Posted on 10/24/2015 7:46:36 AM PDT by McGruff
Donald Trump boasts, “I’m the most militaristic person there is,” and that he’d build a military force so robust “no one is going to mess” with the U.S. Yet at his core, Trump is a businessman. So when the Republican presidential frontrunner looks at the Defense Department’s multi-billion dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, he sees a lousy deal.
During an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, the real estate mogul said he has received briefings on the fighter jet effort and that it has “big problems.”
“I’m hearing that our existing planes are better. And one of the pilots came out of the plane, one of the test pilots, and said this isn’t as good as what we already have. And to spend billions and billions of dollars on something that maybe isn’t as good,” Trump said. He was referring to a recent five-page report written by a test pilot and obtained by War is Boring that said the fifth-generation aircraft was easily outmatched by the F-16 fighter, which the F-35 is meant to replace.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefiscaltimes.com ...
The F-51 is the P-51 brought back for the Korean conflict.
Funny how that is always true of tools. Specialized tools are always superior to those tools that try and be everything to everyone. Do a few things well is a better design philosophy than do lots of things so-so.
So far the total program cost of the F22 is about a third of what the JSF program is currently over budget. program requirements are being walked back (you really don’t need that much range), it needs to go.
A link would be nice...
I agree and concur with Colonel Boyd on the F-111, I’m not a test pilot but I recognize common sense when I see it. The F-111 was a waste of tax money and it’s primary purpose was to feed the ego of that rotten sonuvabitch Robert McNamara.
F-111’s are cool. They go fast. Their wings go back and forth. They transform diesel into noise and speed.
They just aren’t very good warplanes!
Oldplayer
One needs to recall how we got the F-35. Recall that Boeing said if that Lockheed plane (submitted to the fly off) works, they will win this competition.
The F-35 is costly, and its costs went up during development. But this is not new. The cost of technology that is state of the art is going to be expensive.
The real question is, Does the plane do what it was supposed to do? (Vertical landing? Carrier landing? short runway take off?) The problem is that one plane is not going to do everything we want.
So watch our allies purchases. They are buying a few F - 35s and we have bought a few F-22s.
The services will do the best they can with the money we give them.
My view is that a few of each of the systems is not a bad idea. I too would like to have more money, but we have a lot of debt. The solution is to spend carefully and the better the mix the better we will do.
Saw the rear half body of an F35 being hauled down the freeway yesterday all shrink-wrapped on a flatbed.
The F-111F with precision weapon capability was an awesome air to ground asset. It scared the crap out of the Russians. The rest of the fleet was never upgraded to that kind of level. Partly because the F-15E was on the drawing board. We actually should buy a couple more wings of F-15Es with the latest upgrades. There is no current non-bomber match for range and payload. Plus it can protect itself. A good stealth aircraft will have a significant advantage air-to-air, so both are required. And when stealth is not required (often in the Middle East); there is no reason to risk the technology transfer of a plane going down for any reason. Am I a big fan of the F-35? No. Am I a little fan of the F-35? Yes. However, the Air Force should by a mixed bag of A,B and C models for different applications. Once they sort out the proper flight control solution, the A model will be competent in air to air and the B model will be better that any of the previous generation of fighters. The A model’s wing is a bit small, but it should give a better ride in the low altitude high speed environment. Yes we should have bought more F-22s. To fix a current worry; the F-22 should make the combat trade of several more missiles externally mounted for the stealth that you give up. If you are facing numbers, it is a very good trade off.
Because we can’t wait for 20 year acquisition cycle to get something other than the F-35, we have to make do and try to make smart choices on its internal and external configurations.
“A link would be nice...”
Sorry about that. The link got cut off somehow.
How quickly could Lockheed “roll out” another F-22 Raptor?
https://www.quora.com/How-quickly-could-Lockheed-roll-out-another-F-22-Raptor
“Because we can’t wait for 20 year acquisition cycle to get something other than the F-35, we have to make do and try to make smart choices on its internal and external configurations.”
A new and better air superiority fighter can be designed, manufactured, and deployed into combat duties within 18 to 36 months if it was made an emergency top priority order with sufficient funding, and the task can be done within 5 years given the correct funding and specialization for its mission. It is only a matter of will and financing.
If you dump the F-35 what would we replace it with? F-22 is good but it can’t do a lot—Do we have better planes on the drawing boards? Can the F-35 be saved? What can we do? Buy Mig -35? Revamp the F-16? The F-18? How about we steal the plans for the Mig-35 and improve it?
“Oh, by the way, we should add a couple more active A-10 Warthog squadrons while we’re at it. “
I thought I read that they had destroyed the tooling.
I agree, the F-111 ended up being the best strike-interdiction aircraft on the planet. And while more expensive was better than it’s F-15E replacement.
The Aussies kept their F-111Cs flying long after we retired ours. Supplemented by transferred FB-111s (which had the longer wing in common with the Aussie models) they were still known to give fits to “enemy forces” at Red Flag because on the deck and at speed nothing could keep up with them.
Yes, the A-10 tooling was destroyed.
However ....
There are hundreds stored out at the Davis Monthan boneyard. If you look at the overhead pictures you’ll see that most of them wear the old Euro1/Charcoal Lizard cammo scene, meaning they were retired in the early 1990s as part of the Peace Dividend. Not due to age.
And, when the decision was made to rewing the active fleet Boeing rebuilt the tooling for the wings.
Functionally, we have the ability to put a lot more A-10s into active service and keep them there for a very long time.
Yes, and their are tons of old farts that used to be in the biz that would dust off their skills to comeback and this this the old college try. IMHO a single engine version of the YF-23 with as many off the shelf components as possible would fit the bill. And while we are at it, Classify it and run it under the same 13 rules that Lockheed used to design and manufacture the F117A. Keep Congress and the freakin' Senate out of it, heck we designed the P-51 in 100 days, we can do it again....
FWIW their are some videos about the YF-23 that are interviews the test pilots and get into design attributes that were probably under raps that they now can talk about. The V Tails are huge and I never realized they never did "High Alpha" testing or firing a weapon off the rail and Lockheed did. Given the characteristics of their Delta wing ( which are good at High Alpha ) and the huge tails, their is not doubt in my mind the YF-23 probably would rock a lot of worlds even without thrust vectoring. All that glitz may have won it for them vs. Northrup.
You dig deeper listen to the interviews of those on the program ( or more ) you get a sense that they were robbed.
While we are at it my wish list would be we never destroy tooling going forward and store them in the bone yard as well even if we have to build buildings to store them.
Programs like the A-10, we have the plans redo them in CAD and make new tooling in CAM for replacement parts, this is do-able....
I bet the blueprints and specs are still available. We also have actual planes for comparison. The tooling is peanuts to put together relative to R&D costs.
You wouldn't believe what happened at Studio 54 in the 70s when he and Margaret Trudeau were regulars ...
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