Joint Strike Fighter: The Latest Hotspot in the U.S. Defense Meltdown

While its illusion as an "affordable" multi-role fighter-bomber is alive and well in Washington D.C., the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter" is already a disaster, and the bad news has barely begun to roll in. Internationally recognized combat aircraft designer Pierre Sprey and Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler summarize the many failures in a new opinion piece that appears in the Sept. 10, 2008 issue of Janes Defence Weekly and is reproduced below.

Politicians in the US are papering over serious problems in the country?s armed forces. Equating exposure of flaws with failure to 'support the troops', Congress, the presidential candidates and think-tank pundits repeatedly dub the US armed forces “the best in the world”. Behind this vapid rhetoric, a meltdown – decades in the making –is occurring.

The collapse is occurring in all the armed forces, but it is most obvious in the US Air Force (USAF). There, despite a much needed change in leadership, nothing is being done to reverse he deplorable situation the air force has put itself into.

The USAF's annual budget is now in excess of USD150 billion: well above what it averaged during the Cold War. Despite the plentiful dollars, the USAF?s inventory of tactical aircraft is smaller today than it has ever been since the end of the Second World War. At the same time, the shrunken inventory is older, on average, than it has been ever before.

Since George W Bush came to office in 2001, the air force has received a major budget 'plus up', supposedly to address its problems. In January 2001 a projection of its budgets showed USD850 billion for 2001 to 2009. It actually received USD1,059 billion – not counting the additional billions (more than USD80 billion) it also received to fund its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. With the ?plus up? of more than USD200 billion, the air force actually made its inventory troubles worse: from 2001 to today, tactical aircraft numbers shrank by about 100 aircraft and their average age increased from 15 years to 20, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Not to worry, the air force and its politicians assert, the solution is in hand; it is called the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. It will do all three tactical missions: air-to-ground bombing, air-to-air combat and specialised close air support for ground troops – and there will be tailored variants for the air force, navy and marines. Most importantly, it will be ?affordable? and, thus, the US can buy it in such large numbers that it will resolve all those shrinking and ageing problems.

Baloney. When the first official cost and quantity estimate for the F-35 showed up on Capitol Hill in 2001, the Department of Defense (DoD) predicted 2,866 units for USD226 billion. That is a not inconsiderable USD79 million for each aircraft. The latest official estimate is for a smaller number of aircraft (2,456) to cost more (USD299 billion). That represents a 54 per cent increase in the per-unit cost to USD122 million, and the deliveries will be two years late. The Government Accountability Office reported in March that the US can expect the costs to increase some more – perhaps by as much as USD38 billion – with deliveries likely to be delayed again, perhaps by another year. That is just the start of the rest of the bad news. The price increases and schedule delays cited above are for currently known problems.

Unfortunately, the F-35 has barely begun its flight-test programme, which means more problems are likely to be discovered – perhaps even more serious than the serious engine, flight control, electrical and avionics glitches found thus far.

Take the F-22 experience; it was in a similarly early stage of flight testing in 1998. Its programme unit cost was then USD184 million per aircraft but it climbed to a breathtaking USD355 million by 2008. Considering that the F-35 is even more complex (19 million lines of computer code compared to 4 million, and three separate service versions compared to one), the horrifying prospect of the F-35?s unit cost doubling is not outlandish.

The last tri-service, tri-mission ?fighter? the US built, the F-111, tripled in cost before being cut back to barely half the number originally contemplated. The DoD currently plans to spend more than USD10 billion to produce fewer than 100 F-35s per year at peak production. USAF leaders would like to increase the production rate and add in a few more F-22s. That plan is irresponsibly unaffordable (which contributed to the recent departure of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff). The unaffordability will become even more obvious when the unavoidable F-35 cost increases emerge.

The inevitable reaction, just as in past programmes, will be a slashing of annual production, the opposite of the increase the air force needs to address its inventory problems. The DoD fix is simple: test the F-35 less and buy more copies before the testing is completed. Two test aircraft and hundreds of flight-test hours have been eliminated from the programme, and there is now a plan to produce more than 500 copies before the emasculated testing is finished. This approach will not fix the programme but it will help paper over the problems and make the F-35 more cancellationproof in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

It gets even worse. Even without new problems, the F-35 is a ?dog?. If one accepts every performance promise the DoD currently makes for the aircraft, the F-35 will be: ? Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight ratio for a new fighter. ? At that weight and with just 460 sq ft (43 m2) of wing area for the air force and Marine Corps variants, it will have a ?wing-loading? of 108 lb per square foot. Fighters need large wings relative to their weight to enable them to manoeuvre and survive. The F-35 is actually less manoeuvrable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 ?Lead Sled? that got wiped out over North Vietnam in the Indochina War.

? With a payload of only two 2,000 lb bombs in its bomb bay – far less than US Vietnam-era fighters – the F-35 is hardly a first-class bomber either. With more bombs carried under its wings, the F-35 instantly becomes ?non-stealthy? and the DoD does not plan to seriously test it in this configuration for years.

? As a ?close air support? attack aircraft to help US troops engaged in combat, the F-35 is a nonstarter. It is too fast to see the tactical targets it is shooting at; too delicate and flammable to withstand ground fire; and it lacks the payload and especially the endurance to loiter usefully over US forces for sustained periods as they manoeuvre on the ground. Specialised for this role, the air force?s existing A-10s are far superior.

However, what, the advocates will protest, of the F-35?s two most prized features: its ?stealth? and its advanced avionics? What the USAF will not tell you is that ?stealthy? aircraft are quite detectable by radar; it is simply a question of the type of radar and its angle relative to the aircraft. Ask the pilots of the two ?stealthy? F-117s that the Serbs successfully attacked with radar missiles in the 1999 Kosovo air war.

As for the highly complex electronics to attack targets in the air, the F-35, like the F-22 before it, has mortgaged its success on a hypothetical vision of ultra-long range, radar-based air-to-air combat that has fallen on its face many times in real air war. The F-35?s air-to-ground electronics promise little more than slicker command and control for the use of existing munitions.

The immediate questions for the F-35 are: how much more will it cost and how many additional problems will compromise its already mediocre performance? We will only know when a complete and rigorous test schedule – not currently planned – is finished. The F-35 is a bad deal that shows every sign of turning into a disaster as big as the F-111 fiasco of the 1960s.

In January the US will inaugurate a new president. If he is serious about US defences – and courageous enough to ignore the corporate lobbies and their minions in Congress and the think-tanks – he will ask some very tough questions. These will start with why an increased budget buys a shrinking, ageing force. After that the new president will have to take steps – unavoidably painful ones – to reverse the course the country is now on.

The man who best deserves to be inaugurated next January will actually start asking those questions now.

There’s also the concept of concentration of force. Getting the right firepower to the right place and living to tell about it. High volume can actually cause problems. A bunch of junk clogging up the air fields, wasting fuel, bogging down repairmen, etc. At the end of WWII, MacArthur found thousands of grounded Japanese planes in need of minor repairs.

At the same time, low quality planes getting shot down, demoralizing the pilots. Wasted training on a dead pilot. That’s an ugly path to take for defense. I hope we never have to repeat the massive level of WWII. Sure, we could do it. And sheer numbers can terrify your foes, but I prefer quality myself.

Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust...

... perhaps you missed the part that I put in bold font. The quoted takeoff weight if for practically 'clean' configuration, not a bomb-laden strike mission with a lot of external stores. Like I said before, this is troubling...

I should look up which version of the F-35 weight they are quoting. I know that they are frantically working on reducing the weight of the F-35B -- the STOVL version. It stands to reason that that plane will be heavier & less of a performer than the "A" (USAF) or "C" (USN, CTOL) versions. The "C" has a broader wing, too, so wing loading numbers would be different.

And the entire US Military is collapsing? In a meltdown? As a Marine from the early 80’s thru the Reagan transition i call BS. My first M-16 looked chrome it was so worn out. I had a WWII steel pot and a WWII .45. My tent was a WWI canvas shelter half. By todays standards, the training was utterly abysmal.
We felt superior to the National Guardsmen next door as they hooked up a BBQ smoker trailer to a Jeep to take along on their 2 week summer camp training.

Don’t kid yourself. These kids today would have handed us our ass. Im proud of em. The Marines stun me with their proficiency today. Todays Marines approach a lethality that Delta would have been proud of in 1979. Todays National Guard is a lean, serious outfit.
Our fighters have incorprated long bitter lessons. They are hardened beyond belief.

He may have *been involved* in design of a plane in the late 60s or early 70s, but he is wildly out of touch to say our armed forces are in collapse.
This is the argument of the maroons who whine that war fighting operations interfere with their training and maintinence schedules.

War zone operations have a leaning effect on a unit that nothing else does. The crap is quickly discarded as a deadly waste of time. The dandies are soon weeded out. A great example of this is the USAAF in WWII. Highly acclaimed leaders often turned out to be duds and were ruthlessly weeded out,, other unknowns rose to colonel in a year or two, and created a USAAF that was truly the terror of the skies. No sir, our services are not in melt down. The Wesley Clarks and Gen Sanchez’s get weeded out,,and the Patraeous’s are rising.

The CDI thought the M1 and the Bradley were 'death traps' and boondoggles. They oppose any defense spending and have zero credibility.

I don't know if they oppose ALL defense spending. But sometimes I think they are advocates of a Soviet-style "Quantity over Quality" force structure. The US public will never accept huge losses, so they are advocating something that will never happen. I think that they keep pushing the rock in that direction, however.

I agree that the concept of an all-in-one plane is a problem. Isn't that what turned the F-111 into a boondoggle? McNamara wanted the Navy and Air Force to cooperate on a fighter-bomber and it just turned into a plane neither service liked (the Navy dropped out before it bought any).

Pierre Sperry was one of John Boyd's "fighter mafia" colleagues and I don't take his criticism lightly (please note his column was published in Jane's Defence Weekly and was just reprinted by CDI). It was Colonel Boyd who stressed the importance for a fighter to have a high thrust to weigh ratio.

Reduced to its basics, Boyd's work hinged on thrust and drag ratios. * * * The E-M Theory, at its simplest, is a method to determine the specific energy rate of an aircraft. * * * In an equation, specific energy rate is denoted by "Ps". The state of any aircraft in any flight regime can be defined with Boyd's simple equation: Ps = [T-D/W]*V or thrust minus draft over weight multiplied by velocity. http://www.jjraymond.com/books/nonfiction/boyd.html

You can be sure that if the JSF design had been pushed as having supreme dog-fighting capability and cheap to make, the would oppose it as an antiquated design.

The CDI is full of former officers who think their military gravitas allows them to promote appeasement policies. It's a kind of political 'bait and switch' tactic, Alinsky-like dissimulation. I have no doubt that most of the officers are sincere, but that just means they fall into the 'useful idiot' category.

I guess they’re just desperate to have some semblance of ‘mass production’ to help keep the cost down.

Regardless of the problems, we need revive some of Cap Weinberger’s dedication to research and development, especially in air power. Air is fast becoming more important to any victory. Maybe McCain will see the need for that when he sits in the oval office. [I hope.]

Just looked-up the F-35 weight specs on www.fas.org. This info might be a little ‘dated’, but the weights quoted are MUCH lower than the ones Pierre Spey is citing.

Empty weight for the F-35 (A or B) is given as (approx) 22,500-lb. I gotta believe the ‘B’ is heavier than that, but that’s their number. Add-in an internal fuel load of 15,000-lb & you have a takeoff weight of 37,500-lbs. Carrying a load of AIM-120D’s & AIM-9X’s I think that max takeoff weight would be right around 40,000-lbs (less than the engine thrust rating.)

The empty weight for the F-35C (carrier version) was given as 24,000-lb. Internal fuel load is 16,000-lb. As I said before, the ‘C’ has a broader wing to allow lower landing speeds & this is where some of the extra fuel is stored. The wing may make the ‘C’ the better dogfighter of the 3 versions.

This does seem like a bipolar review of the F35 (too fast, to slow). I thought with vectored thrust and the current power, it is more then capable as a dog fighter - putting out more stress than a pilot can handle?

With the exception of the vectoring nozzle on the F-35B STOVL variant, the F-35 does not have thrust vectoring. And even the F-35B's thrust vectoring is limited to STOVL modes, not regular air-to-air combat maneuvering.

Only the F-22 has thrust vectoring, and that is only in pitch. The Russian Suhkoi Su-30 has two dimensional thrust vectoring in the pitch and yaw planes.

Fas.org needs to update their specs, I think. Lockheed Martin on their website gives the following for the F-35A:

Length 51.5 ft
Height 14.2 ft
Wingspan 35 ft
Wing area 460 sq ft
Horizontal tail span 23 ft
Weight empty 29,300 lb
Maximum weight 70,000 lb class
Internal fuel 18,000 + lbs
Speed Mach 1.6 (~1,200 mph)
Range ~1.200 n. mi
Combat radius 610 n. mi
Power plant One P&W F135 or GE F136
Engine thrust 40,000 lb (with after burner)

Far left lobbying cabal in DC

With a branch in Mother Russia. From their own website:

CDI is part of the World Security Institute, whose divisions include the Center for Defense Information, International Media, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Azimuth Media and International Programs with offices in Brussels, Cairo and Moscow, and projects in China.

Thanks for that correction. I actually checked the Lockheed-Martin website first, but didn’t find what I was looking for.

I went for the www.fas.org numbers with a little trepidation. They ‘looked’ like design spec numbers rather than ‘real’ numbers.

This means that Pierre Spey’s numbers are ballpark, at least.

As a Marine from the early 80’s thru the Reagan transition i call BS. My first M-16 looked chrome it was so worn out. I had a WWII steel pot and a WWII .45. My tent was a WWI canvas shelter half. By todays standards, the training was utterly abysmal.

Yep. We were driving around in WWII jeeps, the 16's I was issued had to be babied by armorers, the .45 was older than I was, and I HATED that steel pot.

The best weapon I was ever issued was the M40, and that was VN era tweaked by USMC armorers.

Semper Fi, bro.

The last tri-service, tri-mission ?fighter? the US built, the F-111,

F-111 was only dual mission. Of course the naval fleet defense version was dropped pretty early on. The F-111 is still flying, 40 years later, in Australian service. They not only bought some new ones of their own (C models), they've bought 4 old USAF versions (A models), and brought those to pretty much the same configuration as the original Aussie version, which of course has been greatly updated.

They also have 14 F-111Gs, which were originally produced as FB-111s for SAC.

The authors do not seem to accommodate in their argument the revolution in military affairs that has increased lethality and efficiency by orders of magnitude. The question is, does this increased capability compensate for the decrease in units? Here in amateur-land the answer seems to be yes. The accuracy of bombs and missiles has reduced the number of sorties required to destroy a target by several orders of magnitude. What required hundreds if not thousands of sorties to destroy in WWII now requires 1 or 2. That ought to count for something in their analysis.

Well said. Modern and future fighter planes are more like very fast flying destroyers than dogfighters.

Whomever that may be; he should sit down with the warfighters, mechanics, support, logistics, ground pounders etc, and ask them what they need; What they feel is the better platform. I mean, can one airframe do three jobs, and do them well? I personally don't think so.

But I would go to the lower ranks from all services (Full bird and down) and disciplines, and get their take. And then go back and talk to the generals.

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