Reader comments - Under Oath

From this previous post, reader M&S has some interesting words...

M&S

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In summary, the Joint Strike Fighter program is the first of its kind with three variants, nine international partners, additional strategic allies and more than 1,300 global suppliers.
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Which is to say a program that is dependent on every gear meshing or the entire engine fails, technically from the standpoint of variants being cancelled or markedly reduced in total buy numbers due to operational unsuitability and/or irredeemable engineering flaws, unrecoverable before IOT&E/OPEVAL. Economically as continued downturns in global capitalism, la rgely due to U.S. suppression of interest rates to keep our massive debt under control, cause multiple buyers to reassess their participation. And by means of logistics as 1,300 suppliers world wide means either tiered redundancy (I like you better than you) which fixes contract lots on a scaled buy basis. Or vulnerabilities by which one manufacturer of Widget X is no longer available to sustain rate Y at profit margin Z and thus the price stability being sought falls out the bottom of supplier cost increases.

Any and all of these are almost guaranteed, just on the basis of partner states like the UK, one of the damn fool idiocracies directly responsible for STOVL, _now_ choose to buy less than half their original order.

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It is delivering revolutionary, game-changing technology that has now been technically endorsed by all participating nations and their air combat services.
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You don't need game changing in the kinds of wars we fight. You need persistent presence with plug'n'play avionics matched to:

1. Superior S-CAS or Sensor Close Air Support abilities to acquire and track targets without their knowi ng it, principally in the optical regime _before those targets become a threat to U.S. and Allied Forces_. Or scatter at the sound of jet noise.

Presently, the EOTS which is the principle A2G aperture for missions like AfG and Iraq is less capable than both LITENING-G5 and the ATP-SE (Advanced Sniper) in both resolution and marked target seeking as well as the ability to receive marked target locations in eye-safe mode.

Fixable but an indication of technology dating and/or Interdiction Role Specialization.

2. A2G Modem technology. Specifically ROVER-5 and a secure interface with non-MADL equipped aircraft that don't require a supporting trunk node mission airframe like BACN on Challenger or GHawk.

The F-35, with it's .9lb/lb/hr engine will _never be_ an endurant ISR platform because it's a race to determine whether the fuel tank empties before the pilot's bladder fills. UCW is not won in minutes or even hours but _days_. If you don't have corporate intelligence as a constructed database, always updated, you don't have dominance of the battlespace, air or ground.

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For the first time, it is now operationally possible to deliver a next-generation joint coalition air power from any operating venue ashore or afloat while achieving economies of commonality and scale across that partnership.
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The Marines were officially told to keep their Harriers on the boat because they are such gas hogs with very poor altitude performance, even when lightly loaded, that they cannot keep up with conventional strikers and steal fuel from jets that are better suited to the role.

The USN will likely have 10 F-35C per boat, replacing the Classic Hornet and supporting the two squadrons of Super Hornets. This is inadequate to either Interdiction or CAS missions, even as a SEAD-only asset.

Other nations do not accomplish the FNOW mission like we do. Once that First Night Of War condition -is- accomplished, many other jets are in fact superior to the F-35, both because they are not equipped with a high TSFC engine and because they are capable of carrying (Brimstone, APKWS, PWIV, AASM) superior CAS ordnance which they can release from above the threat floor.

Bluntly, the U.S. services do not like 'interacting' with the joint force environment because FNOW is when the Secret Squirrel kit comes out and if you aren't cleared in to how that works, you're a nuisance at best (RAF Tornados exiting the target area 'against the flow of traffic', begging a face shot from BVR) and a menace at worst (French anything, vacuuming the ether for SIGINT which they then sell abroad as 'updates' to their own export kit).

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The F35 was conceived for the exact situation we find ourselves in today: global economic pressures and an increasingly uncertain security environment that regularly requires our allies to join force s in defence of the freedoms we all treasure.
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_Stealth_ was conceived to allow individual jets to penetrate with a minimum of penetration aids as support missions and then return without the costs, unitary warhead limits and trashfire vulnerability of million dollar Cruise Missiles.

It is now technically obsolescent in the face of increasingly electro optical threats (which SEE it and it's ultrahot engine plume, just fine) and it's costs per flight hour (35-40,000 dollars when every pilot should be flying a minimum of 20hrs per month, _per mission ratin g_, or 120-240 hrs annually, assuming month to month switched in currency training, or a total of 1.25 manning ratio X18 jets X 35,000 dollars per flight hour X 120hrs = 94.5 million per F-35 Squadron, vs. less than 1/2 that for a JAS-39 or 2/3rds for an F-18E) and lack of proper, 30-40nm, minimum, standoff ordnance means that it cannot protect it's vulnerable beam (-25dbsm) and tail (-20dbsm), even if it's FQ protection (-50dbsm) signatures are better than the F-22.

And when it is tracked by proximity to the target terminal defensive radars which come up BEHIND IT as it proceeds to a 12.5nm JDAM release, it will be engaged by both S2A and A2A systems which, the recent debacle of the F-16D.40 DACM revealed it lacks the energy maneuver options to defeat _even when empty_ (n o bay weapons).

ARGUMENT:
If stealth is questionably valued (compared to a 10-15 million dollar MQ-9 Reaper ER with it's 20+hrs at 500nm radius persistence) in places like Southwest Asia and East Timor and the F-35's frightening lack of maneuverability prevents it from being able to win a dogfight when flown by top quality fighter pilots today, how vulnerable will it be when it faces threats which are still getting 100-200 hours per year in 2030 while it's own pilots are stuck with '60 + 60' of active flight time and simulation?

Ans: Run a REAL (not virtual ala Pacific Vista) joint multiforce test with IRST equipped SAAB Gripen-C, Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale, using modern (BAe Meteor and ASRAAM) air to weaponry and find out. I believe you will discover that the 'magical' EO-DAS global visionics/SAIRST/MAWS system is less credible than single-tube (magnified optics) IRST on these threat jets because they will have the dominant ENERGY and WEAPONS KINEMATICS to come into a fight from multiple aspects and ranges which the F-35s, because of their limited Ps, and low count of old fashioned rocket-AMRAAM, will not be able to match. Whether herded up together or scattered as individual victims.

Once you have the outcome of the A2A mission set, rinse and repeat, A2G with both Predator and Reaper UAVs (both of which now have counterparts in the PLAAF and RUAF).

On the basis of 'NT ISR' in the fighter vs. 'R-ISR' I think you will find that the robot platforms do better as both S-CAS and Hard CAS through numbers of targeted acquisitions converted to valid firing opportunities (collaterals/no collaterals) across a much longer period of flight.

If we do not face a large, high intensity, threat but do have an incredibly broad terrorist policing mission to fulfill, then it is _vastly better_ to do so with 1,000 dollar per hour Predators or 3,000 dollar per hour Reapers than it is to at tempt the same missions with manned airframes that cost 10 times as much.

All of which would be brought out, rapidly and decisively, with serious mission testing relevant to the theater operational requirements and planning we face today.

CONCLUSION:
The Marines staged an ORI or Operational Readiness Inspection, prior to accepting the F-35B into service. Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations or DFARS _require_ a further IOT&E/OPEVAL period before Milestone C clearing a weapons system into full production as service. The U.S. Services, in showing their  willingness to bring close Allies into comparative accelerated mission testing analysis at a secure range complex like that in Alaska, would go a long ways towards proving the credibility of their assertions: "Six to one Air To Air, Eight to one, Air to Ground" about the F-35's abilities.

To do less than this, after the release of the Test Pilot's initial report, documenting the major performance shortcomings in the F-35's pitch rate and loaded roll performance while tracking or defeating shots from a Legacy Trainer model F-16D with a weak engine, would, on the other hand, speak only to the fear and lies of the JSF Program Office and U.S. Armed Services who _insisted_, under oath before Congress, at the last Nunn McCurdy hearings, that this jet and only this jet was suff icient to defend U.S. interests.

There were no other options.

If that is true, it's time to prove it. If they can't prove it, all three services should be forced to cancel the Joint Strike Fighter program, completely. I would not see the reputation of the U.S. miltiary, industry AND GOVERNMENT tarnished when this flying sausage gets to overseas customers who promptly begin to talk out of church as to exactly how poor a performing jet it is. And that will happen. If the documentation of the U.S. Test Pilot is accurate.

PS: I would add the following: Watch 'The Pentagon Wars'-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
As a preparatory indication of how the U.S. military cheats. If there is to be AMT, make sure you have people looking over every shoulder at every instrumented range _on the ground_ and with full access to ALL mission telemetry from TACTS/ACMI as well as Mass and Red/Blue Debriefs.
It's bound to get dirty before it gets better.

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