I've pondered long and hard about one thing.
Why does the F-35 scare its critics so much?
I can come up with only one answer.
It will drive fighter production and innovation for the foreseeable future.
Consider this.
With just the Navy/Marine Corps buy of this airplane, it will out number the total production of Eurofighters in service or planned.
With the combined Air Force/Navy/Marine Corps buy, it will out strip the purchase of the Eurofighter, Rafale and Gripen.
It will be---with just US purchases of this airplane...the dominant fighter on the planet.
Add in the allies and you have total dominance in the fighter market.
And thats the real fear. Another market that the US will dominate...and for some that must not be allowed...even if their industry has a stake in the production.
Sol,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you would like to elaborate on just who you mean when you say, 'even if their industry has a stake in the production'
As the UK is a major partner in Eurofighter and also a tier one partner in JSF it seems you are aiming your barbs at us.
Perhaps other countries have reason to fear US dominance if it affects their aircraft industries and the lives of thousands of workers.
Something which I suspect affected the decision to give Boeing its tanker contract,was the fear of the US over the same thing. You can't have it both ways.
Those times have gone for good.
first let me be clear.
ReplyDeletei'm aiming barbs at no one.
the thought of protecting a nation's industry should apply across the board and i believe it does.
every country on this planet has a duty to its citizens to have a strong industrial base.
the idea that a named company, no matter its origins is US, UK or European is I think a misnomer.
perfect example is Force Protection. Force Protection UK developed the Ocelot...because of a UK requirement. i'm not sure how the licensing works but the UK government should have say over the sales of a vehicle that it commissioned. in that light Force Protection UK can be said to be a purely UK company...even though it has roots in the US.
the opposite can be said of BAE.
understand that my thoughts on multinational corps is in the process of evolving...but you get where i'm at in general.
On the flip side, Europe will most likely out-saving the US across defense and other sectors. The pain will be felt in the short term, but better economic stability can be expected in the long term.
ReplyDelete@ Sol
ReplyDeleteWhat a grand attempt of BRAVADO,
supported by such an equivalent of chicken brain across your shoulders.
Net effect: What a fucking idiot.
@Anonymous Douche: You there, at the end, Bill supports his views. You know, Bill Sweetman, self-professed "the success of the F-35 will mean the end of European fighter developement", world's-most-vociferous anti-F-35 critic? Pull your head out.
ReplyDelete-sferrin
PS When the pacific nations (and others) start getting into fixed wing at sea there will only be one game in town. Do you want to guess what it will be? If they want a true 5th generation stealth aircraft instead of Betamax guess where they'll go. Talk about fucking idiots, you take the cake.
Sol,
ReplyDeleteJust for the record I am a great believer in JSF and in particular the C model. I believe the UK made the right decision when it changed its order from the B to the C.
This give us more interoperability with US carriers in particular.
It may be an expensive aircraft but when in full production the backup,maintenance and spares from LM will more than justify this.
I just hope that the UK finances will improve enough in the next few years to enable us to buy a realistic number of these aircraft.
The one little niggle of doubt that remains are over the software codes,as far as I am aware no agreement has yet been reached between our governments of their release to the UK.
I still think that Europe can have a military aircraft industry that is viable,whether this is in manned aircraft or not remains to be seen.
First of all the F-35 has an enormous amount of problems, like the software problems late last year, and more recently the generator failure inflight. Also, Sol you said that someday all three services will purchase the F-35B because it can take off from most anywhere, but what you don't mention is that the F-35B has a nasty little habit of melting aircraft carrier decks, not only that, but when you start putting B's on helo carriers, the helo carriers can only carry about six B's. Moving on, all three F-35 variants have payload issues (seriously the USAF wants to use the F-35A to replace the A-10), come on only four internal hard points, and as everyone knows carrying ordnance on the wings messes up the stealth characteristics (Air Power Australia had a great piece about the F-35's stealth capabilities a year or so ago). Not only that, but with only four internal hard points it will probably carry in an air-to-air, 2 Sidewinders and 2 AMRAAMs, but in an air-to-air engagement the F-35 has shown problems with dogfighting essentials like the thrust-to-weight ratio, turn radius and top speed. I could go on, but I have to go.
ReplyDelete1. The F-35 has no more problems than any other new fighter over the last 20 years. They are simply more visible due to the "social media age" we are currently residing in.
ReplyDeletePoint of fact, not a single F-35 has crashed at the time of writing. Very few other projects cannot boast as much, including the vaunted SU-35, F-22A and Typhoon "wonder jets"...
2. No F-35 has ever been ON a carrier, let alone melted a deck. What has been reported is a potential risk. NOT a reality. The potential risk stated that the F-35b would also destroy asphault too. Sorry for you and your argument, but it simply hasn't worked out that way, unless you believe NAS Patuxent River has a special runway, newly laid...
3. USN "helicopter carriers" only carry 6x AV-8B Harrier IIs today. How is it a big deal that they'll only likely carry 6x F-35b's in future years? Given the capability difference, is it any wonder that the USMC can't wait to rid itself of Harriers and get the F-35b flying off the "helicopter carriers" it has?
4. Goodness me. The A-10 "stealth" attack plane clearly has an advantage here then. Oh wait, no it doesn't. There isn't ANYTHING stealthy about a subsonic A-10. So one would imagine that a supersonic F-35 could survive in ANY theatre that a subsonic, non-stealthy A-10 can survive in AND it has the option of low observability or stealth as you call it, when it needs it.
When it doesn't need to be stealthy the F-35 has 10 hard points in total it can use. This argument is just about as bad as it gets when criticising the F-35. It is SO ill-informed it is breathtaking.
5. Well clearly if APA says it isn't all that stealthy then it must be right, eh? Er, no. APA knows about as much about the F-35's "stealth" as I know about tomorrow night's lotto numbers.
Here's a link to a document known as a patent. A patent is something a company files, in order to protect it's own Intellectual Property. Clearly there are at least 2 different parties out there who think APA, "don't know what they don't know" when it comes to LO. L-M, the builder of multiple generations of LO aircraft and CNT, who filed this patent.
http://tinyurl.com/4nwarzz
Given both companies are currently employed in developing and the fielding of LO technologies and no-one from APA has EVER been employed in any industry even related to LO technologies, let alone in defence using/maintaining LO fighter aircraft, excuse me for taking the word of companies producing these products today and military force using these aircraft today, rather than those who build computer generated wire diagrams and use "simulators" that rely (allegedly) upon a 1970's era level of understanding of technology... If you are going to use an "appeal to authority" argument, like APA does, you had better be sure of your stuff. Unfortunately like APA, you are not. They just believe they are...
6. Missile loads? High speeds? Goodness me. If superior missile load and high speed was all it took to be successful at air combat, the B-1R "missileer" that APA so lavishly copied with their "F-111 AMRAAM missileer" proposal (decades later I might add - says a LOT about their "advanced technical knowledge") would be the USAF primary platform for air superiority.
Guess what? It ain't...
God I'm glad you had to go. I was about to throw up over the nonsense you've sprouted here. Do us all a favour and go join the "special members area" of APA, where you can build pretend simulators, pretend "operational scenarios" and regurgitate their nonsense and congratulation them upon their complete lack of relevance or impact to your heart's content.
You'll be happier and so will we.
@USSHelm: The F-35 has yet to "melt a flight deck" nor does it turn runways into cluster bombs. At worst they'd have to modify the flight deck to take higher heat a few selected spots. Big deal. They had to change out blast deflectors when afterburning turbofans became common too and it wasn't the end of the world. As for hard points, what other fighter (other than the F-22) has more internal hardpoints than the F-35? That's right- none. And the F-35 has plenty of external hard points should it need them. (Please, oh please, come back with the whining "but then it loses it's stealth".)
ReplyDeleteRe. Thrust to weight, are you going by the 50,000lb+ figure or the outdated 40k figure? BTW do you honestly believe aircraft X can out turn an ASRAAM, AIM-9X, or other HOBS missile because it might have a better (debatable) thrust to weight? Put down the pipe man.
I could go on and on but I have to go.
As a sometime F-35 critic, I'd say my reasons boil down to this,
ReplyDelete1. It has the potential to suck up all available aviation funding for the foreseeable future.
2. Cost increases and budget tightening will mean far fewer aircraft than the services need.
3. Delays and problems keep pushing IOC further and further out.
4. It may be too much airplane for bombing peasants (bad peasants, of course), but not enough to penetrate high-end IADS.
5. Many saw the cost and delay spiral coming years and years ago, but can now just say "I told you so".
6. It was used to justify closing the F-22 line just when the more capable Raptor program was bearing fruit and reducing costs.
7. Given our increasingly restrictive foreign basing right around the world, we should be shifting more resources to theater or strategic airpower, and spending less on comparatively short-ranged, tactical fighters.
I'm sure there are other arguments, but that's all I could come up with off the top of my head.
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