Thursday, January 23, 2014

F-35 astro-turfer calls it quits

One of the top astro-turfer / Baghdad Bob efforts for the troubled F-35 program decides to end it all.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014
My swan song

As you’ve probably noticed, my blogging effort here has slowed down considerably.

There’s a reason for that. To borrow from “Top Gun”, it looks like the F-35 program is past the "danger zone".

That’s where a program such as the F-35 is in danger of being cancelled or drastically cut back to a dangerous point - dangerous for our military and our country. The original impetus for me doing this blog was watching what happened to the F-22 program. It concerned me deeply.

Our air power is aging, we were seeing the emergence of a new level of aviation technology that is critical to our future and decisions were made to curtail a program that would keep us on the cutting edge of that technology and almost guarantee our ability to establish air superiority if not air dominance in future conflicts. This blog was my small attempt to try to avoid a repeat of what happened to the F-22 program. I wanted to try to help ensure, given the volume of critical press when I started this, that the good news got through as well.

So I concentrated on publishing what some would call “fan boy” posts in which I tried to tell the other side of the story, or simply made sure articles which were good news for the program, but mostly ignored by the critics, got some exposure.

The full production of F-35 in combination with those F-22s we have will likely give us the ability to continue to enjoy air superiority, perhaps not as robust as I’d prefer, but robust enough. And given the outstanding year the F-35 program had in 2013, I feel confident that the program is on the right track. I’m of the opinion it will continue to do well and deliver an aircraft that will fulfill all of its promise.

I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to read the blog and comment over these past few years. However this will be my last post. I wish the F-35 program well and to our future F-35 pilots, may you always have clear skies and a tailwind.

Graff


Leaving on a high note? Probably not. Here is some additional background on this kind of effort.


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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Aviation Week (ARES blog) F-35 posts (2007 to present)
-U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) F-35 reports
-F-35 JSF: Cold War Anachronism Without a Mission
-History of F-35 Production Cuts
-Looking at the three Japan contenders (maneuverability)
-How the Canadian DND misleads the public about the F-35
-Value of STOVL F-35B over-hyped
-Cuckoo in the nest--U.S. DOD DOT&E F-35 report is out
-6 Feb 2012 Letter from SASC to DOD boss Panetta questioning the decision to lift probation on the F-35B STOVL.
-USAFs F-35 procurement plan is not believable
-December 2011 Australia/Canada Brief
-F-35 Key Performance Perimeters (KPP) and Feb 2012 CRS report
-F-35 DOD Select Acquisition Report (SAR) FY2012
-Release of F-35 2012 test report card shows continued waste on a dud program
-Australian Defence answers serious F-35 project concerns with "so what?"
-Land of the Lost (production cut history update March 2013)
-Outgoing LM F-35 program boss admits to flawed weight assumptions (March 2013)
-A look at the F-35 program's astro-turfing
-F-35 and F-16 cost per flying hour
-Is this aircraft worth over $51B of USMC tac-air funding?
-Combat radius and altitude, A model
-F-35A, noise abatement and airfields and the USAF


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