1713

No, no, no, if we had not spent that money on warporn, the commies would have invaded and made us give up our Chevrolets for Ladas. Trust me, I saw it in a movie.

1714

The F-35 is the only reason we were able to defeat the Chinese in Maine.

1715

And don’t forget asking that plane to also make tradeoffs at being a good plane so that it can have stealth and so that it can support a variant that does STOVL.

1716

It wasn’t capable of carrier takeoffs and landings, which means it couldn’t replace the super hornets.

1717

Unless I was misreading, I think the point was that we had a single-role air superiority fighter that did one thing and did it very well. We barely built any.

1718

Reverting to gender-based scoring and reducing the minimum standard for combat arms will also hurt the women in those branches. Under a gender-based system, women in combat arms have to fight every day to dispel the notion that their presence inherently weakens these previously all-male units. Lower female standards also reinforce the belief that women cannot perform the same job as men, therefore making it difficult for women to earn the trust and confidence of their teammates. The original ACFT promised some respite from these perceptions, but a reversion to gender-based scoring threatens to validate them. While it may be difficult for a 120-pound woman to lift or drag 250 pounds, the Army cannot artificially absolve women of that responsibility; it may still exist on the battlefield. The entire purpose of creating a gender-neutral test was to acknowledge the reality that each job has objective physical standards to which all soldiers should be held, regardless of gender. The intent was not to ensure that women and men will have an equal likelihood of meeting those standards. Rather, it is incumbent upon women who volunteer for the combat arms profession to ensure they are fully capable and qualified for it. To not require women to meet equal standards in combat arms will not only undermine their credibility, but also place those women, their teammates, and the mission at risk.

Capt. Kristen M. Griest was one of the first two women to graduate from Ranger School and she became the Army’s first female infantry officer in 2016. She is currently serving on active duty at the Army Talent Management Task Force in Washington, DC.

1719

Sure, but then we made the carrier plane replace the F-22, which we barely got any of, because reasons.

This was my point yes.

1720

What aircraft are you talking about here?

1721

F-35. I get there are variants, but it’s like giving the Air Force a F-18 variant.

They don’t need F-18s. They had that role covered, so the F-18 was made to the specs required by the Navy. And it all worked out fine. Great even. But now it’s a one-size-fits-all scenario because every service wants a piece of the pie (in my opinion) and everyone wants the money.

1722

What would be the ultimate problem of such a thing, if the variant achieved their operational requirements?

1723

Wasted money?

And presumably it doesn’t meet their operation requirements because we never gave the Air Force F-18s at the end of the day.

Landing on a carrier, costs a plane in it’s “budget” of shit it can do, to gamify it. Those are wasted “points” on land-based aircraft. If you have a limited budget or something, maybe you do it anyway, but we assuredly don’t have that problem in the US.

And we can see the (in my opinion) natural result: Almost $2 trillion spent on a plane that is now considered a failure.

1724

Having a single airframe the supports both branches of the military wouldn’t waste money, it’d save oney.

No, in the case of the F/A 18, I don’t believe it could have been retrofitted after the fact to meet the airforce’s operational requirements, and when it was designed, it was specifically designed only for the Navy to replace the F-14.

Well, only one variant of the F35 is capable of carrier landings.

1725

Right, but there’s a fixed development cost alongside the per unit cost. This fixed cost increases dramatically as you pack stealth and advanced electronics into the jet. So developing one very-high-fixed cost multirole jet could make sense over trying to develop a bunch of different single role jets.

The whole point of the project as I saw it was to make stealth much more prevalent in the US fighter fleet (and also get stealth capability to key allies). It wasnt felt practical to do this with a bunch of separate planes. I guess whether this was a good call depends on whether the F35 is actually good or not, which will boil down to the true value of stealth against a near-peer adversary.

1726

Right up until it can’t do anything for anyone, sure.

It’s feature creep. And it failed. But we didn’t need to do it because we already spent the money on F-22’s. Which we then didn’t buy many of, wasting even more money.

It’s chasing after the Jones’ only the Jones’ are just other branches of the military.

The F-22 is also a stealth plane. And a better air superiority plane (since that was it’s mission).

Actually it’s a better stealth plane than the F-35 as I understand it.

1727

But it has less strike capability, doesnt have a carrier variant, can’t be sold overseas, and costs more per unit.

Now I’ll give you that the idea of creating a STOVL variant with all the design complications that implies to keep the marines and allies happy does seem dumb. (Although getting Japan to dip their toes back into carrier aviation could be kind of a big deal way outside of the capabilities of the jet itself)

1728

It only costs more per unit because we stopped buying them and moved the money to F-35s.

F-35 is like the most expensive thing ever at this point. The only way to recoup the costs is to make a shitload of them.

We spent like $66 billion on the F-22. And then ordered less than 200 planes (we were supposed to get 648 of them). So the price on them effectively tripled.
So far we’ve spent $400 billion on the F-35 (which, mind you, was supposed to be the cheaper plane).
Said plane basically doesn’t work yet and the services are assuming they aren’t ever getting the things and buying older planes like F-18/F-15s.

The F-35 is basically a sunk cost fallacy money hole of the defense industry made real at this point.
Which of course is how this whole discussion got started: The Air Force basically saying it’s a failure.

1729

Mind you, I’m pretty pro-military spending.

But I saw a long time ago that the F-35 was a boondoggle. The plan to use it to replace basically everything and sell it to everyone never sat right with me and as the years passed, it turned out it was because it was overpromised, overpriced and ultimately didn’t really work.

The idea of replacing F-16s is fine. The idea of replacing basically all planes with one plane was silly and never going to work.

1730

I think this is exactly right. Multi role designs for a single platform has not served the air force well at all. Although, I will give that the F-35 is probably the best disrupter plane (targeting opposing militaries infrastructure) in the world right now, but the B 21 will likely take that role from it. So basically we have a better air superiority fighter in the F 22, a better bomber in the B 21 being developed, and a better close air support in the A 10.

1731

As long as you guys build at least a thousand of them, they have a role, and value.

Panthers have phantastic sensors. Both passive EW and near visible IR. They can network like a boss. That makes a fourship of panthers able to do thjngs no B-21 ever can. Triangulate, do hunter-killer pairings, etc. They also have near fighter performance; a truly great first turn, a powerful engine and a fairly slick airframe. I’m told their AoA performance is pretty sweet too.

I wouldn’t call the -35 a failure so quickly. It only is if only 200 are built. Then it is.

Of course the amount of gold plating and feature creep boggles the mjnd. This thing should have been a factor 25 cheaper than it is. The fighter industry is broken, and it didn’t surprise me at all you needed outside help (saab) to get even a trainer replacement built (the T-7).

1732

Can’t be sold overseas because we decided it was too advanced and we had to keep it all to ourselves. Other countries(Japan was definitely interested) would be interested in purchasing F-22s if we’d allow them.

As far as the STOVL stuff, didn’t the JSF start out as a Marine project to replace the Harrier? So really that replacement should have been its own thing and the Navy/Air Force should have developed a different new plane if needed.

I agree with this. At this point they are good planes that can do things none of our other fighters can. But despite being multi-role they just don’t fit every role in a way that makes sense. Stealth is expensive, it limits the ordinance you can carry, etc. Using the F-35 in any of our current wars seems like absolute overkill. Hell, we could have probably used turboprops over the last 20 years and saved a ton of money.