When it comes to the F-35 I've focused on one issue and what it means to the USMC.
Cost.
Now we see the Pentagon still playing the "ramp up production to push down the cost curve" lie. Check this out from Bloomberg.
-The Pentagon will request funding in fiscal 2016 to buy 57 F-35 jets made by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), two more than previously planned, according to two government officials.I don't think it will work. I don't see sequestration being eased or lifted. The author of this article summed things up perfectly at the end.
The Defense Department’s previous five-year plan had projected buying 55 of the fighter jets during the year that begins Oct. 1, said the officials, who asked not to be identified before President Barack Obamasubmits his budget to Congress on Feb. 2.
If approved by lawmakers, the acquisition would mark a major increase for a program that’s experienced cuts amid tight defense budgets and setbacks in testing of the costliest U.S. weapons system. The Pentagon had requested 34 of the jets for the current year, and Congress increased that to 38.
The projected budget for 55 aircraft was $9 billion; the added cost for two more planes wasn’t immediately available.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a September audit that the Pentagon continues to “develop and field the most costly weapons system program in history without knowing whether the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps can pay for it.”The debate IS about costs. No longer is the debate about whether stealth as presented in the F-35 is effective. Its not about sensor fusion or whether the airplane can dog fight or if its even capable of delivering on the promised performance. Its all about cost.
Can the Pentagon afford this airplane?
I don't think so.
Most recent F-35 costs per plane, as actually paid by the US goverment (LIRP-8)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.janes.com/article/46129/pentagon-finalises-f-35-lrip-8-contract
>F-35A: 94.8 mill
>F-35B: 102 mill
>F-35C: 115.7 mill
plus engines at 21.9 million apiece, gives us:
>F-35A: 116.7 mill total cost
>F-35B: 123.9 mill total cost
>F-35C: 137.6 mill total cost
Compared to Rafale (inferior 4.5gen tech, 209 mill per plane as of latest Brazilian proposal, not including maint. or parts) and Typhoon (4.5gen, about 100mill per plane), the F-35 CURRENTLY looks excellent, as it's not even receiving full mass production bonuses to unit price and it's capabilities are superior.
Even with somewhat outdated EOTS and DAS, its fusion of sensors and BVR capabilities are unmatched,considering its a single seater with,let not underestimate, stealth.
Sorry but F-16 and even F-18 is living on the edge of its airframes capability.
DeleteEven Advanced Super Hornet cant and wont be able to match J-20 or PAK-FA (once it enters service en masse), all of whom are new designs.
you could make the same argument about the F-35 when it comes to capability against the J-20 and PAK-FA. what we do know is that the plane is kinetically substandard in comparison, and that our missiles are out ranged by threat weapons. the cost issue is a matter of interpretation but the figures that you're quoting are disputed and the report that is sited is from the GAO. this plane is in trouble and why you continue to make light of it is beyond me.
DeleteIts not a hopeless case at all, fact is - F-35 is here to stay and it will be on the on USAF pillars for at least two more decades until 6th gen aircraft enters production.
DeleteIts been said by many that both F-22 and F-35 need new air-to-air missile. Simply upgrading AMRAAMS or Sidewinders wont do it.
Both planes need big-time new weapons - like Meteor or LRASM http://www.raytheon.com/news/feature/missile_announcements.html
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DeleteEven with somewhat outdated EOTS and DAS, its fusion of sensors and BVR capabilities are unmatched, considering it's a single seater with, let's not underestimate, stealth.
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How is the F-35 stealthy? Denys Overholser once said "Shape, Shape, Shape and Materials."
But the F-35 has a conventional, near-cruciform wing with more in common with the F-104 or F-5 wing planform than even the F-22 (which is itself no F-117). Either the rules for stealth have greatly changed:
a. See Youtube videos of F-35 delivering 'Spear' and notice that they -turn away- from the radar, exposing their greater, side on, aspected, signatures.
b. The ASQ-239 is emphasized as a major system element to a jet which has no jammer and thus no means of protecting itself (ala Spectra on Rafale) vs. popup threats.
c. The jet itself contains a plethora of compound curves, bulges and feature geometries (inlets) which simply don't belong on a smooth-skinned VLO platform.
Or the jet is (as was originally planned) _not VLO at all_, outside of about a 30` arc on either side of the nose and then only in X-Band.
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Even Advanced Super Hornet can't and won't be able to match J-20 or PAK-FA (once it enters service en masse), all of whom are new designs.
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I believe if was Chuck Meyers (Fighter Mafioso) who once commented: "JSF was good when it was JAST because JAST was 'Joint Advanced Strike Technologies', no 'Air' involved..
Bluntly, if I want to defeat advanced airpower, I will do it on the combat turn (cycle between sortie evolutions) and/or I will simply go beyond it's ability to reliably engage.
There are at least three ways to achieve this, without going to exotics like DEWS:
1. An ELO asset with a belly full of RamAAM, fed targeting by a small drone, like a MALD, with an IRST that tracks targets into the field.
2. A swarm of MALIs as turbo-AAMs in their own right, each with an alternate ground target, each with 500nm of range, each with 300lbs X 10ft of dimensions as the ability to be drop kicked from an MCALs launcher on the back of a C-130 _en masse_. Each with a Mach 1.2 @ 50nm dash capability.
3. Hypersonics. HSSW as the high end. Air or naval launch TACMs at the low. If you are doing Mach 5 to Mach 8, not only are you push 1,000nm in 15 minutes but you are also doing it at 150,000ft++, beyond the reach of realistic AAM intercept capability. NCADE as Raptor Talon might get a few, but only if you are _directly_ adjacent to the launch point to do a BPI.
Never fight the way your enemy fights best is common logic. But never fighting at all, on your way to do another mission, is how you go from a contested A2AD environment to 200:0 slaughter as LER.
COE baby.
You have to be very careful when comparing costs between aircraft and countries. Different countries have different operating tempos and work-sharing / local production / offset arrangements, support infrastructure, training and weapons packages, etc. And isn't Brazil buying Gripens?
DeleteThose are bullshit fantasy numbers.
DeleteEldererr:
DeleteHas anyone done any tests on how stealthy this thing is with something like LRASM hanging off of it?
As time goes on, I'm less and less convinced Stealth and VSTOL are even close to being worth the cost, both in dollars and in the performance hits they require of the F-35. New fighters are including IRST and some pretty impressive AESA radars. Further, in the 15 years since the F-35 program started the computing power behind those radars has exploded. Sure, they may be able to see the ASH from farther off, but the ASH doesn't have to worry as much about wrecking its stealth profile by carrying any ordinance only internally.
I honestly think if you put money into a new missile, like the meteor, or bought the meteor and integrated it, the ASH would be fine with BVR engagements, and better off in close in engagements when low observability doesn't matter.
The ASH also has an existing logistic train for the most part, and the basis of the model is known to be very good at not being a hanger queen. Neither of those are true for the F-35.
Could we make the F-35 work? Sure. But it would be a horrifically expensive buy, and by most accounts an extremely expensive overhead aircraft. And we would get something that has a tenuous advantage with its almost 20 yr old stealth in BVR, and no advantage in close.
I personally think we would have been better off going with one of the new Tomcat models Grumman put out years ago. Yes, they'd be expensive too, but they were fast, manueverable, could fly far, loiter long, carry a crap load of ordinance, and have plenty of room for upgrades like a massive AESA radar, new avionics, and new processors. Just IMHO.
In WWII terms, the F-35 is an ME262. An expensive, overly complex, maintenance nightmare that will never see the field in large enough numbers to matter to the outcome of a real war.
DeleteSimplicity, reliability, value, numbers. That should be our mantra.
@Elderr
DeleteThe F-35 is not a Very Loe Observable airplane, it was expelled from the Stealth Olympus to be classified as a simple Low Observable mortal plane. not stealthier than the Low Observable Super Hornet.
The F-35B/C carrying a Gun pod with its huge integrated pilon, 4 Amraams internally and two Aim-9X carried externally is not better than a Super Hornet carrying an internal gun, two Amraams with out pilons under the engines, two other carried on pilons and two Aim-9X with out pilons on the wing tips. Once the cheaper 55million Super Hornet launches their 4 amraams at long distance it will be less observable and way more maneauverable than the fat F-35 carrying the Gun pod for dogfight.
That's why the Navy is asking for more Growlers, to cover both, the Rhino and the A-35 against LBand radar emissions. The advantage of the Rhino is that it can geo locate any radar emission sharing data with the Growlers, has a great sensor fussion as well and can share data with the rest of the fleet and ground troops.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQHvSiIb3OhGcpPNPywpsf375VX5pZZz5VbYeQKONDWe8Bx0tdH
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSBRr1STU4rB767gua-Tp1IS0xeEbCFI7cs8tap2BBumtx38fiZ
http://images.defensetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/f-35b-inverted--490x385.jpg
We will know it's more than posturing when we start to see estimates of shut down costs rather than continuation ones.
ReplyDeleteThe inventory, as modeled, is near to the F-22 one in equivalent numbers which means that you have a potential F-117 replacement force in both STOVL and CTOL formats to compliment the more (EO, ESM, fusion) limited Raptor capability at least.
Since the NIghthawk was also produced in what could be termed an LRIP environment of a few per year with massively different equipment standards and the like, the questions then become:
1. How much to terminate, for convenience.
2. How much to terminate, for default (after rebaselining this may not be easy to prove).
3. How much of a loss can LM take and remain in the game as a tacair house.
4. How willing is LM to carry on a contract maintenance fee for the existing fleet and if not, how much to buy the
TDP and farm it out to others?
5. Near, Intermediate and Longterm, what are our options. Can we recover sufficient funds as production capacity
to buy -new- F-15K+/F-16E level airframes rather than continue to try and 'leverage' (limp) F-16s through radar
and maintainability improvements. Or are we better off going straight to Gen-5+ as a UCAV. Or to Gen-6 as a
true supersonic all the way platform with extremely low observables?
Again, from experience on the A-12 program, it's not until you see the Services start to plan for aftermath conditions that 'who is wrong and why it cannot be' really matters at more than angels-dance-on-pinhead levels.
To me. it's always been about cost. The JSF cost multiple times the aircraft that they are replacing even when using adjusted dollars. And for the Navy, there is little difference practical difference in capabilities between the 2018 SCS H14 Super Hornet, and the F-35C that gets introduced in 2018 - and will not see more than a few squadrons until the middle of the 2020's. BTW, the SH employs a far greater range of weps than F-35 - and remains that way until at least Block 5 or later JSF. The F-35C for the Navy is more of a boutique aircraft, not unlike the F-117 was for the USAF. The are too expensive to buy in one-for-one replacement numbers, particularly when considering the bang-for-the-buck factor is negative when compared to the SH.
ReplyDeleteFifteen months ago the Pentagon wanted 62 faulty F-35 prototypes produced in FY 2016 as reported by Capaccio himself in BusinessWeek.
ReplyDelete"The Pentagon’s current five-year plan calls for increasing F-35 production to 42 jets in fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1, 2014, from 29 this year and in fiscal 2013. The rate would increase to 62 in 2016, 76 in 2017 and 100 in 2018, according to internal Pentagon budget documents. The new plan will be released next year with the Pentagon’s fiscal 2015 budget plan."
But now we're back to 29, not 42, in FY2015 (Lot 8 recently contracted) and 55, not 62, in FY2016 (Lot 9), and so Tony Capaccio's "major increase" is actually a decrease from plan as he reported earlier.
These F-35 fan-writers (especially Tony, Andrea and Aaron) never quit promoting Lockheed.
Capaccio also reports a budget cost of $9 billion for 55 prototypes, that would be $164 million per plane which is low compared to the current unit procurement cost of around $200 million per aircraft. It's $185 million just for the F-35A prototype.
Buying all these prototypes with faulty engines that require redesign? Stupid.
Oh so very stupid. We should instead take the best tested, most reliable tech we have NOW, and build a good airframe around it. Instead we're experimenting with new airframes, engines, avionics, coms, and now we're fantasizing about new weapons too.
DeleteWinslow Wheeler has some comments regarding the F-35B IOC this summer. quoted in NationalDefenseMagazine:
ReplyDeleteEven if the program office makes its projected IOC on schedule, that title is only “cosmetic,” as the joint strike fighter will not be ready to be deployed in combat, said Winslow Wheeler, an F-35 critic and director of the Strauss Military Reform Project of the Project on Government Oversight.
“Before the F-35, weapons were typically never declared initially operationally capable until after the first round of operational testing. For the F-35, that will be 2019,” he said. “If you look at the details of what the Marines plan to have next December, it’s not an operationally capable airplane.”
Wheeler pointed to the fighter’s weapons systems, many of which will not be online until years after the Marine Corps declares IOC. The F-35’s small diameter bomb II, manufactured by Raytheon, will not be integrated onto the plane until 2020. Its 25 mm Gatling gun — which will be externally mounted on the Navy and Marine Corps variants — as well as the Block 3F software necessary to fire it also will not be available until at least 2017.[actually later]
The 25mm is worthless either way. By the time the F-35 pilot needs it to the point of compromising stealth and drag, he's been shot twice by R-73, Python IV or ASRAAM. And 3 or more times by high energy Mediums like Adder, Alamo (IR) and SD-10/PL-12. Nobody has said that if you point a high prf, high KW output radar seeker RIGHT AT an F-35, it will not lock on.
ReplyDeleteAnd IRST will give you that cue as well as a command guidance until whatever threshold distance (3-4nm?) where it does. Where the IRST itself is dot-track effective to 20-25nm and imaging capable from 15, using today's 3rd generation quantum well systems, that means the F-35 cannot win the nose to nose BVR fight because it cannot use burner (which ups the IRST detection threshold to 30-50nm) to sprint the weapon into advantaged pole position.
The gun is related to the helmet which is important but the gun as a whole is such an anachronistic piece of kit it hardly matters, one way or another.
SDB II is important for the simple reason that it compensates for the EOTS. If your ESM geolocates a SAM battery at X-distance beyond onboard designation, you can fly the weapon out into seeker parameters while the jet plays catchup until it designates just at the edge of it's own detection range, say 15-20nm. The USN LANTIRN II (AAQ-25) could do this so there is no reason to assume AAQ-40 will not as well. Alternatively, you can drop through clouds and use the datalink IIR image to lock up the target or accept designation from someone on the ground.
However; GBU-53 is subsonic to the point of being a 300 knot transit weapon in the middle of a snake thicket of 2,500 knot popup shooters.
What the F-35 (and F-22) need is the ability to mount a similar dropfire weapon (on the BRU-61 multirack carriage box) and kill whatever moves on a speedy-to-speedy gonzales basis. Right now the only option out there which isn't officially 'cancelled' (solely because it's a Lockheed internal project) is CUDA and it uses an ARH seeker in a world rapidly shifting to Stealth On Stealth ACM tactics.
Derpalicious.
At the rate things are going, I would also like to either know precisely why a jet with a conventional configuration is now listed as 'more stealthy than the F-22'. Or that we are developing a Delta-mod jammer package that will allow the F-35 Edsel to win the fight on cruise control.
It s fun to ses how it s hard to integrate thing already on 4.5 on 5 gen...
ReplyDeleteAnd lol rafale cost at 200m€ 😊... Dis we have offer a 130-140m€ discount on each plane to india ????
20000 rafales, more than all your enemies missile stockpile, thats you coule have bought for the same price...