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Let's Git-R-Done! Monday is June!
Posted on 05/30/2015 2:16:38 PM PDT by artichokegrower
Testing began this month on the U.S. Marine Corp’s new, highly anticipated, aircraft. At $135 million each the F-35B Lightning II fighter jet is the expensive sibling to vertical take off and landing aircraft like its older brother, the venerable Harrier Jump Jet. Since May 18, Marines and sailors have worked together to conduct Operational Testing 1, to test the integration of the F-35B with a U.S. Navy warship, the (LHD-1).
Throughout OT-1, the aircraft and staff involved were challenged with a variety of flight and deck operations, allowing the gathering of data which will lay the groundwork for future F-35B deployments aboard U.S. Navy amphibious carriers.
(Excerpt) Read more at gcaptain.com ...
We watched one doing a vertical landing yesterday at Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. An Impessive feat!
That way they could buy 3 or 400 of them.
Another good one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-_p3blli2k
With this system in operation, you can add another 10-12 small carriers to the US fleet.
I think newer versions of fighters are great, but is it more cost effective to buy 100 F-35B fighter jets at $135 million each or buy 200 f-18 jets at $70 million each or even 465 F-16 fighter jets at $29 million each?
Is quality that much more important than quantity? Particularly when I am not sure if more than 10 F-16 or even 1 F-18 has been lost to hostile action.
Ping, if you still lurk.
I wouldn't want to be around if the 16s or 18s decided to conduct operations from a Wasp class ship.
That way they could buy 3 or 400 of them.
you're not wrong.
Of course when the going gets rough and they need close air (as they do now) they will have to call in the old tried and true A-10s since the expensive payoffs to the manufacturers can’t begin to do the job.
They also have computer systems and manufacturing that is already been debugged and proved in real World combat operations.
I am not being combative, I am being practical. At some point different and more expensive is not better. We also have an $18 trillion debt and a $200 trillion unfunded liability and a military budget under constraints.
It is difficult to take out 1 f-16, f-18, or Harrier. It is even more so to take out hundreds or even thousands, all of which can be procured at significantly lower cost than the f-35 program.
I think that is part of my point. We are constantly increasing our variety of aircraft and stating they are vastly improved, yet our present aircraft has shown to not only be reliable and battlefield commanding it is also significantly less expensive.
$135 / ea. Wouldn’t it be more effective to just launch 135 cruise missiles at a target?
F-16s do not cost $29 million today. The total cost of the latest block 61 F-16s are north of $200 million each.
Nope....far from it.
You really need to learn more about this turd.
That’s scheduled in 2035. Can’t rush things.
Weird watching the take off at the end of the vid with the huge intake air door open behind the cockpit. It looks,like somebody driving a convertible on the freeway with the top stuck halfway down. That’s got to be an incredibly strong structure to take that wind load.
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