NOTAMs and violated a TFR. We only hear about those because the communication is on ATC frequencies. I'm sure there are many other things they do that we don't hear about.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    I don't get how your answer applies to the specific question of why not have some of them without maintained stealth coating. That's different from armed and has nothing to do with check-ups on general aviation and commercial planes violating airspace restrictions, or having set up their transponders wrongly, or failed in the air. How is working stealth relevant for that?

dirtyid 5y ago

Whatever one thinks about F35 capabilities, it's a massive successful export program that's ensnared / locked in dependencies all over the world. Of course that's dramatically undermined the second a F-35 gets shot down with Russian/PRC missile tech. Which will then be proliferated everywhere. Who knows the entire platform could have been "cracked" already and majority of operators (read western world) are sitting on duds. There's something to be said about diversity, especially in defense.