The U.S. Air Force Has Doubts About the F-35
nationalinterest.org
nationalinterest.org
Turkey, which is kicked out if the F-35 program for political reasons, demonstrated huge success in battle through it's home grown drone programs.
F-35's were supposed to be the stealth weapons who were to be able to penetrate Russia made air defences etc, but Turkey proved in Syria that relatively cheap drones can do just that. Before the Turkish drones, only Israel was able to hit a Russian made air defence system and that was done when it wasn't operational at that moment. During the conflicts between Azerbaijan-Armenia, Syria, Libya the Turkish made drones hunted down multiple such system and provided very impressive footage of the action.
Again, Turkish drones are suspected to be used in first ever AI based attacks, where for the first time machines decided who to kill and who to spare[0].
Though Turkey has a sizeable engineering capacity, it's not a rich country. Budgets used to develop these drones are nowhere near the F-35 or similar projects. One wonders, what's the argument to invest so much in planes when there's low hanging fruits in the drones business.
It seems to me, the 5th gen plane projects are like trying to breed the next gen horses instead of developing the automobiles.
[0]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a36559508/...
F-35 has subcontracts let in every state, making it organizationally impossible to de-fund. Another similar program is SLS.
It's also one of the principle theses of "monopoly capital" by Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran
Well, to add a small clarification to this, you probably mean not rich compared to the US. Turkey, even with its current economic crisis, is still a top 20 world economy, a member of OECD and last I checked, just a couple steps behind Korea in GDP. You mostly don’t get to train and retain engineers capable of a world-leading drone program without some accumulated wealth.
Iran is an economic basketcase. You think they have no capacity for research and development? Israel doesn't agree.
Ofcourse should global security ever deteriorate the EU can potentially field an army as large and advanced as any in the world. The cold war was not won by the US alone. But every cent spent on missiles can't go to healthcare or education.
I imagine weapon systems like the F35 are intended for a higher level of conflict and deterrent than the new lower hybrid-war conflicts we're seeing taking place right now. In those cheap home-grown drones can be useful but must rely on satellites and other infrastructure which at a higher level of escalation would be under attack.
I'm certain they've done quite a bit of homework on these choices.
What I find interesting is how something like the F35 is more meant for asymmetrical warfare. If a real war were to break out I imagine something like the A35 Warthog and other such aircraft being rapidly manufactured and delivered to battlegrounds.
But it's all just, like, my opinion man.
Never trust them to have done their homework, trust your enemy to have done more and alreay made your strategy obsolete.
The Maginot Line is an interesting example. Sure, it functions as the defining joke of WW2 - they just walked around it. But one can imagine other side purposes for building such infrastructure before a war. For instance, just forcing your enemy to declare war against your neighbors (to pass through their territory) could already be seen as a pretty good payoff/deterrent. Or maybe having a large labor force capable of building similar infrastructure based on the experience from building that Maginot line might have been seen as valuable. Hell, maybe it was more about “jobs” and keeping the populace “loyal”. Again - I don’t know the details of the Maginot Line or that history but what I’m getting at is that there are so many unknown factors and results that might be at work behind the curtain that it’s very hard to say.
Coming back to the F35 I’m just wondering how they measure the expertise and loyalty of the people who have to know how to design, manufacture and build these things. Engineers are theoretically free to work where they like - so it is of strategic importance to keep them happy and keep them occupied and making progress. Maybe this could be something happening that we don’t know about? A significant amount of money has been pumped into the project, but that money doesn’t just disappear. It goes into a huge strategically crucial supply chain. It might just be worth the political loss off face to keep that healthy and operative.
Note that the role of a fortification is not only to help defend against an attack, but also to try to discourage an attack against it in the first place (instead forcing the enemy to attack through a different point; makes the attacks more predictable, which translates to higher concentrations of defensive forces --- bonus points if there are natural choke points or such).
Ultimately, Germany was left with two options for an advance, so France had to guess which one. What happened was that France guessed wrong (IIRC, they didn't at all expect a German armored assault through the rough terrain & forests near Ardennes), and the rest, as they say, is history.
[*] The initial plan was to fortify the Belgian border, too, but this was adapted to a "France helping Belgium defend against Germany" plan, after Belgium's protests that it would simply get "sacrificed" if the Maginot line was fully reinforced in the north. I've a sneaking suspicion that France wasn't quite ready to honor this quasi-defensive-plan, but that's a different topic.
The US could fly its drones with pilots comfortably sat in mainland US because the Taliban had no weapons able to shoot drones down. There was no dog fighting, no anti-satellite weaponry deployed etc.
Another reason is that warplanes are saturated with expensive kit like crazy. Yes the pilot is a major constructional constraint, but the main reason drones are so much cheaper right now is that they just aren’t designed as equally versatile platforms. If you wanted a full-fledged F35 drone replacement, I’m not sure it would be that much cheaper.
A different axis of the question, which came into play in the Azerbaijan-Armenia war recently, is whether we want few super-capable machines or much much more simpler ones. I think the jury is still out, but to me this is the interesting area of development.
The point stands that the shepherd is a lot more complex than the sheep. F-35 is so packed with sensors: multi purpose radar, IR sensors, I believe there are radio receivers throughout the airframe, turning the whole thing into a phased array receiver. It has sophisticated software and hardware to orchestrate it all. You can configure it to shoot down enemy planes, fight air defences, bomb targets, I’m guessing shoot at ships etc. It can do it all while maintaining stealth and remaining in the air for hours (with aerial refuelling).
This is much fancier than any drone can do right now.
Fighter planes do have a few remaining roles. They are delivery vehicles for cheaper missiles and bombs to take out smaller ground targets or lighting up targets for missiles/bombs that are launched from far away. The longer range missiles (e.g. cruise missiles) are more expensive. An additional role would be reconnaissance even though most of that is probably done by satellites and drones these days. Then there is the job of escorting bigger, more vulnerable planes like bombers or just generally patrolling areas of interest (which could be done by drones as well). And finally there's the psychological warfare factor where flying them over the enemy has a demoralizing effect.
Basically a missile is an autonomous drone that happens to destroy on impact. Missiles have a few advantages over fighters: they are much faster and maneuverable. And they are disposable by their very nature which means they can go where no pilot would go except when very desperate. And a few disadvantages that mainly boil down to cost and range. The cost is high because they are 1 time use only. The range is limited by fuel and size. Which is why using fighter planes as a launch platform is common.
Autonomous planes aren't particularly hard. It's mostly the price performance that needs attention. Cheap, autonomous drones already exist. Making them bigger and beefing up their abilities is just a matter of time. That's all there's to it. At some point their abilities encompass most of what fighter planes currently do.
Currently the allure of drones is that they are very cheap and can perform some missions as well as their big expensive brothers.
If you make a drone that is equally capable as a modern crewed jet, you bear most of the cost anyway. You’ll save something by excluding the pilot, but have to pay for extra (stealth) communication, infrastructure etc.
Maybe we’ll go away from that, have many types of cheap drones that are specialised and disposable. That’s not the case now.
Bear in mind our perception is skewed by the fact that the last N wars were all fought against at least one country far behind in military technology. But NATO et al are really prepping against a war against an equal. Having a cheap plastic drone with a bomb attached at the bottom won’t do.
Is that premise actually a valid concern though? Last few "wars" have been proxy wars or insurgencies.
If F-35 can stay connected, so can the drones.
Drones also have the inherent advantage to do manoeuvres way beyond of what human can do or withstand, they don't carry the human and the devices that are made to keep it alive and in control.
F-35 is also know for not flying that well, it's not really a dog fight machine and the scenarios where the plane is supposed to excel are stealth operation, remote intelligence gathering, launching missiles way before visual contact etc anyway. I don't see why drones can't do any of that.
> The first known U.S. drone strike in Yemen was November 3, 2002 (killing al-Qaeda operative Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi)
Plus, if you could disable an enemy airforce by destroying the infrastructure, that’s an uncomfortably simple way to ground them. An F35 can operate successfully in total radio silence if need be.
These days, a sub 1000$ consumer drone can follow targets, execute pre-determined tasks, navigate around obstacles and fly back home safely when the communication is lost.
The months and years that military pilots spend in training is not just "driving license", but how to best operate a sophisticated destruction machine.
Comparing military jets to the capabilities of commercial drones is massively missing the point of the actual challenges of airborne warfare.
These probably aren't unsolvable problems, I'm not saying we can never replace crewed jets with drones, there are just fundamental reasons why this isn't happening right now.
A bit like, Archers having some advantages over rifles but overall rifles being vay superior making archers irrelevant.
Firearms took over bows in Europe around 16th century. But they have been around for far longer, as early as 13th century, possibly much earlier too. Even when firearms took over, they were in many ways inferior to bows. The crucial difference was that they required less skill to operate, so much easier from a general logistical point of view. Training longbowmen in medieval England was a whole massive social project.
So even being the long-term solution doesn't make something the right solution right now, the time gap until it takes over can be very long, and even once it is the right solution, it might not be due to actual technical superiority (at least not initially) but rather wider strategic considerations.
And just to stem the thought, this wasn't because people in the past were stoopid, humans have always devoted a huge amount of skill, cunning and attention to warmongering. Technological progress in military technology was always rapid (if likely slower than today), we just don't see it that way, since one bow kinda looks the same as another to us - but could be an enormous advantage.
Drone could mean remotely piloted $4M Predator firing $140,000 a piece Hellfire missiles
But drone could also mean mass-produced, battery operated quadcopters delivering small scale explosives over the distance of a few kilometers or less (or perform recon). Sometimes deployed in swarms, flying low. Not necessarily remote controlled
Those are two very different military capabilities. The important impact of the kamikaze-drones is that it strongly favors the side with the stronger and more vertically integrated manufacturing base
We don't have the ability to field highly survivable drones into enemy territory remotely just yet, we still need humans for the time being.
The US has a comprehensive drone program and 'lots of drones' to fulfill the kinds of missions the Turkey drones were operating.
And separate from the technical merits of how bad the F35 and F16 is the only country that has placed arms embargoes on Turkey is the US. And the US openly arms terrorists in northern Syria with weaponry to bomb and attack Turkey. And their military STILL want to buy F16s from the US. Either they are real real dumb or financially incentivized. To paraphrase and mangle Hanlons razor don’t ascribe to stupidity what can be explained by corruption.
Historically, Turkey's primary rival is Russia.
Whatever the reason is, I don't like the "If the people in power must know what are they doing" mentality. Many times they don't or do it for way different reasons than the apparent one.
Turkey is also developing its own fighter, with support from the UK.
Absolutely not. This isn't an either/or prospect. The USAF employs plenty of drones and DoD and DARPA fund plenty of development of newer and better drones, while also funding manned aircraft improvements.
[0]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/03/aol-1point5-million-people-s...
Several reasons,
Up until now as far as I am aware there has never been a drone used in an air to air combat role in an actual conflict. There is research happening on this but it appears no one has a combat ready system. The fact appears to be that the technology is just not there yet to allow unmanned aircraft to perform an air combat role. It might not even be a technology but a cost thing, drones are cheap because they lack all the technology required for that role, they are essentially light attack aircraft, they are less like an F-16 and more like a Super Tucano, subsonic with very limited payload and no radar. The primary costs of a figher jet are related to the capabilities required for the air to air combat role, maneuverability, super sonic speed, a large radar, stealth capabilities, and missile and radar warning systems. If you tried to build drone with these characteristics you would end up with a price tag similar to a modern jet.
They are incredibly susceptible to electronic warfare [1][2].
> Turkey, which is kicked out if the F-35 program for political reasons, demonstrated huge success in battle through it's home grown drone programs.
While true you have to take into account that in all these conflicts the drones operated in a virtually uncontested airspace. The air forces of Armenia, Syria, and Libya were comprised of a few strike aircraft. The Armenian air force had available 12 Su-25[3], the Syrian insurgents targeted by Turkey had no air force, and I could not find any sources but I would bet Haftar's air-force could not have more than 20 fighter jets. The effectiveness of drones against a peer with the capability to run 24/7 air superiority missions is still questionable. Certainly a large drone force like Turkeys is a significant force multiplier that can incur outweigh costs and casualties to an opponent but not in itself sufficient to fight against an opponent with a modern air force.
In all these cases the deciding factor was not the fact the aircraft were unmanned but the fact there were aircraft with precision weapons. If Azerbaijan had 50 F-16s or A-10s the result would have likely been the same albeit at a much higher cost. Unmanned aircraft in my opinion up until now don't present a radically new proposition they merely make large scale air strike capabilities available to states that could otherwise not afford them.
> F-35's were supposed to be the stealth weapons who were to be able to penetrate Russia made air defences etc, but Turkey proved in Syria that relatively cheap drones can do just that. Before the Turkish drones, only Israel was able to hit a Russian made air defence system and that was done when it wasn't operational at that moment. During the conflicts between Azerbaijan-Armenia, Syria, Libya the Turkish made drones hunted down multiple such system and provided very impressive footage of the action.
The US air force has flown suppression of enemy air defense missions in almost all the conflicts it fought since Vietnam always against Russian made air defenses[4]. The role of the F-35 is not a new one it's just they needed an new airplane for that role[5].
> It seems to me, the 5th gen plane projects are like trying to breed the next gen horses instead of developing the automobiles.
I guess you are referring to all the loyal wingman projects that are around. I think they are being conservative given that a bet on the wrong horse would be catastrophic for them. Their approach gives them all the benefits with very little risk, they get an expendable platform, with long endurance, the characteristics of a drone, along with increased situational awareness, immediacy, and a guarantee that a successful electronic attack won't result in the complete annihilation of their force.
[1] https://eurasiantimes.com/russia-shot-down-a-total-of-nine-t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incid... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Air_Force#Aircraft [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Enemy_Air_Defen... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Weasel#Current
disclaimer: I get all my info from “Independence Day”
In practice, historically when the US government wanted to do things that are illegal, think Iran Contra, they just relied on private funding to bypass Congress, not stealing from other line items. Or they just lied (e.g. sending troops into Cambodia but not admitting it).
It seems every fighter has had its share of scandals, though the local press of course doesn't report of a lot of it.
The lift fan space in the B variant has forced a "fat" design on all the three variants, with resulting aerodynamic penalties.
To me, it seems it would have been relatively easy to just design a new airframe ignoring any commonality in airframe, because - the airframe is not the expensive part. Maybe it was in the fifties still. Instead use all the systems like the engine, avionics, sensors, software etc where the cost anyway is nowadays. Even aerodynamic design can be done with computers nowadays so you don't need so much calendar time in costly wind tunnels.
We don't hear much about how say India or Israel does thing but both have a record of performing significant modifications/improvement to existing airframes.
But the new Red Hawk trainer looks great.
F-35 sounds like a good solution for, say, Poland, since Polish F-35 (Harpias) maneuvering unnoticed near Belorussian border will be able to attack Russian forces, supply lines all the way to the Smolensk Gate (50-mile-wide territory between the Dzwina and Dnieper rivers), which is a main attack direction for Russian army.
Similarly, planes operating in the middle of Poland can attack targets in Kaliningrad - another crucial strategic ability for Polish defense.
Note, that dogfight capabilities (in which F-35 is worst than F-16) does not matter here, Polish or Finnish army will always avoid confronting Russian air forces in the direct air strike, as they will be outnumber by Russians.
Strangely, it seems that F-35 is much more useful for other armies than US army so no surprise US army wants something different.
Another thing is that F-16 Viper has sensors almost at the level of F-35, can carry JASSM missiles, but it is way, way, cheaper to buy and maintain...
B2 I think is definitely thermal since it's inside/above the wing.
Also, an attack of that nature would would certainly trigger Section 5 of the Collective Defense, and then US resupply. I suspect most NATO members who buy the very expensive F-35 do so in the belief (or hope) that the US will replace these aircraft immediately, from US squadrons, if necessary.
If that happens, i.e. a NATO country directly attacking Russia, then a nuclear war starts. I'd put China in the same basket, also Pakistan if it gets attacked by India or vice-versa. Proxy-wars (to use your example Poland attacking Belarus) are of course more complicated.
EDIT: I'm wrong about Afghanistan.
The US successfully invoked NATO article 5 after 9/11 requiring all NATO members to assist militarily.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/16/belarus-ar...
[2] https://www.itv.com/news/2021-11-12/russia-sends-paratrooper...
But Ukraine is right on the border of Poland. And what we saw in Ukraine is by the time Paris, London and Berlin notice something is amiss, Russia has already achieved their goals. And the fear-of-triggering-WW3 goes both ways.
I can believe Poland would want to be well equipped, so they can hold out for a few days so their allies have time to mobilise.
Read on if you are interested why it matters.
The US Army is a branch of the USA military. The US Army is not a costumer of the F-35. The F-35 is a joint project between the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. That's 3 other branches.
Now one can say that this is a silly interjection and I should just see "US military" every time I see the word "US army" in the GP comment.
But, in the case when we are trying to understand the F-35 project understanding the crazy force structure of the US military is a must. Why? Because that structure left an indelible mark on the airplane!
Very roughly: The Air Force is the folks with the airplanes, the Navy is the one with the ships and the Marine Corps are the troops on the ship. But turns out in modern warfare you can't do naval warfare without having proper air cover, so the US Navy also got airplanes. And historically the marines were left in the lurch one too many times so they insist on having their own transportation, so they have ships, and also airplanes. (Very rough explanation, bear with me.)
You can see that the branches are somewhat converging, will we end up with 3 carbon copies of the same thing? The legislators asked the same question and put in the law limits on each branch. There are experts on what the particular limits are and etc etc, what matters to us in terms of F-35 that the Marine Corps can't have ships bigger than X. So they can't just buy a conventional aircraft carrier. Therefore the marine's airplanes have to take off vertically.
This means that when this 3 branches joined forces to build an airplane together the airplane had to be designed such that it can serve all 3 of them. So the F-35 has to have a variant which can take off vertically. And many says that capability made the whole thing waay too complicated and the boondoggle it is. And it's not a real physical "we need otherwise we cannot fight" thing. It's a legal loophole.
It's purpose is not to conduct war effectively. It's purpose is to transfer public wealth into private hands.
It was the same in Romania when joining NATO. They bought a bunch of retired F-16s at inflated prices which pissed off the Romanian taxpayers and the Frech and Swedish governments, since for that kind of money, the Romanian air force could have bought more modern and brand new Dassault or SAAB fighters while also supporting the local EU economy, but instead, they spent the money to buy themselves tickets at the US-ally table (possible corruption and bribes involved as well, but that's pretty much the norm in all defense related purchases)
In a real war there would be a much sharper focus on building planes that can fight and win. But that what the enemies of the US are already doing and it’ll be too late for the US when it needs the right planes.
The US is focused on building complex overly technology focused boondoggle machines that take far to long to design and build and cost too much and underperform.
It’s a robot war future anyway.
I think this is partly because if you are not currently at war then you don't know who or when you will be at war with and what exactly the threats will look like so you end up designing for a range of scenarios. If you're currently in the midst of a big war than the requirements are clearer (but certainly not clear!)
I know people discuss it as plausible in some way, but you only need to think for a microsecond to work out it’s not.
There’s so many reasons why they’d end up with zero that there’s little point even starting to articulate them.
But wasn't the F-35 already meant to replace the F-16? As well as the F-15, F-18, A-10 and a whole slew of other planes? I guess this means they finally figured out that was unrealistic.
> The Air Force has already begun purchasing a slew of new old fighters in the 4th generation F-15EX, which will replace aging F-15 Eagles in the branch’s inventory.
So they're buying new F-15s now? That's a plane from the 1970s, right? That sounds like a testament of good those designs were, and how little has effectively improved in the 40+ years since then. I mean, obviously this new F-15 will have all the best new high-tech computer, radar, targeting gear that will probably also end up in the F-35, but the airframe is apparently still a solid design, as long as you don't need stealth and VTOL.
End cost will be way higher and what does a neutral country need stealth for? Whom is the country going to hide from? It's own citizens which happen to be the military? The military said them selves it is for air policing.
Being cheaper means you can have more of them, which then could mean you don't even need to worry about the expensive stealth features. So what if the enemy detects one and shoots it down? The four other drones can carry on with the mission.
The days when manned bombers played any role in the first strike against an capable foe ended decades ago, today's fighters are used when you need on the spot decision making whether it is to interdict errant civilian planes or provide close air support to infantry.
What about autonomous drones? Can't you have AI piloted drones with ML models trained on thousands of hours of combat missions, where you just punch in the mission objective and the acceptable outcome/casualty levels, and it can decide for itself how to carry it out if communication is lost?
That feels terrifying but it does sound like where the future is going.
The problem is that the missions flown requires a lot more judgement then modern machine learning is capable of providing, or that we are likely to entrust solely to an computer anytime soon.
Yes the skynet scenario is increasingly likely but it's also something military planners are aware of especially doing periods of diplomatic tensions like the ones we are under now where you really don't want an trigger happy automated defence system in charge of fully armed missiles.
There is also the issue that all we know is that the next war will have it's own entirely new politically defined strategic constraints, where the most effective tactical strategy is might be blocked out due to long term diplomatic/political consequences.
I am nowhere near an expert on this subject, but it seems to me that drones could be very resistant to ground-based jamming. All their antennas and communications can be above the plane, perhaps relayed via another drone or aircraft flying very high overhead.
If you want a more autonomous system I'm not sure there's even a way forward for that at this moment (i.e. if you want to fly in civilian airspace). Airspace is much more heavily regulated than e.g. carspace where companies are allowed to put pretty much anything on the road.
I have zero military experience but I have two thoughts:
1. Military leaders are resistant to change. From what I've read, the establishment of the US Air Force as its own branch was highly resisted by leadership.
2. I'm not sure if this covers all the bases. I'd imagine new technologies like drones would complement, not replace existing manual(?) fighter jets. What if they have larger payloads? We'd need time to make them smaller, no? Perhaps there is a limit to how small a "conventional" weapon can get and you can't just nuke everything and everyone and hope nobody fights back?
Just thinking out loud.
Fundamentally almost no one reading this (myself included) knows jack shit about the actual performance of the F-35 in combat, how good drone technology is etc.
Why did they stop shooting?
OTH combining human-piloted planes with cheap "companion drones" for scouting, distraction and as weapon carriers sounds much more useful.
An F-16 will do just as well against someone armed with an AK-47.
2. Go ask Ukraine about fighting rebels with AK-47s... who might occasionally get Buk missiles from a friendly slav on vacation.
That's not to say anything about F-35, or F-16; just about the reason why keeping the birds up to date makes sense.
And Ukraine does not have F-35s and will never have.
Israel handily destroys syrian pantsir systems with f-16s or loitering munitions, and turkish made drones 'damaged' two pantsir systems in the 2020 nagorno karabakh war.
I don't think we've seen the results for longer range systems like the S-300 but I'm not sure russia wants to see the results either.
My point about Ukraine was that the "non-advanced” militaries can mysteriously acquire very hi-tech anti-aircraft systems.
Like the Donbass "rebels" who shot down MH-17 out of the sky with a Buk missile which they weren't "supposed to" have (and have no capacity to produce, obviously).
On the other hand, Russia's "vacationing" tank drivers are going to be dodging US-made Javelins should they decide to make a detour through Ukraine.
The point being, if a weapon exists, you might as well assume your opponent on the battlefield has it, no matter how much they are tech-wise.
1) For posturing. One reason others might not want to fight the US is the presence of a large and very well equipped force that apparently trains for just such an eventuality.
2) The military-industrial complex is how the US economy stays ahead and yet pretends to be capitalist and free-market. If you pump domestic technology companies with trillions of dollars of tax money in the name of defence, they might just produce something valuable (say like the internet).
1. The lack of war against our international rivals is in fact a huge success, indicating our powerful military is an effective deterrent. If we didn't have the F-35 we'd all be speaking Russian right now /s
2. Preparing for the last war is a perpetual problem for the military. That's how we ended up in Afghanistan with high-speed air superiority fighters, but no IED-proof vehicles. We should counter this known bias by buying stuff that would have been completely useless in our last major wars /s
We are depending on infrastructure that was built by the WPA during the great depression and right after WW2. The rot is deep.
Same with our roads. I drive up and down I95 and the roads are full of road snakes and patches.
"If you were to go back to the year 2000 and somebody said, ‘I can build an airplane that is stealthy and has vertical takeoff and landing capabilities and can go supersonic,’ most people in the industry would have said that’s impossible"
How anyone thought they get a cheaper plane which at the time was "impossible" is beyond me.
TLDR: F-35 is too expensive to maintain and operate, therefore the USAF wants a 4.5Gen Fighter (non stealth, but with updated electronics) to replace the older F-16 that will be retired soon.
This is similar to the strategy that the russians did with the unveiling of their 'Checkmate' light weight fighter last month.
So the USAF wants more funds to build yet another fighter. (it has already a 6gen fighter in development).
I feel it is going to be another waste of money. It wont be much better than an updated FA-18 or an F-15EX with more advanced electronics.
The best thing it can do is to accelerate the development of the 6gen fighter, and mass produce a cheaper 'non-stealth' version of it as the cheaper version, but with the same electronics. The best way to do cost saving by scaling up production of the same internal components/avionics.
Until a beyond-visual-range rock throwning champion emerges there is little risk to conventional, non-stealth, airframes.
Where you still want a pilot in the loop is in A-10 territory where the role is to fly low and slow and work directly with local infantry commanders, and this means sustaining some level of damage mostly from "primitive" optically tracked weapons rather then last-gen long range radar tracked missiles.
I.E. what you want is an cheap to operate, replace and train for plane that can be deployed in large numbers from forward bases. a role currently filled by army operated drones who is extremely vulnerable to "electronic warfare" in a way that a piloted plane wont be.
There's an insane number of layers/middlemen who need to get their "fair share". Congress isn't measured in budget but measured in "rah rah factor" and military know this thusly feed into it.
NASA during the shuttle era was no different. The shuttle was an absolutely terrible design of compromises given towards different military branches to gain funding.
While painful, the best thing was Bush defunding the shuttle program and pushing it towards privatization. I'll be the first to admit, if SpaceX wasn't around, this would probably be a dubious move and no better than NASA contracting it directly (looking at you Starliner).
Basically we want a "SpaceX of military fighter jets", which sadly can't exist.
Here's their analysis of that aircraft:
https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/reach-for-the-sky/4526982
In particular they ask is fairly obvious question:
It's billed as the smartest jet fighter on the planet, but could the JSF be a massive waste of money?
The Australian Government purchased these massively expensive F-35s even when basic logic told us they would be duds.
I would say this analysis shows governments are not good at making simple decisions as they struggle with basic logic.
Wasn't the whole point of the F-35 to be exactly this F-16 replacement? E.g. the F-22 was supposed to replace the F-15 as specialized air-superiority fighter, while the F-35 would replace the F-16 and F-18 as cheap all-purpose fighter). Now the F-22 is no longer produced and the F-35 is so expensive that the search for a cheaper alternative begins, and the cycle can start anew...
Suddenly the much more pragmatic Su-57 design doesn't look so silly anymore.
"If I do not keep that F-22 fleet viable, the F-35 fleet frankly will be irrelevant. The F-35 is not built as an air superiority platform. It needs the F-22"
Have things changed since?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/david-cenciotti-the-f-35-fle...
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/41138/the-air-force-mi...
- that is absolutely crazy, especially during times of non-war when these machines are essentially up there for patrol and training.
https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/334416-russian-checkma...
The same goes for say French, Swedish or Indian planes who does tend to hold up a lot better in real world conditions then the derision they get from the pentagon propagandist doing procurement suggests.
The truth is that the technologies involved is so mature that any largish economy can put out reasonable effective platforms the reason nobody else then the US is making stealth have more to do with the limitations of stealth then the fact that it requires secret knowledge only possessed by the US.
And it's applicable even in non-military spending: a month ago some US newspaper (Bloomberg? WP? Don't recall exactly) managed, in the same article, accuse Russia both of a) it sells to much gas to Europe too cheap to make it dependent on Russia; b) Russia doesn't sell Europe enough of gas, it should ramp up the sales immediately. Yes, in different paragraphs, but it still kinda funny when you notice it. Or that one time when Biden simultaneously called everyone to double down on transfer to green energy, battling the climate change, and also demanded from OPEC to increase oil output and then even released 50 million barrels of oil from the reserves, because expensive oil is bad for economy, you know.
a) RF increased its share in EU market for natural gas too much. Everybody worried that RF can decrease supply rapidly to skyrocket price.
b) RF decreased supply of natural gas rapidly to skyrocket price.
Also, RF resisted until the very last from switching from the long-term contracts to the spot contracts, it was forced to do so by the court decision in 2019, sued by Poland that argued that the spot market price is fairer (it also got $2 billion refunded to the boot). Two years later, this November, Poland tried to sue again, arguing now that the spot market price is unfair, and Gazprom should only take the previously negotiated price, and refund whatever was overpaid to it (about $5 billion IIRC).
I understand that all this is pretty much how haggling looks like when the hagglers are nation-states who have to sell the deals to their population somehow: selective reporting, overstating some circumstances, understating other, selective application of arguments, etc. But the end result is still exorbitant heating/electrical bills and cold houses all over the country but you also get to feel outraged at the other side, as a bonus.
But according to media propaganda Putin should literally be giving it away for free. Russia is using oil and gas for making € and as a geopolitical tool. As every sovereign country does. It's their gas for crying out loud they can do with it whatever they want!
Pipeline exports of natural gas from Russia’s state-backed monopoly Gazprom to continental Europe have dropped roughly one-fifth in 2021 on pre-pandemic levels despite a sharp rebound in demand and low stockpiles of the important fuel. The imbalance has helped send prices in Europe to the highest levels since 2008, increasing energy costs for homes and businesses.
https://www.ft.com/content/c023ba5f-4d78-4749-8485-4851baf9e...
Natural gas flows at the westernmost point of the Yamal pipeline — a strategically important 2,000-kilometer pipeline that runs across four countries: Russia, Belarus, Poland and Germany — dropped to 20 million cubic meters per day in mid-August, according to ICIS. This was down from 49 mcm per day at the end of July, and a sharp fall from its typical rate of 81 mcm per day.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/24/russia-is-pumping-less-natur...
Why India has signed an agreement to produce over half a million AK-203 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/deal-for-a... ?
Even if we take nominal GDP, Russian GDP is roughly 17% higher than Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
If we take GDP by PPP, then it's more than twice that of Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
However, they have very capable military hardware, and in many types of it, quantity has a quality of its own. It doesn't matter much that an M1 Abrams is technically superior than a T-14 Armata if for the same budget you can get three times more Armatas.
That, and ease of maintenance and support, is among the reasons why Russian military hardware is very popular and sells extremely well, even if it might not be the best objectively compared to the competition.
And sometimes it is better, like the S-400 SAM which is objectively better than the Patriot, or some types of missiles ( e.g. BrahMos). Or BMPs/BTRs that are even popular with very US friendly Gulf states which don't care about budgets.
Regarding Spain, they have literally developed a (small) aircraft carrier, frigates, supply ships, submarines that were successfully sold abroad. Airbus Military is based in Spain, and they're working on a future stealth 6 gen fighter with Dassault Aviation, Thales and Indra ( which are fully Spanish).
Don't shit on smaller countries just because they don't have the same budget as the US.
1. T-14 Armata never entered into serial production, Russia lacks resources to actually make it into product, they just built cardboard prototype and left it there. Abrams is being produced like hot cakes. It's just Russia's claim that T-14 is superior but there is 0 proof.
2. Maintenance and support of junk is still junk
3. It's Russia's claim that S-400 SAM is better, but nobody knows the truth, in fact S-300 only proved itself in battle by shooting down civilian aircraft over Ukraine when Russia invaded it, killing innocent children in the air.
4. BMP/BTR lack sufficient armor to the point that soldiers prefer to go marching on their own foot because it is basically death trap to be inside BMP/BTR APC.
Yes, Spain is doing way better than shithole Russia, after all Russian people is being ruled by Tzar Putin and they like it.
Easy maintenance of not great hardware is better than complex maintenance of magnificent hardware. Just ask the Germans, Americans and Russians during WW2. The Sherman tank was a piece of shit on paper, but was easy to maintain, and could be produced in huge numbers. The Tiger sounds scary on paper, but it didn't matter since there weren't enough of them, and the few that existed broke down easily.
S-400 is probably better. The Patriot system is old, and doesn't even have 360 field of fire. Turkey went as far as getting kicked out of the F-35 programme over the S-400, so it's not only the Russians' word. Furthermore, it's an improvement over the earlier S-300, which is widely deployed and understood, and is generally a good and well liked system. (And note: it wasn't an S-300 that was used to shoot down the civilian airliner in Ukraine, it was a Buk, which is a mobile AA system, unlike the S series, which is (mostly) static for defense of specific areas).
BTR isn't supposed to protect from more than small arms fire, being a light armoured vehicle and all. BMPs aren't APCs, but IFV. Do you have a source on your ridiculous claim that infantry prefer to march on foot? BMPs were used in Yemen and I've heard of no such thing.
Spain is doing decently, and so is Russia. ( In terms of armament, in terms of civil liberties and all that stuff Russia is far behind).
https://twitter.com/sebh1981/status/1465351592018956295
No doubt a technogical marvel but maybe too complex for practical use.
Ignoring that it's a new aircraft on a new carrier, the only thing close to a hypothesis at the moment is that an operator fucked up which could happen with any aircraft.
I.e. it was multiple humans making an error in their trained & checklisted pre-flight duty, rather than a failure of the aircraft.