Don't get it twisted.
The plane is too damn expensive, its manufacturing plan is pure economic blackmail and Lockheed Martin leadership needs to be indicted for corruption.
But "Save The Royal Navy.org" is supporting an organization thats between a rock and a hard place.
I haven't examined it closely but since I really believe this plane will be killed outright or begin its inevitable price death spiral, then what does the Royal Navy do? Do we sell back the Harriers? Do they put catapults on their ships? What does the UK do when the F-35 prices itself out of existence?
What do our allies do?
You are too sure that F-35 is going to be closed. BUT USAF has bet too much for it. Too many jobs depends on it, and there are not reallistic alternatives. It's like when Cortes burn his ships
ReplyDeletesequestration is going to continue and only a few (and i mean a few...John McCain and his six senate buddies) will fight to end it. even if they win, no one in the House will do a thing to stop it.
Deleteso cuts are going to come. additionally they've kept a lid on it but inter-service squabbling is going to come. do you think the US Army is going to sit by and watch its programs killed to save the F-35? they're gonna bitch and guess what. they have a lobby too.
last you have the American people. they believe in self defense but not offensive wars. Syria proved that. do you think anyone is gonna get upset with defense cuts? no one batted an eye when DoD workers were threatened with furloughs. additionally many defense companies have already announced layoffs and no one is batting an eye.
so no one is going to kill sequester. no one is going care about the job losses in the US and finally Canada and S. Korea are telling. the death spiral is coming. Italy will be buying fewer. Canada. Norway and eventually even the US. and if the US doesn't buy fewer then the plane is gonna be delayed. it all spells doom.
sorry but Cortez didn't have F-18's or Gripens or could pull Harriers out of the boneyard like the US military can.
John McCain recently said he is thinking of retiring after his current term. I think the Syria crisis did it in for him:
Deletehttp://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/23430219/2013/09/14/did-sen-mccain-hint-at-a-2016-retirement
If he plans on ending sequestration he'd better do it before 2016.
you do know the Sea Gripen is a paper airplane right?
DeleteNot ONE SINGLE order.
The Gripen NG (The closest the West has gotten to a modern F-5E) will not start production before 2021. Even then, the Gripen NG will cost about 65 million a pop, well over the 40 million or so that a brand new F-16 Block 50/52 costs.
Italy is LOCKED-IN to buy 90 F-35s. Sure, less than the 130 or so they wanted, but the cash wasn't there.
As for S. Korea, remember that all 3 jets were too expensive initially, and Boeing made sure to make their bid JUST UNDER the cutoff the 2nd time around. Also, the ROK's defense budget is locked in and can't be changed, no matter how much the military wants it increased.
As for delays, from what?
Flight testing is progressing fine.
Andrew, 2016 is a presidential election year.
DeleteI will bet that BOTH candidates will promise to end sequestration.
Italy is LOCKED IN???? you better take another look at that economy. they're hurting and we're not out of the locker yet either. as for S. Korea....why didn't the F-35 which was suppose to be F-16 affordable not make the cut? because its anything but. no one wants to talk price anymore. they talk stealth. they talk advanced avionics. they talk anything at all but PRICE!
DeleteDavid, how often do political candidates make nice promises during the campaign and not keep them after they're elected? Empty promises don't mean jack.
DeleteThe Italian F-35s are currently under review. Anything but "locked in".
DeleteThey will undoubtedly purchase a few, since they are being built in Italy, but even 90 seems a bit optimistic at this point. Especially with the Eurofighter already in service.
http://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-italy-f-35-fighter-purchase-review-more-cuts-ahead-2013-6
Why so much hate for the F-35? It feels over the top.
ReplyDeleteThe fly away cost is better than anything else you are gonna get with that kind of stealth and technology.
The R&D costs are sunk costs, complaining about them is useless.
Maintenance costs are high but lower than maintaing older fighters and those maintenance costs seem to be falling as they update outdated data.
I get your sequestration argument,
Deletebut if the F-35 gets axed you have to look at the alternatives the pentagon would be faced with. Maintaing the older more vulnerable fleet at higher cost is just not a realistic option. You can build new F-15s, 16s, and 18s, but then basically you're taking a vacation from development of the weapons that actually win the wars.
You'd be choosing a larger current force at the cost to the fact its going to become outdated. Kinda useless.
I think the F-35 is gonna go through because even beyond the plane itself the technology being developed in it is gonna be the linchpin of anything the US wants to build down the road.
I'm fairly sure a lot of the stuff in that plane are things they want to bring to the next set of F-22s as well. (the f22 has the most carefully mothballed production line in history for a reason in my opinion)
True, but Solomon can't or won't see that. F-35 facts will not disuade him, he will just call you or others Lockheed shills.
DeleteHe sees the F-35 as the sole or biggest reason that the USMC isn't getting and new toys like the MPC, ACV, ect.
The fool Eric Palmer and others have managed to convince him that if the F-35 was just killed, then the Super Duper upgraded Hornet, a warmed over F-15, and upgraded F-16s would be more than enough for the next 20 years or so until a 6th gen jet can be designed, developed, and procured.
Sol also seems to thing that a PAPER design called a Sea Gripen would be able to take off from a LHD and should be bought (for 65 million apiece) or that the USMC should simply restart the A-10 production line all by themselves and upgrade it......
Oh and in regards to the F-22, the USAF and Lockheed were VERY thorough in the mothballing as they had to make sure that ALL spare parts (and even whole aircraft) could be produced if need be.
Deletethe finances of the situation are everything.
Deletewe're seeing the military dump practically everything in order to pay for the F-35. additionally this affordable fighter is causing our allies to buy fewer and fewer of them in order to meet their own budgets.
the results of the financials on this airplane will see the legacy aircraft updated with bits from the F-35 and the next plane will be structured totally differently with the idea of designing airplanes to meet the needs of the services and not to test a "joint" concept.
why is it over the top to want to save the Marine Corps from financial ruin and to get it much needed armor now? if you're talking Marine Corps specific missions then we can fly A-10s and be happy as a hog in slop. instead we're getting a STOVL deep strike fighter. something is twisted with that.
additionally how come all the pro F-35 articles aren't over the top? how come only articles that are anti F-35 are over the top??????
you're about one inch from getting banned from my blog David.
DeleteKeep Eric, Goon, Sweetman and others out of your mouth when discussing how i come to decisions.
I LOOKED AT IT AND MADE UP MY OWN DAMN MIND. THE CRAZY THING IS THAT THIS SHIT IS OBVIOUS IF YOU THINK FOR YOURSELF AND DON'T BELIEVE THE SHIT THEY'RE SPOON FEEDING YOU.
do it again (accuse me of having others think for me) and your ass will never post here again. that's crossing my red line and unlike the President I KEEP MY PROMISES.
David is starting to sounds like the character from the Monty Python's Holy Grail who keeps talking about the castle he built on a swamp.
Delete"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."
It's overweight: build it anyways
It's slower than designed: we keep building it
It's less maneuverable than intended: we build it, in slightly less numbers
It's logistics software and advanced helmet don't work: we enter LRIP and retrofit those pesky details
It's too expensive for both us and our allies: we build it because we need stealth and it will be the strongest fighter in all of the world.
If this was 2009, one might be able to defend this program as inevitable.
But it's not 2009, it's 2013 and Sequestration is here to stay.
thats the thing. sequestration IS here and no one is up in arms about it. that surprises everyone but the American people sense that like your analogy the economy is built on sand and so is the F-35.
Deleteno one will talk about the cost of that beast and thats what has my attention 110. its gobbling up the entire Pentagon. thats just a fact. no debate. no equivocation. just fact.
additionally if it was any other program it would have been killed because of its cost overruns alone. but the USAF is infatuated with the idea of an all stealth force and the USMC must have its supersonic STOVL fighter. ignore the fact that the USMC, if it was being true to the real purpose of having fixed wing aircraft would be flying close air support planes like the A-10.
the DoD is living in fantasy and its going to take a kick in the ass in the form of continued Sequestration to get them out of it. they won't get BRAC. they won't get troop reduction. they'll have to give up the uber expensive toys.
additionally even if the DoD stays stupid our allies won't. Canada won't buy this plane when all is said and done and even if they do it'll be half of what was planned (Boeing will sell some Super Hornets to make up for the shortfall). same applies to everyone else from Italy, to Norway to Australia.
some countries take budgets seriously. we're about to join that list. maybe kicking and screaming but its coming.
Another thing: we don't have to spend a fortune maintaining 30yr old teen-series fighters. The production lines are still open and we could afford two or three new F-16s for each F35.
DeleteFor the money the F35 is expected to cost we could buy 1000 F-16s Block 60+ and 500 F-15SEs. The Navy and USMC could buy several hundred Super Hornets. These 4.5 gen fighters would still be relevant while we develop a 6th gen fighter (designs that Navy and Air Force have already started to develop).
If we get desperate, we could re-visit the F-22 and design a less advanced C-model that we could build in lieu of F-15SEs and export to our major allies (the Aussies, Japanese, South Koreans and Israeli's all would rather have the F-22, but we wouldn't sell it to them and ended production prematurely). After all, all the tooling is carefully mothballed, right?
I will just add a small little thing, even with sequestration, DoD budget is still going to be over $500 billion dollars, kind of hard for services to cry poverty!!! With proper planning and realistic goals for our military, we have plenty of money to have a good, strong, well balanced military but you have to make some choices, you can't just buy some gold plated weapon systems just to make LMT or Raytheon happy and "pay off" some politician that wants the jobs in his district or a board full of retired generals/admirals that gets millions thru stock options.....
ReplyDeleteNo point in having an aircraft carrier with a bare bone air wing, a Marine Corps that can't hit the beach or an Army with no helicopters and tanks.....We have to have a balanced military and F35 has a place inside our services but not to the detriment of everything else....
http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2014/FY2014_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf
Dont panic.Just put EPE engines to this guy and will take off from the Royal Navy carriers with all it's weapons and internal and external gas.
ReplyDeleteAre you crazy for Stealth for day two of conflict after launching the tomahawks? Just send them with the external weapons pod.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-_OWMDN64M&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The British could even buy few F-35B with more Duper Hornets with those EPE engines as I just mentioned
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=_9NGLvc7eLM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrZ7jWT_GY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Just like the Russians, Chinese and Indians do
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=lB1S8JEyaYE&feature=youtube_gdata_player
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV4v_KxCja4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Even with out EPE engines will take off from the British carriers
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com/watch?v=pz2Cl3TnRyM&feature=youtube_gdata_player