australianaviation.com.au
thedrive.com
Only 98% over budget for airfleet cost, 56% over budget for maintenance cost, and not meeting dozens of its primary goals resulting in "re-baselining" by DOD.
F-35 completes flight testing
Jason Ross
Other urls found in this thread:
web.archive.org
wired.com
archive.defense.gov
archive.is
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
bloomberg.com
flightglobal.com
twitter.com
William Martin
Ok, dumb I only care about small arms question: what ever happened to the F22?
Brandon Walker
No money after the Cold War ended, production line was shut down.
Connor Garcia
It actually works and doesn't urgently need any upgrades, so production was immediately halted and all the tooling """""disappeared""""" shortly before the chinks unveiled their new stealth fighter.
Jack Morgan
It was twice superior to F-35 and about the same cost, but the factories and tools needed to make it were melted into scrap metal. The F-22 was the only airplane Russia was concerned about because they could wreck F-117, B-2 and F-35 all day. Some say the brits had something to do with it, as in F-22 was too advanced for them and incompatible with their carriers, and it made no sense for america to be vastly superior to allies it would be working with.
Basically it was a victim of its own success, it gave too much value to the military for the same amount of money, ergo.. wasn't worth it. F-35 is less value, effort and resources for the same price (or more in some cases).
Ethan Gray
Wait, there's still work being or pretending to be done on the F-35? I thought it was just in limbo where it wasn't making progress even on paper. I sort of assumed it had been declared "finished enough" already and nobody had cared enough to put them into service. I figured they were so certain that the shekels would continue to flow that they had stopped bothering to keep up the illusion it was a legitimate project.
Matthew Gutierrez
Software still isn't done. The gun fires off center of the aiming reticule, the countermeasures don't work, and the maintenance tracking is a disaster.
Ryder Harris
You've got planes mixed up. F-22 never had a Navy variant, it's always been a USAF exclusive plane. Many of the problems surrounding F-35 have been attributed to britbongs demanding that it be made to work with their shitty carriers, but I'm not sure what the truth of that is.
Jeremiah Thomas
SecDef Robert Gates bought into the multirole meme.
While I was looking into this, I found a curiosity.
wired.com
This article has a dead link to a transcript of a speech Gates gave to the Air War College on April 14, 2009 and I can't find the speech anywhere. Not even the US DOD archive has it listed:
archive.defense.gov
Even though it has a speech of his at the Naval War College two days later, where he said
If someone could find this speech, I'd be very interested in reading it because that Wired article makes it sound important.
Aaron Lopez
Leo Howard
We should have named the XM-8 F-35 instead
Zachary Gray
But the multirole isn't a meme.
A F-14, a Rafale B/M, a F-15E, tandem seat Su-27, etc… are perfectly fine multirole fighters, they have the range, the payload and the performance to do both things appropriately.
The F-35 just isn't one of them…
I mean there isn't even a two seats version!
Nolan Moore
The day we completely retire the F-15 is the day America will be invaded. We should push for the F-15 to get it's final upgrade with that stealth package so we can justify keeping it around till 2030.
John Reed
I thought the Pilot couldn't fire the gun at all until a scheduled software update in 2019?
Easton Morris
What the actual fucking hell.
Gabriel Lewis
F-35 not scrapped yet? Its Chinese clone will kick its ass!
Andrew Thompson
Gee xi, your peasants let you have two engines?
Ayden Hernandez
A WW1 biplane could kick its ass in a 1v1 by virtue of not having its heat/radar signature recognized by the hyper-advanced avionics suite, thus automatically disabling master arm without pilot input thanks to heightened gun control requirements among the USAF.
The only option then would be to ram the wildly maneuvering biplane, but such maneuvers would in all likelihood either crush the Pilot's neck or overtax the FBW system.
Adrian Flores
Italy bought some of them and is also participating in the cost.
I don't want to be a colony anymore,let Aermacchi or Piaggio build our plane.
Carson Morgan
;_;
Evan Watson
Thats an issue with the pod guns on C and B. The aiming reticule is about the fixed gun on the A.
Matthew Smith
Aermacchi M-346 Master is based on the Yak-130, which is cute as all fuck. Even its callsign is heartwarming - Mitten. Can carry out all the roles of a strike fighter and even some air combat, since thrust to weight is very high. M-346 Master has more thrust, but is also heavier, not sure how that plays out.
Jose Powell
Aaaaahhhhh
I want Caproni and his crazy ideas back too.
For what i knew it was a joint operation between Aermacchi and Yak. Only that Yak bailed out or wasn't putting funds on it or something else, and they separated making each their own plane with the deal that Aermacchi will sell to the West and Yak to the East.
Colton Turner
Fusion of F-15SMT/D with F-15SE would be all that America needs.
Jayden Lewis
We won't produce them because it's more convenient to produce the 35 than to deal with Israel who sold a lot of military technology to China such as the Patriot missile twice.
Sebastian Smith
You do realize that only non-US operational F-35 squadron is Israeli right?
Everyone else only has test sample so far with most of the further deliveries being pushed back for 2019 or later.
In fact being a point defense light fighter-bomber it's almost as if it was meant to be operated as the sole aircraft of a small country that need good penetration/stealth on all it's aircraft because it's surrounded by legacy soviet/Russian air defense. Rather than a long range air/superiority fighter bomber that the US need to cover their vast airspace, let alone their empire…
Landon Miller
Oh and BTW the pentagon has ceased to take in deliveries of F-35 for the third time.
archive.is
After the fuel liners that were faulty, the panels that were corroded now Lockheeb want to bill the repairs of the faulty planes barely out…
Evan Watson
Kek. Stealthy F-15 with canards and thrust vectoring. I can't decide if sexy or silly.
Xavier Nelson
Found a sexier drawing. Sage for double post and off topic.
Robert Kelly
What are the main problems of the F-35?
Gabriel Sullivan
Cost.
If F-35 cost
Jayden Edwards
Yak-UTS design started in 1990 and was complete in 1993. In 1993 Yakovlev needed cash and formed a deal with Aermacchi to help with developing the design into a saleable product. Aermacchi wanted full control and Yakovlev wouldn't hand it over, so the two companies split. Aermacchi paid about $77 million for the design of the airplane, and claimed they invented it. Kind of the same thing that happened between Yakovlev and Lockheed for the invention of the first supersonic VTOL.
Yakovlev basically gets shit on by everyone.
Nathan Peterson
Money.
The F-35 is supposed to replace the F-16 fleet, initially at 1:1.
Now a F-16 is around $20M which is why it allows even small countries like Belgium or Danemark, or Norway, etc… to have a small but credible fleet of around 40 aircraft standing (and around 60 in total). That's the main great advantage of the F-16. It's a good plane at a dirt cheap cost, which allowed NATO to develop it's total air supremacy model, because the USAF is gigantic but if you add all the US allies F-16 fleet you get a silly result.
Despite their initial claim nobody trusted Lockheeb to actually deliver "a F-16 version of the F-22" at the same price but people believed them when they then said it would 3 times the cost of a F-16 with hope to reduce it in time with production gains. A 1:3 is acceptable ,sure the small air-force would suffer a drastic reduction of numbers but, if the plane were to be so much superior to a F-16 in tech and in design to it's foreign counterpart that it wouldn't much of a problem.
Already people were extremely dubious, SAAB, EADS and especially Dassault yelled bullshit that Lockheeb would never deliver a meta-material and hi-tech at that cost, no matter how much they make.
Today we see the results the price per plane is certainly not $20M. It's not 60M. It's almost $140M per.
Meaning if you operated around 60 F-16. On the same budget you can operate 9 F-35.
And while dubious, it might have been possible for 20 to do the job of 60, 9 planes will never do the job of 60 no matter how good they are.
Worse $140M per is the high ballpark of a Rafale/Eurofighter that all the countries client of the F-16 and now F-35 always swore not to buy because those were far too costly for them.
It's reported problems and performance issues are just the cherry on top.
If they really cost that much money it is a failure because even if it doesn't break the USAF, it will break NATO back.
Xavier Fisher
I thought the design was more similar to Aermacchi previous trainer jet, the 339 made in 1979.
Carson Wright
How are these companies funded? Not just aircraft, but private defence companies in general. Most of them don't seem to sell any of the products they developed, yet you don't hear about them crashing all the time. Are they relying on other sources of income?
Jason Scott
Aerimacchi makes mostly parts (Eurofighter, C27, Tornado).
Lots of aircraft companies still exist as part providers, giant companies (Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier) are doing the assembly.
For example Morane-Saulnier and Latécoère still exist in France, one has changed name and the other just makes fuselage sections and doors, etc…
Asher Williams
Nope, design was complete a few years before Aermacchi entered the picture. Yakovlev does have pretty low ability to construct military aircraft, so some parts might have been sourced from Aermacchi. I mean Yak-130 isn't being made at a Yakovlev plant, it's being made at SOKOL which is owned by MiG.
Thats what I mean by "based" on a Yakovlev design, the final result is a mixture of technologies.
Some companies are mostly design bureaus, with limited production capacity. A thousand college interns with AutoCAD, a prototype mould, and a wind tunnel aren't that expensive to run in the large scheme of things, especially since most equipment is a commie-era relic and costs them nothing. At one point in the 90s Yakovlev made and restored old WWII aircraft and sold them to private buyers for millions apiece, kept their doors open when the Russian economy was garbage. Even the pittance of $77 million can keep Yakovlevs lights on for fifty years.
As for others like Aermacchi, they make weapon systems, rockets, parts, and sell service packages depending on company. Also they always dip a toe in the commercial industry which provides a steady income stream.
The large numbers that are often quoted as costs to develop an aircraft are often spread out over ten or twenty years and include all kinds of investment sources or even literal bank based business credits.
Josiah Williams
Basically: it got kiked
Wyatt Carter
Similar "I only know small arms" question, why didn't the F-22 ever get a USN variant for carriers?
Juan Gomez
Same as the F-15.
The USN was already deploying multi-role light fighter/bombers with the Harriers and Hornets (which only have a fraction of the plane they replaced but hey).
Gabriel Gonzalez
We would have, but it got canceled in favor of the JSF.
Jaxon Fisher
What kind of crazy ideas Caproni had?
Aaron Edwards
Behold:the Noviplano!
Joseph Clark
Honestly, we should had gone with these.
en.wikipedia.org
What's not to like?
In fact we could have most likely made a naval version of the fb-22
Blake Parker
Another nation could buy forty frigates, ten destroyers, and three cruisers for $9 billion. Canada could buy six frigates and a used icebreaker.
Grayson Garcia
Juan Miller
Yeah but for 9 billions $US the USN can only buy 5 ships armed with a 57mm and 11 RIM-116.
Robert Rivera
Justin Brown
What's the point in living this life anymore?
Jaxon Green
To die a slow humiliating death deprived of all hope while watching all your loved ones turn to islamic gommunists.
Henry Myers
Jesus christ, every week at Caproni's aircraft company must have been magical.
The only reason I can think of as to why F22B wasn't used was too good cost-efficiency due to F22 program, which was already too good apparently and not cost-inefficient enough.
Samuel Scott
Can't they build the cheap plane and just tape the bombs on them to crash-pilot it by remote control?
Jacob Baker
FB-22 died for the same reason F-22A died.
That's because F-35 would be a more bottomless dollar sinkhole for Lockheeb.
Michael Reed
They can do even better than that. Looking forward to fully autonomous UCAV's that carry smart bombs. These things will be stealthy, cheaper and lighter because life support for a pilot isn't needed, and will probably turn harder than 9G because no human is in them. To be frank I have no idea why they still make fighter jets with pilots in them. Maybe it's the romantic thought of flying warriors. Maybe it's the ethics of having a human directly pulling the trigger. Either way it will hopefully go out of fashion in a few hundred years. Just like ancient war chariots.
Just FYI some examples for UCAVs: Dassault Neuron, MiG Skat, BAE Taranis, Northrop Grumman X-47B.
FWIW years back I really liked the idea of the F-35: basically a smaller and cheaper F-22 which was to be the F-16 to the F-15 over again. Suffice to say I'm disappointed to see how it failed so far, and even more disappointed to see how the F-22 won't be the swan song of manned fighter jets before the UCAV era dawns. They should have stopped at the F-22, a beautiful bird, and don't lynch me for saying so but I always did favor the YF-22 over the YF-23.
Kayden Morris
kek
Protip the giant satellite dish it uses to communicate with the base weighs way more than even a burger pilot.
Cooper Wilson
…
I shit you not. It says "managing"
Airbus was a mistake.
Leo Reed
Thank taxation.
Corporate taxes basically ruin small businesses, so in order to survive ruinous taxation practices in the west they have to conglomerate into larger megacorps.
Eventually, due to taxes in every nation, there will be just one corporation on earth controlling everything, building every product, owning every farm and water source…. Only economy outside it will be flea markets and a smattering of one-man plumbers and electricians providing services to poor people.
Then this corporation will just unilaterally abolish all governments, and the leftist utopia of a corporatist socialist state will be realized.
Elijah Harris
Remove Airbus.
That feel there was more free enterprise and choice under fascism than now.
Look at this stereotypical italian man,what can you expect from him if not magic?
Also Miyazaki put him in one of his film.
Landon Green
Maybe they need the skills to operate the spaceships in the distant future?
Levi Nguyen
Everything.
To take it from the top and give a short version:
Individual unit cost isn't actually as big a deal as one might think. It's the cost of running the damn thing that is the problem. For example the Britbong Eurofighter may be expensive to buy but it is surprisingly cheap to run.
Operational costs is where the F-35 falls flat. Having a brand new plane cost $30k each per flight hour is beyond even the capabilities of the United States to afford and actually a good chunk of the reason why the F-22 never replaced the F-15. Imagine how Chairforces with peanuts for budgets are reacting? Before some retard points it out, yes $30k per flight hour is what Burgers currently spend on their ancient as fuck F-16, F-18 and F-15 fleet but keep in mind a brand new F-16, F-18 or F-15 is looking between $6k-$15k per flight hour then the immediately grasp how fucked the F-35 is. As aircraft get older the cost per flight hour increased drastically, typically by about $10k a year, so imagine a 10 year old F-35? Unless the F-35 manages to get around $10k per Flight hour when brand new it's going to get replaced immediately since nobody can afford to run it, at least not without crippling their airfleet and that goes for the Burgers as well. End of.
Despite what people may think, it was the US Marines that fucked the F-35B not the Royal Navy, the RN had set aside shekels to convert their carriers to accept F-35C's or even F/A-18's if the F-35B didn't work out which later got spent due to a severe act of kikery so now they are stuck with the F-35B. It was the Marines in their insistance on having their VTOL at all costs that screwed the F-35B the most.
Add onto the fact the F-35 has to accept a wide range of munition types and is meant to do everything means that it is a technological clusterfuck struggling to be compatible with the most basic of munitions and does nothing great. Keep in mind that European munitions are actually a generation ahead of Burgers since Burgers don't believe in keeping on top of missile development for some reason, you've got a Burger made plane being designed for weapons that the Burgers have no experience of using or how to even equip. Expect when if the F-35 is used for combat a lot of unexpected equipment failures and "jams" to occur when used by Europoor nations.
The F-35 is not even the plane anyone wants or needs, especially in Europe where what they need more than ever is a replacement for their old SEAD and CAS aircraft, not another fighter. Britbongs especially are in desperate need of a replacement for the Jaguar. If anyone thinks a F-35 is going to make a good SEAD or CAS aircraft then they are beyond fucking retarded. The F-35 is quite simply the last plane anyone needs right now, with only the Burgers truly needing it cause their F-16's are so fuckold.
Lockheed has one of the worst reputations imaginable especially in Europe. They constantly lie and cheap, get caught bribing politicians, and none of their products ever livie up to their hype. Also whenever they gain a contract they can never remain in budget and will go ridiculously over the agreed upon figure to extort as much shekels as they can from you. They should have been thrown to the dogs decades ago but they are lining so many pockets they are pretty much immune to failure. Maybe if they actually spent more time on making a fucking plane instead of marketing they might not have to do so much damage control all the time.
Honestly Lockheed is such a red fucking flag that their name alone should give you a clue that a project is doomed. I honest to fuck guarantee you that if the JSF project was won by someone competent like Boeing or Northrop we wouldn't be having a fraction of the problems we have today.
Anthony Evans
Why do the Marines need be their own branch,and not the equivalent of paratroopers for the navy?
Why do the marines need VTOL when they have the navy and airforce?
Asher Cooper
They really don't. Neither does the Air Force for that matter, they should be reintegrated as the Army Air Corps.
Andrew Thompson
Didn't the US Marines have their own paratroopers as well?
And also it's just a special snowflake Burger thing for how the US Marines are treated. Everyone else integrates them into their Navy or Army pretty much.
John Sanchez
What would happen if Donald Trump were to do that?
Xavier Adams
US would see if they could finally weaponize autistic screeching.
Noah Evans
He'd get some minor praise over on Zig Forums from autists who get a stiffy over better logistics handling before continuing to get shit on for being a cuck on bumpfire stocks and becoming progressively more neocon. The Marines would have a spastic fit because they lost their special snowflake status, and with any luck that rage could be harvested for use against the enemy. Chair force would grumble a bit but probably wouldn't care too much as supporting the Army is 99% of their job anyways.
Hunter Ramirez
Ayy yo hol up. That would mean the airforce won't get to wear their speshul snow flake blue tiger stripe uniforms though.
Benjamin Walker
Marines aren't their own branch, they're part of the Navy. They just get special treatment because the Navy essentially selected the dumbest bastards they had, and made them into an expendable meat shield for sailors. That way no one else in USN need ever enter any danger.
Marines are basically the Navys little military force, existing to protect the Navy as if USN were a country.
Asher Thomas
Eh, yes and no. The USMC fall under the purview of the Secretary of the Navy but they are considered a separate branch of the armed forces.
Mason Torres
I take the opposite view to the Marines should be fully separate. In fact considering American soil is protected by 400k Reservists, 300k National Guard and 100m gun owners, there isn't any point to your Army or Air force. The only reason these two branches survived the last 80 years is because America thought these branches could be used to defend Europe in case of Soviet invasion. That hasn't been an issue for awhile.
Step 1: Split the Marines off into their own branch. This will give you a rough ratio of
USN - 138k people, 2500 aircraft, 11 supercarriers
USM - 182k people, 1200 aircraft, 9 light carriers
Step 2: About a third of resources and personnel of the air force should be merged with the Navy, remainder should be established as a space force. The space force would be in charge of most ballistic missiles and high altitute to orbital control. This will also add numbers to the navy and give you a rough ratio of
USN - 256k people, 4600 aircraft, 20 supercarriers
ASF - 150k people, 800 SSTO shuttles, 400 satellites, 10 orbital battlestations
Step 3: All of the budget and resources of the Army should be merged with the Marine force, increasing the total marine strength to:
USM - 575k troops, 6000 aircraft, 30 light carriers
Step 4: Merge 400k reservists with 300k National Guard to make a 700k strong territorial defense force. Allow them to operate state-by-state IADS systems, artillery, and finally build their own aircraft such as the Blitzfighter. This will make them useful in occupation, just transport them to other countries if you need a larger force, kind of like the Army is now.
Noah Sullivan
What makes you think current day robots will be able to handle WVR air combat when Raytheon's state of the art AIM-9X can't help but submit to its soviet flare fetish?
Air superiority drones aren't necessarily a bad idea, but we'll need more advancements in AI and such to make them viable.
Aaron Phillips
Nani? First I've heard of this.
Jayden Murphy
Dumb OT question:
Assuming airborne stealth somehow worked as advertised, wouldn't air-to-air engagements between 5th gen ASF like the F-22, Su-57, J-20 and F-35 be limited to WVR ranges outside of IRST use?
t. brainlet who doesn't understand US doctrine of muh super invisible networked missile boat
Wyatt Cruz
Engagements are limited to WVR anyway, at least in most situations. Fights in instrument only ranges are dangerous because the enemy can easily pretend to be one of your aircraft, your allies aircraft, or even a civilian aircraft. Any air force worth anything would close to WVR to confirm before firing. The only time BVR becomes possible is if the enemy isn't spoofing, or if your radar shows four jumbo jets coming at you in fighter formation.
The problem is that "visual range" is based on obsolete measurement of how far a pilot can see, but that was established 70 years ago (160 years ago if you count naval "visual range"). As far as I'm concerned modern sighting tools have expanded WVR combat to >60km, because that's how far we can actually visually confirm a target nowadays.
Mason Russell
Sorry if stupid question but why aren't cameras of greater performance than the human eye used for visual/optic confirmation?
Liam Jones
The human eye can't make out a fighter-sized object at 60km you know
Jace Martinez
That's kind of what I meant. Visual confirmation doesn't mean human eye, it can be a camera plus magnification equipment. Technically even infrared might make it under visual confirmation, as long as its multicolor infrared and the shape of the aircraft can be seen (its not just a blot on a screen).
David Taylor
>only real way to guide A2A missiles at long range without acquiring radar lock
Jose Bennett
MUH LOW PROBABILITY OF INTERCEPT AESA
most likely.
Jordan Mitchell
I think it has to do with tradition. A lot of other US air superiority fighters don't have built-in infrared electro-optical sensors, for example F-15 and F-16 (yeah, yeah, F-16 is multirole officially). I guess it's because Americans lag behind the Russians in development, thinking that the shorter range of IR doesn't justify the weight of internal carriage as opposed to pod. This is the same nation of people who removed the gun from the F-4. So naturally with the fancy AESA LPI tech they have even more incentive to play smart and shrug off IRST as obsolete. Export variants of the F-16 don't need to suffer this, though.
Asher Carter
The PR disasters you could do if you somehow managed to remote highjack the flight control systems of civilian aircraft.
Hudson Bell
It's a dumb philosophy, when you're all on your own surrounded by thousands of kilometers cubed of air, you need every advantage possible.
Lincoln Perez
Thing is you need to sort of identify targets before you shoot them down. If you start firing missiles all over the place how long till the 6 o'clock news comes on with "Burgers shot down a civilian airliner today!"
What everyone should do is make a plane that appears visually on radar and to the naked eye like a 737 but have concealed gun ports so when an enemy plane gets close they open their gun ports and shoot them down.
Sort of like an Aircraft version of a Q Ship.
Thomas Perry
To bear witness to the end of a civilization
Ethan Gomez
Just for reference, here's the point of a Q Ship.
Caleb Cook
So I'd need to file a flight plan with the Agency to make a Q plane?
Colton Ward
Liam Wilson
That's not even counting the various ICBM / Cruise Missile bus proposals.
Cooper Kelly
Zig Forums, why is my wee-wee so stiff and feels funny?
Hunter Walker
Wne an airplan and a man love each other very bery much, the y come together to make a bebe.
Jaxson Sanders
Why not just use a C-5 airframe?
Brody Stewart
Fucking Lockheed. This plane is way too over-engineered and will be outdated in less than a decade.
bloomberg.com
Nathaniel Cox
Gotta love based Britain and our (((special relationship))), they've been like a pair of brick shoes in a swimming pool since WW1.
Ryan King
You'd think that something like that would pretty much confirm this as a scam, but I'm sure the US is willing to keep feeding into the F35 until it deploys and performs excellently (against goatfuckers without the shittiest MANPADs available)
Chase Perry
They actually got almost a billion dollars FREE BUX to develop a hypersonic missile.
flightglobal.com
Boeing already developed the Waverider, and applied for the same contract, but for (((some reason))) lockmart got the truckload of cash.
Aiden Roberts
Why not use conventional Pershing 2 missiles instead? 1000 mile range, Mach 8 vs mach 5 cruise missile?
Ian Moore
That's kind of like what Russia is doing, they have two types of hypersonic missiles. Their main anti ship missile for the next 20 years will be Zircon, a mach 8 air breathing scramjet with variable ranges.
Their main multipurpose hypersonic missile is Kinzhal. Now this is the interesting one, similar to what you mentioned. It is basically a booster stage from a Iskander missile, and it gets bolted onto the MiG-31. The cool part is the Avangard warhead has an air breathing scramjet, and maneuvering ability. MiG-31 takes it to altitude and boosts it to above mach speeds. Iskander/Kinzhal booster raises speed to mach 10. Now if you want to do it cheap, there's a maneuvering warhead with a payload, basically a glide bomb that goes from mach 10 to strike the target at a gradually reduced speed.
But also there is an ability to mount the Avangard scramjet booster warhead sustains that speed for most of its flight envelope. In certain configurations Avangard can hit Mach 20, but that's not in service
Kevin Robinson
Xavier Ortiz
At this point you dont even need an explosive warhead
Ayden Carter