Forum: General F-35 Forum

"Outrageous! Translation: We cannot afford to keep up our side of the arms race between “stealth” and detection — we are going to lose. So rather than trying to persist with stealthy platforms, we need new longer-range standoff weapons and new kinds of electronic attack...

Greenert’s piece removes all doubt about the Navy’s continued institutional resistance to F-35 — or at best, it now makes its official support very confusing...

Moreover, the Navy also has shown it was willing to publicly undercut the F-35 anytime it pleased, with more orders for F/A-18E and F Super Hornets; its decision to begin studying a new “sixth-generation” F/A-XX it probably can’t afford; and its now-infamous leaked slide deck positing very, very high costs for the new jet. Greenert’s Proceedings article is only the latest example of that trend...

Still, an aircraft-launched standoff weapon with enough range and precision might mean you don’t even need a stealthy jet to carry it. The Navy’s existing Super Hornets (or Super-Duper Hornets) could get close to the dangerous boundaries of an “advanced adversary,” release their new super-missiles and then bingo back to the ship. Why bother with an expensive, advanced, stealthy aircraft whose “stealth” might not even work?

Because, the Air Force and the Marines and the F-35’s international customers all would argue, the world’s good guys need to take advantage of the commonality they’ll get from all operating the same advanced aircraft. Plus you could argue that Greenert is giving way too much credit to the bad guys’ air defense innovations and severely undercutting the performance of his own airplane. Plus you could argue that Greenert is putting way too much faith in long-range guided weapons and way too little in manned aircraft: What if his spooky new submarine-based suppression of enemy air defenses doesn’t work? What if tomorrow’s Super-Tomahawks can’t get a satellite signal to find their targets? You need a highly trained naval aviator in the cockpit of an airplane willing to ride the highway to the danger zone..."

Apparently the Navy likes boats more than planes.

Interesting, Admiral Greenert is from a submarine background. I wonder if his views may be a little different if he was a naval aviator.

... Perhaps the admiral thinks: 1) with smart purchases in long-range weapons and a good EA-18, F-18, UCAV mix, the Navy will be just fine until 2030. 2) In the 2030s, a better aircraft than the F-35 can be produced and purchased for use until 2060.

I'm not saying that WHAT the admiral wants. ...

No, you're clearly NOT saying what the Admiral wants. As Spazsinbad's 3:51am post in http://www.f-16.net/f-16_forum_viewtopic-t-19509-start-45.html points out, the Admiral's staff clarified that the reason he didn't directly state that the F-35C was a bad deal in the article is that he doesn't think it is. http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/07/03/the-navys-advanced-weapons-shopping-list/

His Proceedings article was about what to do next, AFTER the F-35C, at a point long in the future when stealth really is a matter of diminishing returns. Right now, the F-35C is the right weapon, already a little late. We need it now, not after a decade or two to develop something better. Right now, development of a new plane would only wind up with the F-35, except ready for use by 2030 instead of before 2020, and costing as much to develop as the F-35. However, we've already spent the F-35's development cost and, and we nearly have the F-35, neither of which are true for the new plane. If on the other hand we start in 2030, we will have a plane much better than the F-35C by 2040 at the earliest, more likely 2050, and it will have to serve until 2090 or 2100.