Forum: Program and politics

It may be the popular thing to call for the evaluation of "alternatives". But, the fact is that there is no alternatives. Sticking with obsolete teens or Eurocanards are not alternative unless you want to cede air superiority to newer generations of Russian and Chinese types. Building 600~700 F-22s instead gets you inferior striking power and insufficient airframes to cover all fronts. Going for a massively UAV air force is not feasible with today's technology, dubious with tomorrows and will probably entail a developmental and construction program just as expensive or more so.

I'm sorry to take a counter point to this view, Dwight, as you might know I do, although I greatly respect your insights and contribution to the education process.

It's just imperative for all sides to come to the table now and show all the cards.. for everyone's best security interests, to mitigate all flaws herein.

Basically, what it sounds like is that the USAF will go to great lengths, even unprecedented lengths to bolster the F-35's psychological 'above water' status quo, from clearly miscalculated initial business plan. I'm rather curious herein too, as to what 'savings from operations and maintenance' entails? What's next, USAF will propse retiring a couple dozen F-22 plus another 300 pre-mature legacy craft (in addition to those already planned) to hit their next 2015-18 targets? It just sounds too much like putting RAM lipstick on this program, despite any gutting or cost. When we start talking that, one could raise either a flag about military industrial military complex 'cart before the horse', or perhaps covering up for simple piss poor planning and being stuck in a strategic sore spot.

I personally don't have a problem still supporting the F-35 to a reasonable extent, if the Strategic blundering would create severe, devastating effects vis-a-vis allied/partner relationships. (we woulda shoulda coulda have thought more about that back in 2002 (as some of us were), but now that we're where we're at, it must be handled very wisely, no question). Hopefully, DoD and USAF officials need to be very honest and open in declaring the full, inner strategy to Congress and all it's implications going forward.

Furthermore, the USAF/DoD need to seriously study and prepare hedged contingency plans B,C,D (if not done already), if e.g., substantial foreign partners decide on alternative recapitalization. And perhaps most important to bring things into more honest debate/negotiations with Congress and foreign allies (as some have been imploring over the past couple, few years), is for the still official 2,400+ total US procurement estimate (and the 1,700+ USAF estimate) to be humbly and respectfully revised, discarded and left open for said future budgets and defense planning, etc. To keep announcing official USAF/DoD policy schedules/estimates, based on these unrealistic numbers is counter-productive, IMHO.

God Speed.. and sincere respects for service, to anyone reading this involved with the F-35 program.

Well, I don't think annual run rate for 2013 (48 being USAF; the remaining USN/USMC and export for a total of 110) is unrealistic. The planned USAF run rate of 100 by 2015 is also not unrealistic. In fact I think it is conservative. Whether the F-35 ends up being a 1000 unit fighter or a 4000 unit one, it won't change the unit recurring cost much as long as the the production rate is relatively close to the planned rate. The only thing that will change is the R&D amortization. At 1000 units you are looking at a difference of $40 million per unit and $10 million. This translates roughly to an increase between $58.7 million unit cost (as recently quoted to export customers) and $88.7 million. Significant? Yes. But there is nothing within $30 million of an F-35 which is anywhere near as capable. More importantly this difference may not be passed on completely to foreign buyers and is largely irrelevant to the US services because it is a sunken cost that is already paid out and unrecoverable.

Finally, I don't think 1700 units by the USAF is unrealistic. This will be the number the USAF will end up with if it commits roughly $5 billion a year (in 2007 dollars) to F-35A procurement for 17 years -- $5 billion covers the recurring costs for producing about 100 F-35As a year in FRP (circa 2015). The US defense budget being ~$450 billion and the USAF budget being roughly $150 billion (1/3rd of the total budget). Somehow, the argument that a $450 billion a year military cannot find $5 billion (~1.1% of its budget) for the procurement of its primary tool for air dominance -- the fighter -- is not very convincing.

It may be the popular thing to call for the evaluation of "alternatives". But, the fact is that there is no alternatives. Sticking with obsolete teens or Eurocanards are not alternative unless you want to cede air superiority to newer generations of Russian and Chinese types. Building 600~700 F-22s instead gets you inferior striking power and insufficient airframes to cover all fronts. Going for a massively UAV air force is not feasible with today's technology, dubious with tomorrows and will probably entail a developmental and construction program just as expensive or more so.

The chinese and Russians are nowhere near the west be it Europe or US in terms of technical capability of their fighters and operational status. Chinese can bolster their numbers of their J-10' and 11s to compensate but the Russians are stuck where they are and it wont change much in the next decades.

The only reason I see for the replacement of the obsolete teens would be airframe fatigue. There has been alot of hype for russian and chinese types but the truth is that its alot harder for the lobyists to justify before public opinion that the current generation is literaly getting age old instead of being superceeded. And what makes money for industry is not replacing current planes but design and sell the new ones.

Old for new replacing would be still be viable. The only ones that dont see alternatives to this are the manufacturers and their lobies.

The US will never buy Eurofighter not because it cant deal with all flanker drivatives (it can) but because its european, simple as that. It would take a similar lax atittude torwads fighters as it took for the tankers to buy European. Despite overbudgeting and the economical crysis we're still far from that. Even less now that the US industry has taken wake up call lesson from the said tanker deal.

European 5th gen fighter? easy answer...the F-35 since its also European

Whatever they realy need it NOW is another question. Russia 5th gen fighter is still much of a mistery and judging by their marketin with examples like the Su derivatives being soold as 4++ when the west fielded equal or batter capabilities for a long time, leaves only room for total speculation if the PAK-Fa will be LO and be anywhere near as sophisticated as the latest models in the west.

My guess is that it wont be any more LO than the eurofighter is unless they hire some alien engineers to do it in half the time it took for F-22 or 35 and be able to match them in capability. There arent any miracles in this business.

I also think that, judging by their speed of introduction of the Su-27SM chances are that the PAK-FA will entry in service late and in very low rates.

Just knowing PAKFA will have weapons bays should make it quite LO, when doing missions without external weapons. And since it's not 1990, whatever LO tech russians have today should be decent enough to get sub 1m squared RCS frontal values, perhaps up to 0.1. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't end up being the third stealthiest fighter plane in existance.

Well, so far all the little press releases from russian MoD (seems they're running the show, not Sukhoi itself) have mentioned internal bays. There's also a modified variant of S-37 test aircraft that was seen with enlarged weapons bays, compared to the original version. To me, all that means weapon bays are much more likely than not.

Well, without internal weapons bays I doubt it would be very Stealthy.....