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F 35 Sink Hole

 
 
 
Yeah, the F-35 is one of those pieces of military hardware that is out of date by the time it is produced. Besides the Chinese already have stolen the plans and produced a very similar model.
 
Canada's new PM says he's pulling out of this one and cancelling our order, which I think is a good thing.

It doesn't sound like the design was ready for prime time and we need at last a couple of interim generations of warplanes before we get to a place where this one will do what it was actually supposed to do.

Kudos to the sales guys at Lockheed for being able to sell the R&D budget to do many customers, though.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Canada's new PM says he's pulling out of this one and cancelling our order, which I think is a good thing.

It doesn't sound like the design was ready for prime time and we need at last a couple of interim generations of warplanes before we get to a place where this one will do what it was actually supposed to do.

Kudos to the sales guys at Lockheed for being able to sell the R&D budget to do many customers, though.
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It's easy to sell military hardware to the US Congress.
 
Nice Squirrel said:
Yeah, the F-35 is one of those pieces of military hardware that is out of date by the time it is produced. Besides the Chinese already have stolen the plans and produced a very similar model.
Click to expand...

This statement is actually true of the F-22 Raptor. The F-35 was already out of date by the time they were finished DESIGNING it: the original design concept is a Cold War relic that evolved from the ill-fated A-12 fighterbomber. The kinds of strike missions it was designed to fly were already rendered obsolete by new technologies ten years before the first prototypes fell from the sky due to software defects.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Canada's new PM says he's pulling out of this one and cancelling our order, which I think is a good thing.
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Man, I wish we would do the same. Our government's insistence on buying the F35 is forcing us to seriously downgrade our airforce numbers. But because we spent a billion or so dollars on helping develop it and however more on pulling in private sector contracts, the government is stubbornly sticking to it without buying enough of them to maintain a decent airforce capability. At least we already have 2 of them, I guess. Wooh.
 
bleubird said:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/air-force-admits-big-f35-problems-and.html
This is one of the best examples of what President Eisenhower warned USA about.
I will admit there is need for new technology is defense,but this is just insane.
A Fucking Trilion dollars!
Click to expand...

Criticism of the much maligned F-35 is fully warranted, but lessons learned have little to do with the military-industrial complex. Let's start with the factual background:

1) The estimated cost of the program of 1.4T (max) is over 55 years, including procurement, maintenance and operations. Development and procurement is projected to be $400 billion, and O&M is projected to cost between $859 billion and $1 trillion. This provides 2,457 U.S. aircraft, with allies projected to purchase hundreds of F-35s.

2) The program was conceived and spec'd by the military "geniuses" who returned to mutton-headed myths and strategies of the past, while adding a newly invented blunder of simultaneous "design while in production".

a) The myth that one aircraft could meet the needs and roles of three different services, and thereby save money. The last time this was popular was in McNamara's civilian "brain trust". His team came up with the "idea" they could save money with one multi-role plane - the F-111. The 'fighter-bomber' was an embarrassing design and management debacle. It also had "repeated cost overruns, sub-par design quality and near complete procurement ineptitude." Eventually the Navy bowed out and it became a single role long-range bomber for the Air Force. (Procurement was slashed to less than 600).

b) The myth that the era of the dog-fighter was/is over. This same myth also dominated US military thinking through the 50s and 60s. The assumption was that planes only needed to be fast, big, and make kills with long-range missile shots. By the end of the Vietnam, the often gunless 'strike-fighter' F-4 was shown to be good at "strikes" but very challenged as a fighter against M-21s. Lessons were learned, the result being the development of legendary air-superiority dog-fighter, the F-15.

Does the US learn from the past? Hell no, they go brain-dead and the same flawed myths, and come up with another "multi-role" and "multi-service", strike fighter that will depend on long range missiles, and (this time) stealth to hide. Yet, any modern enemy fighter that comes within visual range can easily out accelerate, out maneuver, and out-shoot the plodding F-35.

Worse yet, this new program it won't save money. The military added a new blundering idea; it tried to economize by developing the design while manufacturing at the same time. It's been a disaster.

And yes, it seems to be widely acknowledged that a substantial portion, if not most, of the F-35 plans and data has been stolen by China. Thier newest J-20 shows lots of recent F-35 features, including the coveted F-35 jet engine design (prior to the theft, all Chinese jet engines were known to be inefficient).

The problem is what to do about it? The recent blunder of terminating the F-22 program prematurely has limited modern US air superiority fighter inventory to a paltry 187 aircraft, I guess to protect 2500 sitting duck F-35s.
 
Crazy Eddie said:
Nice Squirrel said:
Yeah, the F-35 is one of those pieces of military hardware that is out of date by the time it is produced. Besides the Chinese already have stolen the plans and produced a very similar model.
Click to expand...

This statement is actually true of the F-22 Raptor. The F-35 was already out of date by the time they were finished DESIGNING it: the original design concept is a Cold War relic that evolved from the ill-fated A-12 fighterbomber. The kinds of strike missions it was designed to fly were already rendered obsolete by new technologies ten years before the first prototypes fell from the sky due to software defects.
Click to expand...

You might check that. Google notes the F-35 as the plane that was mostly stolen.
 
Ha! The Chinese stole the F35 plans. Suckers.

This is funnier than when the Russians were trying to steal the Star Wars plans from Reagsn.
 
Yea Max!
An other bloated reply.
Bottom line is we have shit sense about what needs to be done.
Infrastructure falling down,shit school system,power grid near collapse,crap health care.
Right,we need more weapons to fight the bad guys.
 
Nice Squirrel said:
Yeah, the F-35 is one of those pieces of military hardware that is out of date by the time it is produced. Besides the Chinese already have stolen the plans and produced a very similar model.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't call the F-35 out of date--that implies it had a date.

The F-35 is a turkey from the starting line--it never would be good at any of it's jobs because it tried to do too many. It's a perfect example of jack of all trades means king of none.
 
maxparrish said:
1) The estimated cost of the program of 1.4T (max) is over 55 years, including procurement, maintenance and operations. Development and procurement is projected to be $400 billion, and O&M is projected to cost between $859 billion and $1 trillion. This provides 2,457 U.S. aircraft, with allies projected to purchase hundreds of F-35s.
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Another surprise maxparrish. I'm going to agree that getting behind schedule and using Lockheed as the prime resulted in inventing the design while build fiction which is mutton headed from the top by the way.

As for costs. Well waving the trillion dollar flag on a program that is going to produce more than 3000 a/c seems a bit rude.

My clacs show about thirty percent of cost of each A/C goes for design and advanced design test, bringing the price per copy down to under $450,000 a copy, subtracting around for thirty percent of that amount for facilities and development brings and production cost per A/C down to $130,000 per aircraft, and subtracting another 40 percent of that remainder for life system maintenance and documentation documentation brings it to about $50,000, and another 40% of the remainder, and a final 40% of that remainder for modifications/refits and training leave a per copy A/C out the door cost of about $21,000 per F35 which is even less than the costt for the venerable F18 which was going through its F mod in the early nineties.

Boneheads are born every day everywhere, Check the latest Jobs movie if you have doubts. We flew the venerable SR-71 Blackbird was a leaking fuel tank until it got off the ground and up to about 30k feet where it had to be refueled before it went anywhere. Still, look what it did. The B-2 was a two billion per copy dinosaur until Gulf War I, and the F-14 cost about 50 mil a copy when it became operational in 1974 at a cost of $38 million a copy which translates to $190 million a copy in 2015 dollars. Were these fat head, mutton headed wastes?

Get real. Mess with schedule and cost, design, everything goes out the door. I submit given the 7 to 14 year lead times for such programs anything that comes out will be out of date and stupid until one realizes that everybody else has even worse problems.

I claim narrow criticisms based on cost and design obsolescence are not valid when it comes to sophisticated nation saving products for defense. There are other more reasonable critiques such as getting vendors out of the pockets of legislators when we discuss national defense. But doing an unfair hatchet job on the aerospace engineering industry or one of their products is really hitting low.
 
maxparrish said:
bleubird said:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/08/air-force-admits-big-f35-problems-and.html
This is one of the best examples of what President Eisenhower warned USA about.
I will admit there is need for new technology is defense,but this is just insane.
A Fucking Trilion dollars!
Click to expand...

Criticism of the much maligned F-35 is fully warranted, but lessons learned have little to do with the military-industrial complex. Let's start with the factual background:

1) The estimated cost of the program of 1.4T (max) is over 55 years, including procurement, maintenance and operations. Development and procurement is projected to be $400 billion, and O&M is projected to cost between $859 billion and $1 trillion. This provides 2,457 U.S. aircraft, with allies projected to purchase hundreds of F-35s.
Click to expand...
I would be utterly amazed if they actually complete orders for 2,500 F-35s. IIRC they were supposed to be getting around 1,400 F-22s when massive overruns and "not as advertised" capability reduced that to just a couple hundred planes.

I expect we'll get about 600 to 800 F-35s max, and the Navy will either push for yet another upgrade of the Superhornet or shore up its numbers with drone fighters. The latter is probably more likely, seeing how the sole purpose of U.S. air power is to bomb terrorists in third world countries that couldn't defend themselves from a flock of seagulls.


maxparrish said:
Crazy Eddie said:
This statement is actually true of the F-22 Raptor. The F-35 was already out of date by the time they were finished DESIGNING it: the original design concept is a Cold War relic that evolved from the ill-fated A-12 fighterbomber. The kinds of strike missions it was designed to fly were already rendered obsolete by new technologies ten years before the first prototypes fell from the sky due to software defects.
Click to expand...

You might check that. Google notes the F-35 as the plane that was mostly stolen.
Click to expand...

I know what journalists are saying, the same thing they say whenever China unveils a new stealth fighter "Ermagehd they sterl er plerns!" And the F-35 is the newest and the most heavily hyped, so that's the one they assume is stolen.

All the best analysts are saying the Chinese probably derived them from the F-22, though, primarily because at the time those fighters were being designed the F-22 was just entering production and they were trying to develop a plane that could counter it (in much the way the F-15 was, in some ways, designed to counter the Mig-29).

As far as I can tell, none of China's newer designs are even comparable to the F-35 (any version of it), primarily because they don't do the same kinds of multirole shit the U.S. tries to do with its planes. Their only aircraft carrier is using a Russian-style ski jump system, which pretty much rules out heavy single-engine fighters like the Navy Lightning. They're also not screwing around with VTOL, which rules out the Marine Lightning. That only leaves the Air Force version, which is less than useless to them since they don't expect to be operating their fighters anywhere near enemy territory; flying a stealth fighter in your own airspace is a bit like sending a squad of snipers to hold a bridge.


Tom Sawyer said:
Ha! The Chinese stole the F35 plans. Suckers.

This is funnier than when the Russians were trying to steal the Star Wars plans from Reagsn.
Click to expand...

Or the time some KGB agents got caught photographing the spaceplanes on the set of "Space: Above and Beyond."
 
fromderinside said:
My clacs show about thirty percent of cost of each A/C goes for design and advanced design test, bringing the price per copy down to under $450,000 a cop, subtracting around for thirty percent of that amount for facilities and development brings and production cost per A/C down to $130,000 per aircraft, and subtracting another 40 percent of that remainder for life system maintenance and documentation documentation brings it to about $50,000, and another 40% of the remainder, and a final 40% of that remainder for modifications/refits and training leave a per copy A/C out the door cost of about $21,000 per F35 which is even less than the costt for the venerable F18 which was going through its F mod in the early nineties.
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I must be misunderstanding something, because $21,000 wouldn't even buy you an A-1 Skyraider -- even in 1960s dollars -- let alone an F/A-18.

Best numbers I've seen project $450 million per aircraft IF current cost projections hold true -- that is, no more overruns, no more schedule slips, and all components and development work are completed as advertized without the need for major revisions or redesigns. This latter assumption is already incorrect given the problems with the F-35s flight control software; we'll be lucky if they go for less than $600 million apiece. Which, again, is why I expect the number to drop dramatically over the years; a trillion dollar program for a fighter plane that does nothing well and can barely even fly safely in bad weather is not politically feasible no matter how vigorously the defense lobbyists wave their flags.

the F-14 cost about 50 mil a copy when it became operational in 1974 at a cost of $38 million a copy which translates to $190 million a copy in 2015 dollars. Were these fat head, mutton headed wastes?
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No, because the F-14 was designed to do one thing -- shoot down other aircraft at extremely long ranges and then muscle them to death if they get too close -- and it did this extremely well. In fact it did this SO well that their continued use by the Iranian Air Force was an actual deterrent to U.S. military planning during the 1990s; there was concern that the Hornets lacked the Tomcat's speed and engagement range and would be at a serious disadvantage if the Iranians decided to take the gloves off in a real fight. Later revelations revealed that the Iranian Tomcats had been converted to AWACs planes, something they turned out to be surprisingly good at due to their ridiculously powerful radars and their capacity to move in and out of combat areas almost with impunity.

I submit given the 7 to 14 year lead times for such programs anything that comes out will be out of date and stupid until one realizes that everybody else has even worse problems.
Click to expand...
That's just it: nobody else is trying to design fighter planes on the "cutting edge" of the technical envelope, and in doing so they eliminate the 14 year lead time. Most of those designs go from concept to mass production in 7 years or less; the F-22 took almost two decades just to get from concept to prototype.

What's interesting is that they keep discovering that the things that make the F/A-18 and even the 15/16s "out of date" are actually pretty fixable. Even the "obsolete" A-10 thunderbolt is STILL a superior tank buster than the F-35 could ever be and can provide better air support than any of the new designs will be able to. It is therefore "outdated" only on the assumption that the Air Force will never need to conduct close air support in a major ground war again, an assumption that is, itself, outdated.

What can an F-35 do that an F-16 can't? The answer is some variation of "Not enough to be worth it." And it's what the F-35 can't do that gives people pause.

I claim narrow criticisms based on cost and design obsolescence are not valid when it comes to sophisticated nation saving products for defense.
Click to expand...

It's a valid criticism when "cutting edge advanced technology!" is supposed to be the plane's main selling point. The stealth technology and interconnected datalink capability are actually the only things the F-35 and F-22 do particularly well; it is, in fact, their ONLY real strength as weapon systems.

The problem is, newer radar systems can nullify the stealth advantage and the software that runs their fancy datalink systems is bugged all to hell. So you have a plane whose only real selling point is its ability to gain a technical advantage over its opponents; when that advantage disappears, what's left?

tHe F-15 and 16 were as effective as they were because their designers (under considerable pressure to do so) developed extremely effective aircraft and then packed them with advanced weapon systems and technology. The F-35 was designed completely ass-backwards: they started with a technological paradigm -- stealth technology and battlefield IT -- and then tried to build an airframe around it.

A solution looking for a problem.
 
dystopian said:
Crazy Eddie said:
Tell that to the Georgians.
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So... you're saying that South-Ossetian spies infiltrated the set of Space: Above and Beyond? Somehow I'm skeptical.
Click to expand...

Or so the story goes. The theory is that they were actually acting on behalf of Russia, who didn't want to be caught conducting espionage in the U.S. again.

On the other hand, considering the kind of complete dumbass who couldn't tell a TV prop from an actual fighter plane -- and moreover, would actually get caught red handed photographing them between takes -- it's plausible.
 
Billions for the military and Congress doesn't bat an eye, but try to get funding for domestic infrastructure, education or any social programs and it's like pulling teeth. It's maintain The Empire at all costs and to hell with domestic welfare -- austerity and a police-surveillance state.

Why couldn't the US get by with just a National Guard and Coast Guard?
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Ha! The Chinese stole the F35 plans. Suckers.

This is funnier than when the Russians were trying to steal the Star Wars plans from Reagsn.
Click to expand...

Well at least the Chinese actually stole something with real plans.

- - - Updated - - -

seyorni said:
Billions for the military and Congress doesn't bat an eye, but try to get funding for domestic infrastructure, education or any social programs and it's like pulling teeth. It's maintain The Empire at all costs and to hell with domestic welfare -- austerity and a police-surveillance state.

Why couldn't the US get by with just a National Guard and Coast Guard?
Click to expand...

Somebody else will fill the void of Gunboat Hero... probably France... although India and Brazil are hoping to do so.
 
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