Forum: General F-35 Forum

Last edited by stereospace on Jul 20, 2012 - 06:56 AM; edited 1 time in total

bjr1028 wrote:

maus92 wrote:

A3D / A-3 Sky Warrior aka "Whale" was probably the heaviest aircraft normally operated, not sure about the wingspan though.

72ft wingspan 76ft long 82,000lbs max takeoff.

Manufacturer Douglas Aircraft Company
First flight 28 October 1952 Exclamation

Retired 27 September 1991 Shocked

Wow! Now that's a service life. Says a lot for the design and aircraft quality.

Gratuitous photos: Very Happy

F-16.net Sponsor

The CVN is only as relevant as the capability on-board -- i.e. the aircraft. The decisions that are being made today have implications for -- at least -- the next 20 years. Big bets being assumed on "SH is good enough," particularly when the Navy itself said the SH was not "first day of the war survivable" in its JSF requirements. And, as others have pointed out, it's no longer about the "first day of the war" -- it may be day sixty (or whatever).

"We'll buy UCLASS...". Dream-on gents. Show us the technical risk assessment for UCLASS launch and recovery CONOPS. What?..it's all good??. No doom and gloom from the naysayers?

[You] can keep repeating the same tired group-think mantra(s), but that is not going to change the reality. Apples to apples, legacy aircraft are going to get the crap spanked out of them by an F-35-equipped force.

stereospace wrote:

redbird87 wrote:

Now. Whether we have money to pay for it or not................is totally irrelevant. We'll just borrow some more, like we always do. What's another 300 or 400 billion when you are 15 trillion in the hole?

I don't think spending on the F-35 is the budget problem RedBird. Take a look through these charts to see where our money is being spent, when it went out of control and what the projections are if we don't make some major changes to our spending patterns:

http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/

(Specifically, see this for a defense versus everything chart: http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/b ... -programs)

(Here's the sequestration plan: http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/b ... ntrol-act)

Note also that INTEREST ALONE on our debt is equal to 3/5 of total defense spending!!

I'm with ya 100% stereospace. Entitlements are out of control. One party is going to use that to continually get re-elected more often that not I'm afraid. Once people are on the pay-roll, it's awfully hard to wean them off. We've reached the tipping point where over half of our citizens are either on entitlements or work in the huge bureaucracies that facilitate them. Unless we do something to REALLY encourage business and commerce here in the US, that trend has zero chance of changing. And changing the current status-quot is the very last thing the current regime wants.

My problems with the F-35 are two-fold. One, the plane does virtually nothing to address the real threats to our way of life (Terrorist/Rouge State WMDs and insolvency).

Two, it has been bungled horribly from a business stand point. It looks like the end product is going to be a very good aircraft, but the repeated cost over-runs and IOC slippages have been totally unacceptable. If Lockheed were doing business with another corporation as the buyer rather than Uncle Sam, this thing would have been cancelled long ago and that other corporation (buyer) would be suing the $hit out of LM for abject breech of contract. Sadly, we have had no one in Washington with foresight and leadership ability necessary to put their foot down. This is big business and in this transaction, you have had a bunch of dis-organized armatures (the federal government) going up against a savvy corporate giant. Who gets fleeced in that match-up?

The Tac Air fleet needs to be recapitalized, but we have gone about it in about the most inefficient and incompetent way imaginable.

quicksilver wrote:

The CVN is only as relevant as the capability on-board -- i.e. the aircraft. The decisions that are being made today have implications for -- at least -- the next 20 years. Big bets being assumed on "SH is good enough," particularly when the Navy itself said the SH was not "first day of the war survivable" in its JSF requirements. And, as others have pointed out, it's no longer about the "first day of the war" -- it may be day sixty (or whatever).

You are dead wrong. The aircraft do not make the CVN relevant. The weapons systems do. An F-18 with a JASSM is a lethal threat to virtually any target in the world. Just as a F-35 with a JASSM would be. First day or day sixty of what war? Let's see, since 12/7/41 to about 6/1/43, when is the last time we've not had an over-freaking whelming advantage in tac air? Yeah, never. And currently no one is even close to threatening that.

Quote:

[You] can keep repeating the same tired group-think mantra(s), but that is not going to change the reality. Apples to apples, legacy aircraft are going to get the crap spanked out of them by an F-35-equipped force.

Unless something drastically changes in the world, if we bought zero new aircraft and only updated the weapons and avionics on the existing fleet, no force in the world could survive in a all out head to head fight against us for the next 20 years. And I mean PAK-50, J-20, SUs, IADS, and all the rest. If we focused all our military assets on such a threat force (presumably the Chinese or the Russians), any offensive capability their air force had would be totally destroyed in detail in a matter of weeks (if not days). Do you have any clue how many stand-off precision weapons our B-1, B-2, B-52, CVNs and Subs could put onto Chinese airfields and C2 in one hour of our choosing? This could be done without a manned US aircraft ever coming within 100 miles of their airspace. Their air force and the ability to sustain it would be in shambles before it ever got off the ground. And what did get off the ground to counter attack would be wiped from the sky. That is the reality, with or without the F-35. And that assumes we would even WANT or NEED to get into a high intensity fight the Chinese or the Russians (which seems ridiculous).

For the record, I'm not advocating not recapitalizing the fleet. I'm just not of this cult-like belief that without the F-35 on carriers, we are somehow going to be doomed to military failure.

stereospace wrote:

...The F-22 is clearly a piece of crap...

The F22 should have been significantly better.
To use local forum slang, YF23 kicks current F22's a$$ in all aspects, including those where the YF22 was supposedly superior by a wide margin, thx to LM's inability to deliver contracted figures.
Similar thing is happening with JSF and making comments about Boeing offering inferior solutions to LM is fallacy, since LM didn't deliver (again) on what they were contracted for, in the first place.

What's the point of all this talk about tech, then?

"You are dead wrong. The aircraft do not make the CVN relevant. The weapons systems do."

Then we don't need to spend $15B on floating, nuclear-powered weapons magazines.

The weapon system obviously includes the aircraft, it's avionics, and the ordnance it delivers, hence the word "system". But saying the CVNs are going to be obsolete in the next twenty years without F-35s is just wrong. With modern weapons, the F-18s and UCAV will do just fine against any foreseeable threats.

Now, they may become obsolete due to the fact that they are a HUGE unstealthy "nuclear-powered weapons magazines" (to use your wording;-). In other words - a huge target. And neither the F-35 or F-18 (both with fairly short legs) do much to mitigate that. But that is another discussion.

sufaviper - I do agree that the next competition should be open, to a degree, however given Lockheed's dominance of the past two fighter contracts, it makes sense for the following condition: namely that Lockheed not a bonus for having built the F-35 / F-22, as doing so means that they'll win the F/A-XX contract by default, thus making them the monopoly buyer. At the same time, the military probably needs a new fighter contract in the next 10 years to replace the remaining F-15C/E.

I would say I'm concerned about two possibilities. First, Lockheed gets an invincible experience bonus (or lobbying bonus) allowing them to win every contract going forward, in spite of the fact that their past performance has been very far from ideal. Second, the USAF, having sunk incredibly amounts of money and time into the F-35 program, sticks with the airframe for the next 20 years, leaving all other manufacturers entirely out of the game, thus handing Lockheed the monopoly by default.

As for the other contracts, its hard with submarines, because electric boat is pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of the US government. With regards to large airframes, I'm all for Lockheed / EADS getting into the game. (Sorry protectionists) Particularly, if Lockheed makes its Speed Agile concept or even better, a blended wing body. One can even see the effect of competition on the tanker contract, with EADS and Boeing bidding quite aggressively to win. That aggressive competition will be lost if we just go single source for fighters.

With regards to the modification. Think of the F-35 with a delta wing as the F-16XL. Granted, the stealth shaping will be very difficult to do, but that is the case for any modification of the F-35's exterior. If they can pair the delta wing with some modification to get rid of the vertical stabilizers, that would be an incredibly idea future upgrade. Engine modifications will probably come with the ADVENT program, if that gets pushed to completion.

I thought the Navy's wing existed because they needed lower landing speeds compared to the air force.

Here is a question: at some point, can other companies bid to build the F-35 in competition with LM?

Doubtful at this point. In retrospect, LM and the government should have concentrated only on the A model, while outsourcing the C model to Boeing (Mac) and Northrop (Grumman), who both have extensive carrier aircraft design and production experience (8 to 9 decades). Since the C model will be for well less than one quarter of the total sell, LM would not have been giving up that much off the profit. They could have concentrated on the big cash prize, the A model, for the USAF and all the allies. Then, once production of both these types was well underway, LM could have put a team together to get the VSTOL B model figured out.

They could still take the same approach with the C model, but greed being greed.......they won't.

redbird87 wrote:

Doubtful at this point. In retrospect, LM and the government should have concentrated only on the A model, while outsourcing the C model to Boeing (Mac) and Northrop (Grumman), who both have extensive carrier aircraft design and production experience (8 to 9 decades). Since the C model will be for well less than one quarter of the total sell, LM would not have been giving up that much off the profit. They could have concentrated on the big cash prize, the A model, for the USAF and all the allies. Then, once production of both these types was well underway, LM could have put a team together to get the VSTOL B model figured out.

They could still take the same approach with the C model, but greed being greed.......they won't.

No, not greed. For one, the government also has to make that decision. For another, the whole point of the program is to maximize commonality between variants so that you can build all of them on the super-high tech production line as well as all the logistical bonuses. You don't get that by having other companies design major chunks of the variants and building them across the country.

The decision to make the three variants concurrently was made before Lockheed even won the competition. The B is particularly sensitive because of the age situation of the marine Harriers and F-18s.

redbird87 wrote:

Doubtful at this point. In retrospect, LM and the government should have concentrated only on the A model, while outsourcing the C model to Boeing (Mac) and Northrop (Grumman), who both have extensive carrier aircraft design and production experience (8 to 9 decades). Since the C model will be for well less than one quarter of the total sell, LM would not have been giving up that much off the profit. They could have concentrated on the big cash prize, the A model, for the USAF and all the allies. Then, once production of both these types was well underway, LM could have put a team together to get the VSTOL B model figured out.

They could still take the same approach with the C model, but greed being greed.......they won't.

Splitting up the development just makes everything more expensive, and actually would have made the A worse/heavier, while possibly putting the B out of reach. The idea would be to use competition to beat down the per unit costs -- competition in development mostly just means duplicated effort. In other words, if the F-35 design was patented, let a generic reach the market when the patent is up.

Outsourcing production to other companies will require setting up separate production lines and bureaucracies to run them.The additional costs involved would not be justifiable.

popcorn wrote:

Outsourcing production to other companies will require setting up separate production lines and bureaucracies to run them.The additional costs involved would not be justifiable.

Right. Any other manufacturer would have to demonstrate that they could produce the same product at a lower price, which would only really be possible if LM was really padding it's numbers. But it would be an answer to the "LM has a monopoly on fighter production" people, even just as a threat.

Quicksilver...

It's even worse than you suggest:

There are currently "Big bets" being placed on old legacy Hornets being "Good enough" for the next 20 years... due to the fact that F-35C procurement has been substantially miscalculated and incapable of being competent and reliable as a replacement system when required.

In the meanwhile, block II+ Super Hornets, which are on track to being further upgraded, and loaded up with the latest long-range stand-off munitions will have to be 'good enough'. Yes.

For example... in FY14 the USN could buy 1 F-18E block II+, plus probably around 20 JASSM-ER, plus 20 AMRAAM-D, for the cost of one 1 F-35C, unarmed.

And don't stop there... aggressively upgrade the Super with various next-gen proposed components and updates. Either that or kick back, crack open a cold one, and retire.

Build floating at-sea barges with decks if you want to operate long-range UCAV in the future. Perhaps rocket boosted and wire arrested?

Why are you comparing a FRP F-18 to a LRIP F-35 being built at 1/5th of it's FRP rate?

Since you're comparing costs, figure in that the F-35C (at FRP) with SDBs, JDAMs, and JSOWs can carry more, go farther, and have a better chance of getting back than your F-18 with JASSM-ERs, all while costing less as a package.

Quote:

And don't stop there... aggressively upgrade the Super with various next-gen proposed components and updates.

I see you adding cost onto your "cheaper" platform. What will that do to it's overall cost compared to an FRP F-35C?

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Navy admiral hints at jettisoning F-35 fighter