F-35. Worst investment ever?

[Jimmy McGill]

I'm not taking a stance yet. But an 82 million dollar jet crashed in Alaska.

Given the amount of money put into the program....its not quite the boondoggle that the Osprey was.....but it is trying hard.

 

[Moral]

The internet

 

[mnole03]

Designing three different variants was the boondoggle.

The F-35 program could have been a cost effective way to meet volume requirements. They tried to do too much. We spent way more than expected for an unreliable fleet. The fact that we’re still using F-22s for so many intercepts is pretty telling.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

The internet

thanks Al Gore...

 

[onlyTheObvious]

Doesn’t Musk want to kill it off?

Drones are the future.

 

[billanole]

I'm not taking a stance yet. But an 82 million dollar jet crashed in Alaska.

Given the amount of money put into the program....its not quite the boondoggle that the Osprey was.....but it is trying hard.

I have seen the Osprey practicing water landings/takeoffs while driving the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It is quite a spectacle.
I would hate to see the number of airmen killed in those things while on routine flights/training missions.
Cool idea, but not a good implantation.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

Doesn’t Musk want to kill it off?

Drones are the future.

Cheaper and less need to worry about casualties to our forces.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

I have seen the Osprey practicing water landings/takeoffs while driving the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It is quite a spectacle.
I would hate to see the number of airmen killed in those things while on routine flights/training missions.
Cool idea, but not a good implantation.

Didn't really seem like the figured out the science / liability ratio. We have lost a lot of marines due to it.

 

[mnole03]

Cheaper and less need to worry about casualties to our forces.

Control signal jamming is still a real issue.

 

[WadeLookingbill]

At least the program has resulted in a lot of good paying jobs supporting various communities. But no, not a great investment.

 

[OutbackBowl2017]

Cheaper and less need to worry about casualties to our forces.

 

[mnole03]

Didn't really seem like the figured out the science / liability ratio. We have lost a lot of marines due to it.

The vertical takeoff thing was pushed by the Marines just like the F-35 variant. It never made sense.

 

[seminole97]

Designing three different variants was the boondoggle.

The F-35 program could have been a cost effective way to meet volume requirements. They tried to do too much. We spent way more than expected for an unreliable fleet. The fact that we’re still using F-22s for a lot of intercepts is pretty telling.

It is really amazing they made the F-111 error again

 

[Jimmy McGill]

At least the program has resulted in a lot of good paying jobs supporting various communities. But no, not a great investment.

The problem with every Congressional district that has military industrial complex ties.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

The vertical takeoff thing was pushed by the Marines just like the F-35 variant. It never made sense.

Yeah, how did that get signed off by engineers? Out of my lane. My BIL worked in both the AF and Rockwell Collins. I've never asked him about the science behind it.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

I'm not taking a stance yet. But an 82 million dollar jet crashed in Alaska.

Given the amount of money put into the program....its not quite the boondoggle that the Osprey was.....but it is trying hard.

Costs way too much but it’s a very capable platform. Never was a fan but the kinks are getting worked out and it’s probably the best multi-role fighter at the moment.

 

[SA_Hawk]

Saw an article about an F-35 pilot having the ability through a data link controlling multiple drones onto targets.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

Costs way too much but it’s a very capable platform. Never was a fan but the kinks are getting worked out and it’s probably the best multi-role fighter at the moment.

I'm sure you are right. Just costs to performance ratio is questionable.

 

[TennNole17]

It’s no X wing fighter

 

[Jerome Silberman]

I think it absolutely will be. Gen 5 fighters sure seem be in a similar place that battle ships were going into ww2.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

I'm sure you are right. Just costs to performance ratio is questionable.

There’s a reason Germany and a couple other countries jumped into the F-35 program the last couple years. With all its faults it’s still top of the line

 

[Tiny Hands Trump]

It took longer than it should have and cost more than we thought. But it is damn good and you can tell that by the sales to allied countries.

Plus it was subject to a lot of bullshit attacks early on, with a chunk of it driven by the dipshits over in Russia.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

It’s no X wing fighter

Or Millennium Falcon

 

[TennNole17]

Or Millennium Falcon

The Falcon never made sense to me as a vehicle that could fly.

As I typed that and looked at the X wing…my childhood is a lie

 

[mnole03]

Costs way too much but it’s a very capable platform. Never was a fan but the kinks are getting worked out and it’s probably the best multi-role fighter at the moment.

The service costs are way too high. It also doesn’t like salt water. Navy had to reduce flight time by 45% to meet their affordability targets.

 

[seminole97]

Costs way too much but it’s a very capable platform. Never was a fan but the kinks are getting worked out and it’s probably the best multi-role fighter at the moment.

One of the greatest abilities is availibility, and that's where it really falls on its face.
It's one thing to eat the expense of an amazing plane, another thing to eat that expense when almost half of them aren't mission capable.
We're buying fewer because they're so expensive, but fewer of them work, and they carry less freight.
It HAS to be augmented with drones so can keep delivering firepower the way we're used to when/if we need to.

 

[DogBoyRy]

I'm not taking a stance yet. But an 82 million dollar jet crashed in Alaska.

Given the amount of money put into the program....its not quite the boondoggle that the Osprey was.....but it is trying hard.

Not good but when i think waste i first think of Ca high speed rail and solyndra.

 

[mnole03]

There’s a reason Germany and a couple other countries jumped into the F-35 program the last couple years. With all its faults it’s still top of the line

The F-35A is fine, especially with the upgraded engine. Unfortunately sustainment costs are spread across the entire program and are now expected to approach $2 trillion.

 

[Jimmy McGill]

The F-35A is fine, especially with the upgraded engine. Unfortunately sustainment costs are spread across the entire program and are now expected to approach $2 trillion.

That is insane amount of money. Scrap it.

 

[binsfeldcyhawk2]

The F-35A is fine, especially with the upgraded engine. Unfortunately sustainment costs are spread across the entire program and are now expected to approach $2 trillion.

I didn’t say it was very cost effective 😂

As a retired Mx guy I have some serious issues with the aircraft on that front. Have a couple good friends working at the F-35 school house on Eglin and they have stories…

But we’re basically stuck with it…at the end of the day it can still kick some ass.

 

[alaskanseminole]

F-35. Worst investment ever?​

Had you not listed the Osprey, you were getting this gif:

 

[mnole03]

I didn’t say it was very cost effective 😂

As a retired Mx guy I have some serious issues with the aircraft on that front. Have a couple good friends working at the F-35 school house on Eglin and they have stories…

But we’re basically stuck with it…at the end of the day it can still kick some ass.

Yeah, we’re way past the point of no return.

 

[goldmom]

The problem with every Congressional district that has military industrial complex ties.

100% this.

 

[SA_Hawk]

The IDF seems to have the F-35 working nicely.

 

[SA_Hawk]

Didn't realize until I saw one up close at an airshow last summer that it's smaller than an F-16.

 

[southlakehawk]

I listened to Matt Gaetz talk to Bill Mahrer on Mahrer's podcast and he said the f 35 fails like 30% of the time. I always thought Gaetz was a frat boy schmuck, but after this interview, I like him a little more. Still has issues, but not as schmucky as I thought.

 

[seminole97]

The IDF seems to have the F-35 working nicely.

Because we swamped them with spare parts.

Israel's F-35I Combat Experience Is Providing Lessons For Future Pacific Fight

Israel's ability to keep the vast majority of its F-35s flying during high-tempo operations against Hamas is opening eyes in the Pentagon.

www.twz.com

One reason for the IAF’s success with the Adirs is that the U.S. government has surged spare parts and other support capacity to Israel, U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), Chairman of the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee, said in his opening remarks.

...

Both Schmidt and LaPlante said lessons learned by these high-tempo Israeli F-35 operations will be especially important in preparing for a fight in the Pacific, where the ability to sustain the notoriously support-intensive F-35s in a vast and contested theater will be a major challenge. The ‘just-in-time’ logistics strategy and the cloud computing hub that is the foundation for F-35 logistics are of especially high concern. While those systems may be adequate for peacetime operations — and even that is highly debatable — during a time of conflict, relying on them could leave F-35s stranded on the ground.

Those lessons are in addition to the Pentagon’s own review of its long-distance F-35 logistics operations.

“We’ve been doing sustainment tabletop exercises, assuming a contested environment, particularly one in the Indo-Pacific and we’re learning a lot,” said LaPlante.

During a panel discussion at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference, and exhibition in April, Schmidt raised his specific concerns about the just-in-time concept in a contested environment. From our story at the time:

“This program was set up to be very efficient… [a] just-in-time kind of supply chain. I’m not sure that that works always in a contested environment,” Lt. Gen. Schmidt said. “And when you get a just-in-time mentality, which I think is it’s kind of a business model in the commercial industry that works very well in terms of keeping costs down and those kinds of things, it introduces a lot of risk operationally.”

“The biggest risk is that F-35 units have little in terms of spare parts on the shelf to keep their aircraft flying for any sustained amount of time.“

In an October interview with The War Zone editor-in-chief Tyler Rogoway, Scott “Intake” Kartvedt, the first commanding officer of a Navy F-35 squadron, explained some of the challenges of such far-flung logistics:

“I’m not sure how much better it got, but I can tell you the challenges that we faced back, logistically specifically, it was designed to be maintenance on demand, essentially. So the aircraft could relay a message to the supply warehouse and say, this part is getting ready to fail. And then Lockheed could send that part out to the base and it could be replaced, rather than having to have large warehouses full of supply parts, not knowing which was gonna fail and what you might need. You take that into the maritime service and the challenge, Tyler, is that you can’t logistically operate that way because we could have a ship, in this case, off the coast of Taiwan that needs a part, and Lockheed Martin can guarantee its arrival into Okinawa. But now there is no FedEx, UPS, DHL that’s gonna get it out to the aircraft carrier. So it stops and now you have a delay and it has to go get picked up and the aircraft might be down. I don’t know if they have resolved that challenge…”

 

[Chewback]

The vertical takeoff thing was pushed by the Marines just like the F-35 variant. It never made sense.

Yeah, VTOL always sounds like a good idea but never seems to work out.

 

[southlakehawk]

100% this.

Lockheed in Fort Worth is on line 1 for you goldmom...My cousin used to be an engineer here :-(

 

[DropitlikeitsHawk]

6th gen will be here soon.