For it's faults, the F-35 is a weapon that can be configured and deployed at the drop of a hat for just about anything. That's a very powerful capability to have as a defensive and offensive weapon.
Yes. The military has tried the multi service aircraft idea in the past, wasted a lot of money, and failed completely to develop one of the desired variants. That was the F-111, which was supposed to have a Navy and Air Force version.
The F-35 was supposed to feature 80% parts commonality between the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps versions. Instead, it ended up being 20%.
With that little parts commonality, the different services should've just developed their own planes. All three services would've ended up with a more capable aircraft for their requirements that wasn't so heavily compromised. And it in all likelihood would have been cheaper.
> For it's faults, the F-35 is a weapon that can be configured and deployed at the drop of a hat for just about anything. That's a very powerful capability to have as a defensive and offensive weapon
It can fly a multitude of roles but it is not as good at many of them as a more focused aircraft would be. Considering the massive costs it was a bad trade off.
Something a cloth winged Sopwith Camel biplane from WW-1 would probably actually be better at; certainly more cost effective.
Nerds who are touting this turkey because "woo woo cool half million dollar vidya game helmet" ... y'awl make me want to renounce my citizenship. This turd can be defeated by a Russian tractor mechanic detuning his radar slightly.
Some in the Airforce recognized this and it lead to the light-attack aircraft competition.
But currently it's stopped, I guess there was not enough money in it and was killed by a competing faction in the Pentagon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Fighting_Vehicle#Histo...
But the US can afford specialised aircraft. Betting the house on a jack-of-all-trades means you end up with a master of none. The US should be master of everything, and that means more specialised fighters, bombers, CAS, etc.
If the A-10 isn't good enough anymore, by all means design a replacement. But don't expect it to also take of vertically and perform air superiority. Everything comes at a trade-off. Having an airframe designed for VTOL and then use it for planes that don't VTOL is just wasteful.
A big motivation was that developing combat aircraft is stupidly expensive and extremely prone to cost overruns, which then make programs vulnerable to cancellation. So the defense industry and DoD got together to make this project very difficult to cancel. They sold the virtues of cost savings by sharing components, then they staked the future of US and allied air power on this one platform. On top of that they spread the production of the aircraft across FORTY-FIVE states. It is not only the most expensive weapons program in history, it is the most politically engineered.
> But the US can afford specialised aircraft. Betting the house on a jack-of-all-trades means you end up with a master of none. The US should be master of everything, and that means more specialised fighters, bombers, CAS, etc.
Yes, but one of the critical weaknesses of the US military's philosophy is that if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. The DoD frequently capitulates to the desire to gold plate weapons systems and change requirements to the point that projects get cancelled. So, the JSF is in a way, a response to that tendency, just the totally wrong one.
> If the A-10 isn't good enough anymore, by all means design a replacement. But don't expect it to also take of vertically and perform air superiority. Everything comes at a trade-off. Having an airframe designed for VTOL and then use it for planes that don't VTOL is just wasteful.
I think the STOVL requirement is key factor that really effed up the JSF program. And that entire requirement is born out of an irrational institutional fear the Marine Corps has about being left without air support that they harbor from WWII.
They later built two prototypes to test for the Navy, decided a common airframe wasn't going to work, and built the F14 using the lessons learned from that development effort instead.
The three variant JSFs are essentially three separate aircraft run by one program office.
The USAF and USN used a common aircraft in Vietnam to great effect -- the F4.
The JSF per aircraft cost is going to be less than the F18 by the time the program is finished.
They're actually shutting down the joint program office because it is now in fact, three separate aircraft. Which again, puts lie to the whole rationale of the program in the first place.
> The USAF and USN used a common aircraft in Vietnam to great effect -- the F4.
The F4 did decently, and if we use it as a guide, the Air Force and Navy variants should have been their own program, and the USMC should've had a separate airframe to accommodate their STOVL requirement. But that's not what we got, and that STOVL requirement is a large reason the platform has some big fundamental compromises.
> The JSF per aircraft cost is going to be less than the F18 by the time the program is finished.
People keep promising that, but the DoD and Lockheed keep laying games with how they quote costs in order to make it seem like cost parity is closer than it really is. Flyaway costs for the F-35 keep getting quoted against procurement costs for 4.5 gen aircraft to make the F-35 look better than it is on cost.
The USMC used the F4 alongside the USN as they always have. USMC aviators are trained as Naval aviators, deploy with USN ships, and support USN missions as part of the CVW. The ARG concept is different, and USMC STOVL fixed wing wasn't a thing in Vietnam. It's a more modern concept. You're projecting things that didn't exist into the past.
There are no compromises between the platforms for STOVL -- the JSF-B is a separate aircraft as it has been since the beginning and as you say in the sentence above. JSF-A and JSF-C are different airframes with different requirements and different capabilities.
So while the different variants have different wing surfaces there is no denying that the Air Force and Navy versions would've been designed differently if the airframe didn't have to fit a lift fan in it.
So then you're back to the fundamental question of why even bother. Parts commonality is 1/4th of what it was supposed to be. Costs are nowhere near what they were originally billed as, even with the most optimistic estimates.
Really the only virtue of the JSF approach was that it made the program too big to fail.
The size of the aircraft is driven by the need to carry large amounts of internal fuel and all internal stores, not the need for a lift fan for the B model. This allows all three models to operate with a reduced cross section for an expanded set of missions, which is the purpose of the aircraft.
Parts commonality is essentially non existent except for the engine and parts of the avionics -- that does make a difference and is a cost savings, but it's not the issue you make it out to be.
Costs are better than they were sold as, and their availability rates are better than they were sold as, and their accident rate is so low as to be non existent. It's a phenomenal aircraft and a capability that's going to completely change the balance of power in some regions of the world.
When on a bombing run radar stealth and bomb load matters, but acrobatic agility and VTOL / STOL doesn't. On a carrier, durability matters every time you slap the deck and VTOL /STOL might be very handy, but stealth or high altitude capability, not as much.
Designing a fighter/bomber to please every service is like training every soldier, sailor, airman, and marine to have the same fighting skills. It's going to get them all killed.
> at the drop of a hat
Ha! There are still multiple variants, and you cannot reconfigure instances of one variant to be instances of another, and certainly not at the drop of a hat.
Ultimately yes.
You can be much more agile when you aren't trying to satisfy a large collection of armed services, nations, and mission roles many of whom are mostly interested in putting their mark on something instead of making it better.
>And would it be as effective?
Not if your definition of effective is ability of one aircraft to do everything. If your definition of effective is forces ability to achieve goals, then yes a set of aircraft specialists can be better than one generalist.
Quick turnaround is something yiu get from Soviets/Russians or Swedes, where the doctrines involved make it priority feature.