Here is an extended review of the program's ability to avoid cuts in the Washington Post.
Here is a recent discussion of the supervising general's criticisms of the F-35.
And here is an excellent discussion of the flaws of the joint strike fighter:
I'm no expert on these programs, but I have never come across anyone associated with the military that doesn't have a critical thing to say about this plane. I am very much a proponent of a military on the cutting edge, but it's hard to be sympathetic to this.
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It's been a while since I've kept up with cutting end military research, and I'll definitely have to check out these links, but I think drastically changing the F-35 program would be a huge mistake. The F-35 might be a "lemon," although I really doubt it. It's surely more expensive than it needed to be. But, we are fast approaching a time when we need to replace much of our naval aviation, including our Harriers and F-18s. We can upgrade these aircraft relatively inexpensively, but these upgrades can only take us so far. We can think of what we've spent on the F-35 as a sunk cost, but we also have to think about the costs we're going to endure when we replace our older planes anyways. I suggest finishing the F-35 project and just think hard about additional expenses in the same area (aviation).
ReplyDeleteYa, and I hesitated to say the answer is to not move forward for these reasons (I'm not sure I feel comfortable weighing in on that either way), but the project is a real albatross and there are important political economy questions around the budgeting process.
DeleteThere are importtant questions about the effect of political dictates in the design process.
ReplyDeleteIt never made any sense that one aircraft would be all things to all people and cutting edge to boot.
It particularly made no sense that the F35 would replace the much cheaper A10 in the ground attack role.
The thing about airplanes is that even with regards to the airframe itself that they are technologies that allow for a lot of adaptability as well as after the fact fixes of bugs. I yet have to see anything about the F-35 that doesn't look like standard issue problems with the development of sufficiently advanced weapons system be it an aircraft or anything else.
ReplyDeleteTechnical problems are rarely the reason you want to scrap a program like the F-35; those can be fixed. Whether it should be scrapped or not really depends on what sort of war you expect to fighting over the operational use of the F-35.
In other words, if a problem exists it is very unlikely that this is a De Haviland Comet sort of problem.
DeleteRight - that's largely the point of the video I provided.
DeletePutting scrapping totally aside, there are interesting political economy and acquisition questions here. Not that the strategies are new, but they seem to be particularly well executed in the case of the JSF.
Well, questions about future wars are terribly subjective so I'd have a hard time calling any weapons system a "lemon" if that was the criterion for doing so. I mean, I don't think we should develop the F-35, but then again, I want to see a dramatic decrease in America's force posture worldwide as a way to regulate our relative decline in relationship to other rising powers.
DeleteLike newspaper columns, I would not assume too much about the origins or significance of that title.
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