Here's a great Australian-based analysis of the F-35's particular attractions for current foreign buyers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQgNwrtVoZ4
Scathing criticism of the early F-35 development process has always been entirely warranted, and the Pentagon continues to pay the price in rebuilding costs for early "production" airframes. Its also notable that the Navy is being quite, ah, deliberate about F-35C deployment; I think only one carrier is currently rated to operate them. The Marines are more gung-ho about their F-35Bs, but only the F-35A is an export success story so far.
People have also learned that a lot of the "experts" that criticized it were extremely noncredible (eg. Pierre Sprey) and are spouting nonsense that hasn't been true since before the Vietnam war (eg. Relevance of dogfighting and guns in air combat).
The only "American thing" that really exists in modern military history is a tendency to do more things than everyone else. The US has NIH-ed their way into pretty much every military technology that's been hypothesized by someone not wearing a tinfoil hat and raving about Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci. The public hears about questions like dogfighting and firepower in US aircraft because the US is one of the only countries in the world whose military actively seeks out (or at least sought out, there's some argument that the F-35 is the beginning of the end) multiple home-grown variants of military equipment, especially aircraft, that are expected to compete both on economic and doctrinal value as actual service craft for continuing contracts, rather then just proving ground test beds. More chances to change preference, more chances for contracts, more argument, more buzz filtering into newspapers. In contrast, we're probably not going to talk much about if stealth is a Finnish thing or whatever else for quite some time after this. Perhaps the American thing is spending lots of money, but a full assessment doesn't really allow for more specifics than that.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/23/the-new-york-ti...
Sentiment has definitely shifted towards the positive viewpoint though.
However, the negative viewpoint is not unrealistic. The US can strong arm other countries into buying their crap with bribes and other under the cover dealings. Heck why do you think TSMC is opening a fab in Arizona? Because it's a profitable move? No way.
In exercises such as Red Flag, it dominates anything 4th gen.
"Stealth" is not only about being hard to detect. It's just as much about making it difficult for enemy missiles to get a lock and keep it until they score a hit.
Also, the softer (or software) elements of the F-35 is a huge part of it. Sensor Fusion makes it a lot easier to know what to do next.
Both of these are groups which exist to oppose any kind of military spending, neither of them have any relevant expertise.
F-35 is quite cheap now.
"Quite cheap now." After we already wasted trillions on it.
IIRC, the most serious criticism of the F-35 was mostly not that the fighter was terrible, but that the decision to pursue the project in the way it was was terrible, that the misguided attempt to try to save money by commonality among the radically different missions of the main versions instead made each variant more expensive to develop than it would be independently, compromised capability, and didn’t solve logistical problems better than separate projects would have.
(There was also criticism based on the cost arc of manned fighter development vs. alternative technologies and countermeasures against them that in terms of funding mix, the US should have been spending more on alternatives/countermeasures and less on manned fighters including the F-35, which was an even higher-level meta-criticism.)
As for manned vs. unmanned, while unmanned technologies are clearly developing rapidly, I suspect they're not ready yet for all the manned missions. Hence the JSF project is still warranted. Maybe the next gen JSF follow-up will be an entirely unmanned platform, who knows..
Sixth generation tactical aircraft will probably be optionally manned. So they can operate as drones when flying high-risk strike missions against known targets but can also carry pilots when greater flexibility is needed.
The F-35B may have started as a Marines ask, but it seems to have become an export success with countries that aren't really up to footing the costs for catobar-capable flat-tops for modern fighter aircraft during peacetime, e.g. the UK, Japan, Italy, Korea, potentially Spain.
The Marines have also been exploring the F-35B in austere basing, EABO conops, airborne amphibious ops, etc., so it's not just carrier ops.
It has been a lead weight on the JSF development project, for sure, but the F-35B does seem to provide an intriguing capability now that it's a thing. I'm also not convinced that a dedicated STOVL project would've given a more suitable plane -- it really seems like you would want the whole stealth + advanced sensor/avionics package on your jump jet to meet needs like naval LHD-borne fixed-wing AEW/air interceptor/task group anti-air range extender, airborne amphibious ops CAS, etc. Owing to the difficulties encountered by the JSF in supporting the F-35B, I doubt it's going to be succeeded by another platform for a very long time.
Just saying that in a hypothetical world in the early 90'ies (a quick wikipedia look says that the STOVL JSF can be traced back at least to a 1992 USMC/USAF project that eventually morphed into the JSF), if it would have been decided back then that, nope, we're not gonna do a follow-up to the Harrier, then navies that are currently looking at the F-35B would have decided to either upgrade existing small carriers with catobar and/or ordering new carriers with them. And I think in that case the total cost could have been cheaper. Yes, somewhat more expensive carriers, but cheaper planes and much less R&D cost.
I don't think that adding catobar support for modern fighter platforms is viable for all of these small carriers that are incorporating the F-35B. Admittedly my understanding of the situation is very shaky, but by all accounts I've heard, the catapults and arrestor gear place very significant strain on even the US supercarriers. More countries used to operate catobar carriers in the past (such as my home country of Australia, up until the retirement of the Melbourne and a decision to discontinue fixed-wing carrier ops), which I suspect has to do with the operation of lighter aircraft from the carriers at the time. (~7t max takeoff weight for a Sea Venom, ~11t for a Skyhawk; compare to ~30t for a Super Hornet or an F-35C.) Maybe the situation has gotten better with EMALS cats, but we're yet to see this technology used to make baby catobar carriers a thing, so who knows?
The countries in question would likely need to upgrade from their ~25000t LHDs to something with at least the displacement of the 40000t Charles de Gaulle. (Not to mention that most such carriers use nuclear power for both propulsion and to power the cats and traps.) Such vessels would come at great expense, and likely also have significantly larger crewing requirements, which tends to be a pain point for middle-power navies. I also don't think a lot of these vessels would've been built bigger in anticipation of catobar requirements, as they were largely originally specced for helicopter deck and amphibious roles. The F-35B really seems like an opportunity which all of these countries have siezed upon after seeing it come to fruition.
Again, it seems like you have a case with the Queen Elizabeths, though it seems like the UK balked at the cost of fitting catobar, if that's any indication.
As to whether the costs would've been offset by savings in the development of the F-35B, I don't even think we're talking about costs on the same magnitude here. For reference, total R&D costs for the F-35 as of 2019 were $71.9billion in 2012 dollars. Building and sustaining big boy carriers for middle-power countries would've cost the JSF partners hundreds of billions of dollars, easily.
Fair enough.
As for the size of a carrier needed for F-35, the Royal Navy was apparently operating the Phantom from ~30kt carriers. They did some tests with a smaller ~25kt carrier and found that it worked in principle but required lowered fuel load etc. I had assumed the Phantom to be a really massive plane, but it turns out the max weight is around 30t, similar to a F-35, so the comparison is actually pretty close. (I would guess it would in principle be possible with a smaller ship if you'd do a WWII style straight deck and utilize the entire deck for launching and landing, though I guess that would limit operations rate too much so nobody wants to do that?)
For cost, I think I saw somewhere some estimates that the RN had calculated that equipping the Queen Elizabeths with catobar would have added IIRC ~$200M per boat. However one also needs to take into account the cost difference between the F-35 B and C variants. Searching around I found a figures from 2019 that said a B variant then went for $115.5M and a C for $107.7M (for comparison, the A model at $89M but I found newer figures from 2022 saying $80M). But if, hypothetically, the B model wouldn't exist production numbers for the C model would be higher and thus lower per unit costs. Lemme just spitball it and say $100M in 2019 for a C model in the hypothetical world without the B model. Per wikipedia the complement of a Queen Elizabeth is 36 F-35's. So (115.5-100)x36 = $558M, which is more than twice the cost of the catobar installation. Even if we assume no cost difference for the C model due to the disappearance of the B model, it's still (115.5-107.7)x36=$281M, still much higher than the price of the catobar installation. Not to mention that over the service life of the carrier probably many generations of planes would be used (or newer versions of F-35's, considering F-35 is expected to be a very long-lived platform).
I guess the crux of the argument is really what about those navies that want to operate baby carriers. If we assume a ~40kt Charles de Gaulle is about the minimum you wanna have for a 'proper' catobar carrier (maybe ~30kt if you really stretch it?), that leaves out all those 25kt helicopter carriers and whatnot.
* Manufacturers of competing fighter jets. If enough people think the F-35 is terrible, they might vote for politicians who will nix F-35 procurement and maybe buy their plane instead. These often take the form of slick PR hits where e.g. the CBC will cite Boeing as an "expert source" about why Boeing's Super Hornet is a better choice than the F-35 for the Canadian air force.
* Russian state media, which wants to further their own propaganda narrative.
* Pierre Sprey, who has notoriously overstated the extent of his expertise and his involvement with US aircraft development in the past, and has convinced unwitting journalists (including the aforementioned Russian state media) to cite him.
A lot of things have changed over the past ten years: Pierre Sprey passed away, Boeing's credibility has taken a massive hit in recent years for a number of reasons, and the Russians are invading Ukraine which makes them pretty unpopular and Westerners much less willing to take RT and the like at face value. Meanwhile, the F-35 is in service and seems to be relatively successful so far.
Like I said, that Sprey person seems like a blowhard who got attention in the USA, I never heard of him before some YouTube videos in the past few months. The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum.
And by what standard did you find them credible when it comes to evaluating fighter jets? It seems like you aren’t applying a consistent standard to ”confident strangers on the Internet”, which is all those guys seem to be.
The truth is, anyone with the qualifications and information necessary to make a proper evaluation already works for a military and isn’t allowed to say much.
I live in a democracy, so its my duty to form an opinion about large controversial purchases my government proposes to make. Of course my opinion on most of them can't be an expert opinion, but it can be at least as good as my representatives'.
Neither of them have the qualifications to evaluate fighter jets. In any case….
Here’s a pretty comprehensive compilation of well-cited information from 2014 you can pore through: https://comprehensiveinformation.wordpress.com/
And here’s a copy of a story originally published by Air & Space Magazine in 2019 with quotes from F-35 pilots: https://www.jsfsim.nl/f-35/f-35-what-the-pilots-say/
I think there's historical evidence that the US used bribery to get aircraft sold in the distant past and no doubt other countries have too so it would be odd to think that political and other pressures are now suddenly non-existent because we're better human beings than before.
You cannot really even trust pilots because they will want Raybans and iPhones even when the cheaper generic sunglasses and phones do the job. They are only the top of the pyramid of people that have to look after the system.
I completely agree.
I agree with you that in a democracy it's a citizen duty to be informed of what is happening. Though in the case of fighter jets, or other high-end military systems, they are very complex and the exact capabilities (and how the military intends to make the most of those capabilities, which can vary greatly for different offerings in a tender) are highly classified. And to be fair, I'm quite sure our representatives don't know much if anything of the classified stuff either.
At least in the Finnish case, there was a procurement organization setup including, obviously, Air Force personnel but also lots of other expertise. They did a very expensive and thorough evaluation of the various offerings, including access to classified material I'm sure, before ending up at recommending the F-35. The politicians then more or less rubber-stamped the recommendation. That is not to say that politicians couldn't go against that recommendation, ultimately it's their decision. Things like industrial policy (aka jobs programs) related to major military acquisitions matter, and particularly during the cold war Finland tried to stay neutral and one way this was done was that major military acquisitions were divided between Soviet and Western gear (e.g. how Finland ended up with both Mig-21 and Saab Draken fighters). Though today if the politicians would decide to go against the recommendation of the procurement organization I'm sure that would cause quite an uproar and need some pretty hefty justifications.
How much of this was down to practicality, though? Being able to pick and choose the best gear from each side?
I'm not an expert on cold war Finland, but my understanding is that Finland was threading a very fine needle between not provoking the USSR (see Prague 1968) while still maintaining relations with the West in order to not be seen as being part of the Soviet sphere of influence (which, again, can be seen as form of insurance against a Soviet annexation). Foreign trade, and in particular major arms deals, were VERY politicised, and I'd imagine there would be a need for very strong differences in military/technical capabilities to override the political considerations in any particular deal.
There are no competing stealth aircraft capable of naval deployment. China is developing what appears to be a stealth fighter for their aircraft carriers, but I don't know how soon they will be deployed.