Highway landing and take-off on its own is useless. F35 requires extensive machinery to maintain, in needs proper airport and hangars. It is not possible to operate it somewhere from forest! And vertical landing/takeoff can not support any load, it can not even be fully fuelled!
In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to refuel and restock ammunition.
Our new F35 will only be able to operate from a single runway in entire country!
It's vertical landing, not vertical take off. It's still a short rolling take off. I actually wouldn't be suprised to find they do a short rolling landing too (rather than go full hover, use the lift fan to allow them to land at lower than normal stall speed would be). They've tested the rolling landing on board the HMS QE
And yes, for full maintenance, you do need need a proper airport and hangars. But for a quick refuel/arm and launch, you don't need that much. It's a trade off in capabilities: do you want to have a highway strip launch capability, or do you want something that is much less likely to get shot down. It's doubtful that the F-35 will only be able to operate at a single runway, unless your country only has one runway. It should be capable of operating off nearly any concrete runway you have (highways are typically not constructed to the same standards as a runway).
Here’s a video showing STOVL(Short Takeoff and Vertical Landing): https://youtu.be/hO5mZxaiyUQ. The distance it needs to take off is incredibly short, should work on any short straight road with enough clearance on both sides. It does need to come slow crawl engage STOVL landing.
For some context, that F-35B took off with only 600ft of runway. A Cessna 172 can take off with as little as 800ft meaning you really don't need much for the F-35B. You can find this airstrip on Google maps when searching Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, it's the one out in the desert. It looks to be abandoned now but the runway markings in the video are still visible.
From what I know, we only have single military airport capable of supporting F-35. Fully loaded F35 needs 2.5 km of high quality concrete. It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle!
There are also civilian airports, but we would propably run out of those very soon. And using civilian infrastructure for military purposes (like bombing foreign country) would not be politically very digestible!
>It also needs extensive overhaul after every flight to maintain stealth coating. There is no "quick refual/arm" with stealth, it is more like operating Space Shuttle!
I don't know where you heard that but it's completely untrue. Some older radar absorbent material required intensive maintenance but the F-35 is not like that. It's not that much more difficult to maintain than a previous generation fighter. It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight.
Difficult, no. But it does require different and new support mechanisms for long term use (eg not a temporary site). A lot of the controversy in Canada with our F-35 purchase is that we're going to have to completely overhaul our military airports with new maintenance and storage hangars, though honestly we didn't keep them as up to date as we should have.
Right now that is not verifiable. It is a clasiffied information, only supported by claims from manufacturer. And maintaince cost is already dispuded at court in Switzerland.
>It would be completely impractical to operate if you needed to completely overhaul it every flight.
And? Maybe it is every 2nd or 10th flight, that does not make it much more practical. Cost for operating F35 is astronomical. Old Soviet airplanes we had could take of from grassy fields!
And their circle of hit probability with preprogrammed missiles is misured in hundreds meters instead of a handful. The war for which they were built never materialised, and their performances now largely obsolete.
And who's going to sell you replacement parts anyway if your principal adversary is also your plane supplier? You want suppliers that don't threaten to nuke you every other week.
- right now we have fighters from Sweden (not Soviet design obviously)
- Soviet planes came with technical plans, we would be probably capable to fix them by our selves to huge extend. Ukraine maintained their Soviet planes for 10 years during war. Also we manufactured some airplanes ourself, and even today Czechia produces fighter jets.
- Many countries produces Soviet derived planes and spare parts. Ukraine, India, China.. Half of world operates those, and there is a huge market.
- For Slovakia (and other NATO countries) that operate Migs, Russia was actually supplying spare until very recently. They sabotaged spare parts AFTER it was announced that Migs were going to be send to Ukraine, which was against the support contract.
At least you guys have a backup. If the Eurofighter gets grounded Austria has no airforce, because we retired the Saab 105 without buying L39s or Grippens as replacement.
S300 is only good against old jets, not against modern stealth jets such as the F-35. Modern western SAM systems such as PATRIOT and NASAMS are obviously much more capable.
> Jet fighters for air superiority are obsolete.
No they aren't. Why do you think Ukraine is asking for F-16s. You can deny air superiority to the enemies with good air defense, but not establish it for yourself.
Nobody in Ukraine would agree with this. For keeping Russian fighters out of your airspace, sure, ground based air defense is great. For taking your territory back, it cannot substitute for jet fighters.
It's high but considering the expected number of flight hours the airframe can take, it's on par or not significantly worse than others.
For example the Eurofighter is a $120 million plane with an airframe lifespan of 6,000 flight hours, whereas the F-35 is an $85 million plane with an airframe lifespan of 8,000 hours. Even with higher maintenance costs the tradeoff is still pretty favorable.
Compare that to the Gripen E which is cheap to operate, but still costs $85 million, isn't stealth, and is less capable in many respects.
Different stealth airplanes. Some documentaries that celebrate Raptor and F35 as technical marvel (highly complex). I have not really observed any maintenance difference or break throughout between F22 and F35.
And nobody really provided any solid numbers. If numbers are good, it would be easy to prove.
There is a lawsuit going in Switzerland. Swiss do not believe official maintenance cost.
Other countries (Japan and South Korea) have stealth program that has similar issues. Some disagreements with F35. South Korea fighter should cost 30% of F35 maintenance. But that goes into spare parts and features, not coating...
And frankly Russian program ran into a lot of troubles and cost overruns with stealth fighters. I believe Russians have better science and technical knowledge to deliver such airplane cheaply (without software integration). And they did not made any breakthrough that would magically reduce maintenance costs.
So you don't have any evidence (solid or otherwise) that backs up your claim about the F-35 requiring a "complete overhaul" after each flight. Do we even know where the maintenance costs go to?
I also fail to see how the Russians are in a better position to build a stealth plane (cheaply or otherwise) when historically they've always been behind the US in that regard.
Anyway, opinions aside, big claims should be backed up with evidence and I'm not seeing anything that supports the idea that the F-35 needs that level of maintenance.
I wrote "extensive overhaul". I guess better wording would be "extensive inspection and coating overhaul". Far from "quick refuel/arm and launch" original post wrote.
F-35 has internal bomb bays, and those have to be opened and closed to add bombs. Those have to be resealed to maintain stealth. It has polymer based coating, how that stuff survives transsonic speeds with friction and heat?
F-22 maintenance cost was quoted at $72000 per flight hour (10 years ago). Stealth used as main cause. Is F-35 somehow different or cheaper?
Russians do not have cost overruns and technical feature creep, the way US does. Go ask on military forums. Problem are finances, not science.
Anyway, I do not believe claim that F-35 needs extensive and expensive maitenance is somehow extraordinary. "Overhaul" of stealth coat cold be some spray on stuff and inspection.
F-35 has a long track of cost overruns and proper maintenance cost is yet unknown.
While attempting to quote your post, I ended up quoting your quote of another comment, hence the "complete overhaul", not "extensive overhaul". My bad.
You're doing a lot of guesswork to reach your conclusions. You have no idea which parts of the F-22 are more fragile and require frequent changes or if the F-35 uses the same materials as the F-22. You're assuming that flaws from the F-22 haven't been fixed for the F-35. We have no idea if there's a problem with the F-35's internal bays, but you assume they need fixing before flying again. And to use your example, I'm not sure if spraying some foam can be consider "extensive overhaul".
You have conjecture, but no evidence, which is a problem as we can reach many conclusions that way. The maintenance costs for example... where you see evidence of a flawed plane, someone else sees evidence of corruption. Everyone's guessing and guessing isn't enough to change my mind.
Regarding Russia's capabilities, historically every country has been better at certain things. The Soviet Union created good SAMs and radars, but they've never been known for having the best computer chips or best stealth. It has nothing to do with feature creep, it's just that some are better than others at some things.
Military forums do a lot of guessing and assuming, which can make it a good echo chamber. Even people in the military have no idea what's being worked on at Skunk Works or the Chinese or Russian equivalent.
For this reason, the aircraft exterior coating, panels, seams, are inspected after each flight, to look for anything that might affect the jet's stealthiness, identifying any damage or scratches. Removing sand particles and dirt that settle on the aircraft surfaces and may turn into abrasions of the coating.
So you have to inspect the plane to make sure that stealth isn't compromised. How long does an inspection take? How often do they have to fix scratches?
The only long maintenance mentioned there is the washing of the plane every 3 months. It takes them 2 days by hand (even though some do it with a machine?) and this is mostly to maintain stealth.
Maybe I have a different definition of what "extensive" means, but this doesn't sound like "extensive overhaul after every flight".
I'll leave the discussion after this comment. We're just guessing here and going nowhere.
There's no phenomenon that causes the F-35 to magically lose its stealth coating at the end of exactly one flight. You can obviously delay maintenance for a few flights just fine.
I'm not so sure, the US at one point did talk about how if the F35 wasn't kept in climate controlled hangars then its stealth abilities would be negated rapidly.
I'm absolutely not, because I remember the argument was part of 'factor in the cost of improving hangars to be climate controlled when considering the purchase cost of the F35 from the US', in particular, I think it was when the canadian purchase of the F35 was being discussed.
Since the F22 and B2 are not exported at all, not even to canada, it cannot possibly have been a factor in purchasing either of those.
A Boeing 787 needs 2.8km of high-quality concrete for a runway. A F-35 is known to have low maintenance stealth coatings, so you don't need extensive overhaul every flight. If you're fighting other countries from Czechia, the most likely countries to fight are either Russia, or it's minion Belarus. In which case you're probably not worrying about the politics of using civilian infrastructure.
Or Hungary, it has far right government sympathetic to Russia. And they may get kicked out of EU any time soon. Also Slovakia and Poland are wobling... And Ukraine might get conquered by Russians.
35 years ago we would fight Germany. F-35 are supposed to last until 2050!
There is zero chance that Russia will be able to conquer the rest of Ukraine. Russia might be able to retain the currently occupied areas but their capability to conduct major new offensive operations is essentially gone and will take years to rebuild.
Do you expect Serbia to be able to conduct air strikes against Czechia? Last I looked at the map, there's at least two other countries in the way, at least one of which is a NATO member.
Last time Serbia attempted to commit literal genocide, for the second time in less than a decade, for NATO to get involved. Do you think they'll start mass murders again?
What I know is that serbians who were assigned to northern Kosovo do not recognize the authority of Prishtina. This is still a major issue between Serbia and Kosovo and it is a regular reason for increased tension between the two. More than anything else, the perspective for EU membership keeps the tensions down, but do not expect that Serbia will disregard the problem just because.
Yes, there are border tensions, I'm well aware. Stupid things like car registration numbers. But thankfully, it's nowhere near actual mass murders of civilians, so I don't see any reason for NATO getting involved.
Think about it this way, if the F35 needed an extensive overhaul after each flight, there's no way it'd be suitable for the harsh environment of carrier operations.
That's what people were complaining about in Poland in 00s when we bought F-16 in addition to our MiG-29.
That the airplanes will be hard to maintain, aren't as rugged, can't handle street landing and improvised conditions. There was a huge scandal because one of the F-16 was flown from USA to Poland and did emergency landing on the way because of some minor technical issue.
20 years later and we lost two MiG-29 to bad maintenance and no F-16.
No idea where Poland got that idea about F-16s as they have a reputation for being a reliable and robust fighter even before Poland purchased the planes, unlike the MiG-29 which is a maintenance queen (particularly the engines) and has a reputation for being a mediocre plane whose career mainly consists of being shot of out of the sky.
One of the coolest things about the Gripen is the support infra. Even while in the fancy hangers, all support equipment is in 20 foot containers. This makes it very mobile when the fancy runway gets a few holes put into it. Also, only one professional soldier and a few conscripts can service the jet, all while standing on the ground, with mostly automotive style tools.
The efficiency of turnaround is something that is incomparable to all other fast jet systems of which I am aware.
The most informed analyst on this matter appears to be Justin Bronk [0]
If I was an F-35 buyer, I would also buy some more Gripen-C if at all possible. That should be the "High/Low" mix in 2023 and beyond.
If I was king of "The West," I would have had sent all available Gripens to Ukraine months ago.
Those motorway strips were all over the place in Geany during the Cold War. Most, if not all, got built back since. The idea of operating modern milizary aircraft from ad-hoc and improbvised airfields is nothing new. Easier to do with s/vtols so, added bonus for aircraft being carrier rated.
In Czechia we are replacing Gripens that can operate from almost anywhere. It only needs a few hundred meters of road, and single truck to refuel and restock ammunition.
Our new F35 will only be able to operate from a single runway in entire country!