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Ten years ago, everyone interested in military aircraft who was not trying to sell the F-35 told me that it was terrible (too expensive, trying to do too many i

Ten years ago, everyone interested in military aircraft who was not trying to sell the F-35 told me that it was terrible (too expensive, trying to do too many incompatible things, dependent on software systems which did not work and possibly could not work). I would be interested in an article on what changed now that more countries are picking it.

kyleyeats 4y ago
All competing projects did even worse.
elabajaba 4y ago
The bugs have mostly been fixed, and it's cheaper than most 4.5 gen fighters (they're building a lot of them so the unit cost drops significantly) while being significantly more capable (see the ridiculous numbers it puts up at Red flag). People have also learned that a lot of the "experts" that criticized it were extremely noncredible (eg. Pierre Sprey) and are spouting nonsense that hasn't been true since before the Vietnam war (eg. Relevance of dogfighting and guns in air combat).
- pixodaros 4y ago
  The thing about dogfighting and guns / mawr dakka seems to be an American thing, I did not hear it, but David 'Warisboring' Axe seemed like a serious reporter, and Marcus Ranum was a serious IT guy
  - Phiwise_ 4y ago
    Mirage 2000, Rafale, and Typhoon were/are all arguably designed with a huge emphasis on energy maneuverability, which is also only meant for dogfights according to postings on internet forums. And there are plenty of other isolated ways you could argue the reverse of the US showing restraint in ways others don't, such as Europe's love for delta wings (rejected most recently when the F-35 was first considered), or the Russkies' obsession with supermaneuverability, which the US has barely even considered sane enough for demonstrators. In terms of "mawr dakka", too, assuming you're referring to the A-10, that honor also belongs not to the US, per popular opinion, but to the Soviets in the MiG-27. You've just never heard of it because they wanted to fire essentially the same projectile in a slightly bigger casing at 2000 more rounds per minute, which the airframe simply couldn't handle reliably, and were also limited in the battles they did see due to an unusual weakness to ground fire as opposed to the A-10's unusual resiliency. And besides that, the US also built the F-111 and F-117 as an explicit alternative to light air attack craft. The only "American thing" that really exists in modern military history is a tendency to do more things than everyone else. The US has NIH-ed their way into pretty much every military technology that's been hypothesized by someone not wearing a tinfoil hat and raving about Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci. The public hears about questions like dogfighting and firepower in US aircraft because the US is one of the only countries in the world whose military actively seeks out (or at least sought out, there's some argument that the F-35 is the beginning of the end) multiple home-grown variants of military equipment, especially aircraft, that are expected to compete both on economic and doctrinal value as actual service craft for continuing contracts, rather then just proving ground test beds. More chances to change preference, more chances for contracts, more argument, more buzz filtering into newspapers. In contrast, we're probably not going to talk much about if stealth is a Finnish thing or whatever else for quite some time after this. Perhaps the American thing is spending lots of money, but a full assessment doesn't really allow for more specifics than that.
- miguelazo 4y ago
  “Mostly been fixed.” Please elaborate, cite. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/23/the-new-york-times-should-be-ashamed-of-its-feeble-defense-of-the-f-35-boondoggle/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/23/the-new-york-ti... https://mises.org/power-market/f-35-15-trillion-boondoggle https://mises.org/power-market/f-35-15-trillion-boondoggle
  - kilgnad 4y ago
    There's definitely a distortion field around the F-35 both from the positive perspective and the negative. As most of us are laymen who've never flown the plane, it's hard to know which viewpoint is definitive. Sentiment has definitely shifted towards the positive viewpoint though. However, the negative viewpoint is not unrealistic. The US can strong arm other countries into buying their crap with bribes and other under the cover dealings. Heck why do you think TSMC is opening a fab in Arizona? Because it's a profitable move? No way.
    - trashtester 4y ago
      I guy I grew up with is a flight instructor for the F-35. He claims (publicly) it's a total game changer compared to the F-16's he used to fly before. In exercises such as Red Flag, it dominates anything 4th gen. "Stealth" is not only about being hard to detect. It's just as much about making it difficult for enemy missiles to get a lock and keep it until they score a hit. Also, the softer (or software) elements of the F-35 is a huge part of it. Sensor Fusion makes it a lot easier to know what to do next.
  - Maakuth 4y ago
    As I see it, the budget and schedule overruns are not functional faults in the airplane itself, but in the program that produces and maintains it. As such, it is not in the scope of a tender process for procuring such planes outside the US.
  - gggggg5 4y ago
    Are you kidding with these sources? Perhaps next you will go to Greenpeace for their opinion on the F-35? Both of these are groups which exist to oppose any kind of military spending, neither of them have any relevant expertise.
lmm 4y ago
The competitors have gotten more expensive, and apparently they've sold enough that the "shovel cash into development and make it up on volume" approach has worked. Like, the Gripen's development costs are a fraction of the F-35s, so it should be cheaper both because of that and because of being built with less fancy technology. But the development cost doesn't matter now that everyone and their dog is ordering a thousand F-35s (and it certainly feels like it took a certain amount of "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM" to get there, but at some point being the industry standard is a self-sustaining position), and meanwhile the Gripen is more expensive to operate than it should be because... honestly I'd really like to see some answers on what kind of "cost disease" seems to have affected all "4th gen" combat aircraft over the last 10 years or so, but it's undeniable that it's happened.
philwelch 4y ago
The short answer is that you've been misinformed. Many of the criticisms of the F-35 originate from one or many of the following: * Manufacturers of competing fighter jets. If enough people think the F-35 is terrible, they might vote for politicians who will nix F-35 procurement and maybe buy their plane instead. These often take the form of slick PR hits where e.g. the CBC will cite Boeing as an "expert source" about why Boeing's Super Hornet is a better choice than the F-35 for the Canadian air force. * Russian state media, which wants to further their own propaganda narrative. * Pierre Sprey, who has notoriously overstated the extent of his expertise and his involvement with US aircraft development in the past, and has convinced unwitting journalists (including the aforementioned Russian state media) to cite him. A lot of things have changed over the past ten years: Pierre Sprey passed away, Boeing's credibility has taken a massive hit in recent years for a number of reasons, and the Russians are invading Ukraine which makes them pretty unpopular and Westerners much less willing to take RT and the like at face value. Meanwhile, the F-35 is in service and seems to be relatively successful so far.
- pixodaros 4y ago
  Confident strangers on the Internet are not worth much. Good articles, with references, which go into competing points of view and explain the problems with them, are worth a lot. Like I said, that Sprey person seems like a blowhard who got attention in the USA, I never heard of him before some YouTube videos in the past few months. The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    > The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum. And by what standard did you find them credible when it comes to evaluating fighter jets? It seems like you aren’t applying a consistent standard to ”confident strangers on the Internet”, which is all those guys seem to be. The truth is, anyone with the qualifications and information necessary to make a proper evaluation already works for a military and isn’t allowed to say much.
mcarmichael 4y ago
The project had a real mark-to-market agonizing reappraisal in 2010 or so, as reviewed here (from the standpoint of 2013): <https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-690t https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-690t>. Since then development targets have largely been met, and potential customers are much more comfortable with capability and reliability data. Here's a great Australian-based analysis of the F-35's particular attractions for current foreign buyers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQgNwrtVoZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQgNwrtVoZ4 Scathing criticism of the early F-35 development process has always been entirely warranted, and the Pentagon continues to pay the price in rebuilding costs for early "production" airframes. Its also notable that the Navy is being quite, ah, deliberate about F-35C deployment; I think only one carrier is currently rated to operate them. The Marines are more gung-ho about their F-35Bs, but only the F-35A is an export success story so far.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Ten years ago, everyone interested in military aircraft who was not trying to sell the F-35 told me that it was terrible IIRC, the most serious criticism of the F-35 was mostly not that the fighter was terrible, but that the decision to pursue the project in the way it was was terrible, that the misguided attempt to try to save money by commonality among the radically different missions of the main versions instead made each variant more expensive to develop than it would be independently, compromised capability, and didn’t solve logistical problems better than separate projects would have. (There was also criticism based on the cost arc of manned fighter development vs. alternative technologies and countermeasures against them that in terms of funding mix, the US should have been spending more on alternatives/countermeasures and less on manned fighters including the F-35, which was an even higher-level meta-criticism.)
- jabl 4y ago
  TBH, I find it really hard to believe that all the R&D cost associated with the STOVL variant was worth it, instead of just equipping a couple carriers with catapults and arrestor gear. Not to mention that the carrier variant is significantly more capable in terms of range and payload than the STOVL version. As for manned vs. unmanned, while unmanned technologies are clearly developing rapidly, I suspect they're not ready yet for all the manned missions. Hence the JSF project is still warranted. Maybe the next gen JSF follow-up will be an entirely unmanned platform, who knows..
  - nradov 4y ago
    The primary driver for requiring the STOVL variant was the US Marine Corps which wanted to fly the F-35B off of amphibious ships to provide close air support for ground troops. There was never any possibility of equipping those ships with catapults and arresting gear; not enough space. Now perhaps the STOVL variant should have been dropped and the Marines told to make do with other aircraft, but that wasn't politically feasible at the time. Sixth generation tactical aircraft will probably be optionally manned. So they can operate as drones when flying high-risk strike missions against known targets but can also carry pilots when greater flexibility is needed.
  - 4y ago
mastax 4y ago
The criticism about the folly of merging into one super program to rule them all (F35ABC) was proven at least partially correct. It caused lots of problems, delays, cost overruns. The Navy doesn't seem to like the F35C much anyway. But now all that's been finished and paid off. What's left is a great plane at a good price that's very modular and everyone is investing into upgrading it for the long haul.
miguelazo 4y ago
Came here to say this. The F-35 was widely considered a boondoggle, if not a flop. Not sure what cave all the MIC boosters crawled out of, but this is hilarious.
- mlindner 4y ago
  Emphasis on "was". It got cheaper from mass production to the point it's cost competitive even with aircraft like the Gripen.
  - miguelazo 4y ago
    Got cheaper from mass production, or because the massive sunk cost of trillions of dollars isn't factored into the unit cost? Those trillions could have been used to improve the military in more important ways, not to mention the country, which has failing infrastructure, inadequate education, etc.
    - mlindner 4y ago
      I'm not sure why you think the sunk cost wouldn't be factored into the unit cost? Lockheed Martin (and them any other subcontractors) aren't a charity.
javier2 4y ago
Well, they set out to create one plane to rule them all, and essentially ended up with three different planes... In addition the first 5-10 years have been riddled with software issues. Luckily they seem to have ended up being pretty good jets though, and the price is decreasing for the F35A quite a bit.
favflam 4y ago
The F-35b/c? (vtol one) lets foreign navies operate aircraft on helicarriers (think Japan, Italy, South Korea). There are no competing stealth aircraft capable of naval deployment. China is developing what appears to be a stealth fighter for their aircraft carriers, but I don't know how soon they will be deployed.

kyleyeats 4y ago

All competing projects did even worse.

elabajaba 4y ago

The bugs have mostly been fixed, and it's cheaper than most 4.5 gen fighters (they're building a lot of them so the unit cost drops significantly) while being significantly more capable (see the ridiculous numbers it puts up at Red flag). People have also learned that a lot of the "experts" that criticized it were extremely noncredible (eg. Pierre Sprey) and are spouting nonsense that hasn't been true since before the Vietnam war (eg. Relevance of dogfighting and guns in air combat).

pixodaros 4y ago
The thing about dogfighting and guns / mawr dakka seems to be an American thing, I did not hear it, but David 'Warisboring' Axe seemed like a serious reporter, and Marcus Ranum was a serious IT guy
- Phiwise_ 4y ago
  Mirage 2000, Rafale, and Typhoon were/are all arguably designed with a huge emphasis on energy maneuverability, which is also only meant for dogfights according to postings on internet forums. And there are plenty of other isolated ways you could argue the reverse of the US showing restraint in ways others don't, such as Europe's love for delta wings (rejected most recently when the F-35 was first considered), or the Russkies' obsession with supermaneuverability, which the US has barely even considered sane enough for demonstrators. In terms of "mawr dakka", too, assuming you're referring to the A-10, that honor also belongs not to the US, per popular opinion, but to the Soviets in the MiG-27. You've just never heard of it because they wanted to fire essentially the same projectile in a slightly bigger casing at 2000 more rounds per minute, which the airframe simply couldn't handle reliably, and were also limited in the battles they did see due to an unusual weakness to ground fire as opposed to the A-10's unusual resiliency. And besides that, the US also built the F-111 and F-117 as an explicit alternative to light air attack craft. The only "American thing" that really exists in modern military history is a tendency to do more things than everyone else. The US has NIH-ed their way into pretty much every military technology that's been hypothesized by someone not wearing a tinfoil hat and raving about Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci. The public hears about questions like dogfighting and firepower in US aircraft because the US is one of the only countries in the world whose military actively seeks out (or at least sought out, there's some argument that the F-35 is the beginning of the end) multiple home-grown variants of military equipment, especially aircraft, that are expected to compete both on economic and doctrinal value as actual service craft for continuing contracts, rather then just proving ground test beds. More chances to change preference, more chances for contracts, more argument, more buzz filtering into newspapers. In contrast, we're probably not going to talk much about if stealth is a Finnish thing or whatever else for quite some time after this. Perhaps the American thing is spending lots of money, but a full assessment doesn't really allow for more specifics than that.
miguelazo 4y ago
“Mostly been fixed.” Please elaborate, cite. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/23/the-new-york-times-should-be-ashamed-of-its-feeble-defense-of-the-f-35-boondoggle/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/23/the-new-york-ti... https://mises.org/power-market/f-35-15-trillion-boondoggle https://mises.org/power-market/f-35-15-trillion-boondoggle
- kilgnad 4y ago
  There's definitely a distortion field around the F-35 both from the positive perspective and the negative. As most of us are laymen who've never flown the plane, it's hard to know which viewpoint is definitive. Sentiment has definitely shifted towards the positive viewpoint though. However, the negative viewpoint is not unrealistic. The US can strong arm other countries into buying their crap with bribes and other under the cover dealings. Heck why do you think TSMC is opening a fab in Arizona? Because it's a profitable move? No way.
  - trashtester 4y ago
    I guy I grew up with is a flight instructor for the F-35. He claims (publicly) it's a total game changer compared to the F-16's he used to fly before. In exercises such as Red Flag, it dominates anything 4th gen. "Stealth" is not only about being hard to detect. It's just as much about making it difficult for enemy missiles to get a lock and keep it until they score a hit. Also, the softer (or software) elements of the F-35 is a huge part of it. Sensor Fusion makes it a lot easier to know what to do next.
- Maakuth 4y ago
  As I see it, the budget and schedule overruns are not functional faults in the airplane itself, but in the program that produces and maintains it. As such, it is not in the scope of a tender process for procuring such planes outside the US.
- gggggg5 4y ago
  Are you kidding with these sources? Perhaps next you will go to Greenpeace for their opinion on the F-35? Both of these are groups which exist to oppose any kind of military spending, neither of them have any relevant expertise.

lmm 4y ago

The competitors have gotten more expensive, and apparently they've sold enough that the "shovel cash into development and make it up on volume" approach has worked. Like, the Gripen's development costs are a fraction of the F-35s, so it should be cheaper both because of that and because of being built with less fancy technology. But the development cost doesn't matter now that everyone and their dog is ordering a thousand F-35s (and it certainly feels like it took a certain amount of "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM" to get there, but at some point being the industry standard is a self-sustaining position), and meanwhile the Gripen is more expensive to operate than it should be because... honestly I'd really like to see some answers on what kind of "cost disease" seems to have affected all "4th gen" combat aircraft over the last 10 years or so, but it's undeniable that it's happened.

philwelch 4y ago

The short answer is that you've been misinformed. Many of the criticisms of the F-35 originate from one or many of the following: * Manufacturers of competing fighter jets. If enough people think the F-35 is terrible, they might vote for politicians who will nix F-35 procurement and maybe buy their plane instead. These often take the form of slick PR hits where e.g. the CBC will cite Boeing as an "expert source" about why Boeing's Super Hornet is a better choice than the F-35 for the Canadian air force. * Russian state media, which wants to further their own propaganda narrative. * Pierre Sprey, who has notoriously overstated the extent of his expertise and his involvement with US aircraft development in the past, and has convinced unwitting journalists (including the aforementioned Russian state media) to cite him. A lot of things have changed over the past ten years: Pierre Sprey passed away, Boeing's credibility has taken a massive hit in recent years for a number of reasons, and the Russians are invading Ukraine which makes them pretty unpopular and Westerners much less willing to take RT and the like at face value. Meanwhile, the F-35 is in service and seems to be relatively successful so far.

pixodaros 4y ago
Confident strangers on the Internet are not worth much. Good articles, with references, which go into competing points of view and explain the problems with them, are worth a lot. Like I said, that Sprey person seems like a blowhard who got attention in the USA, I never heard of him before some YouTube videos in the past few months. The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum.
- philwelch 4y ago
  > The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum. And by what standard did you find them credible when it comes to evaluating fighter jets? It seems like you aren’t applying a consistent standard to ”confident strangers on the Internet”, which is all those guys seem to be. The truth is, anyone with the qualifications and information necessary to make a proper evaluation already works for a military and isn’t allowed to say much.

mcarmichael 4y ago

The project had a real mark-to-market agonizing reappraisal in 2010 or so, as reviewed here (from the standpoint of 2013): <https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-690t https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-690t>. Since then development targets have largely been met, and potential customers are much more comfortable with capability and reliability data. Here's a great Australian-based analysis of the F-35's particular attractions for current foreign buyers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQgNwrtVoZ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQgNwrtVoZ4 Scathing criticism of the early F-35 development process has always been entirely warranted, and the Pentagon continues to pay the price in rebuilding costs for early "production" airframes. Its also notable that the Navy is being quite, ah, deliberate about F-35C deployment; I think only one carrier is currently rated to operate them. The Marines are more gung-ho about their F-35Bs, but only the F-35A is an export success story so far.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Ten years ago, everyone interested in military aircraft who was not trying to sell the F-35 told me that it was terrible IIRC, the most serious criticism of the F-35 was mostly not that the fighter was terrible, but that the decision to pursue the project in the way it was was terrible, that the misguided attempt to try to save money by commonality among the radically different missions of the main versions instead made each variant more expensive to develop than it would be independently, compromised capability, and didn’t solve logistical problems better than separate projects would have. (There was also criticism based on the cost arc of manned fighter development vs. alternative technologies and countermeasures against them that in terms of funding mix, the US should have been spending more on alternatives/countermeasures and less on manned fighters including the F-35, which was an even higher-level meta-criticism.)

jabl 4y ago
TBH, I find it really hard to believe that all the R&D cost associated with the STOVL variant was worth it, instead of just equipping a couple carriers with catapults and arrestor gear. Not to mention that the carrier variant is significantly more capable in terms of range and payload than the STOVL version. As for manned vs. unmanned, while unmanned technologies are clearly developing rapidly, I suspect they're not ready yet for all the manned missions. Hence the JSF project is still warranted. Maybe the next gen JSF follow-up will be an entirely unmanned platform, who knows..
- nradov 4y ago
  The primary driver for requiring the STOVL variant was the US Marine Corps which wanted to fly the F-35B off of amphibious ships to provide close air support for ground troops. There was never any possibility of equipping those ships with catapults and arresting gear; not enough space. Now perhaps the STOVL variant should have been dropped and the Marines told to make do with other aircraft, but that wasn't politically feasible at the time. Sixth generation tactical aircraft will probably be optionally manned. So they can operate as drones when flying high-risk strike missions against known targets but can also carry pilots when greater flexibility is needed.
- 4y ago

mastax 4y ago

The criticism about the folly of merging into one super program to rule them all (F35ABC) was proven at least partially correct. It caused lots of problems, delays, cost overruns. The Navy doesn't seem to like the F35C much anyway. But now all that's been finished and paid off. What's left is a great plane at a good price that's very modular and everyone is investing into upgrading it for the long haul.

miguelazo 4y ago

Came here to say this. The F-35 was widely considered a boondoggle, if not a flop. Not sure what cave all the MIC boosters crawled out of, but this is hilarious.

mlindner 4y ago
Emphasis on "was". It got cheaper from mass production to the point it's cost competitive even with aircraft like the Gripen.
- miguelazo 4y ago
  Got cheaper from mass production, or because the massive sunk cost of trillions of dollars isn't factored into the unit cost? Those trillions could have been used to improve the military in more important ways, not to mention the country, which has failing infrastructure, inadequate education, etc.
  - mlindner 4y ago
    I'm not sure why you think the sunk cost wouldn't be factored into the unit cost? Lockheed Martin (and them any other subcontractors) aren't a charity.

javier2 4y ago

Well, they set out to create one plane to rule them all, and essentially ended up with three different planes... In addition the first 5-10 years have been riddled with software issues. Luckily they seem to have ended up being pretty good jets though, and the price is decreasing for the F35A quite a bit.

favflam 4y ago

The F-35b/c? (vtol one) lets foreign navies operate aircraft on helicarriers (think Japan, Italy, South Korea). There are no competing stealth aircraft capable of naval deployment. China is developing what appears to be a stealth fighter for their aircraft carriers, but I don't know how soon they will be deployed.