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Why would they buy such a problematic platform? https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/04/failing-f-35-grounded-once-again/ https://responsiblestatecraft.or

• Waterluvian 4y ago
  Non-leading questions: are there articles like this for basically all major military procurements? Or are there examples of big spends where basically everyone’s delighted by the project, timeline, and deliverable?
  • amalgamated_inc 4y ago
    Ha, you should check out some of Palmer Luckey's talks.
  • ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    If everything goes to plan and everyone is satisfied, noone write an article about that. On the other hand, this is government (taxpayers) money, so why not waste some extra money, skimp on testing and pocket the difference, because everyone know they can and nothing will happen to them.
  • JohnBooty 4y ago
    For jets, yeah, always grumbling. Lots of complaining around the F-16, F-14 had early issues as well: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/1977-when-the-f-16-was-americas-problem-child/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197... Naval vessels have similarly eye-watering (or greater) price tags, but they usually don't fail so spectacularly that they sink or explode or are totally out of commission. Problems with fighter jets are more "dramatic." If there is a problem with a jet, it either (a) crashes or (b) is effectively nonfunctional, stuck on the ground. Fighter jets also just capture the public imagination. We mythologize fighters and fighter pilots. Jets are considered "sexy" and so articles about them generate probably 10x or 100x the traffic as articles about problems with boats or rail guns or artillery or other procurements. Also remember that there is fierce competition for those military contracts. Lockheed, Grumman, etc compete tooth and nail for them. Just a guess, but I bet the PR team at Company A is more than happy to seed the press with stories about failures by Company B.
• the__alchemist 4y ago
  What would you recommend instead?
• luxuryballs 4y ago
  maybe the guy in charge of the buying decisions and the guy in charge of sales are buds
• lumost 4y ago
  Current wargames on YouTube based on DCS show the F-35 reaching kill ratios in excess of 5:1 against 4th gen fighters in bvr. Modern f-16s and f-15s are only slightly cheaper than the f-35.
  • vfclists 4y ago
    Don't they have to get in the air first? And what advanced systems are present in the F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • JimtheCoder 4y ago
      "And what advanced systems are present in the F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s." Those are both 45+ year old airframes as well. You're going to have to upgrade to something new eventually...
    • andrewnicolalde 4y ago
      Any kind of stealthiness for one. There are versions of the F-15 which attempt to be more stealthy than the base airframe, but it’s a far cry from being as stealthy as any purpose-built aircraft.
    • JohnBooty 4y ago
      And what advanced systems are present in the F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s. Yikes. 1. Stealth 2. Sensor fusion with other aircraft 3. Carrier landing/launch 4. An airframe that isn't on the verge of forced retirement due to accumulated flight hours and metal fatigue, like many/most of the F16s and F15s The F16 and F15 are arguably more capable in movie-style dogfights. They can pull 9Gs while the F35 can do 7G IIRC with superior thrust to weight. In a guns-only dogfight maybe you want one of those. But that misses the point. Modern air combat is not about movie style dogfights. It's about hitting your enemy with a missile from beyond visual range before he even knows that you or the missile exist. Perhaps even more crucially, it's about surviving enemy ground defenses. Anti-aircraft defenses including man-portable missiles are cheap and getting more deadly by the day. No stealth? You're dead. You're not just dead; you were an easy kill. "Stealth" is not a binary property of course; "stealth" aircraft can be detected with enough luck and effort. But stealth is table stakes for not being easy pickings. You can see this in Ukraine. Neither side has stealth, neither side has established clear air superiority.
• Vecr 4y ago
  There's nothing else they can really buy and expect to have before 2026. The US won't sell F22s, they obviously can't buy Russian or Chinese jets, and Eurofighters and Gripens have radar cross sections bigger than the super hornet. They could get even older plane designs, but that's not good enough.
• cjbgkagh 4y ago
  I figure it's less about the airplane and more of a tribute to the US. Being a valuable customer of a powerful lobby means the US is more likely to take your interests into account in a way that could be worth the price of the planes.
  • reactor4 4y ago
    If you believe that then I have some lumber to sell to you.
    • osigurdson 4y ago
      One of the things about conspiracy theory like sentiment is it makes anyone who takes things at face value seem dumb/naive. However, what is the real value in assuming that everything is corrupt to the core while doing nothing about the corruption? Does it help one formulate more predictive mental models? That seems impossible.
  • ethanbond 4y ago
    Tribute to the US’s unrivaled defense development maybe
  • legutierr 4y ago
    Canada is part of NATO. The US is obligated to take Canada’s interests into account with regards to the country’s defense. Canada is buying these planes because they are the most effective fighters available within the general price range.
    • epups 4y ago
      An unspoken part of NATO is that the US is the primary military supplier of its allies. The comment that this purchase is partly political/diplomatic is spot on. In fact, why does Canada even need a state-of-the-art Air Force in the first place, if not to appease the US and NATO?
      • 4y ago
• gumby 4y ago
  I am not a fan of the F-35 but I have to admit that most of its problems (well, the egregious ones) seem to have been (expensively) resolved or at least adequately mitigated, and its air fighting performance now does appear better than anything else in the US armory, so likely better than anything else made by CN, much less RU, today.
  • legutierr 4y ago
    How do you think it compares to the Typhoon?
    • JohnBooty 4y ago
      Not parent poster but: by all indications the Typhoon is a superior dogfighter. However it should be noted that modern air combat is not about movie-style dogfighting. It's about BVR (beyond visual range) combat: launching a missile at a foe and killing him before he knows that you or the missile exist. It's also about survivability against enemy ground defenses attempting to lock onto you with radar and kill you with missiles. For both of those things, stealth is a bare minimum requirement. The F-35 has it, the Eurofighter does not. (yes, stealth is not a binary property, but that is the TL;DR) So the Typhoon is going to kick serious ass in certain situations and be completely unusable in others.
      • person22 4y ago
        How does this differ from the F4 being retrofitted with a cannon in a centerline pod? It was designed for BVR, but that (politically) didn't work out so well.
        • JohnBooty 4y ago
          I'm just an armchair nerd but I think it's safe to say that BVR was really in its infancy back then in terms of radar, stealth, missiles, etc. The technology simply was not there for an effective BVR fighter. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/more-sixty-years-later-f-4-phantom-still-roams-skies-197340 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/more-sixty-years-la... "The Air Force didn’t realize those early missiles were terrible. Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed to either launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers, the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight percent and 15 percent for the two types, respectively" Missiles are ridiculously lethal and maneuverable now. They can thrust vector, be fired from crazy angles, etc.
• amalgamated_inc 4y ago
  My understanding is that NATO members are required to maintain a certain type of jet, and the only one of the required type currently for sale in the western countries is the F-35. Even the Europeans are buying it. So you literally have to, by NATO contract.
  • nilstycho 4y ago
    I'm not familiar with this. Can you share a source that explains more?
    • bobthepanda 4y ago
      The thinking is that NATO should have some level of equipment commonality so that people can work together, communicate together, use a different country’s equipment in a pinch, etc. with minimal training. The Ukranians are using Western equipment but they had to be trained to use it first, and that took weeks if not months. That’s precious time in the kind of war involving all of NATO. I don’t know that the F-35 is the only plane currently meeting requirements, if only because that would represent a bottleneck and single point of failure.
      • amalgamated_inc 4y ago
        The Eurofighter is not the same type of jet as the F-35. It can't deliver nuclear weapons, for example. AFAIK there is no other 5th gen platform for delivering those available to western countries. I think I got the original idea of the "requirement" from this article: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44740/germany-has-chosen-the-f-35-as-its-future-nuclear-strike-fighter https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44740/germany-has-chos... But I might've misread it, this might only apply to that particular sale to Germany.
  • Thaxll 4y ago
    This is not true, NATO members are free to buy whatever they want, as a matter of fact some of them buy f16/18, rafale, eurofighters, gripens etc ...
  • 4y ago
• JohnBooty 4y ago
  It's crucial to talk about the F-35's issues but perspective is also crucial. Every modern fighter program has faced issues like this. The F-14A had "flat spin" issues as dramatized in Top Gun. The F-16 had tons of early headaches. Etc. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/1977-when-the-f-16-was-americas-problem-child/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197...
  • JimtheCoder 4y ago
    "The F-14A had "flat spin" issues as dramatized in Top Gun" The early F-14As had engines that would just stop running for no apparent reason...
    • JohnBooty 4y ago
      Ah yes you mean our "spontaneous fuel saving mode," we're proud of that one! - Grumman salesman, probably
  • bnegreve 4y ago
    I'm not sure this is the most appropriate citation, the article argues that there have been problems with the développement F16 but the that the problems are particularly bad with the F35. The F-16 encountered months of delays, but the F-35 A/B/C models will, on average, be delayed half a decade. The F-35 was originally slated to cost $50 million apiece—nearly twice the original cost of the F-16 at today's prices—but the three versions of the plane currently run anywhere from $112 to $120 million each. Yes, America and her allies have been down this road before, but this time it is a lot rockier.
    • JohnBooty 4y ago
      That article is from 2016 and prices have come down since then. https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/f-35-to-get-more-expensive-in-next-deal-program-exec-says/ https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/f-35-to-get-more-expensi... The contract for lots 12-14, inked in 2019, included 478 F-35s for the US military and international customers. Under the terms of the agreement, an F-35A will cost $77.9 million in Lot 14, with the F-35B short takeoff and landing variant coming in at $101.3 million and the F-35C carrier variant at $94.4 million during the same period. Those prices are going up in the next lot due to inflation, but in inflation-adjusted dollars the price trajectory is generally downward. That's still more expensive than an F-16, but it's also a more advanced plane. I think the relevant comparison isn't the F-16.... it's competing modern fighters like the Rafale, the Eurofighter, and the Gripen. And the F-35 is competing with and beating them on price. (Direct price comparisons are impossible because of politics, hidden total cost of ownership concerns, government subsidies, etc. But... I've not heard it alleged that the F-35's cost is out of line with contemporaries)
• ipaddr 4y ago
  Because Canada's military has a long history of buying used military equipment that never works from submarines to sea planes to jets. In fairness Canada's army has more people trained in fixing these pieces than actual soldiers to use them.
• dhx 4y ago
  Supply chain logistics and sustainment costs. If a Canadian F35 aircraft urgently needs a spare part on the other side of the world, Canada could purchase the spare part from another F35 user in the region and not have to wait until the part is flown from the other side of the world. Pilots from allied countries could potentially fly the same aircraft type regardless of which country owns an individual aircraft. Thus if a country is short on trained pilots, the aircraft could still potentially be piloted by an ally. These aircraft are estimated to have a sustainment cost USD$8-10M/yr/aircraft (July 2021) or for the 88 aircraft to be procured by Canada, USD$880M/yr (July 2021). These costs would no doubt be higher if Canada were to select or develop an equivalent aircraft that only a small number of countries use as production of a completely different set of spare parts would be required for many decades. The costs would also be higher due to Canada needing to install additional or upgraded equipment during the lifespan--radios, armaments, etc. Instead of benefiting from shared R&D costs of the US and other countries, Canada would need to develop and sustain customised equipment for the aircraft themselves. An argument against consolidation and centralisation of the supply chain would be the fragility of only having one aircraft type. Perhaps there is only one factory producing a critical spare part that is forced to halt production, or a software defect impacts all F35 aircraft of all users at once, or as a generalised aircraft it is disadvantaged against adversaries with specialised aircraft, or countries such as Canada get placed at the back of the queue by the US when it comes to production and support. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2021/07/31/f-35a-jet-price-to-rise-but-its-sustainment-costs-that-could-bleed-air-force-budget-dry/?sh=4387929232df https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2021/07/31/f-35...
  • glitchc 4y ago
    Note that avionics and sensor packages may not be the same across all allies (US tends to withhold their best sauce for themselves, second-best for closest allies and so on), so not quite the drop-in replacement. Although admittedly avionics are less likely to require replacement in the field.
    • _3u10 4y ago
      F-35 is designed for export, I would suspect most of it is there, it’s no raptor.