Forum: General F-35 Forum

I'm doing two speeches for my Comm 101 class on the F-35. One is a unbiased Pro-Con the second one is Picking a side to argue (Pro in my case). I was brain storming and came up with what I think may possibly be a valid argument. I wanted to get your guy's take on it. I'll say I know less at this point about the -35 than I do other aircraft and programs but I am researching everything that I can.

In the latest CA they said that the F-35 is expected to remain in service for something like 50 years. The point I was going to make is that when the current 4th gen aircraft the -35 is slated to replace they were intended to be around for a few decades (say 20-30 years) before they were to be replaced. The F-35 is being developed to remain relevant for at least the next 50 years. As such it is being developed to not only counter fielded threats but ones that are on the horizon. I'm sure they are designing a degree of "update-ability" allowing for further refinements reacting to things we haven't even thought of yet.

As a result of all this first and foremost the program looses some importance because current aircraft can accomplish those missions just fine right now. In other words we don't "need" the -35 right now. Secondly, could the fact that current aircraft designed to remain relevant for 20-30 years have skewed the mentality so that we are not taking into account that we are looking further ahead now than we ever had. Spending more and more money on combating things that are not even fielded yet. My thought is that when you consider how far in the future we are looking and inflation compared to the 60's and 70's we really aren't too bad off. Thanks for the help!

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Fail - I mean Unwin - the first thing you need to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. By which I mean you need to separate the political hyperbole from the practical, and projections for 50 years (!) from the historical record.

Technologies change, and when they're new technologies they can change very rapidly. From the time of WWI until the 1950's, aircraft were being improved significantly every few years. So unless we were at war, aircraft were purchased in fairly small lots and replaced in 10 years with better technology (with a few exceptions).

However, with each generation, aircraft complexity increased. Avionics became more powerful, engines delivered more thrust but ran at higher temperatures and pressures, all of which added time cos for R&D, engineering, testing, manufacturing development, training and maintenance. Each generation was taking longer to field and costing much more.

These much higher costs led to countries requiring aircraft to stay in service longer, because they simply could not afford to replace them as often. Instead, existing aircraft are evolved, slowly, in production blocks, with small affordable improvements made at each block as the technologies evolve. I believe the F-16 is currently in block 60 or so. As a result, the F-16 can be said to have been in service for approximately 30 years and counting.

I expect the F-35 to see a similar service life. The 50 year numbers you hear are politics. People who want to see the program killed (so they can spend the money on their pet projects) ginned up the highest cost figures they could imagine in order to scare the public, so they came up with a 50 cost-to-own for the F-35. You'll never the 50 year cost-to-own for the alternatives, because they're estimated to be even larger. More importantly, the alternatives are becoming obsolete.

We don't buy aircraft to be "good enough" or even worse, "almost good enough", because that's a prescription for defeat in battle. One of the primary reason tens of thousands of Americans and their allies aren't killed in battle or lose their territories to tyrants and megalomaniacs is because the quality of our weapons, especially aircraft. When we have air superiority - not parity, or almost parity - then enemy planes aren't flying over us and killing us and dropping weapons on us. It's that simple. It's a 3-D battle space, and if you cede air superiority to your enemy you will very likely lose your freedom, your life, your home. Look around the world at how many people live and are slaughtered under a never ending stream of tyrants. They didn't have superior weapons and the will to use them.

I would avoid the F-35 topic. There's too much politics and media bias involved. I would recommend picking a topic that is rich in sources (qualitative/quantitative), both .gov and .edu types.

Pick a topic that no one in your class knows any thing about, that way they have take everything you say on athority and can't rebut your arguments.

Try this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkXzYL8EWic&feature=relmfu

What's the grading criteria?

Here is the thing...and this happens with almost EVERY new program whether it be aircraft, ships, armored vehicles, etc...

There is always a group that thinks its a waste of time and money. They will constantly 'prove' their point by pointing out rising costs, manufacturing problems, flight test problems, and the fact that our other 'wonder weapons' have not even seen combat yet.

Then there is the group that acknowledges that this fancy new toy with bells and whistles costs a lot, but understand that you have to pay for function and new tech. They also view the found problems in manufacturing and flight test as expected obstacles and are glad they were found (that's supposed to happen). This group is also glad that we don't have an enemy brave enough to send up fighters against these 'untested' wonder weapons, for the simple fact that THEY believe that our wonder weapons DO work.

As I said, two groups. Bottom line is, if you were on the battlefield, would you rather have the weapon and not need it...or need it...and not have it?

Since it's Com 101 and you are debating with other students and not a expert, stay away from complex arguments. Try not to get too deep into the weeds of facts and figures because those will just change your debate into noise. Find strong reason based arguments for what you are doing and go with that since it's unlikely that anyone in the class is even able to point out what the F-35 looks like.

So remember your audience's education level on this subject. I suspect you will be graded based on your research and ability to argue your point. Reason based arguments are something anyone can understand, unlike statistic based arguments where you start to lose your audience and even have many people that will not understand the numbers or don't trust them. Also, numbers based arguments are easy to argue against because all you need is a counter statistic or some figure in your resources that are not positive.

An example, I would make 3 points:

1. We must keep a strong air force.
2. We must replace older aircraft as they wear out to be able to keep an air force.
3. To keep a strong air force you need to invest in new tech on every new generation of aircraft.

I would tie the F-35 into that and use logic / reason to show that it fits the needs of all 3 points. Then you flesh-out counter arguments that you would get from the prof. or the other students. Again I would keep it as free from statistics as I could, only statistics I would use is the age of the aircraft that it is replacing and their expected useful life since they lay the basis of your argument and are not easy to dispute.

If anyone makes the case that it is expensive, I would brush aside the argument with non-statistic based appeal of some sort that yes any aircraft program is expensive, there may be issues in this one that can be fixed to cause it to be cheaper but this is what we have now and starting over would not only throw away what was already spent, but also cause us to spend the same amount of money again on a new program.

Forum: General F-35 Forum

Need help for a Class - Comm 101