America's most expensive weapons clusterf***: The Lockheed F-35 Lightning II

[techs]

I have always pictured the sales pitch for the F35 like this.

"More stealthy than the F117. Better dogfighter than the F16. Capable of ground attack and air to air and enemy defense suppression. Cheaper to maintain than any other fighter. Able to launch and land on an aircraft carrier. Able to take off vertically. Better radar and countermeasures than any current plane."

To which the Generals replied, YES!

And Lockheed asked, yes to which ones?

And the Generals said YES!

 

[The Boston Dangler]

South Korea restarts fighter jet tender

"The fact they've decided to reopen it is a big statement: basically, it means the F-35 is the only aircraft they want."

 

[AViking]

The F-35B but it's more likely you saw an AV-8B Harrier which can't break Mach. However I doubt there was any sound barrier breaking because there would've been residential complaints about such an occurrence.

This is so long ago. They definitely had a F35 on the ground since you could walk up and see it. They had a F35, a drone, a B2 bomber that you could see but had armed guards keeping you away, and I think a B1 bomber since the thing to see on that thing was the bays and there was some discussion on how they could fit it with nuclear weapons.

I could have sworn it was the F35 they were showing off in the air. On the ground they had a display showing how the engines could rotate and this plane that came in for the airshow did shit I didn't even know was possible.

I doubt Miramar worries about sound disturbances.

 

[Arkaign]

You probably think the era of the foot soldier is over too, right?

The A-10 was developed during the cold war. It had a very well equipped opponent in mind. If you think it's vulnerable you probably go need to read up on how tough it is. Then realize they aren't going to send it in by itself.

True.

People also need to realize that in a wide war with a major power, we would break out the nukes pretty quickly (ie; WW3 with China and/or Russia).

Stuff like the A10, Apache, Marines on the ground, Specops, all of this stuff is OF COURSE vulnerable to an extent. That's war. The fact is that there are different tools for different jobs. Three hypothetical F-35s would be needed to even approximate the tank busting chops of a single A10, and even that's stretching it.

Of course, the ideal role for things like the A10 is in a support role against 2nd-rate militaries (once the skies are clear and you have ground coordination in place). As a device used against the USSR, well it was pretty well accepted that casualties at every level would be insanely high until the nukes started flying, and then everyone's boned anyway. You really must go back and examine the cold war philosophy to understand that 'survivability' was a pretty back-burner consideration when faced with a conflict that basically defined by 'everyone loses bigtime'.

 

[ElFenix]

~90 year projected service life (yeah they're not the same aircraft as in the 50's) what else has such a long service life? a handgun?

not the 50s but the last one rolled off the line in 1962. so the youngest one is over 50.

 

[Dman8777]

Does this remind anyone else of the Pentagon Wars? Maybe we'll get another funny film out of this.

 

[Genx87]

Great example of terrible project management coupled with govt incompetence and corruption.

 

[Gibsons]

Now where using the same airframe can get you into trouble is not roles, but environments. A carrier has space limitations that force smaller wings that compromise the air force version. The STOVL version demands one large engine (better to have no thrust than asymmetric thrust in engine out/damage scenarios) while both the air force and naval version might do better with 2 more reasonably sized engines.

The Navy version has larger wings, not smaller.