Steve made this comment on an earlier post.
F-35 cops a lot flack for development delays - but as I recall it is no worse than the F-22 whose X moodel first flew in 89/90 but did not reach IOC until about '05. The Eurofighter X-model first flew about '86 and did not reach IOC - in only a limited air-air mode - until about '04. The Rafael was not much different.And that boys and girls is the real issue with the F-35. Once it begins serial - full rate production, then its Katy bar the door! The costs of the airplane will drop dramatically. Nations will clamor for the airplane and the Typhoon, Rafale, Gripen and Super Hornet will be shut out of the fighter market. This could be the swan song for some aircraft manufacturers.
Yet I cannot recall Bill Sweetman et al giving anything like the grief to those earlier fighters that they now give to the F-35. And before someone tells me that the F-35 is much bigger program, the issue here is development cos' once development is completed, the production ccosts usually come down e.g. F-22.
That's Bill's fear.
That's Boeing's fear.
That the European Aircraft Manufacturer's fear.
And that explains why so much venom is being tossed at this program. Effectiveness be damned. Its all about protecting territory and market share.
A old F-16 pilot said...
ReplyDeleteWe were all impressed by the F100’s high thrust; however, in-flight we had performance shortfalls and throttle restriction that to some degree forced us to baby the motor in order to avoid engine problems: stalls and/or afterburner blow-outs. We often felt as if we were flying the engine as opposed to employing the aircraft.
The in-flight problems were difficult to resolve and reliability was a fraction of the requirement. Not to let us or the mission down, our maintainers made herculean efforts to keep our F-16s in the air. They would routinely remove and replace engines and the engine back shop would all too often tear them down completely. In a short time, engine shop operating budgets and manpower to perform all the unplanned maintenance snowballed and drove our maintenance squadrons to the brink of operational bankruptcy.
Every new weapons system have growing pains
As to Rafale development cycle, the Rafale A (or eXperimental proof-of-concept) flew from 1986 to 1994, but 'LRIP' aircrafts first flew in the beginning of the last decade (1991 for Rafale C, 1993 for Rafale B and M), and operational capability for shipboard air-to-air combat was reached by the Marine Nationale in 2004.
ReplyDeleteI agree that 10 years is a long time to wait!
Regarding the F-35, the most disturbing thing that nags Bill Sweatman (he as stated it clearly at least once, I'll have to browse through Ares's posts to find it again) is clearly the HUGE GAP between LM and JSFPO optimistic reports and GAO, CAPE, and plain old simple history that sang quite a different tune.
I have to say that ignoring history, even while promising huge strides in CAO and early debugging, is for me such a dumb thing that LM deserved the pressure. After all, it's not as if JSF would not be built and bought by the thousands by the USAF, even if the dutch ditch it.
Peace.