Posted on 04/30/2012 5:15:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
multirole aircraft........... kinda reminds me of walking into a k-mart... “By attempting to provide you with everything, they actually succeed at providing you with nothing”.....
Exactly. As Stalin correctly observed, quantity has a quality all its own.
We are moving in the direction of having only a handful of super whiz-bang planes in the USAF. Yeah, they're GREAT planes, but if just a few of them go down we are toast.
SCRAP IT! Jump to the next generation design, build more F-15SEs at 1/3 to 1/4 the cost, bolster them with F-22s built on contract by someone OTHER THAN Lockheed who are liars and couldn’t build a balsa model without cost overruns and that doesn’t asphyxiate the pilots.
A proper run of F-15SE and F-22 is nothing but a manufacturing process now. If you must have a air superiority fighter for the Navy, you don’t now and won’t with the F-35, fix the F-22 for the role. This has been conceived as workable. The F-15E has a confirmed record of being a very versatile, high performance truck that can still fight in and out from the target.
The Navy’s FA-18 program is going well and it seems to be a good airplane. Consider the builder... the old MD plant builds good airplanes. Boeing did themselves no favors over the tanker fraud but they still build good airplanes. Change the contracts, incentivize them and refuse delivery for anything that does not meet standards. The job will get done.
A good start would be about 10 new squadrons worth of each mark of the F-15SE and the F-22... 500 new airplanes that we desperately need. Our old ones are falling apart.
The scenario that will emerge is a ‘fighter/bomber’ shepherding a fleet of UAVs against a fleet of UAVs controlled from the target.
Oddly, yet again the B52 is a perfect candidate!
Is it impossible to fit the F-22 for Carrier operations?
http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-230209-1.html
Air combat going assymetrical is maybe something to take seriously.
If Japan launched 6,000 WWII Kamikaze Zeroes against a single current US carrier, what would happen?
(The House voted Wednesday) to stop funding for an alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – a program Defense Secretary Robert Gates called 'unnecessary.' But his arm-twisting of Congress is far from finished. February 16, 2011
YUP! A 21st Century version of McNamara’s Folly — the multi-service F-111.
I don't know right offhand, but I was blasted a few years ago for saying the F-35 would end up costing as much as an F-22.
That reminds of the favorite saying of an old Crew Chief friend of mine: "The F-4 is proof positive that given enough thrust even a couch can fly"
Thanks for the boondoggle ping. I agree that we need more F-22’s — and A-10’s for close air support.
Close, but you give it too much credit. The design was a compromise from the beginning, there is simply no way any aircraft can perform multiple functions as well as a single purpose design.
It is slow, heavy, short-legged for air superiority.
It has limited range and payload for attack.
It is single engine, which is NOT what the navy wants, regardless of what the Admirals say now.
It's not VTOL as designed, has morphed into STOVL, and again has range and payload problems.
Those are problems with the original design, and production/real world problems are much worse than can be imagined.
It is a pig in a poke, and so much has already been invested in time and treasure that it is insanity to continue forward, and insanity to cancel it.
It takes huge Government to create huge problems.
Odd thing about the F22, when they are flying slow they play “tones”, they sound like a huge pipe organ, you can hear them for miles. WOOOOOOOOO WEEEEEEEEEEE WAAAAAAAAAA...
Real design error if you ask me. Must be horrendous for the pilots, its the oddest thing to hear from the ground.
There was only one competing model, the Boeing X-32, which lost a performance shootout.
The X-32 had the distinction of being one of the ugliest aircraft in recent times and, given the times (1999-2000) was given the nickname, "Monica." See below.
The poor aircraft was both fat and ugly with an open orifice that, ahem, only a Clinton could love.
The F-35 does have a piano aboard to fight pilot boredom on those long bombing missions. It can be played manually, or with a DVD. It is called the Wurlitzer Option.
The F-35 can perform close air support, carry 122 tons of smart bombs, simultaneously engage enemy fighters in low and high altitude dogfights, land on a carrier, on a highway near your home, on a high school baseball field or volleyball court, go from 0 to 1200mph in 6.3 seconds, get 40 mpg, Can take off and land vertically, as long as the next stop is a gas station, and at the same cost as 45 obsolescent, funky-looking, and really slow A-10s, or 20 of those F-16s that are so yesterday, is actually quite a bargain.
I know what you are thinking. "Can you afford this plane?" Of course, you can! As long as you are a semi-responsible foreign government you qualify for low-cost airplane loans, which can be forgiven if our government feels like it. But you ask, "What if the pilots don't play the piano?" This is a problem in foreign lands where pilots are often skilled bouzouki or gamelan players, but know bupkis from pianos. In that case, the foreign buyers would benefit from the Piano Lesson DVD which plays on the HUD. It is FREE when you order the Wurlitzer Option.
Stop by your F-35 Dealer today!
A lot of people knock this outstanding project's looks. But I say when Disney designs a plane, it's always a winner, whether used in combat, or as part of an exciting ride in Orlando.
There's a good case to be made for allowing Japanese co-production and Australian purchases. The Japanese need a replacement/augmentation of their F-15J's, and the Aussies have been waiting quietly for 10 years for us to get our poop in a group on the F-35, and we've failed to come through for them.
Other countries have options like the Eurofighter Typhoon and the navalized Rafale and F/A-18 and can get by without the F-35, but if you look at Japan and Australia's situation, you see the need there.
If the F-35 project does go down, it'll be our biggest program failure since .... well, ever. The Pogo failed, the Flying Wing failed, the predecessor of the Osprey failed in the 60's, and of course the XB-70 failed. But this will be the worst, if it does fail.
I wish I knew what was adding all the cost. I am not sure the people urging the program's termination have our best interests at heart, however. This article examines the interests vested in carrying the program forward -- well, how about a list of companies, governments, and NGO's vested in the other side of the question?
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