So, is it time to significantly cut the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter buy, leave the 2,400-odd airplane program alone or cut it altogether?
Thats the quandary a prominent D.C.-based defense think tank wrestled with during a briefing to Hill staffers, reporters and Pentagon officials Wednesday. Researchers with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said the per-plane cost has grown by $20 million since the programs original $60 million per-plane estimate in 1997. In 2008 dollars, the JSF program will wind up costing $242 billion.
Thats certainly a hefty sum.
Read the entire “U.S. Fighter Modernization Plans: Near Term Report”
But the interesting thing is that the CSBA analysts switched their earlier position on cancellation, recognizing that at least some JSFs will be necessary for a future Air Force fighter mix. Additionally, it seems that the cost savings from cutting the 1,763 Air Force buy in half would net about $300-$500 million per year a total cut of the roughly 600-plane Navy buy would save about $500 million per year across the program.
As a RAND aviation analyst stated at the briefing, thats not a huge savings in the grand scheme of Pentagon budgets. And others say it is unlikely the Air Force will want to cut the JSF buy and substitute them with more modern Block 60 F-16s.
One CSBA analyst, former Pentagon PA&E chief and Vietnam-era fighter pilot Barry Watts, claimed that the need for JSFs is shrinking with the demonstrated success of precision munitions and smart artillery. The CAS mission the JSF would largely shoulder, he said, is going the way of the horse cavalry.
While it is beyond the scope of this report to estimate what a sensible F-35A/F-16 replacement ratio might be, it seems clear that one-for-one is too high. Thematuration of guided munitions and battle networks argues that fewer advanced fighters will be needed in the future than were required in the prior era of industrial-style warfare in which most munitions missed their aim-points or targets.
As I am sure many DT readers will agree, if anything, CAS is more important now than ever. Artillery is NOT effective in an urban fight and smart shells are still a ways off for general use. Attack helicopter squadrons and fixed-wing assets are taxed to the max in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of those missions are for close air support and the balance tend to focus on surveillance. So if the argument is that the JSF can afford to be cut because its CAS mission is shrinking, theres not much to stand on.
Now, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne argued that the services TacAir fleet is ageing at a considerable rate airframes now average around 24 years old — and are forecasted to be nearly 27 years old by 2010. So some kind of wholesale replacement needs to occur. And whats the closest program to fruition? The JSF.
One intriguing idea that the analysts didnt hit was instead of buying new F-16s, maybe the Air Force and the Navy, for that matter — could accelerate the development of unmanned combat air systems. Theres been a lot of advancement on UCAVs and it seems to me that might be a more viable option than buying less stealthy, manned, legacy aircraft.
There will be a lot of pressure on Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps budgets in the coming years. Ships are expensive, bombers cost a lot and so does a larger Corps. It seems that the analysts are right in saying somethings got to give and its most likely going to be fighter aircraft buys. Some say the Air Force aimed high on its JSF number anticipating a cut in the future, and everyone knows the Navys less than enthusiastic about the JSF with Super Hornets still coming off the lines. That leaves the Marine Corps, whos technologically complex STOVL fighter has its own road blocks, not to mention that the Navy holds the purse strings for Marine air.
The CSBA logic:
From the standpoint of military necessity, a major concern is
that DoDs current air power modernization plans may be unbalanced
in favor of fighters, vice longer-range strike aircraft. In future wars, US aircraft may have to operate at far greater distances than they have in the recent past. In particular, US air forces operating in Asia and the Pacific might well have to travel several times farther than US air forces typically had to during the Cold War. There also appears to be a growing need for aircraft that can loiter over the battlefield long enough to find emerging, fleeting or otherwise time-sensitive targets.
From the Air Force perspective, Wynne can say all he wants, but in the end hes got a lot of big ticket items his service needs to buy: satellites, bombers, tankers, F-22s; and something will surely have to give.
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
However, for urban operation CAS warfare, that $60M could buy a good dozen Super Tucanos…
Although I’m sure a lot of people will have a coronary over purchasing what looks like a World War II Turbo-prop airplane,I agree with the idea of purchasing the Super Tucano,especially since we got rid of all our A-37 Dragonfly’s & OV-10 Broncos(Thank God above that they didn’t get rid of the A-10 Warthogs when they got rid of the above mentioned planes & the A-6 Intruder). I seriously doubt that we’ll see the Joint Strike Fighter.It will join the Crusader,the Comanche,the ARH-70,God,this list of discontinued new weapons could go on & on,in the dustbin of history.
I’m still amazed that they actually built & are USING the F-22 & the Osprey. Our allies waiting for the JSF will just drift towards the Eurofighter,Rafale,& Gripen fighter jets,or the F-16 THAT LOCKHEED MARTIN IS STILL BUILDING!!!!
There’s only one right answer. Dump the JSF now. Unmanned is the only future ahead for fighters and bombers. There’s zero need moving forward for piloted solutions.
The JSF has come a way
Ho Hum. Another bean-counting exercise by budgeteers. This is an obvious support piece shaping the environment for CSBA’s continuing call for more long-range strike capability. A call with which I must say I am in complete agreement.
I just have total disdain for their taking on the ‘easy’ target, the F-35, when the best option would be of course to:
1. Stop procuring the F-18E/F and retire as many non-LO aircraft as possible in all services.
2. Plus-up the Navy/USMC F-35 account by the amount you would cut the AF’s total and
3. Make the AF spend the $ saved on another 250-300 F-22s and 30-40 B-2Cs.
4. Leverage the UCAS-D technology to eventually replace existing F-18 E/Fs.
There. You’ve now solved the Long Range Strike/Force Projection, Procurement Budget, Manned-Vs-Unmanned, Air Dominance, Life Cycle Cost/Aging Aircraft, Parts Obsolescence, and Industrial Base Preservation concerns in one fell swoop.
Next problem, please.
I consider it ironic that Barry Watts, as a Vietnam-era fighter pilot, should resort to the argument that a fighter mission is obsolete because guided weapons are so accurate. Wasn
UCAVs? Can they provide the link that soon to be wasted Sats will give up to first strike Sat killers? Then multi functional UCAVs, cheaper by far than a $100Million Stratospheric missle. A UCAV Wild Weasel?, a UCAV Awacs? UCAV Point Defence or Cap. 15G UCAV with Stay times of 15 hours without refueling? Why is there even a discussion. Manned flight close in is viable if the umbrella sticks out far enough to keep the Carrier group safe. Maybe a new QE2 floating CIC to controll all the UCAVs is down the road. It sure would save some bucks.
SMSgt Mac, I think you’ve got it nailed.
Buy more of everything! F-15, F-16, F-35, F-22, create a A-10 follow-on. We need more diversity and we need quantity. Quantity is a quality all it’s own, and we best remember it.
Unless you believe the US is going to fight China and Russia, there is no justification for a new short range manned fighter/bomber like the JSF. Iran, Syria, DPRK are laughable.
Not going to happen, so that money needs to be re-allocated towards UCAV, CAS, transport and hypersonics.
The US should put its resources to develop 5GW concepts, TTP, not 3GW toys.
There’s a faint whiff of political Kabuki to the CSBA report, almost like it’s trying to justify throwing money at LockMart, Boeing, and NorGrum alike. There’s something missing in the commentary as well. Can’t put my finger on it, but let me toss out a pattern, and maybe one of the pellets will hit.
First off, money saved shouldn’t be our only criterion. What about money wasted? A program zeroed out means no ROI. Maybe spending money to save a declining ROI is a sinkhole; maybe not.
Second, how do you value deterrence? F-16s and F-18s are known quantities; I’m not sure you can say the same about the F-35, particularly if DEW comes on line during its service cycle. I’m not sure anybody really knows what that will portend.
The whole UCAV vs. F-35 argument assumes you can’t rig an F-35 as a QF-35. Ditto for the F-16 or Super Hornet buy scenario. Why are we holding on to the manned vs. unmanned argument, if fly by wire suggests you could go either way with the same system? I mean, if you’re talking about UCAV for SEAD or Wild Weasel, what’s wrong with sending in an unmanned teen series machine as a stalking horse for others — or better yet, something else more capable?
For that matter, how about a QF-117? Is that beyond our ken?
So, OK — some of the old machines are wearing out. If they only had 200 hours left, well, shit — that’s a real long time over North Korea.
For that matter, we first ran attack missions with Ryan Firebees over North Viet Nam back in the 70s. IIRC, our last Firebee SEAD mission kicked off OIF. And, unless I’m mistaken, they remain forward deployed, purely as drones for training exercises. Really. Honest.
Point is, if we really wanted to save money and go QCD, there would be lots of ways to do it. IIRC, we took the inventory for the Boneyard off the Internet after 9/11. Maybe that was just to prevent guys like me from proposing crazy shit like this. Maybe it really was meant to hide how much we have in reserve.
Lastly, how do you factor in the black programs? Maybe a big boondoggle is a good way to launder funds paid for something else. Maybe the F-35′s unit cost is rising because we’re also building a few other things to send out with it.
Sorry for the rant. Like I said, maybe some of this resonates, maybe not. I’d like to believe someone’s got a better handle on this than what I’m seeing in the press. All that seems like middlebrow claptrap. I’d like to believe someone smarter and sneakier is doing something less obvious. But maybe I’m just an optimist.
SMSgt Mac your idea sounds like a plan.
The JSF is over specced for figthing low intensity conflicts and under specced for Asia Pacific. The only viable solution is more F22′s.
However the JSF won’t be cancelled all together because too much has already been invested, not to mention agreements and commitments with international partners.
price increase of 20 million dollar!! Our Dutch government sold it to the parliament with the promise that there would be no price increases. So 3 possibilities: the US pays our price increases, our government lied, or they are fools. It must be option 1 right?
Actually, while precision or smart
The JSF certainly is needed. The most prosiac, but compelling reason for this is maintenance costs. Old planes are more expensive to maintain than new ones, and the JSF is particular was designed to be operating cost friendly.
There are lower cost ways to carry out some of its missions, and the logical way to fund the alternatives is to cut the JSF buy. What are a few alternatives?
1. A significant number of F-16s are tasked with policing rogue commercial/general aviation craft in CONUS. A plane that meets these requirements doesn’t need to be equipped to fight World War III with Russia. A low cost (single digit millions), off the shelf technology, lower operating cost alternative called the Homeland Defense Interceptor (ideally assigned from the get go to the Air National Guard), would substitute for F-35s in this mission. A trade of 100 F-35As earmarked for replacing F-16s, for 100 homeland defense interceptors would be a thrifty and sensible move.
2. There are, at least, three air to ground missions.
One is strike missions in hostile territory, which can call for speed, stealth, air to air capabilities, and comparatively modest payloads — a job for the B-1B (not true stealth and no air to air, but fast and capable of flying low to defeat radar, with a big payload and long range), the B-2 (not fast and no air to air, but a big payload and long range), F-15E (no stealth but good air to air), the F-117, the F-22 and the F-35. Existing manned Air Force aircraft (including the remainder of the F-22 buy) have this mission covered, and if this mission isn’t sufficiently covered. Any further development on the Air Force side for this mission should be in the form of UCAV. So this isn’t a mission we should be buying F-35As to carry out.
This mission is the best justification for a buy of at least one squadron of F-35Cs per carrier, because the Navy has no stealth capability right now (which would imply a reduced Navy F-35C buy of about 132 planes). If the Navy forgoes the F-35C (which would be the easiest of the F-35 variants to cut completely, as the Navy’s F-18 fleet is relatively modern), it needs to really boost development of the X-47, because the Navy needs some manned or unmanned stealth strike option. The Navy should also consider an F-35C based electronic warfare plane, instead of the usual deal of retooling the F-18 to create the Growler. An X-47 won’t work because there is too much on the stop manned work for to allow a pilotless aircraft, and an EF plane would benefit from the option of going silent and hiding and fleeing if a mission doesn’t go as planned, an option for which stealth capability would be helpful.
A second is plain vanilla bombing missions against stationary or relatively static targets when our side owns the air. The A-10, B1-B, B-52, F-15E, F-16, F-18 and F-35A can all serve this purpose. The F-35A is a good solution to this mission and should be kept since it is already close to fielding. The Air Force appears to be lumping this role into the CAS category, although I think that this is a mistake. But, it is correct that given improved smart bomb accuracy that Air Force goals of 1-1 replacement of F-16s tasked to this role with F-35As may be expensive overkill.
A third is the true CAS role against mobile targets during live engagements with ground troops in fluid suitations where visual confirmation of ground targets may be necessary, when we control the air. In this capacity stealth is of minor importance because the targets often lack radar and rely on the sound of the plane coming and visual ID. Supersonic speed is a disadvantage rather than a virtue. Persistence over a target area and crew protection is more important. This is a growing mission for the Air Force. The A-10 and AC-130 fill this role today, and the F-35A is a rather poor replacement for this role — at best it has expensive features unnecessary for the role, at worst it lacks features like improved crew armor that are important for this role. COTS solutions for A-10 substitues are available for about a third the cost of an F-35A. Raiding the JSF budget buy to purcahse several hundred genuine A-10 replacements makes sense.
3. The Air Force should consider replacing part of its F-35A buy (perhaps 20%) with F-35B short takeoff verticle landing models. The planes were designed to have maximum interchangable parts, and sometimes it is nice to have short takeoff, verticle landing capabilities, even if you aren’t deploying from ships.
Good Morning Folks,
I do love reading the responses on the issue of manned vs. unmanned aircraft. The fact is the argurment has been won by the unmanned folks. The reasons give for keeping the F-35 all valid twenty years ago when this program was conceived are dead issues now:
1. Unmanned can’t do what manned can, the rapid developments of the X-45, V-47, XB-48, Fire Scout and the now “combat record” of the Preditor B have ended most of these concerns and those not throughly adressed as of yet are being so.
2. Costs, already covered at about a 67-75% discount in purchase and life time maintence the UCAV’s have won tghis argurment.
3. The human element, at over $2.5 million to train a pilot and an annual bill of $750K to keep those skills fresh vs. a tenth of that for UCAV air crews this is a no brainer. Also UCAVS don’t create POW’s, thus reduced CSAR costs.
4. Air to air mission. The Preditor B has already shown that it can down a helicopter with a Stinger and the next set of test for the X series is air to air combat. But the truth of the matter eyeball to eyeball AC is little more then romantic history. The cost of modern competive fighter aircraft will make them to valueable of a national asset for such low productive activities.
5. The Russian and the Chinese. These future bad guys always come into the debat on UCAV’s. The truth is that neither country has shown been very agressive in recent decades in building fighter aircraft. The pre-Vietnam era Mig 21 still makes up most of what is left of the Russian Air Force and the Chinese still relay on the the J-6 a dirative of the 1950′s Mig-19. The latest Chines creation the J/JL-12, if built will have it’s first posting on Hainan Is. Ledong (Lee Dong) Navel Base, projected sometime about 2025, total aircraft, five.
In the next year expect to see the Air Force start riffing out F-15 Pilots O-3 and above in large numbers. The Navy really is happy with the F-18 E/F/G’s and are finding it harder to allocate hanger space on board carriers for the F-35′s.
The Marines will have to get out of the VTOL business, Without the other models of the F-35 the stand alone cost of a VTOL would be prohibitive.
The big question the Navy will have to deal with is how many carriers will they get and thus air groups. Three years ago the hard number was 12 now it’s 10, many said that the JFK wouldn’t be retired before 2040. Time to start weinning yourselves from the U.S.S. Enterprise, it’s a gonner.
Another factor is party politics. The Republicans are getting a rep. as spend and bill the next generation free spending politicians. The cancelation of a huge defense program would help out Republican Congressional canidates with this argurment.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
Get rid of the JSF completely. Our existing aircraft are getting too old too fast. I think we should do this instead:
1. Move all existing and new build F-16s to the Reserves and Guard. Initiate a Block 60 or even Block 50+ new build F-16 program which would focus on CAS, SEAD, and national air defence.
2. Create a new F variant of the F-15 taking lessons learned from the F-35. Install thrust vectoring and AESA systems to create a backup for the F-22. These would go the the Active Air Force to complement the F-22.
3. Expand the production of the F-22. This is the plane the Air Force wants anyways. And I don’t think they will have purchased enough under the current program to meet their needs.
4. Get rid of VSTOL in the Corps. Sorry, but it just is not worth the expense.
5. Fully upgrade all A-10′s in inventory.
I think with what we would save in cancelling the F-35 we could more than afford the alternative and in larger numbers.
DC2
I’ll tell you right now, if the Dems win the presidency in the next election the JSF will get cancelled. If the republicans win the presidency it will remain.
How much advancement did our military have with Clinton in office? Compared to how much we have had with Bush?
PERIOD
Why don’t you ask the grunts what they think of the Harrier? Then, what is your magnificent proposal for the Navy. One must understand the missions as assigned by the 1947 Nat’lDefAuthAct before making arbitrary and capricious statements of supposed practical facts. I know that the above statement sounds very branch specific oreinted, without a big picture look. Look at the real big picture.
Sergeant Major
> Scrap the F-35, and bring back the AD-1 Skyraider and the A-37 Dragonfly
this isn’t an either/or proposition
i too believe there should be some counter-insurgency type aircraft bought, but these are so cheap you could outfleet an entire fleet and have no impact on the F-35 program
such a fleet is good and all, but against a credible opponent it would be practically worthless, hence the need for the F-35
> For me, I think we should develop a common platform and modify it to meet multiple roles
you mean maybe have an air-superiority version, a STOVL version and carrier-based version?
> the focus shouldn
RE:
> One is strike missions in hostile territory, which can call for speed, stealth, air to air capabilities, and comparatively modest payloads — a job for the B-1B (not true stealth and no air to air, but fast and capable of flying low to defeat radar, with a big payload and long range), the B-2 (not fast and no air to air, but a big payload and long range), F-15E (no stealth but good air to air), the F-117 [my note: not fast and no air to air], the F-22 and the F-35.
you basically just showed why no plane currently in the airforce’s inventory is capable of carrying out this mission except the F-22
and F-35 will stealthily carry a bigger bomb than the F-22 can
> Existing manned Air Force aircraft (including the remainder of the F-22 buy) have this mission covered
you may call having less than 200 capable planes having the mission covered, but i don’t
far from it! such a fleet would be spread too thin and be too vulnerable. It can’t be everywhere all the time. A massive F-35 buy gives you massive flexibility of striking anywhere anytime
> In this capacity stealth is of minor importance because the targets often lack radar and rely on the sound of the plane coming and visual ID.
manpads are always a threat and the F-35 has better IR stealth than anything this side of the F-22
> Supersonic speed is a disadvantage rather than a virtue.
not true
A-10s have problems because soldiers will come under attack and call for air support, but it takes the A-10 so long to get there it’s too late
> Persistence over a target area and crew protection is more important.
persistence: I’ll bet you anything the F-35 has more persistence than the A-10
crew protection: the best crew protection is to NOT GET HIT. A-10s got shot to hell in the first gulf war and that was 15 years ago. New advances are just going to make them more and more vulnerable
with the advanced sensors on the F-35, it will be able to reliably and accurately target at altitude what the A-10 had to fly low to get
>Artillery is NOT effective in an urban fight and
>smart shells are still a ways off for general
>use.
This statement is demonstrateably untrue. That day has already arrived.
Guided MLRS has displaced most USAF smart bomb delivery requirements in Iraq and increasingly in Afghanistan.
See these two excerpts from James Dunnigan’s strategypage.com:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htairw/articles/20070820.aspx
>Note that the air force only dropped 177 smart
>bombs in Iraq last year, and only fired 52
>Hellfire (from Predators) or Maverick missiles.
>Activity is up this year, but still minuscule
>compared to past wars. So every smart bomb or
>missile counts, and accuracy is very important.
>Meanwhile, army and marine helicopters fired ten
>times as many missiles, as well as over 10,000
>70mm unguided rockets and over 10 million rounds
>of cannon and machine-gun ammunition. This year,
>the air forces is using a lot more Maverick
>missiles, and is borrowing laser guided versions
>from the navy.
Iraqi based US army and USMC attack helicopters delivered ~500 Hellfires compared to 177 Hellfires and Mavericks from USAF Predators and fixed wibng strike aircraft for all of calendar 2006.
This passage from another strategypage.com article makes much the same point:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20070628.aspx
>The air force has not had a lot to do in Iraq or
>Afghanistan. Smart bombs have greatly reduced
>the workload for bombers and fighters. The army
>now has MLRS rockets with the same guidance
>systems used by smart bombs, and prefer to use
>them in many cases because the rocket warhead is
>smaller and causes less collateral damage than a
>500 pound smart bomb. There is still work for
>the fighters and Predators, but it is
>intermittent, and the air force would rather not
>fill the down time with IED patrols that rarely
>spot anything
and the Army is rapidly ramping up its production rates of GMLRS:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20070110.aspx
>In order to get more GMLRS, all new MLRS
>production is being switched to GMLRS, and a
>retrofit kit, that will turn unguided MLRS
>rockets into GMLRS, has been introduced. The
>army believes that GMLRS will remain the most
>useful smart weapon, even with the coming
>introduction of the hundred pound 155mm GPS
>guided Excalibur artillery shell, and the U.S.
>Air Force’s 250 pound JDAM (the SDB, or small
>diameter bomb). Both of these weapons pack a
>smaller punch than the GMLRS, and that may be a
>drawback in some situations. Ground troops are
>certain that the GMLRS warhead is just right, at
>least in most cases. But the Excalibur and SDB
>will get a workout anyway, and they will
>probably prove useful, even if they have to
>compete with a thermobaric GMLRS.
Point in fact, USAF fixed wing CAS as we know it is being replaced by Army and USMC missile armed helicopters or UAV directed precision artillery strikes.
See this passage on the scale of Army UAV efforts in Iraq versus that of the USAF:
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20070702.aspx
>What’s happened, in effect, is that that,
>because of UAVs and smart bombs, most of the
>aircraft over the battlefield belong to the
>army. As a result, the army wants to have
>control over that air space, even though,
>traditionally, the air force has been in charge.
>The army is pushing the fact that most of the
>aerial vehicles (UAVs, helicopters, artillery
>shells, rockets) at low altitudes (under 20,000
>feet) are army. For example, the army currently
>has over 1,300 UAVs in Iraq, over 200
>helicopters, and dozens of rocket launchers and
>155mm guns. In effect, over 95 percent of the
>aircraft at low altitudes belong to the army. It
>makes no sense to have the air force calling the
>shots.
The increasing automation of warfare in Iraq has not only a UAV for every American Army infantry or Marine Rifle company. It has a unmanned ground vehicle of the MARCbot, PacBot, Talon or the Mini-Andros in every American Army infantry platoon.
The “forward thinking” USAF is being over come by events on the ground and in the air over Iraq.
USAF “College Educated Pilot-Aerospace Engineer” operators and F-16 class cost UAV’s are being replaced by Army and Marine enlisted men who grew up playing X-Box and other video games, who are operating UAVs and UGV’s costing a fraction of a Predator
I cant believe that they call an f35 a CAS airplane.
Seriously each bullet hole would be like 3 million dollars a pop to fix.
more A-10′s!!
Ditch the f-35A.
you dont need such a god damned expensive plane to loiter around at 15000 feet waiting to drop a smartbomb.
And it really is time to get a loiter capable minibomber/ucav.
> I cant believe that they call an f35 a CAS airplane.
Seriously each bullet hole would be like 3 million dollars a pop to fix.
good thing it’s not going to get many bullet holes at 30k feet
> you dont need such a god damned expensive plane to loiter around at 15000 feet waiting to drop a smartbomb.
> more A-10′s!!
nice way to contradict yourself
now that munitions can be precisely delivered from high altitude, the A-10 has lost its raison d
Mann aircraft is a thing of the pass lets get with it, everyone out there knows it, why is it takening so long for the Services to realize it. Fighter pilots(fighter pilots. The decision on the future of mann or UAV should be left to the Military strategies. Not the Generals who are playing favorities instead of thinking ahead. If the Russian are building a Sealth UAV i would think we are also, and its only a matter of time, till we announce the end of mass man aircraft, in fact an F-22 could control three=six UAV or a C-17 airborne CP could control a hundred UAVs that would i’m sure control the air over most future battlefields. Include Urban ones. Let just stop the JSF and start looking at saving billions and make systems that work and cost less and do more.
> Mann aircraft is a thing of the pass lets get with it, everyone out there knows it, why is it takening so long for the Services to realize it.
> Let just stop the JSF and start looking at saving billions and make systems that work and cost less and do more.
this has already been addressed several times
1. UCAVs are uniquely vulnerable in ways manned aircraft are not. Radio transmissions are not stealth, radio can be jammed, satellites can be destroyed.
2. UAVs are not cheaper. Current UAVs are cheaper than military jets because they don’t have the speed and range and capacity of military jets. You build all those into a system and they’re going to be just as expensive. On the low end, they were looking into using UAVs for border patrol and the question was asked ‘Would that be cheaper than a guy in a Cesna?’ And the answer was NO. UAVs are not the panacea some of you seem to be thinking they are.
Obviously nobody cares that the Iran military is coming up with new arsenal, if everyone is complaining of how much this JSF is going to cost so early in the game, drop this JSF idea concentrate on the F-22 and make it for all the armed forces, especially the Marines since the could use some new jets now. Navy already has their F/A-18 E/F, the Marines are the ones that are going to need all the help they can get if this Iran escalation is going to happen.
If the Marines are a part of the Navy, and the Navy has F/A-18E/F, doesn’t that make more sense for the Marines as well? By the way, Marines occassionally land on the boat as well, not sure how well the F-22 will hold up to that.
This argument is silly.
1. If you need to fly a Cap over the Taiwan straight, would you want to do it in a F-35/F-22 or a F-15.
2.If you where going to fly that mission with a mass uav fleet wouldnt you worry about the security of the network?
3. Isnt it arrogant to think that if we dont mass produce a next generation aircraft someone else wont?
4.What will be the complaint when all you have are a few f-22s fighting in multiple theaters against masses of cheap stealthy Russian Uavs and manned fighters. and trust me, they are coming!
Russian fighter concept:
http://www.janes.com/images/news/p1169017.jpg
Chicom fighter concept
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/3003/jxx025da1edcxc1.jpg
5. The combination of the tor M-1 missiles (which can intercept cruisemissiles and other smart weapons + the SA-300 series is a game ender for non stealthy aircraft The can SA-300 can fire out to 150+ miles That even puts aircraft with slammers or harpoons in trouble. and Like I said befor the tor can hit cruise missiles. you need to get close enough to rain small diameter bomdbs on it. you can do this in a lagaecy aircraft.
6. So yes lets scrap all manned aircraft and tie every thing (even cargo aricraft) into a sat controlled netwrok, then lets pray all of those uavs dont go down in a sat kill first strike or a emp type attack. >:0
gooday sir.
Costs of proposed aircraft
F-16A/B: US$14.6 million (1992)
F-16C/D: US$18.8 million (1998)
F-16E/F: US$26.9 million (2005)
F-16I: ~US$70 million (2006)
F-16I and block 60
Global hawk ( a new strike UAV with a significant strike load would be similiar)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Hawk#Cost_overruns
The Global Hawk costs about $35 million USD each[2] (actual per-aircraft costs; with development costs also included, the per-aircraft cost rises to $123.2 million USD each[3]).
Yes since we are adding in the jsf developement cost lets add in the global hawks.
F-35 cost
Produced 2003-present
Unit cost F-35A: US$48 million
F-35B: US$62 million
F-35C: US$63 million[1]
F-15 c +
Unit cost US$43 million in 1998
Developed from F-15 Eagle
So as you can see a Upgraded F-16/F-15 would be less capable and still wouldnt be able to fly over the Taiwan straight and take out missiles bases without creating pows.
The Navy variant has issues with its wings:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3af8cdf63d-e706-409e-9ab5-0be0b200c7de
Buy more A-10s for CAS. Everybody loves the A-10.
RE: The Navy variant has issues with its wings.
Sorry but no, it doesn’t.
Followed the link and Found Bill Sweetman postulating on F-35C design drivers. Surprisingly for Sweetman, he does not draw conclusions about the design, but writes:
–”Meanwhile, the wing is sized for the approach case, and larger than is really needed for other missions – this can cause penalties, for instance, in transonic drag”—
Observe the careful use of the words “CAN cause”. Since the airplane must meet range and speed requirements (and passed CDR), one can only deduce that the combined brainpower of Lockmart/NorthGrum/BAE has somehow ‘lucked-out’ and came up with a workable solution.
Please also note the lead in Sweetman’s post: the F-35C PASSED the Navy’s Critical Design Review.
In his bread-and-butter writing, Sweetman frequently ventures far into the speculative range and pushes incorrect deductions that no one in authority can debunk without leaking classified information. This time Sweetman presents a pretty informative little backgrounder at the link provided. He discusses design challenges and presents a snapshot of the design solutions.
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Way to go guys! Because of you snoeome at the dump gets to eat a hot meal on wednesday. Thank you all for being a great example!
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