In 2008, Rand produced a report outlining the findings of a wargame they ran depicting combat between the US and China over Taiwan.
The results?
The F-35 was clubbed like a baby seal.
I remember that report well because that's the first time I crossed swords (in a vicious way) with Bill "The Dark Lord" Sweetman.
Between then and now, much crow has been munched on (I like mine with plenty of barbeque sauce and Coors Light thank you) but I can't help but wonder.
Surely Rand has run this computer simulation since then. Surely other think tanks have crunched the numbers too.
Why haven't we heard anything? Why are we still being told that the F-35 will more than hold its own against threat fighters but it appears that no one wants to publish their findings?
Interesting isn't it. Anyone have Harpoon so we can see what gives since there must be an embargo on the big boys crunching the numbers!?
In the meanwhile, Japan is emerging as the F-35's savior, with plans to buy 142 examples. The F-3 program is being stretched to cover the later build F-15Js and F-2s, hence the reason behind the large central weapons bay for carrying supersonic antiship missiles.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20140114000046&cid=1101
"The Japanese defense ministry is also considering upgrading the F-15J fighters under its Mid-term Defense Program. Around 100 of the aircraft's radar systems are not able to be modified, and Tokyo plans to purchase additional F-35s to replace them. This will eventually allow Japan to have at least 142 F-35 stealth fighters. However, the defense ministry will first have to discuss its plans with the finance ministry as the price of a single F-35 can be as high as US$150 million.
Under the new Mid-term Defense Program, the Japanese defense ministry also discussed the possibility of designing or purchasing fighters which can be used to succeed F-2 multirole fighters. The Nikkei reported that Japan is likely to design this new fighter with other nation in a similar way to the United States and its F-35. Meanwhile, the Tokyo-based Kyodo News said that Japan will begin the purchase of its first six F-35 fighters from the United States as early as this March."
Oh, Japan plans to buy an unspecified number of F-35Cs in the 142 unit volume according to SDF sources, and are not interested in the F-35B. Which confirms that two carriers following the Izumo class will be CATOBAR.
ReplyDeleteLikewise, the ROK Navy is trying to acquire 60 S-3s from the US boneyard and use the parts to build 20 operational S-3s fitted with modern avionics and sensors. Asked why S-3s and not new build maritime patrol aircraft which could be had for a little more money, the reply was that they needed S-3 to begin carrier op training. Meaning the carriers planned by the ROK Navy likewise are CATOBAR carriers.
So as the US CBG strength goes down in the Pacific, it will be made up by the allies.
This. This is why I keep coming back here, Sol.
ReplyDeleteAfter once being a staunch defender of the F-35, you are now one of its biggest critics. More than that, you keep bringing up that you WERE a F-35 supporter. This not only means you aren't ashamed to admit when you are wrong, but it means you aren't so blinded by your own preconceived notions that you will ignore something that's going all pear shaped.
It seems the only "positive" stories about the F-35 are either focused on how they've managed to either secure funding or (tentatively) sold a few more jets, either that, or some underwhelming press release about how they dropped a dumb bomb on to the ground (yay... Gravity) or fired a missile into thin air.
As much as I dislike the F-35, I keep hoping against hope that it will one day be as good as the LockMart talking heads say... Otherwise, western air power in going to be in a world of shit. I would be more than willing to eat my words if that means we get a much better aircraft than the F-35 looks to be.
thanks Doug.
Deleteyou can't fix a problem until you admit that one exists. if its obvious to a mud rolling grunt that this program is jacked up, i wonder why those with much more knowledge can't do the same. its almost like they're invested in not saying they were wrong, more than they are in protecting our nation.
i don't get it, but the "original" critics have been right on every front. Sweetman said (when the EFV was canned) that we could have our shiny new vehicle if we weren't paying thru the nose for the F-35 (paraphrasing). i laughed him off but he was spot on. and now other forces world wide are feeling the Marine Corps pain.
it would be funny if it was a comedy but it sucks in real life.
I do think that the F-35 series of aircraft will eventually be perfected. My only issue is the unit cost involved and if US allies will ever be able to affordable realistic numbers of them.
DeleteChina has shown us everything we need to know about stealth. first, if they have the tech to build and design it themselves then so can S. Korea and Japan. second, perfect stealth is unacheivable so partial might be good enough. and last, stealth has to be affordable or else you're just putting holes in your forces. China showed us this.
DeleteChuang Shyue Chou
DeleteNo matter how shitty the F-35 turns out to be, the US isn't selling one to Taiwan, so Taiwanese better start working on the F-CK-2.
no need to remind us all of the lack of moral courage and conviction that the US lacks by refusing to support an allied country that seeks to defend itself against a communist aggressor. US military greats like Patton, MacArthur and Puller would be ashamed if they could see US foreign policy being based on NOT offending a communist country that has stated publicly that it will acquire an ally.
DeleteSlowman, I don't think that the US should contemplate selling F-35s to Taiwan. In time to come, and it is probably a matter of time, when Taiwan does reconcile with China, all that military technology will fall into Chinese hands.
DeleteIn any case, the Taiwanese doesn't have much stomach for a strong defence anymore. They are removing their conscription system.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25085323
Their armed forces will be gradually reduced to a shell when conscription ends. There won't be enough volunteers nor interested folks.
The people are not in favour of conscription or an army either.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23488044
I’ve seen enough F-35 bashing on this blog. My simple question to the blogger: what’s your alternative to terminating F-35? What if Chinese or Russian 5th gen fighters turn out to be decent and enter mass production? Are we going to face them with legacy F-15s or what?
ReplyDeletebashing? bashing indicates that i'm being unfairly critical of the program. i'm not. to answer your question the solution is two part.
Deletefirst, restart the F-22 line and put it back into production and allow it to be sold to allies. next do dramatic upgrades to existing fighter along the line of the Advanced Super Hornet and lastly, dump the long range strike bomber, and put those funds toward a 6th gen fighter for the services that need it.
adaptus primus
DeleteThe Pentagon can always start over, and buy Silent Hornets for all three services in the meanwhile.
Adaptus, every person, organism or organization has to be critical of itself in order to right itself. The F35 was supposed to be faster, lighter, more maneuverable, stealthier, more endurance and most importantly, less expensive than it has proven to be. It is an albatross compared to what it was intended to be. If that plane that they intended it to be in 1995 was plane they were actually going to field in 2015, we'd be fine, but it isn't that plane, it's hopelessly comprised and expensive millstone that around the necks of the US and our allies.
DeleteOur nation deserves and needs better than this.
Even if we all we did was re-start the F-22 line and dumbed it down to the F35 level of stealth, we'd have a better aircraft that our allies could clamor for and help share in the development costs. Japan and South Korea are technological heavyweights themselves and they would relish the opportunity to help develop and build new F-22.
We need an F-22C model supported by new build F-18 Advanced Super Hornets, F-16 Block 60+ and F-15 Silent Eagles, not the F35.
I agree with restarting the F-22 lines and also upgrade F-15 Strike Eagles in the inventory to Silent Eagle through a yearly airframe swap out program (surplussing off the old air frames to allies if necessary to spread costs). This gives a lower cost stealthy platform for literally a fraction of the F-35.
ReplyDeleteIn air combat, the grunts don't care about stealth so much as they care about timely fires, and the F-15 can carry more boom.
F-22 mission computer has less computational power than a modern smart phone. The software was written20 years ago in ADA instead of C, hard to support and upgrade, don't you think? Its proprietary data link is incapable of talking with other air assets. To make F-22 relevant and useful, you pretty much have to re-tool the whole avionic system. This is not an issue today because F-22 is considered a niche capability due to extremely limited numbers. Again, a specialized platform for air dominance mission has limited utility for other usages: air to surface attack, close air support, etc.
ReplyDeleteUSAF current inventory of hundreds of F-15 can’t be reconfigured to silent eagle standard. You have to buy the new airframe, and still end up with a 4 gen fighter. A western made 4+ gen versus a Russian/Chinese grade 5- gen, I don’t see overmatch, what I see is parity at most.
Very true, but some posters here seem to think that slapping CFTs and a bulky pod on a Super Hornet will magically make it into a supercrusing, stealthy Naval F-22.
DeleteOf course, the F-18 CFTs are a great idea, but that pod looks like an enormous draggy blob.
The F-16 block 60 is as good as the F-16 will ever get, and it isn't stealthy, has no internal weapons carriage, and no internal laser designator and no EO-DAS. While an F-16 WAS tested with a thrust vectoring engine in the 1990s, the costs for restarting that program and fitting thrust vectoring engines to non-new build F-16s will be very high.
Also, a Block 60 F-16 costs about 50-55 million USD. Adding a Thrust vectoring enginewill add tot he cost.
An ASH is about 60-65 million USD.
And a Silent Eagle is 100 MILLION USD with no thrust vectoring, or super-cruise, and ONLY head-on stealth.
You are right, simple having parity isn't enough, we need to exceed the Chinese and Russians. Scrapping the F-35 and starting over right now will guarantee the USN, USAF, and USMC will have INFERIOR aircraft to the other guys until at LEAST the late 2020s if there are crash programs, and probably not until 2030.
Nonsense there is plenty of room for the F16 to be improved and built upon, they could even make an F16 II in the same way they made the harrier II. Wing changes, like the larger F2 or F16XL wings, powerplant changes I.e. the PW199 powerplant from the F22, you could probably fit stealthy internal weapon bays on the side of the central air intake and possibly belly mounts underneath for CUDA/SDBII/Brimstone. Radar and avionics could be completely changed, FLIR (infrared) and a targeting pod could be installed as standard.
DeleteUltimately it boils down to mass production, The F15 costs about twice as much to build as the F18 yet is not much different, the F16 costs almost as much to build as an F18 yet is much easier/smaller plane. This can be explained by production scale, as even the F15/18s which are manufactured by the same company are vastly different in price.
Getting back to topic planes like the F15 in terms of capabilities can be brought up pretty close to that of 5th generation planes, undoubtably in some cases by upgrading existing stock for a small ammount of the cost compared to procuring new planes.
I recall that the stated price of the EA-18G isn't low either, it is in excess of $100 million.
DeleteAdaptus primus, so what? a mission computer can be easily upgraded. Windows 3.1 would still run on any x86 compatible processor, even those pushing clock speeds way beyond what an Intel 386 could ever do. Then again, because Win 3.1 was programmed in C it must have been complete awesome sauce that never crashed....
ReplyDeleteAs far as writing mission software in C goes, ADA is the American standard. C is fine if you want to tap into a large segment of civilian programmers, but from a defense standard it is a non issue. If you want to change out a mission computer all you have to do is design a new one that handles the same sensor inputs as the old one, with a compatible data stream output with client devices. This is figuratively childs play as home game consoles from Nintendo and Sony have been designed with backwards compatibility between console generations. In some cases a computer is a computer is a computer.
Then again, if your argument for the F-35 is "cool processor and awesome sauce software" then you have a pretty weak argument.
having known a very smart CS major for years, Not one single Computer Scientist under 45 is familiar at ALL with the ADA language.
DeleteA computer is NOT "just a computer" in a fighter jet. You don't take it out, put a new one in, and press "ON".
With the Super Hornets you have already stealth-stand off strike capacity,
ReplyDeleteWww.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHlW1h_0XQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
You don't even need the advanced Super Hornets, but I don't complain if they build them.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF7RQ50gwFY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
We should remember all the capabilities the USNAVY and Marines have already with the F-18 family. First of all, affordability, two engines, two pilots, easy maintenance, super maneuverability, all weather or thunderstorms flight readiness, superb dogfight at transonic speeds, CAS with dummy, intelligent or stand off bombs or cannon, and so on.
What outstanding capabilities offer the F-35 over the SH to cost more than double?
It's invisible. ?....hahaha That's the best joke af history of aviation.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYGM-aB1Luc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGv83k_hBP8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDSiwqM2nw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
ReplyDeletehttp://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj90/win90/1win90.htm
ReplyDelete"To understand McNamara's commonality approach, one must make a distinction betweenusage by a service of anaircraft initially developed for another service and the joint simultaneous development of a single aircraft for dual-service use. The F-4 and A-7 are examples of the former, while the TFX/F-111 is an example of the latter. As a rule, theformer category--taking an existing aircraft and modifying it for the needs of another service--has a much greater success rate than the latter, Further, there is a corollary that one can add concerning joint-service use: it is possible to take an aircraft intended for shipboard service and modify it successfully for operation from land. However, it is extremely difficult to take a land-based aircraft and modify it for operation from a ship without undertaking extensive revision and redesign of the airplane. Failure to heed this dictum was one of the most serious errors that prevented the attainment of McNamara's commonality goal with the TFX/F-111."