The US Air Force today announced that its first operational squadron of F-35A Lightning II fighters is ready for combat duty. The announcement was made just a day into the five-month period that the Air Force had been given to reach operational levels with the 34th Fighter Squadron, based at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
The "initial capability" declaration comes after two Air Force F-35As joined two Marine Corps F-35s at July's Royal International Air Tattoo at the United Kingdom's Fairford Royal Air Force base and after an accelerated pace of operational tests for the 34th over the past few months. The first F-35A aircraft were delivered to the 34th in September of last year. They've been modified several times after delivery, including getting software updates to the avionics that have eliminated some of the "instability" problems previously experienced (including radar system crashes that required reboots while in flight). Since the most recent software upgrades, the squadron has flown 88 individual aircraft sorties without a software problem, according to an Air Combat Command statement.
[...] However, as stealthy as it is, the F-35A currently has a limited punch. The aircraft won't be able to carry the full suite of weapons used by the F-16—the aircraft it is intended to replace—until 2020, when the Air Force begins accepting aircraft at full-rate production of 150 per year.
Eventually, the Air Force plans to purchase up to 1,800 F-35As at a final price tag of $100 million per aircraft (plus the buried costs of the long-delayed development of the aircraft). The total cost of the program to the US and its allies is expected to exceed $500 billion (~£375 billion).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 03 2016, @10:36PM
Beyond the MIC goals, It's ready for military duty, if the duty is one of the following:
- Taking a pilot from point A to point B.
- Shooting down enemy aircraft.
That's about all you get so far for your 100 million. Better find some enemies with planes soon.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday August 03 2016, @10:52PM
Bad idea if you want to live: [news.com.au]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:00PM
But it the Bad Guys are flying a B-29 at 20000 ft (or a 767 at 500ft), they're toast, for sure!!!!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:08PM
That's why the next war will go nuclear very quickly. NATO can't win anymore by conventional means.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by driverless on Thursday August 04 2016, @05:27AM
The next war, and the one after that, and the one after that, will be against insurgents with AK47s and IEDs and the will to take more casualties than the US (or whoever) ever can. Whether you have an F35 in that situation is irrelevant. In fact the only thing you really need is not enough infrastructure for an opponent to have anything to target.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Thursday August 04 2016, @01:18AM
Lighting II, more like Lame Duck. It's a jack of all trades, master of none. It has no strengths to play against an enemies weaknesses. Even it's stealth is of limited advantage and has a shelf life; radars are already being deployed by some US enemies that can see it clearly.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 04 2016, @01:34AM
Sixth generation stealth fighters better be covered with metamaterials. Flying Harry Potter invisibility cloaks.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Redundant) by driverless on Thursday August 04 2016, @05:21AM
Beyond the MIC goals, It's ready for military duty, if the duty is one of the following:
- Taking a pilot from point A to point B.
- Shooting down enemy aircraft.
You forgot the primary priority:
- Provide employment for voters/money for campaign contributors in the state(s) of the senator(s) who's supporting it.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 04 2016, @04:12PM
MIC: Military-Industrial Complex.
Check your TLAs before stating the obvious.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday August 04 2016, @07:17AM
If we decide to hire Trump as our fearless leader, those enemies will magically appear everywhere.
Of course, we'll have to nuke some of them, just to show we really mean business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @02:24PM
Nuke them and make them pay for it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @05:50PM
Makes sense. I mean, we did do that to Japan.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:39PM
So, this program is going to cost over half a trillion dollars, and nobody's convinced it's going to be a significant improvement over the current state of affairs.
I propose a thought experiment.
Let's rewind the clock back to the eve of the Second Gulf War. And, instead of waging the war, we had packaged up $20 bills, an hundred per package, with a little parachute -- individual bundles of $2,000. And imagine we dropped 250 million such bundles from aircraft all over the major population centers of the Middle East. Making sure the bundles were brightly colored and easy to find, and so on. Half a trillion dollars in free money helicoptered in to the Middle East in a way that none of the governments there could control, a massive infusion of cash directly into the hands of the populace.
Would anybody here care to propose that the repressive governments there would be able to survive such a move? That the likes of DAESH would be able to convince the average residents to adopt lives of brutal piety when they were suddenly fantastically wealthy by any standard they were familiar with? That the governments could prevent the citizens from buying arms with which to defend themselves from the government? That the citizens would hate us the way they do today?
And just imagine all the ways that that money would come back to us -- all the international trade it would spur, all the local investments that would lead to stronger local economies and thus to exports, and so on.
I submit that the world would be a far better place today had we done that...and that we should seriously consider similar approaches to cleaning up the mess we instead made there.
For it seems the height of insanity to think that we can bomb ourselves out of a disaster we bombed ourselves into....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:47PM
But dem ragheads *belong* in the stone age! Let's bomb until all they got is rocks!
/sarcasm (alas, not for everyone)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 03 2016, @11:54PM
> when they were suddenly fantastically wealthy by any standard they were familiar with?
With two, or even four or ten grand?
> That the governments could prevent the citizens from buying arms with which to defend themselves from the government?
People being able to fight their central government is EXACTLY why we are in the current mess.
Because we sponsored tribal-minded governments and groups. And the other tribes didn't enjoy being repressed and took arms.
You do need two reality checks.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 04 2016, @12:33AM
The real reason the Middle East is in the mess it is in is because of the Sykes-Picot agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:11AM
Wouldn't work. First, even though it would had been distributed evenly in geographical sense, most of the money would end in few hands of the strongest, meanest local criminals, or government officials. But even if it didn't, If everyone gets plenty money, it consequently becomes worthless, because all prices come up with elevated supply of money. And that's not all: money, even in single person's hands, being valuable, still gives this person only as much power as there can be extracted from surrounding society. If there is no use for the money (e.g. you are on deserted island sitting on a pile of gold or on stash of greenbacks) it is inconsequential. Pumping money alone into a backwater country does nothing. I know, you would say "but they could trade with the outside world...". No they couldn't, not on significant scale, because first, smugglers would want extra profit and would soon deplete their 2000$ stashes, and second their government can at least choke the smuggling operation down to a trickle, making the money useless again, or worse, they can just break down doors on every last house and confiscate at gunpoint all foreign currency they find.
And finally, with 2000$ in pocket, the smartest thing you can do is to try and emigrate to some First World country, as they do today, instead of trying to overthrown your heavily armed dictatorship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @01:04AM
Oh if we could only use that for space exploration. A manned Mars mission, a probe to the nearest star system, a giant space telescope to study chemistry of extra-solar planets, etc. etc. etc. etc.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday August 04 2016, @01:14AM
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 04 2016, @06:47PM
"useful economic activity" does also include maintaining infrastructure, bring it into the 21st century.
I'll give half of the pentagon budget back as tax cuts, and the other half, for at least ten years, to catch up with Europe and China on the basics to remain competitive.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:32PM
"useful economic activity" does also include maintaining infrastructure, bring it into the 21st century.
So it does. Though what do governments really have to do with building that infrastructure?
I'll give half of the pentagon budget back as tax cuts, and the other half, for at least ten years, to catch up with Europe and China on the basics to remain competitive.
Such as? Don't tell me you think we need a train.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday August 04 2016, @09:04PM
> So it does. Though what do governments really have to do with building that infrastructure?
I'm gonna call Poe's Law on that one.
> Such as?
Deep water ports with direct freight rail, airports interconnected with the cities they serve (looking at you LAX, you make even ORD look good), canals which work, bridges and dams which are not structurally deficient, light rail at useful density, tunnels that decongest critical highways, water networks which don't leak, dykes that don't collapse and other flood-mitigation tools, reservoirs for droughts, sewers which don't overflow into lakes a few times a year, earthquake/hurricane/florida_sinking mitigation measures, and burying all the f--ing power and phone lines get get ripped out at the first gust of wind...
I'll stop but the list can keep on going. Having crummy infrastructure adds cost to everything we do, and the local guys don't tax you enough to maintain it without calling the Big Bad DC guys for matching funds every time.
> Don't tell me you think we need a train.
Not just one.
Sure, you ain't gonna do NY-LA even in a high-speed train, but any two major metropolis less than 600 flat miles apart should have high-speed links. I know Americans are less stupid than Europeans and Chinese, but remember the airline prices and the TSA.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:06PM
Deep water ports with direct freight rail, airports interconnected with the cities they serve (looking at you LAX, you make even ORD look good), canals which work, bridges and dams which are not structurally deficient, light rail at useful density, tunnels that decongest critical highways, water networks which don't leak, dykes that don't collapse and other flood-mitigation tools, reservoirs for droughts, sewers which don't overflow into lakes a few times a year, earthquake/hurricane/florida_sinking mitigation measures, and burying all the f--ing power and phone lines get get ripped out at the first gust of wind...
Sorry, I don't see any 21st century infrastructure in there. I guess my point here is that there is remarkably little that actually counts as 21th century infrastructure. As to the infrastructure list you mention, my view is that the US needs to decide what it wants to fund. There's not the budget for the current large combination of entitlements, pork, military spending, and infrastructure building (even counting the overlap between categories).
Sure, you ain't gonna do NY-LA even in a high-speed train, but any two major metropolis less than 600 flat miles apart should have high-speed links. I know Americans are less stupid than Europeans and Chinese, but remember the airline prices and the TSA.
You just mentioned airlines. We shouldn't be doing trains because TSA. After all, the TSA could be thoroughly inspecting train passengers now. Create enough high speed trains and they'll have the incentive and political backing to do that. But then, from the viewpoint of infrastructure building, the TSA is negative infrastructure and would be eliminated as an obstacle which by itself would make air passenger flight much better.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LaminatorX on Thursday August 04 2016, @01:30PM
Or have tuition free college and child-care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @03:52PM
True that. But those don't make fellow nerds salivate.