This is a horribly unscientific article. It reads mostly like a 'because I say so' hit piece.
"Instead, modern planes in a high-tech war would probably rely on their undetectable, “passive” infrared sensors"
Probably? That's all you've got backing up such a significant claim?
"Remember, the F-35 has one huge and very hot engine. True, Lockheed designed the JSF’s fuel tanks to help sop up some of the extra thermal energy the plane generates. But take a look at the F-35’s engine nozzle. It’s round. ..."
Oh, it's round. Great, now prove your important claim with actual science, field data, etc.
"Even with its radar off, an F-35 could struggle to hide from enemy planes"
Oh, it could? More of the same empty statements, with absolutely nothing backing them up.
"Using these radars, earthbound spotters could point warplanes toward incoming F-35s"
Could? Again, empty.
The article relies on Sprey, who himself is well known for half-cranked attacks on the F35:
>"But take a look at the F-35’s engine nozzle. It’s round. Highly stealthy planes such as America’s B-2 bomber and F-22 fighter both boast flat engine nozzles "
I really doubt the credibility of the author; as if engineers would overlook such a basic factor if it was that crucial.
The round nozzle is a tradeoff for weight. It's a single powerplant aircraft so the IR signature was probably considered satisfactory versus twin rectangular nozzles. The T-50 (prototype aircraft that Russia can't afford to further develop) and the Su-35 he brought up for comparison use two round nozzles, but he somehow neglected to factor that into his comparison.
The rest of the 20 different systems he compares the F-35 to either would bankrupt Russia if they were to ever put them into mass production, or the comparisons themselves isolate one feature of the F-35 against some long-shot (probably exaggerated) capability of such-and-such Russian system. I could say that the F-35 could use its low-observable phased array radar to detect the Su-35 from twice the distance of the latter without triggering the enemy's RWR, fire off an AIM-120 and turn around before the Su-35 detected it. And pretty much every shortcoming for the F-35 (sensors, supercruise, stealth) he brought up is far worse for the F-16, A-10, and AV-8B which the F-35 is intended to replace.
the F-35 could use its low-observable phased array radar to detect the Su-35 from twice the distance of the latter without triggering the enemy's RWR, fire off an AIM-120 and turn around before the Su-35 detected it
Right, when people complain about the F-35, for all its shortcomings, they look at it as though it should be a "faster horse" (it's an apocryphal anecdote but makes a good point) rather than a whole new weapons platform.
The USAF clearly wants something that doesn't engage in close combat, so it's about superior sensors and long range/precision air-to-air and air-to-ground weaponry. I think the biggest shortfall of the F-35 though is its close air support capabilities. The USAF just want to have the target marked by ground forces and for the F-35 to drop small precision munitions on the area, but a big part of CAS is psychological - when you hear that 30mm cannon burp and the A-10's engines loitering in the background, you feel safe while your enemy is terrified. Plus a loitering A-10 is more useful than an F-35 with an ephemeral presence.
Solution: give the Army the ability to provide CAS so they can purchase the A-10's from the USAF. The USAF can play with their fancy spaceships while the Army can have its flying gun.
Well for one thing the armchair airwar blog...er..."experts" keep pretending that with modern, portable anti-aircraft systems the A-10 is a survivable platform long term. Ignore that minor detail and sure it's the answer to all your CAS needs.
> I really doubt the credibility of the author; as if engineers would overlook such a basic factor if it was that crucial.
The problem is that the F-35 had requirements that fundamentally conflict with each other.
It had to have a STOVL configuration, which probably dictated the nozzle design. But it also had to be 'stealthy', so the nozzle design and the wide fuselage needed for the STOVL requirement, negatively affected the stealth requirement. So much so that the stealth rating of the F-35 was downgraded.
It was also supposed to be more maneuverable than the F-16, but the other requirements resulted in aerodynamic performance that was less than what was originally planned. So much so that it lost a mock dogfight against a F-16. Granted that test is not the end of the story but it's not a good sign.
Then there's the fact that the military and Congress inexplicably decided that they'd throw the normal testing and validation phase out the window in favor of 'concurrency' where they're putting the aircraft into production before testing is done. This has the dual downsides of ensuring expensive retrofits when problems are identified but it commits the government even more deeply to a weapons system that may ultimately never perform as billed.
Oh, they didn't overlook it. The mere fact that he assumes that only flat nozzles are stealthy tells me that the author has not done his research.
From my reading of this article, the author accepts the absolute most pessimistic estimates of the F-35 and also accepts the most optimistic estimates and statements of the capabilities of other aircraft and radar systems, without questioning these estimates. For example, take this line:
"Tehran insists its Ghadir radar can spot jets more than 300 miles away."
Now, just because the Qahar 313 is likely fake, that doesn't mean their Ghadir radar can't spot aircraft at 300+ miles. But shouldn't the Qahar fake make a "security analyst" like the author take a closer look at subsequent claims by the same government?
I doubt the engineers would overlook anything like that. It's more like:
Engineer: "We can't get the engine to work with the current airframe design if we use stealthy engine nozzles. It's going to require a significant re-design."
Manager: "Will it work with old style round nozzles? Then use those."
It doesn't have to be a mistake or something overlooked. Consider the possibility that funneling money from the US government to defense contractors is the primary goal, and that the shape of the engine nozzles isn't particularly relevant to this goal.
The JSF C-variant (carrier based) had a hook that didn't work last year...they finally rectified it. When it comes to the F-35, there are a lot of engineering items that have been overlooked that are mindboggling.
Initial trials of the arresting system were conducted in 2011 at Lakehurst. The hook had several deficiencies, in part because a wire dynamics model provided by the government for the team to design against had faulty assumptions. Several components were redesigned and re-tested. During the first sea trials of the system in October 2014, two F-35C aircraft deployed to the USS Nimitz where the trials were highly successful:
"The F-35C test pilots have made approximately 100 traps on the Nimitz, and the three wire was caught so many times that the metal cable had to be replaced. The one wire, the cable furthest aft on the flight deck, hadn't been used at all, Wilson said."
What other engineering items have been overlooked that you believe are mindboggling?
It's not that they overlooked it as such--it's that, at different points in the plane's design, requirements changed. The original powerplant design was probably settled on before the stealth requirements were brought up.
That's not the case at all. The aircraft has always been intended to be stealthy. The X-35 prototypes used F119 engines from the F-22 program (also a stealth aircraft). The F135 engine is a follow-on development with the F119 as a starting point.
Is there any reason the F-35 is receiving this much scrutiny versus other military vehicles? Maybe it's just that it's the information age, or that there are more public people reviewing government action, but there's been a certain fascination with this F-35 that makes me suspicious.
Surely the F-35 isn't the first bad military vehicle the government has/will purchase...
The cost of development and procurement is currently estimated at $323 billion, a number which continues to balloon (the most expensive defense project of all time, if wikipedia is to be believed). That's a thousand dollars per tax payer on average. It is appropriate that such a project should be heavily scrutinized, to shed light on whether we are getting a good multirole fighter out of the deal; it appears that we are not.
Well the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey had a wonderfully controversy plagued development to the point it was even being questioned as to why it was going forward, now it seems pretty much standard to see them.
The Navy has had fun too with the Zumwalt-class destroyer which ended up cancelled after two. They haven't had much luck with submarines either.
Weapons programs are expensive and only more so as they suffer feature creep. We all know how expensive and annoying that is in software development, in the military its just measured in billions.
You can toss NASA into the mix, from the shuttle to many proposed replacements. Government tends to spend big and fail big with a few good things leaking through.
However if you want to get into real government boondoggles simply go look at transportation projects, from light rail to tunnels and finally bridges.
The Navy has had trouble with Seawolf (canceled after 3), Zumwalt (canceled after 2), and LCS (should be canceled). All were basically down the same vein of trying to be a jack of all trades plus major new innovations.
On the other hand the Virginia class submarine is working quite well, and the new fleet of aircraft carriers seems to be OK if you still believe aircraft carriers are useful.
It's the first generation during which we're buying a single plane for all roles. That makes it the most expensive and riskiest plane procurement ever... which is a great reason to have it looked at very carefully.
The F-35 is receiving so much scrutiny because of the exorbitant cost of the program and the very poor product that program produced for the american taxpayer.
Better fighters have been produced in far less time for far less money. I think it's receiving so much attention on HN because it's an example of poor engineering.
Well, the thing is, nobody really needa a Wonderplane like the F-35. Yes, the Marines need a VTOL plane, but they could be developed cheaper, probably on the base of the old AV/8B. A-10 is still fine for CAS. Maybe ask the Israelis in turn about modernization options for "older" planes. Generally, countries that have to make do with "old" hardware have pretty good Ideas.
E.G. the Olifant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_tank#South_Africa
The Sufa
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/f-16i/
> Well, the thing is, nobody really needa a Wonderplane like the F-35.
The do-everything F-35 was actually supposed to be a cost management idea, since the exploding cost of new generation fighter programs was so big, we were just going to do one of them, rather than several for different roles. This would, the theory went, be cheaper in total for development, plus the shared parts would make them cheaper in operation, then separate role-specific airframes.
And, radically expensive and problem-prone as F-35 has been, that still might all be true. It might have been far more expensive, both in development and operational costs, to develop separate airframes for the various roles.
Unfortunately the shared parts ratio is far lower than what was planned. It was supposed to be 80% commonality between variants but it's more like 25%.
Furthermore, because they tried to make the aircraft meet contradictory requirements it has resulted in a plane that doesn't do several things as well as even the aircraft it is replacing, much less newer aircraft on the battlefield. All at an astronomical cost.
At a certain point it just doesn't make sense to pay far more for a weapons system that doesn't do anything well.
The do-everything F-35 was actually supposed to be a cost management idea, since the exploding cost of new generation fighter programs was so big, we were just going to do one of them, rather than several for different roles.
...and if you ever bought that, they've also got a bridge they'd like to sell you. The goal is to spend money. This is just their latest innovation in achieving that goal.
No. but because ALL services bet on the same plane, NOTHING else is developed. Additionally, still formidable planes like the A-10 or F-22 receive flak because the brass wants its wonderplane...
The Pentagon is spending about $11 billion on the F35 for the entire fiscal year (2% of its budget).[1] About ~$30 per tax payer.
$1.5 trillion is the 55 year projection on the total cost of the program over that time frame. Including purchase, operation and upkeep. Or $27 billion per year for everything.
It has cost roughly $100 billion so far over 20 years.
Not "so far". That's the projected total lifetime cost of the entire program. That includes everything -- paying all the engineering and development costs, all the testing, all the airplanes, all the logistics and spare parts and support -- over 50 years.
The F-35 program has been overrun with delays and cost increases, making it the most expensive military system ever to be developed (One frequently-quoted number gives a program cost of 1.4 trillion USD). This makes many suspicious that the program has been heavily mismanaged, and this sort of post only furthers that impression.
The reason it's projected at $1.5 trillion, is they plan to order ~2400 planes, and the time frame is covering 55 years of operation and upkeep.
By comparison that's a larger plane order than the total sum of all combat aircraft that Russia has, and six times that of Germany.
If the F35 had been split into three planes, with the same order and cost scale, the cost would not be a particularly big deal. You're talking about 5% of the Pentagon's annual budget, for 2/3 of all combat planes in the US military. That is, the cost is not the problem: it's the do-everything nature of the plane that is the problem.
The air force is planning on using the F-35 to replace lots of other planes and entire plane categories (CAS). The plan is to have 187 F22s, 1763 F35s, ~100 bombers, plus some utility planes (C&C, tankers, cargo, etc.)
You can see the F35 is the workhorse there. If it's a dud it's a huge dud.
> Is there any reason the F-35 is receiving this much scrutiny versus other military vehicles?
The premise of the question is dubious. Similarly problem-plagued programs -- that have been far less expensive -- have gotten similar attention at similar stages of their lifecycle, some of which have been subsequently abandoned, others of which have dealt with the early problems to become reasonably useful.
OTOH, the fact that the manned combat aircraft seem to be reaching a point where the expense of making them minimally survivable dwarfs their utility, similar to what happened with battleships several decades ago, probably mean that there will be more triggers for attention paid to manned combat aircraft programs, both in terms of problems and overall expense, which draws attention on its own.
I'd wager "it's particularly big, expensive, incomplete, and not fit-for-purpose."
The other recent vehicle criticism that comes to mind has been over how much of the budget went into acquiring light vehicles such as hummers, and other RPG & IED bait.
Unlike with the F-35, this was actively costing lives, so something got done. We've slapped net armor onto a bunch of things. MRAPs have "Mine-Resistant" right in the acronym.
In this age of austerity having a fighter that cost several times more than the previous generation and yet can't do the things that it's supposed to do in the apogee of pork barrel waste. The project should have been killed years ago and yet here we are still throwing money at the thing hoping it will fly.
Look at the F-111B program, the attempt to build an F-111 variant for carrier use. The F-111B was too big, too unmaneuverable, and had too many other problems so after about 6 years with an initial production of 7 aircraft the program was cancelled. The Navy went back to the drawing board, sought out new aircraft proposals, and eventually ended up with the F-14 to fulfill that role. There's a long history of mistakes and bad designs in military history, but in the US at least most of those mistakes are accepted by the top brass, work arounds are developed, and better systems are procured as replacements. It's a history of lessons learned and applied to future generations of weapons systems.
The F-35 on the other hand appears to not only be enormously flawed but government leadership has consistently refused to address or accept those flaws, and has instead doubled down on the program. The F-35 was sold based on some simple promises: that it would be cheaper than alternatives; that having a common design with 3 variants would reduce costs, increase reliability, and increase capabilities; and that it would be a next generation multi-role fighter capable of easily gaining the upper hand against any competitor in any theater in the world. All of those promises have been broken, utterly. The reality is that there are three completely different planes that have similar names, but the commonality between the different "variants" is only around 30%. Worse, the plane is hugely expensive to produce and even more expensive to operate, with a dismally low "duty cycle" (with a ratio of 3-5 hours of corrective maintenance needed for every single hour of flight time). Slowly but surely the cost of the F-35 is approaching the cost of the F-22 (which is a vastly more capable aircraft). And now we see that the planes aren't actually very good at their job either.
It's like going to the car dealership and trading in your beloved and trustworthy family automobile then the salesman selling you on the idea of a fun but inexpensive and reliable high performance sports car. Then when you get the car you realize that it's a lemon, it has the performance of a Geo Metro but the gas mileage of a HUMVEE, it's in the shop every week for some new problem or other, and then when you check the paperwork you see some stuff you didn't notice when you signed and it actually cost 3x more than you thought. That situation would cause anyone to be pissed off. Unfortunately, the Pentagon is so in bed with LockMart/Boeing that they refuse to criticize it or do anything about it.
The whole idea, that you can save costs, by have a "fit-it-all" design, is flawed!
Take multiple different customers for a car, one wants to have a sports-car, one a pick-up and the third, something that can dive ... What does not work in car-design, does even less in jet-design.
Many people have said that over the course of military aviation history and all of them have been wrong. In the ideal situation you can kill your enemy at beyond visual range. But in reality there are multiple situations where you won't have that advantage.
Rules of engagement can prevent you from firing on another aircraft without visual ID
Terrain can obscure enemy aircraft until they are WVR
*Enemy aircraft can use electronic countermeasures to confound your radar
If dogfighting were truly obsolete there never would've been a requirement for the aircraft to be more maneuverable than a F-16 and short-range missiles and a nose cannon wouldn't be part of this aircraft's armament.
The last aircraft shot down by gunfire involving US forces was during Vietnam. I believe the cannon for the F-35 is not operational yet, and will be externally mounted in the navy variants.
We can't be more than a decade away from autonomous drones becoming the fighter of choice. Shouldn't they be able to outmaneuver a human? If they are built cheaply enough, wouldn't a larger number overwhelm a conventional air force?
Are you sure the integrity of the airframe isn't build to a particular strength due to the limitations of humans? Why carry extra weight for structure if the pilot can't handle those turns?
I doubt it's a fundamental limitation of materials or physics, just of the constraints given to the designers of the aircraft.
The airframe is built to meet the intersection of hundreds of variables. Speed, stability, weight, repairability, and cost are a few. Needing to support a human is just one of those factors.
You can over-G an F-16 at 4G depending on airspeed and loadout. That's well below (trained) human tolerances.
Sure, you can build a drone that can handle 1000 cycles of 16G turns, but it's likely not going to be cheap, repairable, fast, capable of carrying weaponry, etc.
Yes. For example, the F-16 was fitted with a 9G limiter for symmetric maneuvers (zero roll and sideslip). A structural check was mandated if the HUD indicated 9.8G was hit during flight.
Disagree. Existing aircraft can already perform flight maneuvers that overwhelm a human pilot before the airframe reaches any sort of engineering limitation.
In the real world? With a munitions loadout? Without needing an immediate overhaul? I don't think so.
Limit loads are the design point, which are 1.5x lower than the ultimate loads, which are still lower on actual aircraft than what humans can handle (and are not meant for sustained or repeated operation).
say, helicopter is behind the hill and waits until a fighter passes low over the hill, and after that the helicopter shoots into the tail of the fighter? well, i think no fighter would fare well :) On the other side :
"The official report details how the F15 was able to lock on to the helicopters around 64 km. However did not get visual ID till 6-9 km.(Beyond-visual range combat wasn't practiced at this typical exercise) "
But why would fighter fly low? It would just shoot a missile from 10km height - unreachable height for helicopter and for many anti-aircraft missiles.
As I recall, when the last HN story came out about the F-35 not doing well in short-range combat, there was a rebuttal that basically said that the test run was not designed to accurately simulate short-range combat, and that in particular the F-35 was missing the expected software suite that significantly augments its navigation and dogfighting capabilities.
I didn't follow the story after that, so I don't know if there were any counter-arguments made. But if that was true, might there also be some similar mitigating factors that apply to this story?
The only counter-argument I am aware of is that "It will get better as software and training improve." I don't doubt the veracity of this statement, however with the whole JSF fighter project falling this far behind schedule there is just too much uncertainly in how long it is going to take it to "get better" and how far you can push the airframe which is, as everybody can agree with, somewhat mutilated from the beginning.
> While the specific details remain secret, Kopp estimates the APG-81 can detect an aircraft with a radar cross-section of three square meters—a MiG-29, for example—just over 100 miles away. Russian radar-maker Tikhomirov claims the Su-35’s Irbis-E can spot a similar-size target at greater than twice that distance.
So, we're comparing some blogger's estimate of the F-35 radar, to the unverified claims of a Russian radar-maker. This does not seem like the firmest ground upon which to base an argument.
This and similar criticisms of the F-35 are just silly. I can take any other aircraft in the U.S. inventory and put it in situations where it will lose engagements against other domestic or foreign aircraft and systems. Multi-role fighters like the F-35, Rafale, Viper, Hornet, and Gripen aren't meant to be dominant in any one specific area. They're meant to be flexible platforms that can be tailored for different operations and flight packages based on the needs of the mission at the time, and like most multi-role fighters, they each tend to be a little better at certain roles than others.
Additionally, most of these criticisms act as if the F-35 will be acting alone on these missions, and don't take into account the fact that other aircraft, radars, and offensive/defensive systems are meant to be utilized alongside the F-35. Such a micro view doesn't adequately account for the actual theater of war these aircraft will take part in.
Is the JSF program enormously expensive? Yes. Is it unnecessary? Maybe. However, expensive and unnecessary are separate issues from whether or not this is a capable aircraft, of which it empirically is. Does it have kinks to work out? Definitely, but this aircraft is still in testing phases, and like all other aircraft, it will go through iterations and variations. In time, as systems mature, bugs are fixed, and pilots become more experienced, we can be sure that the F-35 will at least be a capable tool to warfighters.
Argue the cost, argue the need, but making the argument that the folks at Lockheed all of a sudden forgot how to build capable fighter aircraft is absurd.
Seems to me this F-35 is the pacifist's wet dream.
It can't fight long or short range and even if it could, it can't kill because it's too slow.
It doesn't respond to violence with violence, hence - pacifist.
For ultimate peace making, they should equip it with pigeons and let the birds loose over the enemy territory, sending out love letters to everyone.
Also balloons and candy for the enemy children would be appropriate.
It was arguably designed when radar stealth was a key advantage. But other detection technologies have since matured. And the Russians and Chinese have redesigned faster, perhaps relying on stolen plans and test results.
So maybe it's time to drop the F-35, and copy Russian and Chinese designs.
But maybe, in addition to copying many features, the Chinese tweaked other stuff. Maybe they tweaked heat management, agility, IR etc sensors, and so on. And maybe they also hacked the Russians and Japanese, and combined best features. Overall, maybe the J-20 looks a lot like a F-35a might look.
That's a lot of "maybes", I admit. But it would be foolish to ignore the possibilities, no?
Who is this Joseph Trevithick guy anyway? His linked in profile says "Journalist and researcher with experience using various open source and public domain resources", "Acted as an on call military history consultant for various miniatures gaming products."
I feel a lot of the reasoning seems a little dubious.
> Russian radars, such as the one on the new Sukhoi Su-35, at least match the JSF’s APG-81, according to data compiled by Carlo Kopp at Air Power Australia. While the specific details remain secret, Kopp estimates ...
Air Power Australia have a MASSIVE axe to grind when it comes to the F-35. They also have a history of publishing things that look like F-22 fanfiction (e.g. an article saying that navalizing the F-22 should be a piece of cake, http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-NOTAM-230209-1.html).
> But take a look at the F-35’s engine nozzle. It’s round. Highly stealthy planes such as America’s B-2 bomber and F-22 fighter both boast flat engine nozzles that spread out their exhaust plumes,
I think they are flat mostly to shape radar reflections. I think the fact that the B-2 exhaust nozzle is on the upper half of the aircraft also is supposed to help the IR signature, but does the flatness really affect anything?
> Even with its radar off, an F-35 could struggle to hide from enemy planes ... “You can’t stealthify against long-wavelength radars”
Sure, but this affects every airplane, it's not a weakness of the F-35.
> The F-35’s limited weaponry was one of the major problems that a controversial simulation highlighted back in 2008.
Well, it was indeed controversial. As one article puts it "RAND’s core conclusion is not about specific fighter performance. It’s about the theoretical limits of better performance under adverse basing and logistics conditions."(http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/the-f-35s-air-to-air-cap...). In particular, they concluded that the F-22 would also be completely outgunned, despite being indisputably the best air superiority fighter right now.
The War is Boring coverage of the F-35 in general strikes me as kindof shoddy, it's like they decided that writing snarky anti-F-35 articles is now part of their blog brand.
The missile argument is a bit of a stretch to me. The F-35 can carry way more than four missiles if they're attached to the wings (like the Su-35 the author compares it to), it will just destroy any semblance of stealth.
I feel that the f-35 was a great plane to start with but ruined by adding a VTOL capabilities for the Marines. Why the hell does Marines Corp need fighter jets? Doesn't the Navy already have it? Doesn't the Air Force? Does this mean the Army will get it's own fighter jets? I don't understand why every branch of the military in the US needs a jet apart from Navy and Air
Much of this is rooted in history - namely Guadalcanal. The USMC was very angry at Naval Aviation for "abandoning" them on the beaches without Close Air Support while the Navy instead flew missions to protect their Fleet. The USMC demanded an increased in their organic capabilities to support THEIR mission -- boots on the ground.
From my understanding, Marine air capabilities are typically for supporting marines on the ground. If a bunch of marines engaged in combat need air support NOW, its a lot more efficient for them (meaning, fewer jumps in the chain of command) to have their own planes than for them to have to call up the Navy and ask them to do it.
Who cares? Air-to-air combat is exceedingly rare these days, and in the very near future no piloted aircraft will be able to keep up with a drone anyway (smaller, lighter, able to pull G-forces that would black out or kill a human pilot).
There is no "very near future" in military spending. It will take at least five and probably ten years to get a working high-G drone design with equivalent capability off the drawing board and into the air.
Meanwhile the F-35 is a fiasco for US and NATO force projection. The whole point of modern weapons - ugly and expensive as they are - is that they're supposed to be so intimidating you barely need to use them.
The F-35 fails to continue that tradition. The political consequences are going to be a lot more significant than the military ones.
> It will take at least five and probably ten years to get a working high-G drone design with equivalent capability off the drawing board and into the air.
Do you think we're going to have a shooting war with China or Russia before 2025? Because those are the only countries that can come close to challenging US air superiority.
The entire military-industrial complex is a boondoggle at taxpayer expense. The Iraq war cost, what, $1,000,000,000,000? And that didn't even involve any fancy next-gen fighters.
I just don't see why people harp on this one stupid-expensive plane when there's all kinds of other stupid-expensive junk we waste money on.
It's like somebody burned down your house, but what you're really mad about is that they burned down the brand-new tool shed out back.
