Wear RAAF uniform-get free pass to mislead

Interesting. You can get in a uniform, and have complete cover to lie to the Australian public about the F-35 program.

He said the ground-up stealth capability of the F-22 and the JSF made the aircraft and their pilots virtually “unstoppable”.

The F-35 is not a little F-22: ... not even.

And the F-22 is not "unstoppable". As the Cold War ended, the U.S. got a first-hand look at Soviet (now Russian) high-off-bore-sight (HOBS) dogfight missiles cued with a helmet for within-visual-range (WVR) combat. Some of what was left of the East-German AF was rolled into the unified German AF based on the West German AF. With that, they got MiG-29s with HOBS/helmet setups. These were used primarily as red-air training jets. To good effect. While the early MiG-29 had its flaws, showing up to WVR without a HOBS/helmet setup can be a problem.

The USAF knew this for years, and at the beginning of the last decade, started fielded their own HOBS(AIM-X) helmet cueing system on F-15s and F-16s. Same with the Navy. When the F-22 arrived for initial operating capability (IOC) in 2005, it lacked HOBS/helmet dogfight missile cueing.

It still does today.

The F-22's other weapon, the AMRAAM, is a single point of failure. It is jammable by modern opponents to a very low probability of kill (PK). In combat, it has a 50 percent PK vs. weakly defended targets (example; early MiG-29s run by third-rate air forces).

Today, USAF aircraft like the F-15C with HOBS/helmet dogfight missile cueing, do defeat the F-22 in practice WVR combat. Go ahead. Ask around. The F-22s get a free pass in exercises with an overly high AMRAAM PK and of course the aircraft's brute performance, which along with many other things, the F-35 will never have.

As an aside, because of its configuration, rail mounted missiles like the AIM-9, can't be fired from the F-35s weapons bays. See how the F-22 solved that problem.

(Bayless: LM's X-35 won the JSF competition without having to prove weapons bay function.)

While the F-22 is a great concept, its potential is far from realized. And, the SU-35 and PAK-FA are made to counter the F-22.

In enough numbers to where the 120-some combat-coded F-22s can't be everywhere.

Available sorties, quality and quantity is a fine balance in a war. The U.S. will not have enough combat aircraft, with the right capability to win future conflicts, when aircraft like the SU-35 and PAK-FA are in many opponents hands.

That, and against emerging threats--even some of today's existing threats--the F-35 will get killed. Outright. And that assumes everything on it works to spec. The aircraft is far from working to spec in any reliable manner; over 12 years from winning contract award and $60B invested thus far.

So, RAAF Squadron Leader Matt Harper, the NACC, RAAF, DMO, Defence and others, along with their Sith Lord U.S. friends that supply the endless LM talking points are wrong.

As for the entrenched defence bureaucracy, lying to parliament in Australia is illegal.


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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


“It will affordable because already there are 3,000 aircraft on the order books.”
—27 June 2002, Air Marshal Houston, Defence press announcement, Australia joins the F-35 program—


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