Misleading the public-Team Porkies

A defence "reporter" for The Australian is actually the kind of person that gets his defence information by copy/paste and not actual shoe leather.

Just another fan. If it came from a press release or someone who's pay-check depends on the program working, it must be true.

Critics get the label, "die hard".

Here we have an incredible collection of untrue statements about the troubled F-35 program.

And the military helps with the disinformation campaign against the Australian public.

Several years ago, RAAF chief and fighter pilot Geoff Brown took part in a “red flag” exercise in the US and flew against the first of the so-called “fifth-generation” jets and the older cousin of the JSF, the F-22 Raptor fighter.

So superior was the Raptor, says Brown, “that we didn’t get within 40 miles of it ­before we were ‘killed’. We had no idea who’d killed us.

“It wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience. We basically were never in the fight. That’s the competitive edge that the ADF needs and it’s the competitive edge that we will have with the F-35 in any future conflict.”

Brown says the JSF had better “situational awareness” than the Raptor. The JSF pilot was able to see on one display everything that was going on around his aircraft for a vast distance along with what was being “seen” by other ­allied aircraft, ground forces and warships.

The F-35 is not just a little F-22. And today, none of the systems Brown states that give the F-35 better situational awareness than the F-22 work, and may not for years, if ever.

And then there is the difference in power that team-porkies tries to say isn't important. When anyone says that performance is not important, an aircraft project really is in trouble.

"Andrew Bell, says the JSF ‘was never designed to be a dogfighting super weapon"

Finally, some truth. Yet if it isn't competitive, why should a country with a very small population hand over tens of billions? And once you strip away the faulty systems, you have... a modern day Boomberang. (19 minutes of your time well spent).



Yet we have this to look at:


(click image to make larger)

What else was not mentioned in the F-35 fan-friendly newspaper piece?

This DOD test report (PDF).

And what about the F-35 and air superiority? Don't count on it.

This:

Quite a cost for fleet that is not designed for air superiority. To quote Gen Mike Hostage, Commander, Air Combat Command from Defense News, 3 Feb 2014:

"If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22"

Here is what the F-35s performance is like today. Operational test units have a performance-limited aircraft. All variants of the F-35, A, B and C. Here is the B's said story.

Similarly pilots are looking forward to a larger part of the flight envelope being cleared. “Flying at 400 knots and pulling 4.5 g’s in this fighter is difficult because it wants to do so much more,” Miller said. “Tactically we are rarely going to be flying the aircraft at less than 400 knots.”

The upcoming Block 2B software provides weapon capability and expands the flight envelope to Mach 1.2, 5.5 g’s, and fifty degrees AOA. The F-35Bs will eventually be cleared to operate at Mach 1.6 and seven g’s.

The aircraft are at operational test units, with no working weapon systems and severe performance restrictions. Over 12 years after contract award; over 11 years for Australia. The F-35 is unsuitable for emerging threats. And besides the lie that is being pushed in that "news" article, Kinematics matter.

I am curious when The Australian and some people in Defence, will join the home team and take our interests first?


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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
-F-35's air-to-air ability limited
-F-35 Blocks--2006 and today
-The F-35B design is leaking fuel



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