The new detailed select acquisition report (SAR) for the F-35 has been released by the DOD. It reflects the past years program performance for this aircraft.
What about the hype in the F-35-friendly-news recently in relation to the rosy cost reductions pointed out in the SAR? Cost reduction estimates are not just manpower/labor rates. The SAR shows some fuzzy math that pulls money from spares and support. This is difficult to do when there is no final, operational, go-to-war aircraft that has been in a real flying squadron for a number of years.
The JSF DOD program head General Bogdan's comments a few months ago about wanting to interject competition into the sustainment process will be one more wild card. This is not addressed in the new SAR.
The program does not know what it does not know about what a final go-to-war jet will cost to own and operate. So, any news source (or DOD fluff) that points to program cost reduction is questionable. Spares and support money were cut.
Cost of the aircraft itself? If everythiing works out and everyone buys to plan it might only be outrageously expensive and not off the known planet expensive.
For the foreign sales customer, in the past the LM sales force was using the unreliable (and disengenuous) URF cost as marketing/PR fodder. The SAR shows this for the jet and the motor. It assumes everyone buys to plan. As always URF costs are roll-away prices and not usable combat aircraft.
Here are F-35 procurement trends for the alleged biggest buyer of the CTOL F-35, the USAF. These are procurement and not R&D dollars.
And, everyone staying to the plan on orders hasn't worked out so far. For example, when the program started, it assumed we would be approaching full-rate production by now where the USAF alone would start a buy-rate of 80 (before 2006 this was 110) jets per year, starting, this year. THAT is what the business plan was based on. Lots of lost orders.
Motor costs for the STOVL are insane.
An intelligent buyer military aircraft should be able to evaluate the usefulness of the F-35 by 2021 or so. By then, the TR-2 hardware/Block 3 software aircraft will have been in service for a few years. Also by then, the helmet issues will have been resolved. Either by making the Buck Rogers gear work, or by falling back on a HUD/high-off-boresight helmet cueing combo.
One of the many problems with the aircraft design requirement (an actual KPP) is that it is based on high-90-percentile mission capability (MC) rates. This is yet to be seen and is another thing that a buyer will have to evaluate only after a real USAF squadron has been flying for awhile.
Cost-per-flying hour assumptions in the SAR are bad. It now costs USAF $24,000 per flight hour for the F-16. This is unsustainable for any F-16 user. This points more toward USAF deskilling in the area of aircraft maintenance management than it does anything else. The SAR assumes a CTOL F-35 at $31,000 per flight hour.
It will be interesting to see if the F-35 ages better or worse....than an F-16.......... A model.
The SAR states that the F-35 has more capability in essence justifying a higher operating cost however, the F-16 is more useful for a joint operational commander.
What is the F-35 to be used for? For low end threats, an F-16 is superior. It carries more gun-rounds for straffing. The F-16 has a better field of view outside the canopy. When using a LITENING or SNIPER pod, it has a better field of view to orbit around a close-air-support event of interest. It has ROVER capability and other network connectivity. It's cost per flying hour is less. For many kinds of combat aircraft work, its' design does not need to be replaced.
How will the F-35 do against high-end threats? By 2020, Pacific Rim threats will have no problem defeating an F-35. And, that assumes the F-35 is cheap enough to own and operate and has those alleged high-90-percentile MC rates.
The West has two reference aircraft to simulate coming Pacific Rim threats. That is the F-22 as the PAC/FA and the Typhoon as the SU-3x or even SU-35.
If the F-35 is unable to defeat the F-22 and Typhoon at a reasonable rate in practice, it will be dead meat in war against high-end threats; its' alleged reason to exist. F-35 problems with IADS can be read here.
Neither the F-16 nor F-35 are up for that kind of challenge.
So the big question would be, why are we buying the F-35? Other than platitude and rent-seeking, no one has come up with a reasonable justification. Those are not good reasons for a country close to $17T in debt.
30 comments:
The F-35 has not participated in any type of war games so we don't know for sure how the F-35 will perform against adversary aircraft or the F-22. Lockheed claimed that while testing the F-35s radar, they were able to track and Jam the F-22s radar. I think that says a lot about the F-35s electronics. In a gun fight the F-22 would have the edge only because of its thrust vectoring and tighter sustained turning radius. F-15s loaded with two empty external fuel tanks and 4 missiles took out clean wing SU-30MKI Flankers in simulated gun fights in war games in India. Now if the F-35 matches maneuverability of the F-16 or greater then I think the F-35 can handle SU-30 series even in gun fights. The F-16 turns tighter than the F-15. Like they say, a good pilot in a bad aircraft is better than a bad pilot in a good airplane. What we should be worrying about is the amount of hours our pilots are getting because of sequestration. I have two brothers currently in the air force and they tell me that many pilots are not getting flying hours at all or are only flying once a day rather than two to three times a day like they used to.
To ArmyAbrams Tanker,
Yeah its unfortunate the pilots are now not getting flying hours at all in the real aircraft.
Looks like they are using the simulators to get some flying hours and reflexes going.
Where did you get the information from about the F-15s took out "clean wing" Su-30MKI Flanker-Hs in simulated gun fights in war games in India?
I don't see the F-35A/C able to run rings around the Su-27/30 family in the gun fights with draggy weight and tiny wings on the F-35A/B models.
Again, Lockheed claimed that while testing the F-35s radar, they were able to track and Jam the F-22s radar. Which is based only in the minds of marketeers and not believable.
Can't remember if it was at Red Flag or in Indian war games. Anyways heres a good website with videos talking about it.
http://vayu-sena.indianmilitaryhistory.org/exercise-red-flag-su-30mki-comparison-fornof.shtml
Like I said, we don't know how good the F-35 really is in maneuverability so lets not jump to conclusion. I believe what LHM has to say about the F-35 tracking and jamming F-22 radars. Its a newer AESA radar so I would not be surprised. You don't have any credible information that can disprove it, so it seems its based of your own opinion.
"In a gun fight the F-22 would have the edge only because of its thrust vectoring and tighter sustained turning radius. F-15s loaded with two empty external fuel tanks and 4 missiles took out clean wing SU-30MKI Flankers in simulated gun fights in war games in India."
In a peer adversary war on the Pacific Rim, it certainly is not going to be a "gun fight". It's going to be a missile fight, at extremely extended ranges. And each engagement will have few survivors, those due mainly to luck and timing rather than design.
Sustained turning radius against another fighter is one thing. Sustained turning radius against an artificially intelligent AAM or SAM which can pull to 25G? Forget about it. Zero escape.
The USAF selected the YF-22 over the YF-23 in part based on the former's close-in gunfight chops. That downselect occurred in _1991_. Go back and look at the state of the art in microelectronics in 1991. Then look at today's.
Crewed fighter jets are up against Moore's Law. And on the wrong side of the curve on each and every important vector.
I grew up with the romantic vision of the white-scarved fighter pilot. It pains me to admit that it is as militarily obsolete in 2013 as was the earlier romantic vision of armored knights with lances on horseback.
Time to get with the program. The computer program. If not, those who do get with the program will kill you. Quickly and easily.
Interesting theory, except that there are still several "kills" in F-22 practice against other types. F-22 v Typhoon being one example. When you run out of HOBS dogfight missiles that is what you have left. Unless of course you are a B or C F-35 that left the deck that day without its' gun.
I think the war games in India should be taken with a grain of salt. The first couple of times IAF faced Western pilots, yeah, they got trashed but at their last Red Flag participation, my recall is they performed very well and pretty much stuck to the F15 pilots. The kinetic performance of a MKI Flanker was reported to be a lot closer to a Raptor than the old F15C. Pilot training and experience are still important factors but that can take you only so far, once the performance disadvantage gets to big, you die.
@ Anonymous, I think you are on the right path with your comments. F22 original requirements are ancient history now. The opponent it was supposed to fight went out of business and we ended up with 180 F22s. JSF program started in early 90s. It's 2013, we are know looking more towards the Pacific Rim threats which weren't part of those requirements. We need a heck of a lot more range, lots of missiles for long range AAM encounters and excellent full frontal LO. Is that what we are getting with F35? Come to think of it, sounds like the J20 requirements! We are developing a fighter whose requirements are outdated and which will be unable to fight our main opponent and more than likely has been seriously compromised thru espionage!
It's one of the many reasons I have been opposed to JSF program. It's not going to be up to task against China, not enough AAMs without losing LO, the numbers on order are unrealistic and it is sucking dry important programs to keep it alive, those being just some reasons.... Why is the USA supposing that an jet designed in the 90s to early 2000s can respond to threats that were designed years afterwards?
Not the best example but it's like NOKIA saying our smartphone designed in 2002 can compete against the 2013 Apple IPhone ...and look how well that worked out for NOKIA.
I agree with Eric Palmer on this one. There will be a time when you run out of missiles. The F-22 currently carries only two aim-9 heat seeking missiles internally. That's why the Air Force kept the gun because they knew its still needed. Even USAF admitted the F-22 becomes a 4th gen fighter in dogfights. Being able to shoot from long range without being detected is extremely important, I'm with the "computer program" but we still need to be able to fight in close quarters. Heat seeking missiles have problems with chaff and flares. They don't always get kills. Same goes for long range missiles, jamming and maneuvering can beat these types of missiles. Just look up the probability kill of an amraam and you will see what I'm talking about.
NICO,
The SU-30MKI is no where near the raptor as far as turning radius. SU-30MKI is only slightly ahead of an F-15 in turning radius. The Indians still got shit on by F-22s and believe it or not F-15s during redflag. Just listen to the video in my previous post link. The F-22 was designed in the 80s yet it dominates the skies. The F-35 will do the same against legacy aircraft. We will be matched against Russian and Chinese 5th gen fighters. That's why FA-XX is under development.
"The F-35 will do the same against legacy aircraft. "
Weight, wing area, a jammable single-point-of-failure AMRAAM and some other problems, don't support such a statement.
The F-22 was built with one purpose and only one.
It ruled alone but even 4++ fighters are picking up the slack and have shown that the F-22 is not untouchable any longer.
If the F-35 would have been developed for one single task and not the mixed/multi/cousin/joint crap it would probably already be flying combat coded and been a pretty wicked air superiority fighter as well.
But trying to do everything, for everyone, better and cheaper than any other single tasked optimised aircraft will not work.
It have never worked before and will never work today nor will it tomorrow.
The F-35 will at best be a decent player in the sky but being the best it will not.
The F-35 has a 1.07+ thrust to weight ratio with 50% fuel. That's slightly less than the F-16s 1.09. But you have to remember that the F-35 carries its missiles internally reducing drag. Wing area does not always determine maneuverabilty. There is also the lift coefficient, lift-to-drag ratio, thrust-to-weight ratio, thrust-to-drag ratio, the flight control system, control surface sizes and moment arms etc. F-35 reached 50 degree angle of attack, was able to do tail slides and recover from stalls while having control of where you could point the nose of the aircraft. I hear great things about the F-35s maneuverability and have seen test footage I never thought was possible of the F-35. There's people out there who at best flew a a chair who say the F-35 can't turn, can't climb, can't fight, but every day get disproven by real F-35 tests/test pilots. The F-35 does no fly like a Raptor, but comes damn close for a non thrust vectoring aircraft. F-16s have to use afterburner just to keep up with the F-35 not using burners. The same people who made the F-22s flight control systems made the F-35s. F-35 IS equivalent or better than a 4th gen fighter in maneuverability. A jammable SPOF AMRAAM? Wouldn't that be a AMRAAM problem? Most if not all radar guided missiles with radars can be jammed.
The F-22 was built purely for air to air combat like the F-15 Eagle. The F-22 still has the edge over 4++ gen fighters in avionics and stealth. Not creating a multirole aircraft will get you little to no exports to countrys with smaller budgets. Multirole aircraft make things cheaper and easier to handle a wide variety of missions. Good luck mass producing a stealthy long range strike fighter in large numbers. Though I will admit It would be great to have a stealthy strike fighter with the range of an F-15E or greater, but right now we can't afford one. Hopefully we can use an advanced stealthy long range drone to perform deep strike missions to fill the gap until we get a sixth gen fighter. The FB-22 concept was supposed to replace the F-15E but funding was cut for it.
Also of interest: back when the advanced tactical fighter (ATF) requirement was drawn up in the 80's. (The ATF is what gave us the F-22). Red force analysts knew that stealth for stealth's sake was not enough. You needed extreme altitude and speed to lower the no-escape-zone solution for not just enemy aircraft, but enemy ground to air threats. That in part is why the JSF Joint Operational Requirement Document(JORD) (drawn up in the 1990's and signed off on at the beginning of the last decade)--the operational reason for existence for today's F-35--is faulty. It assumed hundreds of F-22s to take down the big threats, leaving the F-35 for remaining threats (small mobile short and medium altitude/range ground threats where mild X-band/Ku-band resistance was "OK". The other part of that is balance, the F-22 and F-35 are to work together. The F-22 for high altitude and ...although the F-35 has reached higher levels, the Norway brief shows us (as does the motor design for the PW F135 and PW 136, that the jet is to get better fuel economy around medium to lower altitude groups--what you need for a tactical interdiction strike aircraft. This altitude is also the sweet-spot for DAS and EOTS for air-to-ground work. Unfortunately with F-35 troubles and not enough F-22s, emerging Pac-Rim threats are a problem; and that assumes the rosy high-90 percentile MC rates are good. Unfortunately, legacy aircraft with the J-series family of weapons, (JDAM, JSOW, JASSM) make investment in the insanely priced and troubled F-35 irrelevant. F-22, UCAS-N (if it works), Tomahawk-Block-IV, J-series weapons, F-18E/F, F-15E, Virginia-class subs are where the money should go.
To ArmyAbrams Tanker
Like I said, I do know how terrible the F-35 really is in manoeuvrability, so lets not jump to conclusion that the F-35 has the advantage of manoeuvring in the gun fight. I believe its fallacy to believe what LHM has to say about the F-35 tracking and jamming F-22 radars.
You quoted: "Its a newer AESA radar".
The nose geometry of the F-35 limits the aperture of the radar. This makes the F-35 dependent on supporting AEW&C aircraft which are themselves vulnerable to long range anti-radiation missiles and jamming. Opposing Sukhoi aircraft have a massive radar aperture enabling them to detect and attack at an JSF long before the F-35 can detect the Sukhoi.
It has Medium Power Aperture (0)
(Detection range around 140 – 150 nm at BVR)
The F-35 will be totally outclassed in all cardinal performance parameters, with the exception of radar signature when the F-35 is flown clean with internal stores only. That advantage may also be entirely academic if the Sukhoi is networked with low frequency band radar to cue it to the F-35. It is also not entirely clear whether the radar signature of the export variants of the F-35 will be low enough to deny lock-on by the powerful Irbis-E at useful missile ranges.
Yes I do have any credible information that can disprove it, again I've accessed the classified information about the F-35's limitations etc.
As you know there's a bunch of people out there that know the F-35is a dog, alright. They've told me, they've told friends/colleagues/acquaintances of mine that they are terribly concerned that the F-35 is not qualified to the job.
@ ArmyAbrams Tanker
You have to ask if an all-in-one solution built upon compromises actually will be better or even cheaper then more specifically tasked aircrafts.
Almost every one of the problems for the F-35 are due to the all-in-one design philosophy.
The weight, the structural problems, the heat, the acceleration, the speed, the maneuverability, the armament, carrier operations, mission range, fire safety, radar limitation, future expansions etc etc.
And maintenance seems to be a nightmare.
ORD defines 2 hours but after 5 engine swops the mean time for an engine replacement is 52 hours...
Trying to be everything and you will end up being mediocre at best for a cost way beyond whats healthy financially.
To ArmyAbrams Tanker,
For more information.
http://www.ausairpower.net/jsf.html
So why should Australia and other allied nations deserve to be partners with the con-artist Lockheed Martin to join the JSF (Joke Still Flying) program that will never fulfil its mission requirements???
Lockheed Martin is giving the America's allies a blank check for anything. They are here to build the most expensive, inferior, failed F-35 program at the highest price and what they are love doing is to rape the allied nations taxpayers money for them to go back to the contractor to make any changes to the aircraft when required.
If I were you, I'd stay well away from Lockheed, because they continue to brainwash the allies including us (Australian's).
So far the F-35 has been performing much better than expected in flight tests. Like I believe you accessed classified information. Even if you did why would you be giving away nation security secrets? Your full of shit and I never will believe that. I hear alot about these anti stealth radars but none of them have been proven to detect stealth aircraft. I ask the question, why would china and russia bother spending money on stealth aircraft if these radars are so effective?
I'm in favor of building more raptors while building less F-35s. The Air Force has about 1200 F-16s, so lets only build 1200 F-35s to replace the F-16 rather than the AF planned 1743. We could get at least 200 F-22s or more which would be enough for reserve and national gaurd units. All the weapons you named are great weapons. Problem is long range missiles from S-400 and soon S-500 with a planned range of 373 miles will hit a F-15 or FA-18E/F before they could shoot a JSOW, JDAM, JASSM. X-47 is stealthy with good range and sufficient payload to strike high valued targets. That's the only weapon that stands a chance. Cruise missiles can easily be shot down, except maybe the low observable ones. The F-22 has limited strike capabilities. Small weapons bay, can't us laser guided weapons. YF-23 would have been perfect for those types of missions because of its weapons bay design for such a wide variety of bombs and cruise missiles.
All multirole fighters are cheaper. Its a fact. Like I said before, the YF-23 should have won. It had great range and could have served as a strike fighter to replace the F-15E. It was a fixed contract between the government and Lockheed. After the AF saw how much the raptor was costing, even generals were criticizing it saying they would of picked the YF-23 instead. Maintenance on the Raptor is even worse than the F-35. The F-35 has improved maintenance for the stealth coatings. F-35 was designed to do everything but with a slightly less capability. Its too expensive to build a pure fighter/striker fleet in large numbers. Multirole aircraft have proven to be valuable in multiple wars. Deep strike is done by smaller numbers of long range aircraft like F-15E. But of course we don't have a F-15E replacement right now.
Australia can back out any time and buy more superwamets if they would like. Lockheed screwed up on the F-35 program because of all the design changes they had to make, not because its worthless and incapable of doing its job. I criticize LHM all the time for turning the JSF program into a money pit. In fact I would advise the Air Force not to buy another LHM fighter for the 6th gen FA-XX program. We will get less F-35s because of the price but we still need it at this point. There is no alternative. Anything from RAND and airpower Australia is crap about the F-35, except for price.
The idea that there is no alternative to the F-35 is at best wishful thinking.
Why would you want to upgrade piece of shit F-16s and F-15s that will serve for 40+ years? They break ALL the time. Its wishful thinking that we can upgrade all of our current aircraft. The 300 F-16s the AF is upgrading are the newest airframes. Others are too old. Only alternative is build more raptors to the 400-450 mark but have 1200 obsolete F-16s along with F-15Es.
The big reason aircraft would "break all the time" as you say is poor MX management in the USAF. Seen it. Operation:USELESS DIRT 1 and 2 pulled money from things that actually contribute to Defence. Since money is scares, fighters have to be put into missions they can handle. Legacy and anti-access. We can do a lot with new F-16s and new F-18s (most work). Odd as the F-35 is not a solution to low end threats. It is not a solution to high end threats. It is a waste of money and resources best used for something joint operational commanders can actually use. And, in some cases, troops do not care where the fire support comes from. Precision artillery operators do not collect flight pay or cost as much money. Attack helicopters do real close air support for many threats.... and very well at night. Just look at all the X-rated night videos of Apaches killing stuff... danger close and well.
True, these wars did take a lot of money from important military programs. Our current aircraft are at the end of their lifespan, so more money wont do. Close air support is a different story, lets not get into that. High end threats are the F-35s game. F-35 can't fly deep strike missions like a F-15E, but anything within its range is going to be destroyed. F-18 and F-16 are worthless. Any country can acquire advanced SAMs and destroy 4th gen fighters. Unless you plan on using only cruise missiles from 400 miles away.
"High end threats are the F-35s game. F-35 can't fly deep strike missions like a F-15E, but anything within its range is going to be destroyed." --- Overly optimistic considering there is no OPEVAL or other Ops report card of a final go to war config F-35.
When the F-35 has its full block capability it will.
So some time in the early 2020?
They say 2018 but who knows? Lockheed can't deliver anything on time.
To ArmyAbrams Tanker,
You quoted: "Anything from RAND and airpower Australia is crap about the F-35, except for price".
Before you say they are crap. The APA website contributors are far more knowledgeable than the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corp and the Department of Defence. Just watch your step there pal.
Why???
The APA contributors are not constrained by the internal politics and culture of Defence and can tackle issues without prejudice or preconceived bias.
The APA contributor team also includes some very unique talent, most of whom must, at present, stay behind the scenes for reasons of survival in the institutionalised groupthink environment of the Australian defence community.
As to the current face of APA, its founders - Dr Carlo Kopp has 25 years of experience as a defence analyst, 20 years of experience as an engineer in industry, and two hard sciences postgraduate degrees - he is the only academic in Australia today with concurrent academic appointments in hard sciences and military strategy - the APA website alone hosts over 250 of his publications; Peter Goon served as an engineer in the RAAF for 14 years, underwent Flight Test Engineer training at the US Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River followed by two back-to-back tours at the RAAF's Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU), is a founding member of Australian Flight Test Services in Adelaide, a founding member of the Defence Teaming Centre (DTC), which he served as a Director/Deputy Chairman for many years, while becoming a leading contributor to the defence industry reform process. Other APA contributors and reviewers include retired parliamentarians, retired ADF generals, academics in strategic studies, and other former ADF, DoD and defence contractor personnel.
Hang on,Defencetalk says that they do no know what they are talking about.
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