F-35 Jet drama and accountability

Norway decided after quite the drama to buy the new F-35 jet. It was a showdown where the Eurofighter withdrew cause they thought it was all decided in advance while the JAS Gripen stayed on with the Swedish hoping for the contract.

The largest contract ever done by our military.

As expected, we did choose the F-35, for reasons that wasn’t all that silly, for example the Swedish problematic neutrality, however…

It is becoming clear that the bill for the F-35 is now growing totally out of proportion, not to mention the cost to maintain these planes.
I vividly remember the Bradley drama in the 80’s , the US army’s attempt to make a swizz army knife version of the AFV. The bill was astronomical and caused quite a stir and a movie :)
Lessons not learned, I figure this is what’s going on the F-35 aswell…

I know this is weapons system XYZ to blow up in the budget, but seriously… when they bought this, I thought as follows… If I was doing this, I’d buy our F-16 some new missiles…because modern aircombat is dull as hell and nothing like HAWX.

And in the not to distant future looms drones that just do everything in the air and better to boot.

I wonder where this will end…

And in the not to distant future looms drones that just do everything in the air and better to boot.

Hey, that Zentradi dude may have popped his own eyeballs from the G’s, but he freaking killed the drone in Macross + before he died.

No way, are you selling us Robotech?`

Then I’m more than OK with the price.

Replace Norway with Canada and you’ve got a year worth of argument here too. It’s an overpriced aircraft that diverts funds from where they could be better used, especially in the Canadian context.

We haven’t decided yet, but the airforce is horny for the F-35 and the Americans are spending money on lobbying politicians in a way, that we’re not used to (inviting politicians to the US to try, to make a better decision… as if a layman learn anything except “Woooohoooo, that was fun!” from flying a fighter jet)

You’re right, Janster, it’s an epic fucking boondoggle that will be obsolete before the next war where it might actually be needed. Drone fighters will (by a decade from now) kick the F-35’s ass so hard it will never be seen again. No wonder they are putting on the hard sell; their window is rapidly closing.

Procurement’s a complete mess right now, the easy money aughts didn’t help either. They’re finally working out the lingering issues with the F-35 and it looks like it will be a fine platform but it will never be what we were promised. They underestimated what it would take and the oversight simply wasn’t there. Maintenance costs will be lower than current generation aircraft so at least you have that.

Do you really need a 5th generation fighter though? I think a good start would be investing in the pilot training pipeline and making sure your current aircraft are fully updated. The Brits are the one exception, their new carriers are built for VTOL aircraft and they just axed the harrier so they don’t have a choice.

Hopefully CJ will chime in, he had a great post several months ago discussing the issues with drones.

We can discuss this in two ways…

First, the incredible money sink this is and will be…and in this economy?
Second is the hardware porn, I worry this isn’t a plane for the future, but more a bygone age…like the battleships of WW2…however our politicians are completely unprepared for this, and our generals are simply put, not coping with new technology…this is however nothing new for the military.
Innovation isn’t their strong suit for an institution based on strict pattern based discipline.

I would love to hear some arguments on drone vs manned warplane.

AIUI there are some concerns that the Naval version of the F-35 no longer has the range it needs. Advances in Chinese anti-ship technology mean that carriers will need to stand off further than the F-35’s strike range.

The F-35 may be too expensive, but at least according to The Register, the Eurofighter is useless.

Yeah, I’m usually an easy sell for modernizing the Canadian military, but I wish we’d pass on the F-35. I’m pretty sure drones will soon give more bang for the buck.

What kills me is the length of the development cycles on modern planes. I think it would have to kill innovation if it basically takes someone’s entire career to see a plane developed. Progress is better if you can do faster iterations and I think drones should allow that.

Well, on a percentage basis, the Eurofighter overran its development budget even more than the F-35 has.

Granted, the F-35 still may catch up, but while America’s procurement system is very broken, cost overruns on modern advanced military platforms are not limited to the US.

If you don’t think there’s a need for your country to have a modern air force, then whether to buy a F-35, Gripen, Rafale, Typhoon, F-15SE or F-16 block 50 is kind of moot, the answer is you don’t buy any of them.

If you ever think you may use your air force for something, then you have an issue where while you may have cheaper options than the F-35, you may have a tradeoff of having to buy more of the cheaper jets, because in a conflict you’d have a higher loss rate than the F-35. For all its faults, the F-35 can still be operated as a significantly stealthier aircraft than anything but the F-22.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the Gripen, Rafale, or F-16. But if you go to war with them you’re going to lose them in greater numbers. I haven’t kept track of where they are with their avionics packages and AESA upgrades versus what the US is offering to export with the F-35, so I can’t speak as to the relative merits there.

Drones have two huge issues:

Communications infrastructure. Does your country want independent systems? That’s a multi-billion Euro investment right there, for local command and control. Needless to say, if you wanted global capability (unlikely), then move the decimal point over one.

Telemetry Denial. If you do put all your eggs in the drone basket, an adversary will concentrate on the weak link: you have to be able to talk to the things or you’re fucked. This means being able to operate in a modern electronic warfare environment and taking into account the vulnerability of having your space assets (see point one) taken out.

So why does Norway particularly need a 5th gen fighter aircraft? Is there some beef with Sweden not being reported in the news?

I can barely see the USAF needing the F-35 (like most people here’ve posted, it’ll be obsolete by the time earlier generation aircraft reach end of service life) but it’s just kind of silly that we’re trying to sell it to everyone else. Maybe we should sell some to Georgia and really start some shooting wars!

They are hoping to recoup the cost of development somewhat, which is why it is being pushed so hard on the export market.

Considering my New Zealand wife, I thought for myself, lets take a look at them and compare, its same size as Norway, and even almost same population…
However apparently they have decommissioned their jet fighter part of their airforce…

Our generals are nervous about Russia as usual, muttering something about Georgia and high intensity stuff…So our politicians have bought a lot of toys for our boys…

Also apparently some US military guy was scolding Europe except for Norway for not buying enough toys…I guess we’re just such a peaceful nation.
I’m going to one day shove the peace prize down Thorbjørn Jagland throat.

New Zealand is an isolated island. A thousand miles of open ocean are a better defense than F35s.

This is huge. It would be seemingly cheap to build massive jammers (moble ground based or airborne) and completely deny an area from drones. Turn on jammers, drones crash, then you turn off jammers and move the jamming platform so the missle retaliation misses.

Funny, that doesn’t seem to work for the US.

Blame Canada.

And New Zealand doesn’t have border disputes over precious energy supplies with one of the world’s great military powers…