3 ms·

Honestly if we can take one conclusion from current events, is this handwringing about military procurement is largely melodramatic. As it turned out Bradley fi

by varjag 2y ago

Honestly if we can take one conclusion from current events, is this handwringing about military procurement is largely melodramatic. As it turned out Bradley fighting vehicle absolutely kicks ass despite a whole movie filmed to narrate how crappy it is. F-35 appears to be an airborne version of that. Foreign customers love it, its combat record is stellar, procurement queues are now decade long.

ls612 2y ago
Also F-35 was designed in the middle of the unipolar moment, when nobody really knew what future air combat would look like. Thus it was given the task of developing every technology in the kitchen sink (stealth! sensor fusion! VTOL! multirole! fancy pilot helmet!) and that was all expensive. But it turns out that many of those technologies will be crucial for the future and it’s hard to fault the choice they made ex ante in 2000. By contrast, NGAD has a hugely ambitious development plan too but they seem to know exactly what they want (a teaming stealth air dominance fighter for a peer conflict delivered in the 2030s).
- orwin 2y ago
  I do thing NGAD is the future, and i hope the US will reduce the f35 commands to focus on the NGAD, which is truly a next-gen plane. > stealth! sensor fusion! VTOL! multirole! fancy pilot helmet! Only VTOL was completely new. And maybe fancy pilot helmet? The difficulty is to put everything in a single plane. Honestly, without VTOL (which was asked by the UK Navy), i'm pretty sure the f35 would have had a lot less issues and would've made it to production already.
orwin 2y ago
> Foreign customers love it The pilots do. The engineering crew and the armies/navies less, because of its costs. Its hard to have real data, because of armies tendancy to keep it close to their chest, but here is a norwegian report about f35 cost that skyrockets and force them to have less training and less operational capacity: https://www.riksrevisjonen.no/rapporter-mappe/no-2023-2024/innfasing-av-norges-nye-kampfly-f-35/ https://www.riksrevisjonen.no/rapporter-mappe/no-2023-2024/i... US luckily have functional civilian admin, so i was able to find this: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106703 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106703 No luck from UK and Australia. For Australia, i have no hope, but UK might publish something. From what i hard, no particular issue with the RAF, but the Royal Navy grumble a bit (and tbf they shouldn't: 80% of the f35 issues were caused by the UK navy demands). Also, the selling price for UK, Australia and Norway who helped develop the plane seems to be higher than the selling price for Finland, which i think is weird. > procurement queues are now decade long Because it's still in pre-production, when serial production should've started 5 years ago. The block4 (which will be the production standard) will, despite LM promises to be compatible with TR2, _need_ the TR3 upgrade, no other choice. The TR3 should've been on new planes since 2022. The current planes, with TR3 improvement, were supposed to be out this year for testing, and the DoD refused to take them because it was well below what was expected. Now, the TR3 is finally expected for 2025 (i think 2026 is a far better expectation), which mean Block4 won't be out until at least late 2031. (Without TR3 and block4: no nuclear capability, no electronic warfare, no anti-ship capabilities, no A2/AD capabilities. A2/AD is what makes the f35 the most interesting plane of the world)

by varjag 2y ago

ls612 2y ago

Also F-35 was designed in the middle of the unipolar moment, when nobody really knew what future air combat would look like. Thus it was given the task of developing every technology in the kitchen sink (stealth! sensor fusion! VTOL! multirole! fancy pilot helmet!) and that was all expensive. But it turns out that many of those technologies will be crucial for the future and it’s hard to fault the choice they made ex ante in 2000. By contrast, NGAD has a hugely ambitious development plan too but they seem to know exactly what they want (a teaming stealth air dominance fighter for a peer conflict delivered in the 2030s).

orwin 2y ago
I do thing NGAD is the future, and i hope the US will reduce the f35 commands to focus on the NGAD, which is truly a next-gen plane. > stealth! sensor fusion! VTOL! multirole! fancy pilot helmet! Only VTOL was completely new. And maybe fancy pilot helmet? The difficulty is to put everything in a single plane. Honestly, without VTOL (which was asked by the UK Navy), i'm pretty sure the f35 would have had a lot less issues and would've made it to production already.

orwin 2y ago

> Foreign customers love it The pilots do. The engineering crew and the armies/navies less, because of its costs. Its hard to have real data, because of armies tendancy to keep it close to their chest, but here is a norwegian report about f35 cost that skyrockets and force them to have less training and less operational capacity: https://www.riksrevisjonen.no/rapporter-mappe/no-2023-2024/innfasing-av-norges-nye-kampfly-f-35/ https://www.riksrevisjonen.no/rapporter-mappe/no-2023-2024/i... US luckily have functional civilian admin, so i was able to find this: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106703 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106703 No luck from UK and Australia. For Australia, i have no hope, but UK might publish something. From what i hard, no particular issue with the RAF, but the Royal Navy grumble a bit (and tbf they shouldn't: 80% of the f35 issues were caused by the UK navy demands). Also, the selling price for UK, Australia and Norway who helped develop the plane seems to be higher than the selling price for Finland, which i think is weird. > procurement queues are now decade long Because it's still in pre-production, when serial production should've started 5 years ago. The block4 (which will be the production standard) will, despite LM promises to be compatible with TR2, _need_ the TR3 upgrade, no other choice. The TR3 should've been on new planes since 2022. The current planes, with TR3 improvement, were supposed to be out this year for testing, and the DoD refused to take them because it was well below what was expected. Now, the TR3 is finally expected for 2025 (i think 2026 is a far better expectation), which mean Block4 won't be out until at least late 2031. (Without TR3 and block4: no nuclear capability, no electronic warfare, no anti-ship capabilities, no A2/AD capabilities. A2/AD is what makes the f35 the most interesting plane of the world)