While there is no hard proof that Lenin said it, the term "useful idiots" applies to some of the F-35 fan-base.
For the rest, I suspect fraud is the justification to harness taxpayers to fund a faulty and obsolete weapon system that a country over $16T in the red can ill afford.
Much of the pro-F-35 publicity efforts are stitched up with faith-based arguements, hearsay and meme-theory all rolled up into a thana-marketing package which will hurt DOD combat readiness.
For years.
Consider the lastest effort by the cheerleaders at Second Line of Defense (SLD). Their "Gold Sponsor", Lockheed Martin, also the maker of the troubled F-35, want you to believe that delivering F-35B (short take-off and landing variant) Joint Strike Fighters to Yuma, Arizona is a good thing for the United States Marketing Corps.
The USMC leadership is using the same kind of plan that they used to field the MV-22 Osprey: market, hype, market, and get a woefully undertested aircraft to an operational test squadron as soon as possible.
The F-35B is not ready.
The mission software for the aircraft is not ready. The helmet and its visual cueing, (the aircraft has no heads-up-display) is not ready. The logistics system for maintenance people is not ready. The flight envelop is not fully expanded. There are no working weapons. This would entail a wide range of clearance scenarios and hitting actual air and surface targets.
SLD's big problem with being a zombie marketer of the Joint Strike Failure is that the U.S. DOD just handed an operational test squadron a non-ready aircraft. Operational test squadrons are supposed to figure out how to use a weapon for war and write up the procedure for operational training so other training squadrons have a solid (and safe) training program.
All that is pretty hard to do when the development testers are far from finished. Hard to work on tactics when you are just trying to make the aircraft work.
What we have is another piece of the puzzle of the F-35 fraud:
Produce the appearance of capability; meet "milestones" to get big pay-days and for the military leadership, advance your career.
At any cost.
I am curious when Congress--who have run out of other-peoples money to spend--will realise that their shift to the Pacific is depending on what the U.S. Justice Department and FBI in their world would call: "a criminal enterprise"?
Pinning the RICO Statute on all of this is not hard to do.
As America's combat readiness gets worse because its' "Department of Defense" buys a long line of dud combat systems (LCS, F-35, DDX, obsolete carrier air wings, amphibs with no well-deck, etc) the best strategy for the U.S. is to avoid war because we are not capable of winning.
And, propaganda from the likes of SLD won't improve that situation.
12 comments:
RICO, TINA and several binders of Anti-Trust legislation.
This could be the meal ticket for many bus loads of attorneys and moi!
Mike:
They are saying the same things about the Royal Commission the PM just established down here into the sexual abuses and other abuses related to the cover ups of these within the catholic church (and, fair mindedly, other institutions).
At least Stephen Smith the Defence Minister is ahead of the pack on these with his DLA Piper Review into sexual and other abuses in/by Defence.
However, things have gone very, very quiet on that front.
Another F22 crashed today, hope the pilot is OK.
This is with a fighter jet that finished its testing and has been in service for a few years now. I am afraid DoD is making a big mistake with F35, rushing it into service seems to me a recipe for disaster.
The media will have a field day when we lose one this year or next, when the press understands that a regular pilot was in fact at the commands of a jet not fully tested. Oh yeah, that's going to sell real well with the public....
Hello NICO
The pilot was unhurt after he ejected out of the F-22 and went for medical evaluation. The pilot seemed to be in good shape.
The cause of the crash is under investigation and additional details will be provided as soon as they become available according to the Flying Branch.
OK- so the Marines have an 'Operational" squadron. So when can it deploy? When will they start dropping real ordnance (and not ballistic shapes?) or fly it tactically through its full envelope? This has SCAM written all over it.
That is why many refer to the JSF Program as the biggest example of "a total indifference to what is real", ever.
H/T APA.
Interestingly, on a related point, some pundits are claiming the SAC J-31 looks "remarkably similar" to the F-35; even that the J-31 has been cloned from the much talked about stolen JSF data!
A lay person could be forgiven for claiming these two aircraft as similar because, obviously, there are similarities - wing, LO nose, no moving parts intakes, single engine, single crew, etc.
But there are significant differences which bode well for the Chinese design over the American F-35.
Could/would any of the advocates for the JSF care to identify what these significant differences are?
"Pinning the RICO Statute on all of this is not hard to do."
I have always been amused by the RICO statute. Which, for Eric's readers who have not come across it before, is the American law prohibiting "Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations".
Of course, the enforcer of the RICO statute is the U.S. federal government. Which is itself a racketeer-influenced and corrupt organization.
Avic estimates that the J-31 Falcon Eagle will have a combat radius of 780 mi (1,250 km) on internal fuel and the ferry range 2,485 mi (4,000km) with external fuel tanks. Maximum speed is Mach 1.8 the same top speed as the F/A-18.
- Length: 55 ft 5 in (16.9m)
- Wingspan: 37 ft 9 in (11.5 m)
- Height: 15 ft 9 in (4.8 m)
- Wing area: 430 sq ft (40 m2 )
Armament: None on the prototype, apparently the aircraft will have 12 hardpoints. (Four are internal for "low observable" missions.)
You will need weight assumptions to come up with these kinds of numbers. Including predicted operational empty weight (which we still don't know with the F-35) and also a lot of other engineer-speak stuff. And don't forget a requirement document. That would be nice.
Hi Eric
Are you still around?
("which we still don't know with the F-35".)
Its been claimed that the F-35 will be: “Overweight and underpowered: at 49,500 lb (22,450kg) air-to-air take-off weight with an engine rated at 42,000 lb of thrust, it will be a significant step backward in thrust-to-weight ratio for a new fighter…. [F-35A and F-35B variants] will have a ‘wing-loading’ of 108 lb per square foot…. less manoeuvrable than the appallingly vulnerable F-105 ‘Lead Sled’ that got wiped out over North Vietnam… payload of only two 2,000 lb bombs in its weapons bay….
"The mission software for the aircraft is not ready. The helmet and its visual cueing, (the aircraft has no heads-up-display) is not ready. The logistics system for maintenance people is not ready. The flight envelop is not fully expanded. There are no working weapons. This would entail a wide range of clearance scenarios and hitting actual air and surface targets."
You've answered your own 'questions'. They will take the jet and operate it and maintain it as they would normally. Any problems that arise will give flight test a better understanding of the problem at hand. Not to mention they will find issues that flight test simply won't. Did you bitch like this when we got F-22A's at Langley??? Because we did the same thing. Its VERY important to deliver the jets to a unit.
Obviously you do not have a grasp of why an operational test squadron exists. Just because it happened with the F-22 program doesn't mean it is a good thing. Pretty low development and verification bar. Including the fact that the USAF rigged F-22 IOC.
An Operational Tester is not to be the guy at the end of the GM production line trying to play catch up because 3-4 stations back the workers are drunk or high. Operational testers need jets with functioning go to war systems so they can develop combat tactics and produce manuals. Where are the functioning go to war systems? Where is there any hint of a reliable jet?
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