Posted on 04/02/2014 9:21:58 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, national security correspondent David Martin chronicled the seemingly never-ending list of problems with the Pentagon’s next-generation F-35 fight jet, from cost overruns of $160 billion to technical problems that have plagued the plane’s development.
When asked if the F-35 program, which is expected to cost some $1.5 trillion over the four-decade life of the program, is now under control, the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall, said, "Yes, it is."
But that commitment came with a warning.
“Long gone is the time when we're going to pay for mistake after mistake after mistake," said Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the officer who took control of the F-35 program last year. He added that the planes are necessary, however, to keep pace with the technology being developed by U.S. rivals Russia and China.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
What’s interesting - why can different aircraft not be designed that use at least a base of same parts (weapons, propulsion, and other parts), while still having two distinct aircraft (or more)? What is the suppose logic behind a SINGLE aircraft that supposedly can be all things to all branches and purposes?
more than a decade, the contest between boeing (boing!) and mcd-douglas was back in the late 90s. so they were working on the prototypes a few years before that late-90s contest date.
sorry’ lockheed martin, got my hyphenated companies wrong... :-)
F 111 redux. Trying to make 1 platform all things to all services.
We never learn.
Unfortunately, too many so-called "budget hawks" think the Pentagon is the one government entity off-limits for audits, criticism, reform, cuts, etc.
The F-35 is going to make the F-111 look brilliant by comparison.
Here we go again with an even more complex tri-service compromise. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps can use the same rifle. Not so with aircraft.
The mantra during F-15 design was "not one pound for air to ground". The result of this focus on air combat with no compromise is the only fighter plane in history never defeated in air combat. The F-22 could have been the next fighter to do this. So we dump it for a tri-service turd.
It ultimately became the most feared weapon for the soviets when it matured. It was the only weapon system singled out by them in early arms limitation negotiations.
Some eagles look like turkeys, some turkeys soar higher than eagles.
On a totally different note, Warthogs forever!! Now the A-10, that's an airplane!!
You’re likely to wind up with something that could be shot down by a sharp pilot in an F-16... and when was that airframe designed?
It will make it look cheap, too.
The F-16 won the flyoff in the mid 1970’s. The Northrop YF-17 lost the competition. Later it became the FA-18.
“They had a great plane, the F22 and threw it away.”
They should cut the F-35 buy and reopen the F-22 assembly lines. The flyaway cost for the F-35 is now right at the figure for the F-22, for a much less capable airframe.
The original F-22 buy was supposed to be for 650 planes. We ended up with 187 (now less after attrition). We should go ahead and double that number at least. The F-22 is operational now, and all-around superior to the F-35 except for the number of bombs it can carry internally. After the F-22s have cleared the battlespace of threats, any legacy fighter or bomber would do fine dropping bombs from high altitude.
The F-111 actually turned out to be a pretty good aircraft...for the RAAF. The company I retired from made parts for the F-22. We lost that work when it was cancelled. We made parts for the Boeing JSF entry (the Monica). It lost the competition. We made a bunch of stuff for the Comanche stealth helicopter. Twenty years of R&D and billions of dollars and the whole project was scrapped. And then there was the V-22...
If you broke all this waste down to dollars per taxpayer, what do you suppose it would come to?
There, fixed it.
We TAXPAYERS are stuck, not DoD. They got paid off and paid well as did the contractors. Everyone but us got something out of this F-35 scam.
It's like deja vu all over again.
They've been made to follow the same political path that doomed the Dornier Do 335 with constantly changing requirements forcing redesign after redesign to meet each new requirement.
The Dornier Do 335 was an amazing airplane, possibly one of the finest piston aircraft ever built, but it, like the F-35, was doomed by the ever changing whims of clueless politicians spending other people's money.
You'll also end up with a platform that may have an unseen flaw that an enemy can can exploit to eliminate ALL branches' ability to fight and survive.
This is why Bill Clinton forced through the Joint Strike Fighter Program. picked the damn thing. The Globalists needed to slowly erode the military capability of an independent, sovereign United States.
That's not correct, the F-22 is the "F-15" to the F-35's "F-16" role.
Here's a discussion from Feb. 4 this year regarding the current state of the AF from U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command Gen. Michael Hostage (ironic name really). The money quote:
But, the F-22 Raptor will have to support the F-35. And here comes another problem. When the Raptor was produced it was flying “with computers that were already so out of date you would not find them in a kid’s game console in somebody’s home gaming system.” Still, the U.S. Air Force was forced to use the stealth fighter plane as it was, because that was the way the spec was written. But now, the F-22 must be upgraded through a costly service life extension plan and modernisation program because, “If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22,” says Hostage to Air Force Times.Those 180+ F-22s will be awfully busy protecting the 1600+ planned F-35s...
Actually it was a pretty good bomber for the USAF, and a major electronic warfare platform. But it was a total bust as a fighter, which it was originally designed to be, and the Navy never bought a single plane. The fact that they rescued it, doesn’t make it any less McNamaras Folly.
“What’s interesting - “
I seem to recall that there were a lot of F-16 parts used in the F-117. Is that true?
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