The unofficial cheerleaders of Lockmart-Pentagon continue with the softball pitch.
It seems our DOD strategy, tactics and engineers have been downsized, dumbed-down and group-thinked beyond repair
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There are some interesting assumptions going on in this piece.
“What the F-35 gives you is a fused picture of all of that, so you don’t have to interpret separate data streams. For example, my Link 16 is telling me something is here, but my radar is saying it’s over there, and this piece is kind of telling me it’s over there, and this one said it’s a bad guy, but that one is showing it as a good guy, and on legacy aircraft you have to filter what the various systems are telling you. Now, the F-35 system is going to do a lot of that processing for you.”
If only that technology was specific to the F-35. Really it is not. The Block II Super Hornet is sensor fused also.Both the Super Hornet Block II and the F-35 are in effect; second tier fighter aircraft.
Then there is pushing the idea that the F-35 can carry the job. Even to the point that long-range bombers don’t need to contribute to the fight.
“I saw the media reports on Libya and those kinds of things, and now, instead of having to fly a B-2 from Whiteman Air Force Base, and get refueled to take out certain targets because we needed a stealth airplane for the mission, we’ll have the potential to have an L-class ship with F-35Bs or a CV with CFs on it, carrier F-35Cs, and be able to execute that mission without having to bring those airplanes from CONUS, air refuel them, fly all the way over and then fly all the way back.”
You mean, a target can be hit from the states in the first 18 hours of a war by flying an amphibious ship there and back? Dumb and dumber…The long range bomber is there to have a long range strike (hence its name) to hit within hours instead of days, until other air power resources show up. Then there is the issue of once we are there, you can launch hundreds of Tomahawks from a submarine in the initial/additional IADS beat down. We can buy those expensive warshots by the bushel compared to the F-35. Some will get through, even with the best defended threat.
“You have a Day 1 capability on US Navy ships that you can float anywhere around the world. And that’s a tremendous capability for the Navy, the Marine Corps, and really, the nation, to have.”
Just as long as that “Day 1” threat isn’t in the Pacific Rim in the coming years where the Brewster Buffalo II will be out-classed.
The F-35 is too limited for big threats and too expensive to run for second tier threats. And as we all know, the debt will settle this conversation once and for all.
Semper Fi.
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