
108 F-35s Will Not Be Combat Capable - rbanffy
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/10/16/108_f-35s_will_not_be_combat_capable_112477.html
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georgeecollins
The Marines are bringing back Harriers (ancient and not very effective)
because the Hornets are wearing out.* The UK has a carrier in service that has
no planes. The original plan was to have the JSF in service in 2010. Plans
keep getting pushed back, more money is spent, and the state of the art is not
standing still.

The problem with this is that the US is spending insane amounts of money for
what will not be a very effective plane in any particular role. Defenders will
say that the JSF can do more things than any other plane, but what is the
point if in combat the plane is not the best at the role it is sent to
perform?

It's hard to know what to do at this point, perhaps just keep the JSF as a
VTOL replacement (there is no other) and keep some for the Air Force. At the
ranges our navy will need to engage in Asia, they should think about drones
and planes that are built to work very well with drones.

*[https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/u-s-marines-will-keep-the-...](https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/u-s-marines-will-keep-the-harrier-around-longer-as-hor-1794046061)

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nradov
The UK carrier isn't actually in service yet.

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tonyedgecombe
It's undergoing training and testing, which seems a bit dubious without any
aircraft to land on it.

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raymondh
ISTM the F-35 will be the undoing of the U.S. military. The program seems to
be eating all available time and funding but without delivering on essential
core capabilities.

~~~
mcv
It certainly seems to be the undoing of the Dutch airforce. We always used to
have around 100 fighters. It's going to 37 F-35s now. I wonder how many
missions we can still fly with that.

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memracom
When you compare the speed and effectiveness of Russia's military renewal
(including planes like the Su-35) with the chain of fiascos in the US defense
sector, one really wonders whether the Soviet Union's KGB campaign was a
success. The KGB wanted to place deep cover agents within the US establishment
(political and defense) in order to subvert the USA and damage its ability to
threaten the Soviet Union. Normal KGB practice for this was to set up agents,
but then let them run free with no control from Moscow or any requirement to
send info back to Moscow. This made them virtually undetectable and when the
Russian Federation disbanded the KGB, those deep cover agents continued to
function. Soviet defectors in the 70's and 80's warned about the KGB campaign
but nobody seemed to listen.

So when we see so-called "bad decisions" resulting in useless aircraft,
useless stealth ships, and a whole chain of military equipment fiascos (up to
and including $10,000 hammers) you really have to wonder whether the KGB won
the cold war after all. We now know that the USA ran a decades long campaign
to subvert the Soviet Union by sowing corruption deep within the Soviet
system. How could the KGB not have done the same? Also, the Soviet Union
disbanded itself quite abruptly and unexpectedly. Students of the KYB and of
Russian strategy seriously wonder whether this was done to prevent the
ultimate endgame in the US plan which would see Russia balkanized into a dozen
small squabbling countries. Watch the film "The Turkish Gambit" to get an idea
of the kind of chess games that Russians are capable of playing.

~~~
gozur88
The Russian military is in worse shape today than it was five years ago.
Between the embargo over Ukraine and the drop in the price of oil they're
broke again.

~~~
T-A
[http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/24/news/russia-military-
spendin...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/24/news/russia-military-
spending/index.html)

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locat...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=RU)

[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CN?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CN?locations=RU)

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icegreentea2
Popular Mechanics had this story too, but they apparently got an update from
an air force official:

 _Update: A U.S. Air Force official tells Popular Mechanics that, "the Air
Force plans to upgrade all aircraft in question to Software Block 3F."_

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a28685/f-3...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a28685/f-35s-unfit-
for-combat/)

Who knows what will actually happen.

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deepnotderp
It's interesting that while the US develops consistently better stealth
technology, the Russians develops consistently better countermeasures such as
VHF low frequency radar and IRST pods.

~~~
timthelion
Well, I personally think that the entire question of stealth and air
superiority against Russia is a mute point. With a range of just 2000km, the
Russians can simply use traditional air deffence against important targets and
fire missiles directly at the totally non-stealthy giant, impossible to miss
aircraft carriers.

~~~
mlevental
moot point

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0xbear
This is the physical equivalent of rewriting a complex software system from
scratch. Seems like it’ll be less pain and effort than modifying the existing
system, yet five years later you end up with a pile of shit that you’re
tempted to rewrite from scratch. The next “rewrite” won’t have any humans
onboard.

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boznz
All a bit laughable considering Americas current "enemy" drive pickup trucks
and shoot AK47's

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philjohn
That's the thing with defence spending - with the lead time on resources like
this you can't fixate on the current conflict, but need to think decades
ahead.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that nations could see themselves in
a war for dwindling resources on the planet in the next 30 to 40 years.

~~~
animal531
Fair point. But which would have been better, having one F35 or having 3 F16's
for roughly the same price?

There's a great (old/free) sci-fi story with the same premise (of which I
can't remember the name right now). In it the leading power is engaged in a
war which they should win easily, but then they keep inventing all these new
and great technologies. However every time they try and implement a new one
they give up more ground until in the end they're in a bit of trouble.

~~~
manwithaplan
[ _Superiority_ by _Arthur C. Clarke_
]([http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html](http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html))

> We were defeated by one thing only - by the inferior science of our enemies.

~~~
boznz
>The Analyzer contained just short of a million vacuum tubes and needed a team
of five hundred technicians to maintain and operate it

Sounds almost like an F-35 :-)

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epberry
I don’t see why this is such a big deal. It’s like saying Intel spent $3B to
make development boards for their next gen chip but instead of replacing the
chips on those dev boards they just bought new production boards. I can easily
see how that’s less costly than upgrading the dev boards, or the aircraft in
this case. I mean they’ll still have the planes for training and such.

~~~
nradov
It's a huge problem. The Air Force didn't need anywhere near 108 aircraft for
flight testing and initial training. Unlike electronics development boards
which are relatively cheap to manufacture, aircraft cost millions. Concurrency
has been an abject failure.

~~~
icegreentea2
Well, if they're only used for initial training, then ya.

But worth pointing out that right now, there are ~13 active duty USAF F16
squadrons, something like 17 ANG squadrons, and ~5 training squadrons. That's
roughly 6:1. The USAF was planning (who knows...) to get something like 1500+
F-35s. Even at 12 active airframes per training airframe, you'd still be able
to absorb 108 airframes.

If these airframes can be made into sufficiently good trainer airframes, then
it could be okay.

That's a big if though, looks like Block 2B have lower G limits than the Block
3s - don't know if that's a real structural thing, or just software
qualification stuff.

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RandyRanderson
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor)

