The US Air Force Quietly Admits the F-35 Is a Failure - ExtremeTech:
The Air Force has announced a new study into the tactical aviation requirements of future aircraft, dubbed TacAir. In the process of doing so, Air Force chief of staff General Charles Q. Brown finally admitted what's been obvious for years: The F-35 program has failed to achieve its goals. There is, at this point, little reason to believe it will ever succeed.
[...] To say the F-35 has failed to deliver on its goals would be an understatement. Its mission capable rate is 69 percent, below the 80 percent benchmark set by the military. 36 percent of the F-35 fleet is available for any required mission, well below the required 50 percent standard. Current and ongoing problems include faster than expected engine wear, transparency delamination of the cockpit, and unspecified problems with the F-35's power module. The General Accountability Office (GAO) has blamed some of this on spare parts shortages, writing:
[T]he F-35 supply chain does not have enough spare parts available to keep aircraft flying enough of the time necessary to meet warfighter requirements. "Several factors contributed to these parts shortages, including F-35 parts breaking more often than expected, and DOD's limited capability to repair parts when they break.
[...] Congress will have a voice in this discussion, so it's far from a done deal, but after over a decade mired in failure, someone at the DoD is willing, however quietly, to acknowledge that the F-35 will never perform the role it was supposed to play. As for how much it'll actually cost to build that 4.5th-generation fighter, all I'll say is this: The F-35 was pitched to Congress and the world as a way of saving money. Today, the lifetime cost of the aircraft program, including R&D, is estimated to be over $1.5 trillion. The price of a supposedly cheaper 4.5-generation plane could easily match or exceed the F-35's flyaway cost by the time all is said and done, though hopefully any future aircraft would still manage to offer a much lower cost per hour.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday February 26 2021, @07:58AM (23 children)
For decades, express any serious concern about the F-35 and you will have been inundated with over the top responses from people that seem to genuinely believe the thing is the last and only hope of humanity.
Marketing ruins everything.
Original plans for the F-35 called for it to be a fighter-bomber almost as stealthy and almost as good as the F-22 at A2A, but much better at bombing (which the F-22 wasn't supposed to be any good at.) But at significantly lower price.
And yeah, for many years it's been clear it would never meet those goals. The F-22 is getting old, but I'd rather fly it than the F-35 any day of the next 50 years.
ADA, muthafugga, do you code it?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Touché) by Eratosthenes on Friday February 26 2021, @08:21AM (10 children)
And why, oh why, did they not listen to you, AriK? Could it have been than you have no skin in the game, no financial interest? Or that you have no actual knowledge or expertise on flying weapons systems? Perhaps you are actually an alien? Or maybe, the F-22 is also a bag of shite, and the US no longer has any decent fighter planes to go against Snoopy's Sopwith Camel, or the Fokker D.VII, because they all fly too fast. The jets, not the bi-planes.
You know, the F-35, besides being designed to fill the confers of defense contractors, was meant to go up against the the next generation MiG fighters of the Soviet Union? Only, the Union fell apart, disappointing US defense contractors, and triggering the search for a new "budget justifying enemy". Best they could come up with is a bunch of medieval religious fundamentalists, and I do not mean the Westboro Baptist Church, though they do qualify.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @08:40AM (1 child)
A free tip to sound more intelligent and convincing: one does not "fill confers." That's nonsense. One "fills coffers."
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday February 26 2021, @01:48PM
It's not his fault - when he was born, English had not even been invented, so he is doing pretty well to use a PC at all.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Friday February 26 2021, @08:44AM (1 child)
Well, yes, that would be one of the most favorable explanations, and quite plausible.
"Or that you have no actual knowledge or expertise on flying weapons systems?"
Another plausible suggestion.
There are problems with both of these, but I don't think we have to go there, when you follow with;
"Perhaps you are actually an alien?"
Umm, sure, yeah. You figured me out. I'm an alien. My electronic thumb malfunctioned about 30k years ago, and I've been stuck here with you smelly apes ever since.
I'm even forced to look like one of you. Not one of the pretty ones. And smell like you too. On that score, there aren't any pretty ones, believe me. If I seem cranky sometimes, please keep this in mind. It's torture, sheer torture.
"Or maybe, the F-22 is also a bag of shite"
What are you looking for? Do I think it wasn't ridiculously expensive? Do I think it underperformed, even after being paid for 10 times over? I'm not saying it's perfect. I'm saying I would tend to trust it's instrumentation and fire control. Some genuine programming went into it, and that doesn't guarantee there aren't boneheaded glitches but at least it minimizes the chances you'll ever need to reboot the system while in a dogfight.
"You know, the F-35, besides being designed to fill the confers of defense contractors, was meant to go up against the the next generation MiG fighters of the Soviet Union? Only, the Union fell apart, disappointing US defense contractors, and triggering the search for a new "budget justifying enemy". Best they could come up with is a bunch of medieval religious fundamentalists, and I do not mean the Westboro Baptist Church, though they do qualify."
Yes, the SovUn went away, the Russian Federation and numerous smaller entities succeeded it.
And our incipient shadow government scrambled for cover. How could they hide their embezzlement, without an external enemy to justify large shadow budgets?
Enter "Islamic extremism." Our British cousins, always on the cutting edge of Richard Nixonism, already had this thing going, but we (as we usually do) blew it up a couple orders of magnitude.
Not sure still, what you think you are doing? Disagreeing with me? Keep trying. Drawing me out? I've never been shy about my views on our murderous foreign policy, and how it inevitably translates after some delay into a murderous domestic policy as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @02:17PM
Your alien crafts have a bunch of glitches too, OK.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:17PM (5 children)
My take is that when you have this much conflict of interest and incompetence on the line, listening to knowledgeable internet personalities is a better way to build a jet fighter. I'm not saying it's a good way, just a better way. At least they wouldn't be half a trillion dollars in the hole.
(Score: 2) by Eratosthenes on Saturday February 27 2021, @09:44PM (4 children)
Do all Greek names look the same to you, khallow?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:10PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Eratosthenes on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:28PM (2 children)
Plotinus, V, IV. [remacle.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:44PM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Troll) by Eratosthenes on Sunday February 28 2021, @08:46AM
I suppose all Africans look the same to you, white boy American! Yes, we both come from the School of Alexandria, we both have Greek as our native tongue, but that is no reason for you to confuse us. Aristarchus is rather older, and more ill tempered!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @10:33PM (2 children)
What gets me is that we've known for twenty years now that stealth is a dead end, and it has been well and truly broken for about 15. Russian low frequency search radars from the late '90s can still track any modern stealth aircraft without difficulty, even at range, and the Doppler targeting radars the Chinese 'borrowed' from the Israelis around 2005 can get a lock on anything not a balloon by tracking the wake. Heck, about ten years ago the US DoD cracked down on the GNU Software Radio program because someone was working on a Doppler radar project that could see stealth aircraft, and that was hobbyist kit. The only opponents for whom stealth will ever be an asset are the ones still using 1980's era (or older) systems and can't afford to upgrade the electronics, but they were already hopelessly outclassed by the aircraft being retired to make way for the F35. But as you say, we get shouted down when we point out that the Emperor has no clothes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:20PM (1 child)
Now, get those radars on a bunch of missiles rather than a few easy targets which can be taken out early in a conflict. Then stealth will truly be a dead end. Until then, it has a great deal of survival value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:11PM
While low frequency radars are limited to large platforms due to their antenna size, the Doppler based AA batteries the Chinese have been selling to anyone who would buy for the last 15 years are missile systems. A2A has been available for at least 10 years and supposedly even shoulder launched SAMs have it now if you're willing to fork over for the upgrade kit. The next time the US faces someone with access to modern weapons there are going to be some ugly surprises.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @12:22AM
"ADA"? Um, no, I never coded in it, seeing how the language is called "Ada," moron.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:13AM
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Sunday February 28 2021, @09:47AM (5 children)
Whole fighter-bomber concept is bad idea, and it's known since WWII. Only reason program like F-35 can exist is because US wasn't involved in large scale war. If it were it would most likely have to fall back to F-16s and A-10s.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday February 28 2021, @10:44AM (4 children)
That seems a bit overly dogmatic. Fighter-bombers were very important in WWII, particularly on the eastern front and in Asia. When supply and support is stretched thinly, when you only have one plane in an area, it's best for it to be versatile. Capable of carrying out a bombing mission without escorts. The Stuka, like the A-10 later, was an absolutely awesome aircraft for close-support, but quite vulnerable to enemy fighters if not escorted.
But yes, at the point where tech and money was most concentrated, the western front, specialist aircraft were supreme, in large part because of the role of strategic bombing later on.
"If it were it would most likely have to fall back to F-16s and A-10s."
And F-18s. A lot of the heavy lifting would fall to the F-18s.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Monday March 01 2021, @03:03PM (3 children)
Eastern front was carried by Il-2 from SU and Stukas from German side. Only Germans did experiment with fighter-bombers much and that was at the point when they were losing and Hitler was backing all sorts of insane ideas.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday March 01 2021, @10:07PM (2 children)
Ahem. No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_190_W%C3%BCrger
A rugged German fighter-bomber designed before the war, available from the start. Panned in favor of the Bf 109 which was a pure fighter, it was initially only kept in production because it didn't compete for parts; using an inferior engine no one else wanted. Still a fine fighter at low altitudes, still a rugged plane that could and often did take a beating yet make it home again anyway, it was equipped with heavier cannons and multiplying bomb racks as the war went on. They did quite well in the west early in the war, but as the fight in the west moved to higher and higher altitudes they found it harder harder to compete with the newer allied fighters. Many were redeployed as fighter-bombers to the eastern front and greatly appreciated there long after they were considered obsolete in the west. Stukas were death traps when there were soviet fighters nearby and many of them were shot down.
Soviet fighters were often fighter-bombers too. Even the YAKs evolved in that direction as the war progressed - the YAK 1 was a dogfighter, a high performance aerobatics machine with just enough firepower and no provision for bombs whatsoever. But experience lead them to adapt it, step by step, all the way to the YAK 9 which was... a fighter-bomber built around a central cannon and an internal bomb bay.
Bell made a couple of planes, the P 39 and the P 63, both fighter bombers, both quite successful, but neither so well remembered here in their home country because it was in the east, in both Russia and China, where they were most successful. The F4 "Corsair" is another American fighter-bomber that did quite well - just, again, nowhere near the western front.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Tuesday March 02 2021, @07:15AM (1 child)
Still massed rushes of dedicated craft are more efficient as far as resource allocation is concerned. If you got air superiority then enemy fighters are not a factor and there is no need to sacrifice bomb carrying capacity and other features. Specialized craft also tends to be simpler to produce and thus exist in far greater numbers. Can you let fighter perform ground strikes if tactical situation warrants this? Sure. But they can't efficiently carry all frontline bombing duties alone.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday March 02 2021, @07:59AM
If you apply that to today, well we've put ourselves in an even worse position really. We are involved in war or warlike conflict (tm) all around the world, daily. Even the worlds best equipped and best funded military stretches very thin to do this. And that's the line of thought that lead to putting so much emphasis on this new fighter bomber. If you start from the premise that we have a mission to straddle the world with our military, that our mission is not to fight peer competitors nor to defend our country but rather to enforce our will in every far-flung corner of the globe; well then yes. A fighter-bomber here, a fighter-bomber there, spread them out and cover lots of ground.
If you think the military mission has anything to do with defending the country it may make less sense, however. Surely on our own ground we could muster air superiority against Mexico, Canada, or even the highly unlikely hypothetical attack by a coalition of every nation on the planet with a navy; China, Russia, the UK, France, India, etc? That's just not what anyone is planning for.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:06PM
The F-35 is the typical jack of all trades designs.
One airframe that are to replace the F-16 for airforce, FA-18 for navy and Harrier for marines.
Good fucking luck. Every such attempt have sucked at all of the tasks compared to a purpose built frame.
The basic thing about the F-16 was that it strapped some wings on a single engine from the F-15, thus shared the cost and maintenance burden between the planes.
The F-35 do not get anything similar from the F-22.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday February 26 2021, @08:09AM (16 children)
Biden starts his attacks [cnn.com]. Hope he has enough F-4s and B-52s, maybe some A-6s and Skyraiders...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday February 26 2021, @08:25AM (13 children)
"Hope he has enough F-4s and B-52s, maybe some A-6s and Skyraiders..."
The only ones not retired are the B-52s. The oldest of the lot.
A6s? Stop, now, you flirt.
That was a sexy plane.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday February 26 2021, @10:39AM (11 children)
You forgot to mention the A-10, although it hasn't been fully retired yet it is being phased out thanks to the F-35.
A lot of capable and reliable plans got retired because the F-35 was supposed to do their job better and cheaper. It failed at both.
While the concept of having one plane to do everything is great in theory it kind of fails in practice.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:10AM (9 children)
The A-10 thing always makes me laugh. I was talking with someone once and asked what benefit over the A-10 when that was in the news. He said it could carry more ordinance and was stealth to boot. Before I could respond, an old guy the table over said, "how the fuck is it going to be stealthy with all that shit hangin' off the wings, dumbass?" I'll never forget the look on either's face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @12:40PM (4 children)
It carries "that shit" inside it's body then opens the hatch and lets it go? Think of it like doing an actual shit - you don't carry it in your hands.
(Score: 3, Touché) by mhajicek on Friday February 26 2021, @02:42PM
When carrying internally it's capacity it rather limited.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday February 26 2021, @10:43PM (1 child)
FYI, the A-10 doesn't have internal weapons bays. other than ammo for it's gun it has to carry all it's other shit on it's wings.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:13PM
AC was talking about the F35 having internal stores.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:05AM
F-35 Armament 18,000 pounds total:
A-10 Armament 18,000 pounds total:
So the A-10 has more armor, more than 6.5 times the bullet count with bigger bullets, and about the same amount of ordnance total weight. And that assumes that you don't want stealth. If you do, then the F-35 has markedly less than the A-10.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday February 26 2021, @10:38PM (3 children)
It has that effect on a lot of people :)
Remember its official name is "A-10 Thunderbolt II", everyone calls it "warthog" because it is one ugly plane.
It is subsonic, has zero passive stealth features, no internal weapons bays, and usually had lots of stuff hanging off it's hard points. It is anything but sexy, but is also has features that make it incredibly tough. It can stay in the air with damage that would make other plans drop like rocks.
In it's niche it is deadly beyond compare, and it's low speed gives it an advantage in some theaters if the pilot knows how to use it. Many, many years ago an old friend told me about a war game exercise between one A-10 and two F-15s (F-16s?). This is second hand and It has been a very long time so some of the finer details might be wrong, but the gist of the story should still be mostly accurate. If anyone who has better info and can correct any omissions or mistakes I would be grateful. Like I said, it has been a long time.
The mission's scenario was simple, the A-10 had to fly into the target area, destroy a bunker with it's main gun while not letting the defending team shoot it down. The A-10 had real ammo in it's gun for the bunker but everything else was inert ordinance When the pilot launched it the ordinance just dropped off.
So, two F-15s against one A-10. Sounds like an easy victory for the F-15s right?
Wrong.
The A-10 pilot hugged the ground using the terrain (lots of valleys, lots of mountains, hills, etc.) to keep the fighters from being able to find him easily with RADAR. Whenever they did they would have to swing around behind the A-10 since head on closing speeds didn't give the missiles enough time to get a solid lock and the sides were blocked by the valley walls. The A-10 pilot would just throttle back a bit, let the F-15s over shoot since they couldn't go that slow without stalling, showing the A-10's sidewinders a lovely big hot target in the process, if the A-10 pilot got the lock he would fire, then turn down the next valley and disappear.
End results of the exercise: both F-15s "shot down", the A-10 out of ammo for it's main gun, and the bunker doing a beautiful impersonation of a block of Swiss cheese.
Moral of the story; even the ugliest plane in the air can be deadly in the right hands.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @02:08AM (2 children)
I meant the comparison between the F-35 and the A-10 and that one would replace the other. Simple engineering compromises would tell you that you can't be the best at literally everything.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @10:23PM (1 child)
Naively, technology advances can make a good plane in the future better than the best plane today. It's not just engineering compromises that hurt the F-35.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @06:17AM
Exactly, they were selling the F-35 for air superiority, CAS, anti-AA, electronic warfare, aerial recon, and fighter-bomber roles. Those all have drastically different requirements. It's like saying you have a car that can tow 11,000 pounds, win the Indy 500, go off-roading, has seating for 8, a bed, and a full size trunk.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 26 2021, @01:22PM
In theory, you can use a Bluebird school bus for your family car. Or a two ton delivery truck. Or even a dump truck. Good luck keeping any of them fueled, and/or arriving anywhere dressed in your Sunday best. Better go with the Bluebird bus!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday February 26 2021, @09:50PM
Well, I trust he's not sending any F-35s in, unless he's using them as cruise missiles, hopefully unmanned?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @02:17PM
Thank God the adults are back in charge.
Build Syria Back Better!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @04:47PM
Which reminds me...
Whatever happened to the Syria civil war? Just disappeared from the news some how
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday February 26 2021, @08:14AM (3 children)
The late Sen. John McCain on the F-35 [youtube.com]
I didn't always agree with him, but he nailed this.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 26 2021, @01:27PM (2 children)
When McCain asked "who is responsible for the 2.4 billion dollar cost overrun?" he was being dishonest.
Congress is responsible. It doesn't matter how you slice and dice the issue, it always comes back to congress. Congress allocated the funds, and never demanded accountability. Congress allocated more funds every time the parasites demanded more.
And, we continue to reelect all of these fiscally irresponsible children.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:23AM (1 child)
When a policy decision becomes bipartisan in a system where 2 big political parties control everything, that means there's no way for the citizens to vote against it. That's why, for instance, it's often impossible for Americans to vote against continued massive US aid to Israel - if the Greens or Libertarians or some other smaller party don't run a candidate, you're stuck between 2 candidates that support continued massive US aid to Israel.
And the F-35 boondoggle is exactly one of those areas of bipartisan agreement. While the headline describes it as a failure, it actually accomplished its main mission: Ensuring that money flowed from the US Treasury to Lockheed Martin, who split that money into completely unnecessary jobs in carefully selected states and congressional districts, shareholders, and kickbacks to the congresscritters who voted to continue it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @04:14PM
Pork barrel politics, the same as seen with finding a replacement for the space shuttle.
The SLS looks the way it does, in order to keep them juicy contracts going.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Friday February 26 2021, @08:35AM (5 children)
Sounds very much like someone signed a contract without adequate supply of reasonably-priced replacement parts to me.
Almost a classic "We'll sell you a turkey, say it's a turkey a couple of years later, and now that it's a turkey you have to pay and WAIT for any parts and, by the way, you can do nothing yourself because of the support contracts that require us to do everything for you - and nobody else will touch this turkey except the people who made it."
Can't say I'm surprised, really. It's the way capitalism has gone in almost every industry - far more interested in a service contract that ties you in and then providing sub-standard service rather than ANYTHING else, including their own products or reputation. And if they all do that, who do you go to when you need ultra-specialist kit and have no such skill in-house? You can try to play them off against each other but you'll award contract after contract hoping that "someone else will be better" and it's not necessarily true.
See it in all kinds of IT markets, all kinds of government procurement, don't see why fighter-jets should be any different.
Everybody in government, including the military, are too scared to say "Hey, these are now the MINIMUM requirements for government contracts: Annual review, year-to-year service contracts, failure-to-deliver penalty clauses, strict specifications up-front, guarantee of parts availability for the operational lifetime, etc.
If one project does it, they'll just get no bidders. If it's government-wide, though, guess what? You either lose your entire government business (which companies like Lockheed, etc. are inherently reliant on) or change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @08:43AM (2 children)
Friend, the F35 program is a mess PRECISELY BECAUSE of the way the govt wrote the contract. Those snafus are usually the fault of the govt, and no, they will never learn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @12:48PM
The "govt" is heavily lobbied and full of corrupt sonsovbitches who court that lobbying, which attracts the sonsovbitches all too happy to screw over the "govt".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @08:55AM
Friend, the contract was such an unholy mess because they *have* been learning. It takes decades of experience and planning to fork over that much pork to that many players for that long. The entire project was engineered from the ground up to be both politically unkillable and permanently stuck in the (highly profitable cost plus) design phase.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @12:07PM (1 child)
These government contracts are on the scale of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars and decades. Canceling any contract like that, whether it's for a fighter jet, a HR system, fueling infrastructure, or similar throws away a ton of money and resets the timeline. It's worse than resetting the timeline, because you have to remove and decommission the half-assed solution as you put the replacement in place.
It was probably obvious immediately that the product was junk, but sunk cost fallacy kept Congress and the Pentagon trying to keep moving things forward.
With the benefit of hindsight, the US government should have simply - and I mean simply - agreed to fund all four original proposals for their Joint Strike Fighter Program for a period of ten years and the same dollar amount per vendor. Then at the end of ten years they would evaluate which products had the best performance, reliability, and cost and end the other contracts. It would have saved a lot more in the long term, and lead to a better result. Instead they tried to make purchasing decisions for a trillion dollar program based on a few billion in initial investments and picked the winner too early.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @02:43PM
One of the key flaws was the original concept for the plane: a single airframe to replace carrier based planes for the Navy, VSTOL planes for the Marines, and regular planes for the Air Force. Oh, and be stealthy (comes with its own compromises) and CHEAPER than the planes it replaces to boot! Pure fucking pie-in-the-sky from the beginning.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Friday February 26 2021, @08:57AM (10 children)
IoT drones in the cloud, with quantum encryption, communicating over Musk's StarLink . Much wonder, buy Dogecoin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday February 26 2021, @12:42PM (8 children)
You say it like it's a bad thing... [wikipedia.org]
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with swarming drones accompanying a light manned aircraft once you realize communication jamming just gives the drones another target to shoot at.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday February 26 2021, @01:52PM
Sounds like this announcement is conveniently timed to garner buy-in for the next round of spend.
"Geez, that last fighter you bought us was a real turkey, better buy us a new one else the baddies are gonna git ya!"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 26 2021, @02:58PM (6 children)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Friday February 26 2021, @11:29PM (4 children)
You should read up on electronic counter-countermeasure but it's suffice to say that it's extremely challenging to jam anything remotely modern even with stationary equipment at just 100m range. I mean, if it's specific radars you can sample in advance then you have a pretty good idea of the frequency ranges so it's possible to design something specific for the job... But modern communication antennas and power switching circuitry lets you frequency hop at such wide bandwidths and pulse at such high amplitudes that it's just not possible to generate enough noise without using short-range directional tubes.
To illustrate the problem while dispensing with the math, try to imagine what kind of speaker you'll need to drown a battlefield with enough noise to prevent soldiers from communicating via speech while staying outside their firing range. It's basically the same.
compiling...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:45AM (3 children)
To be fair, if I had that kind of gear I'd probably be killing people with it, not merely jamming voice communication.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday February 27 2021, @08:05AM (2 children)
The thing is that nuclear powered navy vessels have all this excess energy being produced and lots of water to dissipate heat so as capacitors get better they keep coming up with all manners of silly sci-fi weapons for them...
But yeah. It's all really silly and that's the point.
compiling...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 27 2021, @01:03PM (1 child)
Actually, I'm not seeing that. With the noise weapon, there are alternate ample means of communication (writing, hand signals) that can't be effected. Jam those drones and you just negated almost all of the coordination (and military effectiveness) of those drones. It's then a natural idea to do the jamming from outside the range of the drones and you can dump a lot of power into jamming even from a plane.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday February 27 2021, @03:08PM
Oh but you do see it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_light_communication [wikipedia.org]
Basically slap a few light sensors and leds on the drones and have them fallback to that if things gets too noisy on the coms.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @11:22PM
You get 50km closer and then fire one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM. [wikipedia.org] They are meant as a radar suppression weapon but they will happily home in on jammers too.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 26 2021, @08:56PM
You jest, but consider trying to defend yourself against thousands of armed drones at a time.
We cannot allow a musky cloud drone gap!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @03:45PM (4 children)
That's about as ridiculous as trying to make a cheap truck that does very fast Nurburgring times while having a high MPG (supercruise), carries lots of stuff, fits on a boat and is stealthy AND is cheap and easy to maintain...
Yeah the F35 has an advantage over the A10 that it's stealthy and faster but it can't do as many missions/week to support the troops and bomb and shoot as much stuff.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday February 26 2021, @04:00PM (3 children)
Yeah, the A-10 remains the gold standard for providing close air support to ground forces. Being slower is actually an asset in that role, and stealth is less important when you've already established control of the skies.
The Air Force brass finds that boring though. Nobody gets the big promotion for being good at running CAS ops.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday February 26 2021, @09:10PM (2 children)
Has there ever been a plane that could absorb so much damage and still get its crew back to base? I would call it the 'platinum standard' myself. It's the very definition of 'bullet sponge.'
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=A10+Battle+Damage&mmreqh=8N8NfH7L3NuLZ57ss5kGo4Gdid%2bYCSlBfT2JXE2egFo%3d&form=IDINTS&first=1&tsc=ImageBasicHover [bing.com]
I somehow doubt the F-35 could take a tenth of that damage and return.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @10:11PM
Some of the WWII era bombers still came home after taking a shocking amount of damage. Even the A-10 stands up and salutes those old birds. On the other hand the F35 seems to be able to crash itself and/or kill the pilot without needing any outside help.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Saturday February 27 2021, @07:28AM
In fairness, the F-35's approach of not getting hit in the first place is generally preferable to tanking anti-aircraft fire. The close air support mission benefits from loitering above the theater to help your buddies though (see also, helicopters). That's tough to do when also being stealthy and fast.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Friday February 26 2021, @03:51PM
The article touches on the concept, but doesn't mention that the reason we've still got so many F-16s is that they were the cheaper counterpart to the higher-end-but-expensive F-15.
At this point, we should just license a low-end fighter platform from Britain or France to hold us over until we can go all-drone for the cheaper & numerous role and build a small number of expensive super-fighters for the small number of missions that demand risking a human pilot (destroying enemy ECM capability to make way for a drone swarm?).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @07:22PM (1 child)
"The F-35 program has failed to achieve its goals."
Sure about that? What if the goal is to steal from working americans to fund the international con game? All the major nations are controlled by the same interests. They only sabre rattle in temporary spats and/or to steal from their respective citizenry. Unless it's time to kill 100's of millions again, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @09:29PM
But when the USA is so rich, they can't really get that much wealth from Afghanistan/Iraq/etc going by going to war with it. BUT they sure can get a lot of money from the US taxpayers...
AND they can sell the weapons to other rich countries.
But why don't the US go to war against rich countries instead? Well because a lot of that wealth vanishes once there's war. When bombs drop, property prices drop...
Also a number of those countries have nukes...
(Score: 1) by Cosmic Debris on Friday February 26 2021, @08:56PM
Obligatory recommendation to watch "The Pentagon Wars" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars).
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Saturday February 27 2021, @05:07AM (3 children)
The F-111 was supposed to be all things to all the services and was disappointing. When I first heard of the F-35 project I though it sounded like a rerun.
(Score: 2) by gawdonblue on Sunday February 28 2021, @01:22AM (2 children)
The F-111 ended up being very good at higher speed ground attack. Higher speed ground attack is probably the only role that the F-35 will be vary good at.
Deja vu all over again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @08:52AM
Vary good, as in "variable good", as in "often sucks", which in weapons systems, means, we lose. The Trump Plane! Are we tired of winning, yet? Why are the tires coming off the jet? How come the ground speed attach immediately translates into ground speed impact? Oh, shit, the enemy has cell phones!! Runaway! Runaway!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2021, @08:58AM
Pretty much, and high speed ground attack is only beaten by low speed air-to-air in being not particularly useful. Helicopters are viable for ground support despite their fragility precisely because they are slow.