Why would they buy such a problematic platform?
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/04/failing-f-35-gr...
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/04/failing-f-35-gr...
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197...
The early F-14As had engines that would just stop running for no apparent reason...
- Grumman salesman, probably
The F-16 encountered months of delays, but the F-35 A/B/C models will, on average, be delayed half a decade.
The F-35 was originally slated to cost $50 million apiece—nearly twice the original cost of the F-16 at today's prices—but the three versions of the plane currently run anywhere from $112 to $120 million each.
Yes, America and her allies have been down this road before, but this time it is a lot rockier.
https://breakingdefense.com/2022/03/f-35-to-get-more-expensi...
The contract for lots 12-14, inked in 2019, included
478 F-35s for the US military and international
customers. Under the terms of the agreement, an
F-35A will cost $77.9 million in Lot 14, with the
F-35B short takeoff and landing variant coming in
at $101.3 million and the F-35C carrier variant at
$94.4 million during the same period.
That's still more expensive than an F-16, but it's also a more advanced plane. I think the relevant comparison isn't the F-16.... it's competing modern fighters like the Rafale, the Eurofighter, and the Gripen. And the F-35 is competing with and beating them on price.
(Direct price comparisons are impossible because of politics, hidden total cost of ownership concerns, government subsidies, etc. But... I've not heard it alleged that the F-35's cost is out of line with contemporaries)
If a Canadian F35 aircraft urgently needs a spare part on the other side of the world, Canada could purchase the spare part from another F35 user in the region and not have to wait until the part is flown from the other side of the world.
Pilots from allied countries could potentially fly the same aircraft type regardless of which country owns an individual aircraft. Thus if a country is short on trained pilots, the aircraft could still potentially be piloted by an ally.
These aircraft are estimated to have a sustainment cost USD$8-10M/yr/aircraft (July 2021) or for the 88 aircraft to be procured by Canada, USD$880M/yr (July 2021). These costs would no doubt be higher if Canada were to select or develop an equivalent aircraft that only a small number of countries use as production of a completely different set of spare parts would be required for many decades. The costs would also be higher due to Canada needing to install additional or upgraded equipment during the lifespan--radios, armaments, etc. Instead of benefiting from shared R&D costs of the US and other countries, Canada would need to develop and sustain customised equipment for the aircraft themselves.
An argument against consolidation and centralisation of the supply chain would be the fragility of only having one aircraft type. Perhaps there is only one factory producing a critical spare part that is forced to halt production, or a software defect impacts all F35 aircraft of all users at once, or as a generalised aircraft it is disadvantaged against adversaries with specialised aircraft, or countries such as Canada get placed at the back of the queue by the US when it comes to production and support.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2021/07/31/f-35...
Canada is buying these planes because they are the most effective fighters available within the general price range.
It does not even get basic stuff like plane handling realistic.
I am pretty sure the US military does their own wargames to get data for things like this, and I highly doubt they are using DCS as a data source...
No one said they did. But they do use simulators for training and mission planning:
https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-35-lightning...
Face it stealth is a huge advantage in BVR when you are well outside the WEZ of fox 2’s.
And yes the F-35 gets killed in dogfights, however it slays pretty much everything in BVR.
Also reports from war games report the same kinds of kill ratios, basically until the F-35 runs out of missiles it will kill every 4th gen
And what advanced systems are present in the F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s.
And what advanced systems are present in the
F-35 which can't be retrofitted into the F16s and F15s.
1. Stealth
2. Sensor fusion with other aircraft
3. Carrier landing/launch
4. An airframe that isn't on the verge of forced retirement due to accumulated flight hours and metal fatigue, like many/most of the F16s and F15s
The F16 and F15 are arguably more capable in movie-style dogfights. They can pull 9Gs while the F35 can do 7G IIRC with superior thrust to weight. In a guns-only dogfight maybe you want one of those.
But that misses the point. Modern air combat is not about movie style dogfights. It's about hitting your enemy with a missile from beyond visual range before he even knows that you or the missile exist.
Perhaps even more crucially, it's about surviving enemy ground defenses. Anti-aircraft defenses including man-portable missiles are cheap and getting more deadly by the day. No stealth? You're dead. You're not just dead; you were an easy kill. "Stealth" is not a binary property of course; "stealth" aircraft can be detected with enough luck and effort. But stealth is table stakes for not being easy pickings.
You can see this in Ukraine. Neither side has stealth, neither side has established clear air superiority.
100% right, f-35 can launch amrams with data link from AWACS, red team gets the radar lock warning about 5 seconds before they are dead.
Well that's kind of cheating, it's not like you can retrofit carrier landing onto an F-35A either.
However, it is a bonkers airborne munitions truck that can carry a loooot of missiles and bombs.
A common bit of speculation is that eventually what you could see is the F-15EX used in conjunction with stealthier fighters like the F-35 (and/or drones?) in mixed formations. The F-35s only carry 4 missiles in the internal bays. The F-35s can scout and relay targeting information to the F-15EX, which can then deliver the hurt from a safe distance.
In a bvr battle of missile trucks, it may be beneficial to have separate platforms optimized for sensing and attack. Maneuverability may not be required if the aircraft can remain high and fast.
Most of this is possible today and the rest is close.
The cost is obviously insane, and that's part of the appeal for the US. For the moment they own the skies in a comprehensive way that nobody else can even remotely afford to challenge. Look at the US's dominance in Desert Storm, and consider that the gap has probably widened since then.
I'm neither endorsing this nor criticizing it by the way. The US does this while a lot of its citizens don't even have healthcare, for example. The ethical issues are infinite!
But to answer your question - stealth airframe. And it’s an enormous benefit - you can’t shoot what you can’t detect. And if that thing has long range weapon systems, good luck.
Those are both 45+ year old airframes as well. You're going to have to upgrade to something new eventually...
Lots of complaining around the F-16, F-14 had early issues as well: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a21587/197...
Naval vessels have similarly eye-watering (or greater) price tags, but they usually don't fail so spectacularly that they sink or explode or are totally out of commission.
Problems with fighter jets are more "dramatic." If there is a problem with a jet, it either (a) crashes or (b) is effectively nonfunctional, stuck on the ground. Fighter jets also just capture the public imagination. We mythologize fighters and fighter pilots. Jets are considered "sexy" and so articles about them generate probably 10x or 100x the traffic as articles about problems with boats or rail guns or artillery or other procurements.
Also remember that there is fierce competition for those military contracts. Lockheed, Grumman, etc compete tooth and nail for them. Just a guess, but I bet the PR team at Company A is more than happy to seed the press with stories about failures by Company B.
On the other hand, this is government (taxpayers) money, so why not waste some extra money, skimp on testing and pocket the difference, because everyone know they can and nothing will happen to them.
it's not better than the F-22 but it's a lot cheaper
It's about BVR (beyond visual range) combat: launching a missile at a foe and killing him before he knows that you or the missile exist. It's also about survivability against enemy ground defenses attempting to lock onto you with radar and kill you with missiles.
For both of those things, stealth is a bare minimum requirement. The F-35 has it, the Eurofighter does not. (yes, stealth is not a binary property, but that is the TL;DR)
So the Typhoon is going to kick serious ass in certain situations and be completely unusable in others.
The Air Force and Navy had different solutions to the early trouble with the performance of the F4. The Air Force attached a cannon in a centerline pod, the Navy did not, and invested in more training and the development of new tactics (notably the Top Gun program).
The Air Force's gun pod did improve kill ratios a little bit, but the Navy's training programs improved kill ratios by a lot, using the same fighters and the same missiles as before. The Air Force later copied the Navy's training programs. I'm sure improvements were made to the missiles over the course of the war as well.
So even at the time (in the earliest days of missile technology) it's not clear that BVR focus was the wrong decision, only that you can't expect pilots to automatically understand how to fight in a new paradigm. But today it's 50 years later, almost as big a gap as between Vietnam and the Wright brothers - BVR combat is very well understood and missile technology is vastly better.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/more-sixty-years-la...
"The Air Force didn’t realize those early missiles
were terrible.
Studies showed that 45 percent of Vietnam-era
AIM-7s and 37 percent of AIM-9s failed to either
launch or lock on, and after evasive maneuvers,
the probability of achieving a kill fell to eight
percent and 15 percent for the two types,
respectively"
So you literally have to, by NATO contract.
But only a handful of NATO members are a part of nuclear sharing, and Canada isn’t one of them IIRC.
It means there's a larger pool of people qualified to fly and work on the jet, nations can do maintenance deals with each other to reduce costs, parts supply becomes less of an issue, air forces can fly to allied air bases and know that the tools, infrastructure, and mechanics are available for their jets, training costs and resources can be shared between nations, flying and integrating with other air forces becomes easier, shared experience on the same jet helps identify and resolve issues, etc., etc.
The Ukranians are using Western equipment but they had to be trained to use it first, and that took weeks if not months. That’s precious time in the kind of war involving all of NATO.
I don’t know that the F-35 is the only plane currently meeting requirements, if only because that would represent a bottleneck and single point of failure.
I think I got the original idea of the "requirement" from this article: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44740/germany-has-chos...
But I might've misread it, this might only apply to that particular sale to Germany.