What makes you think anyone wants it?
Buyers of things like this don't buy because they want to, they buy because they're told to.
My friend at DMO (Defense Materials Organization) in Australia spent 2 years of his life on a huge team that recommended the Australian Defense Force don't buy any Abrams tanks for a whole bunch of very valid reasons.
Australia bought a bunch of them anyway, in direct contradiction to the organization who's very purpose it is to make these kinds of purchasing decisions.
Who are the suckers?
Atleast Japan is trying to actually have a viable solution:
http://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/01/28/japan-first-steal...
The F-35 is buggy, because its unprecedented, I honestly don't think it gets a fair shake, and I wish people would look at the long term cost savings vs the short term boondoggle (and it is certainly that.) Fleet maintenance is astronomical, the F-35 is build to address that; if you spread costs out of 30 years, the plane doesn't look quite as expensive. Since the government doesn't use GAAP accounting, all costs are realized up front instead of being depreciated out.
I really don't buy your story about being able to hear the jet a minute before it hits you. By the time you hear a jet flying directly to your position you are either already dead, or the plane is just about to pass over you. In your instance it sounds like the plane was no zeroing in on your position, but was just incidentally passing by...which is entirely different.
Any cost savings have been annihilated by hideous budget overruns. The F-35 will be a money-loser without exception.
All this is aside from the fact that saving money on something that doesn't fucking work is pretty asinine.
Can they fire the gun yet without crashing the system?
Can the pilots actually use the VR helmet without getting motion sickness?
Has a smaller helmet been made so that the pilot doesn't get stuck against the inside of the canopy trying to look over his/her shoulder?
I don't believe it. Sure, that's how they sold it, and I understand the supply chain problems they want to avoid, but I don't believe a word of it.
Most anyone who heard an F35 and is posting publicly about it must have heard the plane in transit over land where they aren't permitted to cause sonic booms, and could have even been traveling very slowly.
The F-35 program is the biggest scam in history. The people in charge of it need to be put in jail.
coughSpaceShuttlecough
[okay this was glib, but there are some real parallels there, including trying to be all things to all people]
The world has moved on since WW2, and the idea of cheap hordes of aircraft, or spinning up the Arsenal of Democracy to build them in wartime just won't fly.
Ask the Syrians how well their simple Mig-21s and Mig-23s did in the Bekka Valley in 1982 when they ran up against the Israeli's flying F-15s and F-16s. Turkey shoot doesn't even begin to describe it. If you bring a biplane to a modern dogfight, you'll end up a splat mark on the ground.
i'm not sure how well an F-35 would stack up against 1040 400mph targets. the F-35 is much much quicker, but only has, what 200 bullets? something in that range.
Or, take it up a notch. blow $10,000,000 per drone. give them an air to air missile or two. that puts it at a much more reasonable 1 v 10. I get 10 shots, you get 4.
You're not wrong, but i think you're missing a classic military lesson, quantity has a quality all it's own.
It cannot avoid an engagement, nor press the attack.
It has stealth, so it can avoid an engagement if need be, or maneuver so the engagement is on more favorable terms. Try that with a 4th gen aircraft.
Yes. It's slower, and less agile. Than other fighter aircraft.
It can't win a dogfight. Period.
>It has stealth, so it can avoid an engagement if need be, or maneuver so the engagement is on more favorable terms.
Which the Chinese will surely counter, since they stole the blueprints. That stealth is mostly worthless.
And I'm glad you know the truth about stealth. It is useless you know. That's why the Russians, the Chinese and now the Germans are starting to build 5th Gen stealth aircraft. All to prop up the illusion that it's just a boondoggle, and "mostly worthless."
Back to reality. Stealth is very useful, that's why countries work tirelessly to find countermeasures. Some of these work to a degree, some have potential. Stealth isn't magic, it's just a useful tool; like jamming, like AWACs, like OPFOR training. But to deny its merits is just ignorant.
You're right, almost none of it is.
>Most A2A kills in the last 30 years have been BVR shots. Which the F-35 will excel at.
Negative, Ghostrider. It still has to be able to catch its prey, which it's not fast enough to do. And faster aircraft can still prevent it from disengaging. Speed is life in air combat.
>And I'm glad you know the truth about stealth. It is useless you know. That's why the Russians, the Chinese and now the Germans are starting to build 5th Gen stealth aircraft. All to prop up the illusion that it's just a boondoggle, and "mostly worthless."
What are we, on reddit? You're purposely being snide and also purposely misinterpreting what I've written. Stealth itself, as a concept, is not worthless. The F-35's stealth technology has been compromised, therefore it is of little value against an adversary such as China or Russia.
>Back to reality. Stealth is very useful, that's why countries work tirelessly to find countermeasures. Some of these work to a degree, some have potential. Stealth isn't magic, it's just a useful tool; like jamming, like AWACs, like OPFOR training. But to deny its merits is just ignorant.
I'm now convinced you are trolling. Enjoy your evening.
I think @greedo self-outed with the "quit reading the press" comment... posturing some secret source of information more authorititive than the damning reports from test pilots, pentagon office of testing, etc... Lockheed's PR dept maybe.
TROLOLOLOLL... your ploy to miss the point doesn't fool me :)
Thing is, everyone has an axe to grind with the F-35. Despite its shortcomings, its all we have in the pipeline, until the 6th gen fighters come online in a decade or so. Without something like the F-35 paired with the F-22, we have no chance of penetrating a modern IAD.
The idea that the Chinese can just steal some autocad drawings and crank out competitive aircraft isn't realistic. They lack the experience in engine design and manufacturing for starters. Much of their military technology is either licensed from Russia, and then reverse engineered. Yet they still can't produce an engine even close to the PWF135.
And speed isn't life in air combat. Situational awareness is. And someone flying a POS MIG/Sukhoi will get slapped by a slower aircraft if the MIG is unable to detect, track and engage the F-35. Ask the Iraqi's how well they did running away to Iran? Ask them how their MIG-25s did against slower F-15s? Or ask the Syrians why they stopped flying Foxbats over Israel once the Israelis got the slower F-15. The reason is because top end speed isn't the be all and end all of fighter performance.
And thanks for the ad hominem at the end. Nice to know that you've run out of logic and facts for your arguments.
Yeah those silly Chinks aren't smart enough. Huaaaah, America!
Look how they're pursuing a carrier fleet. Are they trying to build a CVN immediately? Nope, they're taking incremental steps with a secondhand refurbished conventional carrier. Iterating towards a long term goal, because they know war isn't Starcraft.
It's why when they wanted to develop a modern 4th gen fighter, they partnered with the Israelis to leverage the Lavi designs that became the J10.
You can be snide and set up strawmen, or you can back up your statements with facts, not ill-informed opinions.
The idea is to win before the dogfight.
And having the blueprints for a stealth plane is not the same thing as being able to counter it.
You're still better off winning most of your battles BVR and relying on your wingman in a dogfight than going toe to toe in every battle.
How about I just hoist 100,000 ball bearings into the air and drop them in front of the F35?
But if you're committed to the fast drone idea then get one. I think they're going about 450 mph now which ought to give you enough time to maneuver in front of the f35.
So again, how are you going to get these 100k ball bearings up to 20k AGI? Your slow, cheap drones are just going to loiter up there and hope an F-35 flies into their web?
It's not like the air forces of the worlds would be ignorant of this "surprise" tactic. And the methodology of targeting an F-35 with a cascade of ball bearings is conveniently left out of your scenario.
Yeah, so, what's your point?
It's obviously not a well developed plan. Nevertheless, considering the costs of repair, sortie interval, loiter time, all of the other limits imposed by having so few very units of expensive aircraft opens them up to novel attacks. As to how to get the things to stay up there? Balloons are one way, large solar panel wings which could be jettisoned is another. Such a plan might not even have to work well, it might be enough to cause decision makers to keep the fighters grounded.
Just what do you think a SAM is? There's a hell of a lot of volume in the atmosphere.
Though, I understand much of it is composites so it might sound better than it actually works.
I do think a lot of low tech options are pretty viable, since we can only afford to make a few hundred F-35s. High wattage UV lasers shot at cockpits permanently blind pilots, high energy RF pointed at jets turn all those little wires into antennas, drones can just play tag because jets are so delicate. when the cost of loss is 100M, with equal resources (even fairly unequal!) you can try all sorts of crazy stuff, one win is a huge payoff.
I dunno. Playing armchair general is fun. I'll never be in a position to test my theorys. I also played a lot of zurg back in the day, so my opinion is probably kinda silly.
If you think jets are so delicate, you haven't been paying attention to the mishap rate with drones. It's not like an RC model you're controlling within sight. You're operating them at ranges where lag is significant, where control links can be jammed, where GPS is easily spoofed, and where current performance is similar to a small Cessna.
How pray tell, is a small, cheap drone going to be able to carry a high power laser or "high energy RF" weapon (whatever that is) to the altitude that modern jets operate at? And if these "high energy RF" weapons are available, why wouldn't they be deployed on fighters, which can carry heavier weapons than drones, and have more surplus electrical capacity to power them?
It's easy to come up with armchair tactics when it's all Starcraft you're drawing upon. But the military doesn't work like that. Weapons take time to design, to implement, to refine. You can't just set your factories up to build UNIT X and ZERG!
http://defensetech.org/2016/01/04/u-s-navy-plans-to-fly-firs...
I doubt that there will be more than some technology demonstrators in less than four years.
And everyone is forgetting that with small size comes small range and payload. Small range means your opponent has to get close to you, exposing themselves. The article has some huge assumptions, at least concerning attacking a naval ship (which is far easier than an aircraft that can outperform a drone). The idea that an Aegis cruiser is going to let a fishing boat launch a significant number of drones without getting perforated by its MK-45 is a non-starter.
And a $10M drone attempting to engage in A2A combat is called a target. Not a threat. Drones are a long ways away from engaging in A2A combat.
Flight time/range - if the wings are large enough drones can be powered by solar panels and run forever [1] but we can safely assume that combat drones will be heavier and be capable of high acceleration and maneuverability so they would probably be powered by battery packs charged before take-off. You might think that's a limitation but battery tech is improving to the point where this will be viable by the the next conflict.
You're thinking of them wrong. They're not meant to compete with $100m planes. They're so cheap that they could be used as cheap guided missiles. They only need to collide with the enemy plane to achieve the win condition. Considering how light and maneuverable they will be, that should be simple.
[1] - http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/solar-powered-drone...
Batteries don't have the energy density for powering high performance aircraft. They can't even power something along the lines of a Cessna 172. Assuming battery tech will take off is just handwaving.
What everyone seems to be espousing is already in place: SAMs. SAMs can be autonomous, have the performance and range to shoot down any aircraft. The current generation of Western and Russian SAMs are all excellent. The question is whether they'll be good enough to defeat stealth technology. The jury is still out on it.
Drones may take on a larger role in the future, if we decide to truly let them function autonomously. But the tech isn't there yet. And even if you create a magical swarm, it's range will be very small compared to a jet fighter.
I wish you went on to back that statement, because I'm going to have to use context clues to guess that you've either failed at reading comprehension or basic abstract thought. The article discusses a well known example of the failure of an inflexible monolithic defense system faced with an enemy schooled in asymmetric warfare. The J-35 is to the naval fleet C2 net as the drone swarm is to the armada of small suicide boats.
> Cheap drones are not going to be carrying...
Solid rocket boosters and pointy nose cones? The drones are the missiles. As far as targeting, anti-tank missiles have had a great deal of success without fancy radar arrays - just object recognition in extremely noisy environments. I see no reason why that would be impossible for this application.
> How are your "light comms" going to work at night...
Better
> ...or in inclement weather...
Ask the Navy, they managed to make it work for a long time without computer aided signal processing.
> Think you can see a spotlight in daytime at 20K?
LOL, the Germans managed to get a range of 4KM (13K feet) in WWI, in broad daylight, with handheld light signals [0]. So yeah, I think you can see a spotlight in daylight from 20 thousand feet in the year 2016.
> ...if we decide to truly let them function autonomously...
When you say we, do you mean every nation? Because it will only take one to disrupt the whole game.
> ...it's range will be very small compared to a jet fighter.
What? If you want to park an aircraft on the other side of the Pacific, are you going to choose a fighter jet or a drone?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_optical_communicati...
Additionally, the SAM locked on while the F-117 was coming off target, with the weapon bay doors open.
I agree with the parent in that a diversified set of aircraft focused on specific missions and more easily produced and upgraded with new tech is critical (no ones saying build bi-planes). And sure we can say 4th-gen beats 3rd-gen and now 5th-gen beats 4th-gen, unfortunately adversaries often don’t follow the script. F-35 seems to be more a danger to national security than a help.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_(missile) [2] http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?121375-MiG-21-...
A fleet of Mig-21s, even upgraded, would be no match for F-35s. Even using Su-30s as a mini AWACs, the F-35s wouldn't be detected on radar. So the F-35s could wax the Sukhois, and then take on the blind Fishbeds with ease. It would be like what the F-22 pilots call it when they went up against 4th Gen fighters; clubbing baby seals.
Fishbeds are decent jets in terms of speed and agility, but they're not dogfighters; they have horrible visibilty, they bleed energy in turns (delta wings), and they have limited weapons carriage.
I like the F-22 for Air-to-Air. I think the F-35 is probably okay, just not remotely worth the money. But I think our "all in" on a single do-it-all, super-expensive fighter-bomber is a huge risk and the wrong direction. We need a mix of assets. And unfortunately, the F-35 just eats up the whole budget so we can't afford anything else. It definitely shouldn't be doing CAS, and strike is probably best performed by other assets too. Trying to merge AF, Navy, and Marine planes into one super plane is bad for so many reasons.
The whole plan seems incapable of taking on serious adversaries and incredible overkill for insurgency operations. A no man's land of happy defense contractors and bad military strategy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mole_Cricket_19#Batt...
People don't realize this. Your smartphone is vastly more powerful than pretty much any single CPU found in the avionics of a fighter. If you really dig around old press releases you can figure out some of what these aircraft use, but I'd rather not specify. But, think about when the F-35 systems were largely designed: the period from 2000 to 2005.
A good example of the "cheap" fighter is the Korean F/A-50. This jet has some of the Beyond Visual Range capability of the F-16, at 1/3 the cost. It doesn't have the range or the weapons capacity.
A well trained T-38/F-5 aggressor pilot can nail an F-16 or F-22 in a dogfight, within visual range. The Stealth F-35 will have the ability to engage an enemy aircraft without ever being detected, and that "minor" detail justifies the cost. In previous conflicts, once the opposing aircraft locate each other on radar, the adversaries would be forced into the merge, or risk being shot down at long range.
Kind of unfair example, the Israelis had a lot of time to prepare for that battle. On top of that the Syrians knew they didn't stand a chance given their resources.
Given any situation you have to fit the resource to meet the need. The United States deploys the EMB 314 Super Tucano to great effect, which is a WW2 style fighter fitted with modern electronics. The F35 in the modern context simply doesn't make sense, as it's simply over engineered and doesn't fit current individual needs.
And the Super Tucano? WTH. The USAF accepted 20, temporarily, before transferring them to the Afghan AF. The USAF has no squadrons that utilize this airframe, and no intentions to. It has no survivability in a contested airspace at all.
Seeing as how the last time the USAF operated in seriously contested airspace was forty years ago, this is perhaps not as big a problem as it would seem.
I read this in a great PDF doc a while back written by I think an ex Russian officer who talked about this and other strategies like their officer heavy army to allow quick expansion through bringing in civilians. I've not been able to find it again if anyone is familiar.
I have no idea what the next major conflict might look like, and nobody else does, either. (WW1 and WW2 both showed large swings in fortunes with even minor technological improvements.) But it's hard to see how the F-35 could play a role in it.
Drones.
Now the RuAF has a fantastic multirole fighter that rivals the F35 but years before the F35 sees a combat debut.
Edit: See grecy's comment for a perfect example. They're a vehicle to siphon taxpayer dollars, not a vehicle to fight wars.
(Although Israel, one of the very largest recipients of U.S. military aid, actually has an exemption to this rule, we actually give them cash they're allowed to spend on their own local military industry. I bet they don't buy any F-35s)
Oh, and the IAF has already contracted to buy the F-35...
And I'm surprised they're not smart enough to avoid the F-35, but I guess it's just OPM and keeps their benefactor happy.
The more war goes 'remote control' the more this will cease to be an issue, and this is a dangerous trend precisely because it removes one of the last impediments to scaling up the export of war. As soon as the losses to own troops drop to near zero because all of it is done through robotic means all bets are off, and it does not even require a 'skynet' in order to achieve it. All it takes is some more telepresence and that's pretty much a solved problem at this stage. The difference is that in the air we now have this and for other branches it is still being worked on but within a decade or two we should see robotic infantry.
If the US tries to fight a near-peer opponent like China or Russia, GPS will be jammed, satellites will be either blinded or destroyed, and both UHF and VHF comms will be either jammed or severely degraded. Just recently a US Army General was bitching about how advanced the Russians were with their ECM/ECCM in Ukraine. The Russians are extremely good at this.
If that would happen it would most likely be by proxy.
Even in WW2, all the major nations had aircraft that were multipurpose. Even the famous P-51 was built to be multipurpose. The difference between then and now is process/planning to build those aircraft hasn't kept up with their complexity. Also there's a lot more consideration of pilot safety and environmental extremes than the typical propeller fighter/bomber of WW2.
Aircraft (and aircraft carriers) were devastatingly effective in the WWII Pacific theatre. (Okay, this wasn't the Air Force, but I'm focusing on the aircraft part.)
It's true for both sides. Japan nearly destroyed the US's ability to contend at all in that theatre. The US turned the tide at Midway.
You're right they don't win wars "by themselves", but I think you're undervaluing their strategic value in wars fought on certain geographies.
That's a pretty loaded perspective on the nature of war. Occupation of territory isn't necessarily the objective and it's a crude sort of "victory" which is not appropriate for many current conflicts.
With all the problems noted over the last few years I'm surprised that anyone wants it. The F-22 has had its problems and production was cut at a very low number (I think I read that they wanted to shift gears and go with the F-35). The complexity of these two planes could make them more of a liability in a conflict.
It makes more sense to me (as a taxpayer) to spend the defense dollar on things that can be built quickly and for minimal initial cost so that many can be built to replace those lost to attrition in conflict. They should also be purpose-built for specific missions just as we built planes in WW2. We have the technology and we don't need a fleet of flying super-computers that can't fight their way out of the battlespace. Planes are great support tools for infantry and armored units who actually win the wars by taking and holding territory from the enemy. They won't win wars by themselves. Sorry 'bout that, Air Force.