USAF's dying F-35 program

The United States Air Force is well toward its plan of destroying what was once America's premier tactical aircraft capability.

For U.S. fiscal year 2015 budget, the service has requested to retire 500 aircraft. Many of these A-10s and F-15Cs.

For fy2015, the USAF is requesting to buy 26 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters.

And they have no proven tactical capability; will certainly be unsurvivable vs. emerging threats; cost twice as much or more per flying hour, and have lower availability rates.

In 2003 the USAF expected to buy 110 F-35As per year in fy2015 and fy2016. By this time it was thought that full-rate production would have started in fy2014 with 110 per year. With 2 years from order to delivery, USAF would have had 550 full-rate production F-35As in hand by the end of 2020. Full-rate production would be complete for the USAF by fy2027-8 and the program of record, 1763 F-35A aircraft, would be delivered by the end of 2030.

In 2006 after development problems and cost climb, USAF predicted it would buy 80 F-35s per year for fy2015 and fy 2016 (full-rate production). End of full-rate production would extend 10 years.

For the USAF fy2012 budget, the service predicted it would buy 50 F-35s in fy2015 and 70 for fy2016. All low-rate initial production.

3 years later, for the USAF fy2015 budget, the service predicted it would buy 26 F-35s and 44 in fy2016. All low-rate initial production.

With no believable full-rate-production date in sight.

For the fy2015 budget, the average weapon's system unit cost (the actual price to get the jet to squadron service (not counting R&D money) for the total buy of 1763 aircraft has climbed 27 percent compared to fy2012 budget predictions. (Source USAF budgets fy2012 and fy2015).

When compared against DOD procurement laws, F-35 low rate initial production is illegal since there is no Milestone C in place, and there may not be for years.

Useless, expensive and illegal.

In the 1990s and early 2000's, the goal of the Joint Strike Fighter program, as stated by senior DOD leadership, was to be a "model acquisition program".

You be the judge.

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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
-Deceptive marketing practice: F-35 blocks
-The concurrency fraud
-The dung beetle's "it's known" lie


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