USAF in for some bad times

The United States Air Force is in for quite a shock if they have to fight a real opponent with the F-35.

Good grief.

Maj. Jared Santos, an F-35 pilot with the 58th Fighter Squadron, believes this aircraft is like an invisible boxer, capable of avoiding detection from the enemy on the way to delivering a knock-out punch.

With previous generations of fighters, each aircraft had a specific purpose, Santos explained. With the capabilities of the F-35, he said, it can do all of the tasks associated with the F-16, F-15 and A-10.

“If you have a conventional strike package, you may have eight F-15s in order to provide fighter protection. You may have 10 F-16s to take out the surface-to-air missiles, and you’re going to have to have 10 F-15E Strike Eagles to go in there and bomb the target,” Santos said. “In order to support those aircraft, you’re going to need probably 10 tankers to refuel those fighters, to get them into and out of the target area, and an AWACS to control it.”

As budgets shrink and resources become limited, Santos believes the F-35 is the perfect aircraft for the Air Force and sister services to field in response to constantly changing requirements.

That would be the job of the F-22  to make sure the F-35 gets there and back...(safely?)

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Senior Airman Jessa Fleming, a low observable technician, masks areas of an F-35 Lightning II in need of metal repair work. Fleming is responsible for maintaining the stealth characteristics of the Joint Strike Fighter. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III) 

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And...

“The four-ship of F-35’s might be able to do the job of 20-30 fourth generation aircraft,” Santos said. “You can send in four F-35’s. They can slip past the fighters, they can sneak past the surface-to-air missiles, they can bomb the target and they can defend themselves out of the target area. You need fewer tankers because you have fewer airplanes going in.”

With the F-35’s ability to slip past enemy defenses without detection and with fewer aircraft, Santos says there may be less collateral damage overall. This means a reduction of targets for the Air Force to drop bombs on, structures to rebuild and lives lost.

As technology in the world advances, the F-35 will bring a combination of capabilities under one airframe that the Air Force was previously operating without. The F-35 is bringing together all the capabilities of different fighter aircraft, and placing them underneath one canopy, with that canopy invisible to enemy radar.

That is a lot of Kool-Aid. Good luck. But thanks for telling us we need a reduction in the fighter force by a factor of 5-7 times.

We certainly don't need 1763 F-35s if they are so great.

Yet since the unaffordable F-35 is faulty, living on a Joint Operational Requirement Document composed in the 1990s and signed off on at the beginning of the last decade, (in other words, obsolete) that is exactly what will happen.

USAF will get very small, but also, very weak.

Result?

Lost battles.

Lost wars.

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-Time's Battleland - 5 Part series on F-35 procurement - 2013 
-Summary of Air Power Australia F-35 points
-Bill Sweetman, Aviation Week and the F-35
-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
-F-35 deliveries
-ADF's wacky F-35 assumptions
-Gauging performance, the 2008 F-35, Davis dream brief
-Aboriginal brought out as a prop
-Super Kendall's F-35 problem
-LM sales force in pre-Internet era
-History of F-35 engine problems
-Compare
-JSF hopes and dreams...early days of the Ponzi Scheme
-The Prognostics
-2002--Australia joins the F-35 program