By contrast, from the time funding was first secured by General Dynamics in 1969 for the F-16, they were already being produced by 1976 and entered operational status by 1980.
What is Lockheed doing?
Responding to ever changing requirements from the customer. When each service competed its own aircraft (i.e. Navy Tomcat vs AirForce Eagle) it was simpler. Now everything must be joint and and the government wants to buy one tool to do all jobs. F-35 has to have three variants (A, B, C) to satisfy Navy, Marines, and Air Force, and the requirements keep changing. That costs schedule and money. On top of that, the contractors were forced to include NATO countries in the procurement process. So not only parts made in multiple states (so each Senator gets his/her cut) but across England and other European countries as well. The contractors are stuck with the mess the US government forces upon them.
Isn’t this the plane that should never have been approved?
Yet the gov is flying anti-gravity drones (UFO’s) all over the skies? Ok.
chechens; chechnya; deathtochechnya; deathtoputin; deathtorussia; putinlovertrollsonfr; putinsbuttboys; putinworshippers; russia; russianaggression; ukraine; zottherussiantrolls
The articles posted on FR about the issues with the F-35 program can be found as of 2021 and earlier, well before 'Russia v. Ukraine' was a blip on most people's radar.
Judging by this article from the Project on Government Oversight, those issues are still ongoing.
Yet this is somehow supposed to be touted as support for Russia?
Give me a break.
At least the "antif35propaganda" and "onesided" are applicable, though there's small issue with how the information being reported on is pulled from government sources.
Especially tidbits like this:
That information is vital to determine how effective the program truly is. Luckily, other federal agencies provided some of that information. The Government Accountability Office included them in a July 2021 report. The GAO found that the entire F-35 fleet averaged a full mission capable rate of 39% in 2020, which was an improvement from the 32% the year before. The Air Force’s F-35A variant performed the best with a fleet average of 54% that year, a rate of performance that is still far below the 80% mission capable rate needed for an effective aircraft fleet (and even significantly below the program’s low 65% availability standard). The Marine Corps’ fleet of short takeoff and landing F-35Bs and the Navy’s fleet of F-35Cs, which are tailored for use on aircraft carriers, lag far behind. The F-35B fleet’s full mission capable rate got worse between 2019 and 2020, dropping from 23% to 15%. The F-35C fleet showed some improvement during that period, but that is not saying much. That fleet’s rate went from 6.4% to 6.8%.
But sure, go ahead, refusing to talk about boondoggles in a government defense contract that's been ongoing since 2001 is clearly the right thing to do. /s
POGO never met a weapons system they didn't like - to trash.
It was never intended to work. I worked with some of their engineers for the tooling department for the skins. They had no idea what they were doing but had TONS of money to do it.
5th generation fighters take time. Contrast to Russia’s SU-57, which was contracted with Sukhoi 6 months after Lockheed was awarded the F-35 and entered production in 2020. China’s J-XX program started in the late 90’s and produced it’s first J-20 in 2017.
There are fewer than 14 SU-57’s in service, they rarely fly and may never enter full scale production. China has 50+ J-20’s. There are well over 800 F-35’s in service, and I see them flying near my house almost every day.
Thanks to our education system and espionage, China is catching up.
What really matters is how many retired admirals and generals received really cushy jobs as “consultants” for Lockheed Martin.
“What is Lockheed doing?”
Making billions of dollars.
This entire program is a disaster. They promised an Air-Supremacy fighter capable of close air-support, tactical attack-bombing, carrier ops, STOL, dog-fighting, and pretty much everything else.
They have delivered a partially-capable plane that is so expensive it nullifies it’s own mission. It is “OK” at several things and “The Best” at none of them. What Colonel or CAG is gonna send those planes into a CAS mission? The plane is becoming so expensive that it will only be used for stealth, first strike missions.
POGO is a subversive Sino-Russian group whose purpose is to subvert ever American defense program with fake stories like this one.
Don’t help them along by posting this crap.
POGO is a leftist, anti-defense organization supported by the foundations of the radical left. I recognize several of those foundations from the list of support for NPR. POGO has obviously been trying to cut defense funding in general for decades in favor of social programs.
Each and every time the geniuses in the Pentagon and in the Gov’t bureaucracy demand one platform for many missions to be a shared platform by the 3 services that fly jets it has been a disaster each time. Yet, they never seem to learn. 21 YEARS in development and this thing is still a disaster. An extremely costly disaster on many levels.