US Air Force Declares F-35A Ready For Combat (defensenews.com) 280
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Defense News: The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday declared its first squadron of F-35As ready for battle, 15 years after Lockheed Martin won the contract to make the plane. The milestone means that the service can now send its first operational F-35 formation -- the 34th Fighter Squadron located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah -- into combat operations anywhere in the world. The service, which plans to buy 1,763 F-35As, is the single-largest customer of the joint strike fighter program, which also includes the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy and a host of governments worldwide. "Given the national security strategy, we need it," [Air Combat Command (ACC) head Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle] said. "You look at the potential adversaries out there, or the potential environments where we have to operate this airplane, the attributes that the F-35 brings -- the ability to penetrate defensive airspace, the ability to deliver precision munitions with a sensor suite that fuses data from multiple information sources -- is something our nation needs." Carlisle said in July that even though he would feel comfortable sending the F-35 to a fight as soon as the jet becomes operational, ACC has formed a "deliberate path" where the aircraft would deploy in stages: first to Red Flag exercises, then as a "theater security package" to Europe and the Asia-Pacific. The fighter probably won't deploy to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State group any earlier than 2017, he said, but if a combatant commander asked for the capability, "I'd send them down in a heartbeat because they're very, very good." The declaration is another achievement for the $379 billion program -- the Pentagon's largest weapons project -- following the declaration of a first squadron of F-35s ready for combat made by the U.S. Marine Corps in July 2015.
Correction. (Score:3, Informative)
They transposed "security theater."
Re:Correction. (Score:5, Funny)
"first to Red Flag exercises, then as a "theater security package" to Europe and the Asia-Pacific. "
They transposed "security theater."
You wish. The truth is that the MPAA has bribed Congress into authorizing military air strikes against anyone who dares to carry a cell phone capable of recording video into a theater. Gotta stop them pirates at all cost, after all.
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Just like the Founding Fathers would want.
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"first to Red Flag exercises, then as a "theater security package" to Europe and the Asia-Pacific. "
They transposed "security theater."
Cute... though "theater security package" is a specific military term.
Funny thing... the "Rams", aka the 34th Fighter Squadron (part of the 388th FW) was decommissioned in the mis-1990s - it was the very first unit I was assigned to back in 1988, when they did F-16 A/B models.
Trivia bit: the 388th Fighter Wing was the very first recipient of the F-16, way back in the late 1970s.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
...the combat readiness of an aircraft can really only be determined by actual combat.
What's worse, a system like the F-35 that relies so heavily on computers won't be tested adequately until it goes up against a first world power and their various jamming capabilities, and adversaries with 5th Generation fighters.
Shooting fish in a barrel over the Middle East doesn't really count.
Ready to (Score:4, Insightful)
Its unlikely it will ever engage another jet in a combat role, countries we fight are too poor for jets, countries with jets have too much power to attack and know we are too powerful to attack too or our allies.
Its ready to be a glorified bomber, bombing mostly suspected terrorists.
Re:Ready to (Score:4, Interesting)
People always say this but the reality is no one knows how global security is going to change through the lifetime of an aircraft and aircraft themselves are evolved to deal with new and emerging threats. People said the same about Europe's Eurofighter Typhoon 5 years ago, and yet it's already having to intercept 4.5th Gen Russian fighters that are infringing European airspace in the Baltic.
In many ways though it kind of works like nuclear deterrents and MAD; in large part the reason we don't have to send things like F-22s up against Su-37s is precisely because Russia knows if it forces such a confrontation it'll lose. The very fact we have the qualitative edge is in itself a reason for not having to use it. If we ditch it because we believe we don't need it, then we're more likely to find that we need it, only then we wont have it and we'll have already lost.
Re:Ready to (Score:4, Insightful)
One word: Drones.
Re:Ready to (Score:5, Funny)
He does a bit, doesn't he?
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Re:Ready to (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing about the F-35 precludes development of drones though, and the West already seems to be leading the way on that front too.
Except the cost -- you don't spend over a trillion dollars (projected cost for deployment + operations) on a platform, then let it sit idle while you send in the drones.
There's no reason the F-35 couldn't in itself be the basis of a drone.
Again, cost. Why turn a $150M+ airframe into a drone when you can use a purpose built drone for a fraction of the cost? Removing the pilot from the plane removes a lot of design constraints, so it makes little sense to turn a human piloted aircraft into a drone.
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But where are these drones that make the F-35 obsolete currently or in the next decade or two?
You're still missing the point that those drones don't actually exist and aren't even close to ready. There's not even any signed off programme to develop such an aircraft for the military, and as we've seen with aircraft like the F-35 itself it can typically take two decades for such programmes to reach combat anyway. On this basis alone the F-35 has at very least 20 usable years, and that's based on the almost ce
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Oh I completely believe you don't worry :)
The Harrier was always a notoriously difficult to fly, and when I saw the F-35B in hover the other week one thing that was incredibly obvious to me is how perfectly motionless it could hover compared to the Harrier which required far greater human intervention to keep steady. Watching it it just looked like a freeze frame in it's complete stillness so regardless of actual automatic landing the fly by wire systems making constant, invisible to the naked eye adjustmen
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People said the same about Europe's Eurofighter Typhoon 5 years ago, and yet it's already having to intercept 4.5th Gen Russian fighters that are infringing European airspace in the Baltic.
Could you post some links to sources substantiating that claim? I haven't heard any reports of Russian military aircraft infringing other nations' air space in the Baltic, although I usually follow that kind of news quite carefully.
It's worth noting that the reach of "national air space" over the sea is defined as 12 nautical miles from the nation's coast line. That's about 22.25 kilometres. Amusingly, the shortest distance between the coasts of Finland and Estonia turns out to be about 50 kilometres, rende
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I'm amazed someone claiming they follow this news carefully isn't aware of the countless infringements. They're relatively regular and, well documented:
http://www.ibtimes.com/despite... [ibtimes.com]
https://theaviationist.com/201... [theaviationist.com]
http://www.baltictimes.com/rus... [baltictimes.com]
http://www.upi.com/Business_Ne... [upi.com]
http://sputniknews.com/europe/... [sputniknews.com]
http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Art... [thenews.pl]
http://uawire.org/news/media-r... [uawire.org]
The fact is that Russia is a hostile nation, it's invaded Ukraine, and it's invaded Georgia, it can't pretend it's an innocent by
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What upsets Baltic and Nordic countries isn't even the 'incursions' as such, it's that the Russians are flying with their transponders off.
So while the military radars see them, the civilians don't and there's not just a possibility of collisions, there's also been quite a few close calls. How anyone who claims to know about Russia, NATO and such wouldn't know about something this well known...
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Yes exactly, both the US and Russia are in the wrong on that sort of issue. The US doing it doesn't act as justification for anyone else to, quite the opposite, it highlights why no one should do it given how badly it fucked the region up. The US has been heavily criticised for it since it did so, and so should Russia be.
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Its ready to be a glorified bomber, bombing mostly suspected terrorists.
Predator drones haven't got that covered?
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Size matters.
Re:Ready to (Score:4, Insightful)
Its unlikely it will ever engage another jet in a combat role, countries we fight are too poor for jets, countries with jets have too much power to attack and know we are too powerful to attack too or our allies.
Its ready to be a glorified bomber, bombing mostly suspected terrorists.
The F-35 is not intended to be an air superiority fighter, it's intended to be a multi-role close air support (bomb delivery platform) that can hold it's own in an environment where control of the air may still be an open question. It is the role of the Air Force's F-22 to clear the skies of the opposition and engage them before they reach the F-35's area of operation. So, the F-35's A-A offensive capability is intended to keep it flying (i.e. so it can get away) and not so it can win a dogfight. It's primary purpose is to be an economical delivery truck, designed to deliver death and destruction on the enemy's ground forces and survive the round trip. For that role, it is well suited should it ever meet it's design specifications.
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Exactly...
Basically the idea (as far as I can guess) is that The F-22 will eventually replace the F-15 (first flight in 1972), while the F-35 will replace the F-16 (first flight in 1976).
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The irony is... (Score:5, Interesting)
that it could well be obsolete in less time than it took to develop it if computer controlled drones keep advancing at their current rate. There was a story not long ago about a computer flying a simulated fighter outperforming a top gun in a dogfight. Move technology on 15 years and putting a pilot in a fighter could seem rather quaint.
Re:The irony is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The irony is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The aircraft is already run by computers. It could probably become a drone with a software update.
It certainly could, but you don't build drones that powerful, complicated, and expensive for a variety of reasons. Since they don't need pilots, it makes a lot more sense to build more but cheaper aircraft, since that way you get more redundancy.
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Actually, not true. We are there now. MIT already has fully automatic and autonomous flying helicoptors that can perform stunts in mid-air, and there are many, many videos of targeting systems using machine vision to target and "attack" specified targets. Most of them use nerf guns and lasers, but the point remains. We know the technology to do fully automated drones that engage and
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I would think the GP meant "select and engage" as opposed to say "select and evade", that is to say it'll start shooting at craft, people and buildings nobody told it was a target. If you just want a sentry gun that shoots anything with a heat signature that's easy, if you're cool with it mowing down any civilians or friendlies that wander into the kill zone. That said if you can nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki and burn Vietnam with napalm I'm sure some collateral death by automation won't stop anyone in a real
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Doing stunts in mid air is a vastly easier proposition than determining the difference between a terrorist base and a local supermarket.
Re:The irony is... (Score:4, Interesting)
The good thing about air is that it's mostly devoid of objects. So everything that shows up on radar can be considered "an object of interest".
From a programmers perspective, I would think that autonomous flying is a much easier problem to solve than autonomous driving.
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Military craft are supposed to be EM shielded against this little guy [wikipedia.org], but I'm not really sure how much real-world testing this has really been put through. It's not the sort of thing you find in the third-world nations we kick around. And of course we don't stir up shit with real developed nations, we all have nukes and the rest of the military is really just for show.
But an EM pulse wouldn't "jam" the computers. It would fry them. You could say "permanently jammed", I guess.
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...vs 1.200 Model airplanes with a gopro and a few kilos of C4...
Don't forget you're dealing with an enemy where even the bomb you plan to drop on him makes him win, because the bomb costs more than what it destroys.
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nonsense, war isn't about flat comparison of economic damage of enemy vs cost to attackers, such comparisons are completely irrelevant.
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Actually it is. If I can force you to cripple your economy to produce and use (and thus force you to reproduce) weapons that don't destroy anything of value for me, I pretty much have to win in the end.
Every plane (or drone) sortie costs money. Lots of it. It costs your resources in fuel and maintenance, it costs you money in form of ordnance dropped on your enemy, and depending on what you hit it may well cost you goodwill due to blowing up yet another wedding. If I can make you spend all that without any
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I think that may be a bad thing overall. Having a live pilot in the cockpit keeps everyone accountable. You know you don't fire on that aircraft unless absolutely necessary because there's going to be some serious international problems if you do.
With aircraft as drones, I have a feeling trigger fingers will be much more quick, and hostilities may end up escalating (and eventually claiming MORE lives) when originally - when there was human life at stake in the first place - it might not have ever happened
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Tell that to Turkey, who got tired of the Russians overflying their airspace, complained endlessly and got ignored, so they placed a phone call with an AIM-120 AMRAAM missle and finally got Russia's attention.
Russia bitched and moaned, but that was about it. Unlike Ukrane, Turkey is a member of NATO and we would respond in force to anything done against it.
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> There was a story not long ago about a computer flying a simulated fighter outperforming a top gun in a dogfight
That's not difficult to believe. For a while now with combat airframes the weakest link has been the meatbag that will stop working above 9Gs sustained. Eliminate the need for a pilot and all the associated safety systems and the airframe will perform even better with the weight reduction.
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One-on-one, perhaps... Except a drone can turn a lot faster than a human pilot can, and you can afford a dozen good drones for the price of one manned fighter.
Can the human outthink all 12 of them?
Even if the human shoots down 9 of the 12 drones, if number 10 gets him it is a victory for the drones. They are manufactured and a new batch of 12 can roll off the production line in a few weeks, the human pilot takes years to replace.
Wasn't this the multi-trillion-dollar failure? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Wasn't this the multi-trillion-dollar failure? (Score:3)
I think this was also the plane that kills pilots when they eject and can't fire its main cannon. Or am I confusing it with another trillion-dollar boondoggle?
Re: Wasn't this the multi-trillion-dollar failure? (Score:5, Informative)
The ejection risk is to lightweight pilots ( < 136 lbs / 62 kg). The temporary solution thusfar has just been to ban lightweight pilots from flying it. Ejection is an inherently very stressful act on the body. For lightweight pilots on the F35, it's too stressful.
Only the F-35A has a 25mm cannon at all; obviously systems common to all aircraft have priority. The cannon is new - a lighter and more accurate version of the GAU-12/U. The schedule is for the gun to go online in 2017. It was on schedule last I checked.
As for the GP, I'll let actual [regjeringen.no] pilots [investors.com] of the aircraft respond. And note that that is about dogfighting, an increasingly less relevant portion of an aircraft's activity. The whole philosophy behind the F-35 is to detect and engage targets from further away than they can detect and engage the F-35. Aka, if the F-35 is in a dogfight, it's already done something wrong to begin with.
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And note that that is about dogfighting, an increasingly less relevant portion of an aircraft's activity. The whole philosophy behind the F-35 is to detect and engage targets from further away than they can detect and engage the F-35. Aka, if the F-35 is in a dogfight, it's already done something wrong to begin with.
That sounds extremely familiar (last heard during the development of the F-4). It's arguable that technology has improved to where that is a true statement today where it was not in the past, but only time will tell.
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Their position is different, sure; their click-bait headlines and pseudoscience wargarbling tackle different topics, too.
Slashdot is a place where you can get a headline claiming something, run a user-submitted rebuttal 2 hours later, and chug along fine... except for certain topics, where the rebuttal sits in Slashdot's pipeline for 90 seconds, then gets marked as spam.
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I guess the Navy is SOL when they have to fly a carrier air patrol.
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Please read what I said and let me refine what I mean..
The F35 is a capable A-A platform that compares to what the Navy currently has. It can hold it's own in most of the conceivable conflicts the Navy might be called on to provide air support for. Right now the primary Navy role is to provide air support in areas where the level of technology and sophistication of the adversary is limited. Under these conditions the F35 is fully capable to do the mission and these conditions cover the *bulk* of the worl
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It is too small to be an effective bomber, it doesn't carry enough payload.
It is, in effect, shitty at everything it tries to do, largely because it is too small.
The F15E Strike Eagle is about as small as you can go for a fighter bomber.
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For the price, we shouldn't have to pick X... Since price was the X.
Look at the F-15, it was so far ahead of its day that it is still effective today. That is because we were afraid of the Mig-25 and didn't know it wasn't a Mach 3 super fighter, so we built our own Mach 2.5 super fighter.
The design goal was to build the best fighter in the world, no compromises, and we did that, quite well. They were and are expensive, but if you have the budget, you can avoid most compromises.
Now you might say, but it
Lawn Dart (Score:2)
Brand new already obsolete overpriced single engine fighter to scatter sheet metal over the landscape. I just don't understand why in hell they had to have a single engine fighter. The F-16 showed how bad that works like the F-105 before it. They may have it operational but it'll be another 10 years before they'll have most of the bugs out of it. They'd better start laying down plans for a new fighter now so they can have that ready to go in 20 years or so.
Re:Lawn Dart (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not my opinion only. Look at the safety record. A warbird with one engine is a bad thing. Redundancy is everything in the air. When you lose an engine in an F-15 you return to base. In an F-16 you reach for the ejection handle. Even you should be able to see that.
Ok. If you want to look at one dimension of multi-dimensional operations, fine. It isn't really useful, but let's look at the facts anyway, apples to apples.
For example, both the F-15 and F-16 use the same engine. The most current with statistically significant data being the F100-PW-229. In engine related class A mishaps (loss of an airframe or life) the F-15 has had 6 in 565 thousand aircraft flight hours. The F-16 has had 0, that's right, 0 engine related class A mishaps in 367 thousand flight hours.
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Jesus fucking Jeremiah Christ on a Poop Stick. The F-16 is, after the Supermarine Spitfire, the single most successful fighter *ever*. It has been deployed in more roles than the initial designers and customers could have ever dreamed of, and is gloriously resisting wear, tear and fatigue way better than projected. Did you write that sentence from a Starbucks on your Apple laptop, i.e. from your virtual armchair, dear fanboi strategist ?
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" I just don't understand why in hell they had to have a single engine fighter."
Then you're not qualified to even be fucking speaking on this subject. Quit being an armchair strategist and get your lazy ass into the actual military.
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Please stop complaining about the F-35. You make those of us who do have actual arguments against this flying garbage can look like idiots when you're standing next to us.
The F-16 was an incredible design for its time. Absolutely one of my favorites of all times. Incredibly reliable. Fantastically easy to maintain. Fairly easy to fly for a RSS plane (that actually gained a lot of stability when going supersonic). Incredible view (seriously, you won't find many planes where you get to see THAT much, it feels
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Wish I had mod points to mod this up. I would also suggest that AC get an account and stop posting anonymously if he/she wishes to continue posting insightful posts like this. I would further suggest including links... the wikipedia page for the Thud [wikipedia.org] (aka the Republic F-105 Thunderchief) shows a bad-ass looking penetrator studded with sixteen(!) 750 lb bombs on its exterior, not including an internal bomb bay with a capacity of Up to 14,000 lb (6,400 kg) of ordnance, including conventional and nuclear bom
Window dressing: IOC does NOT equal combat ready (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/feature/5/170838/a-closer-look-at-dot%26e-report-on-f_35-%3Ci%3E(updated)%3C%C2%A7i%3E.html
The Block 2B version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which the Marine Corps declared operational in July last year, is not capable of unsupported combat against any serious threat, according to Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation (DOT&E).
http://aviationweek.com/defense/test-report-points-f-35-s-combat-limits-0?NL=AW-05&Issue=AW-05_20160201_AW-05_373&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1
http://aviationweek.com/site-files/aviationweek.com/files/uploads/2016/01/DOT%26E%202015%20F-35%20Annual%20Report.pdf
The pentagon must be geting pretty desperate.
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The F-35 is a failure already. That wont stop them from buying them though.
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Are we sure? (Score:3)
Just in time for Drones to take over (Score:3)
What plane needs a pilot anymore?
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What plane needs a pilot anymore?
In situations where you are making split second decisions and have long round trip communications delays, you need a pilot..
In situations where jamming of communications and navigation signals is possible, yet the mission cannot be pre-planned because you don't have all the facts, you need a pilot.
In situations where you need stealth (and thus cannot turn on a RF transmitter) but need a human's input in tactical decision making on the fly because of the number of unknowns, you need a pilot.
In situations
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Government-flavored FUD. (Score:5, Informative)
"...You look at the potential adversaries out there, or the potential environments..."
Uhhh, potential? That's the best you can do here? Exactly how many metric fucktons of FUD does one need in order to justify over 1,700 aircraft and a $380 billion dollar price tag?
This kind of shit scares me because of what the US might be inclined to get involved in, for no other reason other than to justify this little shopping spree.
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Quite the contrary. The closer adversaries are in their capabilities, the more likely they are to fight. This was the case in Europe for a few hundred years before WWI. Heck, from 1803 to 1871 (a lifetime!) there less than 10 years of peace.
Meanwhile every year now we are racking up a longer unprecedent period of peace [fallen.io] -- one that has silently saved millions of lives without us noticing. And that's including both the idiotic ventures of the US into Vietnam and Iraq II (and some more-worthy interventions suc
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This kind of shit scares me because of what the US might be inclined to get involved in, for no other reason other than to justify this little shopping spree.
Well, the theory is that the shopping spree is justified because it ensures that the US doesn't need to get involved in anything (and no one will "get involved" with the US), because the country has such a powerful hammer that merely waving it does as much good as using it.
That said, I think there *is* a strong tendency of presidents to play with their toys because they have them. Although it's clearly a pipe dream at this point, that's why I'd like to see us move back to the constitution's notion of how
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Uhhh, potential? That's the best you can do here? Exactly how many metric fucktons of FUD does one need in order to justify over 1,700 aircraft and a $380 billion dollar price tag?
In general, I agree the US spends too much on defense, but the above is short sighted. To answer you question, YES, you do plan based on potentials, because by the time a "potential" threat becomes an "actual" threat it may be too late to do anything about it.
This OBVIOUSLY lends itself to abuse (if you can sell a "potential" threat well enough you can write a blank check, or, as you note, some people can't leave their toys in the cupboard and just HAVE to play with them, regardless of the mess made) and I
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> ... a $380 billion price tag
Wow. People don't really think about what that means. Because "the government" is paying for it.
But if you do the simple math, that is more than $1,000 from every man, woman, and child in the US. For a single weapons program.
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Augustine's law valid for the foreseeable future (Score:3, Interesting)
Law Number XVI: In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one tactical aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3½ days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.
Neat (Score:2, Insightful)
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2. The money the US is wasting on our military (which is larger than the next SEVEN countries' military, by the way), could easily be spent on helping people, preferably our own, on thing
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Just to clarify.... On the car loan.... I put 50% of the vehicle's price down and I will carry the loan only for about 8 months. Where I could have waited and avoided having to get the loan and paying the interest, we really needed the third vehicle in a household with 4 drivers and 2 cars.
My view on debt is two fold.. 1. Never go into debt that is unsecured, unless you are currently able to pay it off. (I.E. I use credit cards, but I pay the entire outstanding balance monthly, no student loans ect.) 2.
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National defense is a "small fraction" of what we spend? The smallest percentage I found was 16%, and the highest was 54%. This program alone cost $379 BILLION dollars. I'm no economist, but I have to imagine a few million people could be educated or could get some medical care for the price of just these silly jets.
If these jets make you feel "safer", somehow, that's good for you. I'm s
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How does waging war against people who didn't attack us "national defense"? How does causing the creation of ISIL by our ineptness in Iraq (which didn't attack us) constitute "national defense"
Mission Accomplished! (Score:5, Interesting)
:)
And by "mission" I mean to siphon as much money from the taxpayer into into Lockheed Martin's bank accounts...
Don't forget the fine print (Score:2)
Ready for combat*
(*if used by enemy forces)
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Ahw come on... The "Ready for Combat" is a contract milestone that was defined decades ago. The F-35 has reached a minimal level of functionality which was previously defined in the specifications and the contractor has managed to make the case that they have fulfilled the specifications to claim this milestone.
The F-35 will continue to develop new capabilities and features as time moves on. It's been a long bumpy road though development and has sucked up all the spare change from the couch cushions at
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So, essentially, it's the plane version of "it compiles, ship it".
Of course... (Score:2)
...as long as *actual* operational usability isn't a factor.
They're at least as combat-ready as the other giant contractor-subsidy program, the LCS ships...ie, pretty much not, and likely a death-trap for the unfortunate crew that have to operate them in actual combat anytime soon.
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do you have proof for your assertions? the craft is mainly for getting ordinance on target, not to fight another aircraft. you claim this craft can't do that?
The Pentagon Wars (Score:2)
Someone suggested this movie in the comments over on The Register the other day and it's about the development about the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The comment from the General sounds like it could be taken directly from the movie. Actually the whole F-35 program is very similar to how the Bradley played out.
Okay, now can we spend a FEW pennies on bribes? (Score:2)
another achievement for the $379 billion program
After spending $379 billion dollars, delivering a handful of jets seven years late does not count as an "achievement". If someone gave my stupidest cousin $379 billion dollars and 15 years, there's at least a fair chance that he might cure cancer or something by accident.
Like hell it is. (Score:2)
Gremlins (Score:2)
* Won't be too big a problem in the West's lucrative Endless War (TM) sandbox.
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I think you mean the f-104. They were notorious for killing pilots. German pilots in particular had unkind things to say about them. The F-14 was the Navy's swing wing fighter.
Re:I will believe it when a PILOT says that (Score:4, Informative)
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The F-104 had a few rather "colorful" nicknames with the German pilots: Witwenmacher (widowmaker), Erdnagel (earth-nail), fliegender Sarg (flying coffin) oder Sargfighter (coffin fighter, but in German in rhymes with Starfighter).
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Okay, here you go [regjeringen.no]. Want another? [investors.com] ;)
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What amiga3d said: Either you or your dad dropped a zero. The F-104 didn't get a very bad rep in the USAF, because they got rid of the damn thing as fast as they could; some 90% of the production was exported in deals you could smell from a mile upwind.
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Why do I foresee a similar fate for the F-35?
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Who else has the money to buy them?
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As if that has ever been a reason to buy or not buy military hardware.
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some 90% of the production was exported in deals you could smell from a mile upwind.
As documented by Bob Calvert! [wikipedia.org]
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Umm... no.
1. The original ejector seat was shooting the pilot out of the plane by ejecting him DOWNWARDS. As you might imagine this could (and did) lead to a few (un)foreseeable problems at lower altitudes. Even after they realized that this might not be a good idea and replaced it with normal ejectors, they were FAR from zero/zero. And no, zero/zero was absolutely within capabilities of the times, we're not talking WW2 here. And the separation of seat and pilot after eject was even more of a gamble.
2. The
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According to the summary the Marines had a squadron ready last year.
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Listen, I love the military, ok? Just so we know where we're standing. Especially anything that flies. And this is why I am deeply worried that something like the F-35 is being developed. Because the very last thing whoever greenlit this was thinking about were the pilots and the people who actually have to trust their life to this piece of turbine powered garbage.
This is a prime example how pork-barrel politics ruin the US military. Funny enough, that was quite similar in the latter years of Nazi Germany.
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Apples vs. Oranges. You had a point?
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You're confused, we can and did crank out f35 like donuts. defense contracting is a major part of the economy. losing a few doesn't change anything.