The most expensive weapon system of all times

[HundertzehnGustav]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

1. The basic concept, having an airframe that can be used by more than one service is good. The F-4 was used by both the air force and navy.

2. Is there a need? well the F-15, F-16 and F-18 were designed 40 years ago and are nearing the end of their useful life.

3. Does it have to use the latest cutting edge technology? Based on the F-15/16/18 experience, they will probably have to last 40 years. What will be the anti-air tech in 2050? What is more expensive? building it right from the beginning or having an expensive upgrade in 2030?

4. Is there a threat? These airplanes have a long lead time, Russia and China are both designing their own next generation plane. When, not if, but when the next crisis comes around, there wont be time to develop new planes.

5. should it be scrapped? trillions of dollars down the drain. Yes, there would be an immediate savings, but you still have the problem that the current generation of planes will be obsolete in 10 years.

6. Are manned airplanes obsolete? who knows? Drones can do some interesting things, can they do everything? If you want to fly an infantry division to the next crisis point with C-17s, are you really going to trust their protection to drones? How do you prevent the enemy from jamming the transmissions between the drone and the GCI?

7. do we need so many variants? That is probably where they could have saved some bucks.

2 -the E and F have sopme 10-20 years left.

3- the cutting edge tecnology is stolen, and therefor no more cutting edge. PAK-FA. Chinese hardware. software leaks.

4- now you have a bunch of expensive toys, and some rustbuckets. not a single proper tool at hand.

5 - drones. cheap. effective. what needs trying is a fighter drone,.. something that has a gun and can put that gun on an enemy Fighter, transport, chopper...
but they drop eggs, and do so in an accurate manner.

6 - as far as i can see: yes.
it is only a matter of time whehn humans will thrust Cargo and Tanker and surveilance roles to manned drones of all sizes and measures.
Some roles get handed to the machines faster... some much later. Including civilian drones carrying passenges in 2060 or 2100

Not that i like any of that. if it were me, the development would have stopped at the A-4 Skyhawk or the Mig-19.
That 35 aint no good for nothing, it seems. and drones are around the corner. Naval drones even.

when toys are the killers, then the detachment from war is complete.
I hope i die soon, for these times are ugly. Careless killings ahead.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

F-4 Phantom II was developed for as naval fighter and there were relatively minor changes to make it suitable for other services. F-35 Ligthning II tried to merge three aircraft requirements to one airframe which is completely different thing.

So what to do then? I would scrap current F-35 program and use already researched technology for fresh start. I would drop Marine's F-35B S/VTOL variant completely. I would build naval fighter version and cram that down the throats of other services (just like with F-4). Its not perferct solution nor cheap but in long term I think it as better option than current incarnation of F-35.

[Skybird]

That still would make it

- a plane with short legs

- an overpriced plane due to the expensive stealth technology - that stealth technology that more and more is being seen as overestimated in the modern hightech war of tomorrow, since better sensors will compromise it sooner or later. The cost-effect balance just does not show a positive number in black.

Skip the whole program. Focus on cybertech. Drones. Build something on basis of the existing conventional fighters.

And finally get a reasonable AA missile that can outrange modern Russian ones.

Any possible war against any of the real big players will likely not be a meeting on the battlefield anyway, but a cyberwar. A war of currencies waged on financial markets. Economic domination. A drone war. An ELINT war. And this will be a war that very easily can cripple Europe and America. Chinese cyberstrikes against civilian Western infrastructure, energy, economy, traffic, I fear more than anything conventionally military they could show up with. And the claim the American military infrastructure is protected and hardened against such a war I do not believe as long as the claim has not proven its truth in real conflict. Not even mentioning the Europeans' believe that it will not get that bad anyway. Infantility is a widespread disease, I often say to myself these days.

[Bilge_Rat]

ah yes Drones, the wonder weapon...



Drones are fine if you want to kill terrorists in the desert, more problematic when you want to go up against a superpower.

First of all, right now drones are propeller driven, with the current performance of WW1 airplanes. Second, the biggest weakness of drones is the link back to the operator, you jam that and they become expensive lawn darts.

yes, if you spend trilions of dollars, you may get unpiloted planes that can do everything manned planes can do now. Will you save any money? doubtful and you still have the pesky problem of how to secure the radio link back to ground control.

[HundertzehnGustav]

what to do?
it is a tricky situation indeed.

scrap the F-35
with the lessons learned, build a new one,
-use the good, working parts of it, the basic design philosophy.
-drop the extra goodies the gimmicks...
-make it large enough to have legs, two engines, two Guys.
-land and take off from a carrier, and operate for lengths of time overseas.

if THAT machine works, hand it to the USAF to make a singleseater fighterversion of it.
make a copy for the marines, so they get the same tool as the navy and can operate alongside one another in perfect synch

use the F-35 as a testbed and for experiments. get the most out of the wasted dollars.

?

[Skybird]

Drones are the weapons of choice for the kind of conflicts that are mos tliekly - more likely than a conventional full war with any equally armed main power like China or Russia. Asymmetric wars, and all that.

However, I did not call drones wonder weapons (I am to critical of them myself), the vulnerability of theirs - so far - I am aware of, its the com link, and I did not say they should replace existing fighter forces. I just said the fighterforce should not base on something to absurdly expensive like the F-35, but on an improved conventional design, not throwing money after stealth that much, since I think that tech is overestimated.

Drones are supplemental, and will play a big role in civilian and riot control as well as counter insurgency, INTEL, surveillance and such. Once they have been turned to autonomous control logic - I hate the perspective and am totally against it, but if it can be done they will do it - we will need to talk again. Ground sentry robots of that kind already have been produced. Southkorea on my mind, Japan as well. I don'T like it, but that is the broken world I have to deal with.

[HundertzehnGustav]

the human is the weak link in aircraft performance (often not always)
drones offer more manuuuvrability than any Human could ever take, no?

securing the link is a difficult IT problem. at best.

is it about increasing manoevrability, or lessening training costs or lessening pilot loss?
a combo?

hardly know enough

[Skybird]

BTW, how high was the implicit debt of the United States again? How many hundred percent of the GDP at minimum?

And the Pentagon thinks it must bypass political intention for budget cuts by squeezing a half-a-trillion contract out of the closing door in the very last second.

The name is wrong, it is not the United States of America, it is the Broke and Overindebted States of America. But wanting trillions-expensive toys like F-35 and such.

[Oberon]

F35 fleet has been grounded after a crack was found in an engine blade:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21554331

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by HundertzehnGustav

the human is the weak link

Right now it would appear to be the engine blades:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21554331

[Glock30Eric]

I have seen F-35 flying overhead on a daily basis when it isn't being grounded. It is bigger than F-18. It must have more drag issue than F-18 which it is really bad.

I think they should kill F-35 from the contract prospective; running over the budget by double and it is really late to the schedule. I hope they could kill it but I really doubt it because it is a pure politician program; all eggs into that program.

My dream: Kill F-35, use that money to modernize and reproduce the F-18s, F-16s, F-15s, A-10s, and few other planes. I would like to see NAVAIR to develop a navy version of A-10 since we are conducting lots of CAS (Close Air Support) in both so called, "fronts" without a declaration of war from our legislative branch . Those 30mm in the front will be very useful in the CAS.

Furlogh is coming soon.

[HundertzehnGustav]

My dream - the best of all.

Yankee Software and Engines, Gun, AA Missiles, Squad markings. (simply awesome)
Russian Aerodynamics a la Su-35, Bombs, paintscheme (what looks good flies right, yes?)
Non Asian Electronics hardware (no more fake china chips and Playstation components!)
German Maintenance Crew (Ordnung! Perfektion! jawoll!)
A highly pissed off Israeli or Greek Pilot at the stick. (at war for decades already...)

[Bilge_Rat]

The F35 program is taking longer and is more expensive than originally planned. The plane will not perform as well as the original design. All true, although you could say the same thing about pretty much any weapon system designed in the past 100 years.

Just cancelling the program sounds good, but just remember what happened with the A-12. The A-12 was an advanced stealth bomber designed in the late 80s to replace certain obsolecent U.S. Navy and USMC planes. After numerous complaints that it was too expensive, it was cancelled in 1991. Instead the Navy went with the F/A-18 E "Super Hornet", which was basically just an improved version of the regular "Hornet". Even though based on an existing design, the F/A-18 E still took 10 years to become operational and was not that much cheaper per plane ( $67 M vs $84 M ). Now the "Super Hornet" is already obsolecent while the A-12 would probably still have a useful life of 20 years left. Cancelling the A-12 now looks like it was a case of "penny wise, but pound foolish".

Cancelling the F35 just shovels the problem out another 10 years when costs will be even higher.

[Jimbuna]

Wouldn't surprise me if the UK pulled back from buying the F-35 and go for the new Iranian stealth plane instead

[Takeda Shingen]

The leadership at Boeing has got to be tickled pink over this whole show.