Edit: One thing the F-35 has that the other planes don't: Interoperability across basically all NATO nations and beyond. And it is the most up to date, and still in volume production, model.
The Eurofighter could of course carry and drop US nukes. The issue is that it would need US cwrtification to do so, and for rather obvious reasons that certification was close to impossible to get.
Again, the F-35 is a great plane. There are reasons so why it is not not even for the USN and USAF, only one.
You need an extensive set of avionics to control and arm the nuke in the plane which add substantial cost and aren't designed for/integrated into all aircraft.
Edit: The reason for the outcry over French nukes is not that they are French, but rather the need to change the laws around nuclear participation to allow the switch. And that legislative changes would lead to a ton of public debate everyone wants to avoid, as this debate would kill nuclear participation in general. So nobody in governmant wants to take this risk, hence the procurement of a US platform to replace the aging Tornado fleet as a carrier of US nukes.
I think the German acquisition of F-35s is a bit subtle. The Luftwaffe always wanted to buy F-35. I suspect they stalled the subject of the Eurofighter nuclear certification (which would take a good ten years) to force the German government to buy F-35s to keep its commitment to nuclear sharing. The whole thing happened at a time where the ministry of defence seemed disorganized and plagued by scandals. To be coherent with the Eurofighter policy, nuclear certification should have been a top priority ten years ago...
The relationship between the German government, the Luftwaffe, the US industry (and Lockheed...) and the German aerospatial industry has always been complex, and Germany has often been keen to use allied programs to avoid internal defense industry problems, with more or less success. See the Starfighter article on Wikipedia for the most egregious example.
With the German industry stalling the French-German-Spanish fighter project, I also suspect that they'll plan a similar manoeuver with the Eurofighter replacement.
The main pain point in all those large European defence programs is industrial workshare, especially between France and Germany and within Airbus between various sites.
And the French, which excluded their nukes from NATO oversight, might actually be reluctant to share them with Germany. Using Rafales insteads of Eurofoghters might helo, but then Germany is in the same position it is with the F-35. With the added "benefit" of a potentially hurtful public debate.
But German defense policy is built around self-defense and coalition defense: NATO, EU, UN. Nuclear weapons are opposed by Germany, and it's only because NATO is viewed as essential that nuclear sharing is accepted. Most Germans don't know about it though. A bilateral (FR-GE) extension of nuclear policy would be politically unacceptable to Germany, and require extensive legal change.
I presume that they require US launch codes (and the F35 has a kill switch?). So what is the use for Germany?
The fear in Europe (confirmed by Westpoint graduate Mearsheimer long before the Ukraine war) is that if Russia strikes a single city in Europe, the US will get second thoughts and not retaliate. Germany then cannot retaliate either, so what is the point?
This is the reason for France to have its own nuclear arsenal and fighters.
Which begs the question, why didn't Germany collaborate with France on nukes where they could be a more or less equal partner, compared to the US where they would always be the subservient party with little to no control?
De Gaulle wanted sovereign control of any French nuclear deterrent and did not trust that, if it came to it, the US would put itself on the line for Europe: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139272.htm - presumably, for similar reasons he did not want any dependence on allies, even ones closer in location and likely part of the same conflict.
The US did actually help the French nuclear programme once it started going, under the reasoning that multiple nuclear-armed NATO members is better than one.
It could be, if necessary, spun back into production. It would be very expensive and take time, at least $50B to produce 200 more and a few years to get restarted, but it's not like it would need to be designed again. We know how to make them. The issue seems to be the concern that future threats will make F-22 a poor match, and that it will compete financially against new programs that may be a better match. But who really knows what the threat will be in 2035? Maybe the F-22 is just right, and if it is and we need more, we'll make more.
I think in reality spinning up production again would essentially be a new fighter based on the same core design, maybe reusing a lot of the parts.
The only thing the F-35 has a decisive advantage in is STOVL capability. Everything else is compromised to achieve the "one plane fits all" vision; the F-35 is a jack of all trades, master of none.
The only nation that is a realistic threat to Finland, is Russia, and against Russia, the F-35 is a near-perfect aircraft.
By having F35, Finland also has much improved capabilities to interoperate with Nato nations. If the US needs to reinforce Finland's air bases, US planes can be serviced locally. Or if Finland is being overwhelmed, their fighters can fall back to Norway, Denmark or Germany.
Apart from operating costs, there are very few disadvantages to the F-35.
F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.
You don’t seem to understand the criteria against which military aircraft are judged.
Yet we keep flying it in the face of repeated attempts to retire it, with the USAF even going on the record that the A-10 will be kept in inventory "indefinitely"[1]. The A-10 is clearly not obsolete and continues to proudly serve the USA and its friends and allies, and enjoys much adoration from its pilots, mechanics, infantrymen, and civilian fans.
>F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
The F-15 has suffered no airframe loss to enemy combat action in its entire service history, that is a feat not easily met. The USAF even went as far as to procure new F-15s, the -EX model, because F-35 production wasn't keeping up.
As for the F/A-18, the Hornet boasts superior flight range and payload capacity besides being significantly cheaper, to say nothing of its proven air superiority and multirole capabilities.
>The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.
That is patently false. The F-35 must sacrifice what little stealth it has to carry more payload, otherwise it can only carry a small handful within its internal weapon bays. Even accounting for carrying payload on its wing pylons, it still can't hold a candle to the other fighters; the F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.
As for range, it pales in comparison to air superiority fighters (eg: F-15C/D/E/EX, F-22) or 4th gen naval fighters (the F/A-18C/D/E/F).
[1]: https://archive.ph/20170912212105/http://www.theaustralian.c...
Because the US has, in the past decades, not waged a war against a near-equal opponent who could have held together any kind of air force or air defenses for at most the first few days of a US invasion. In all of the US wars since the A-10 might have been obsolete against a near-equal opponent, it was more advanced than the mass of opposing tech, and could be used well. For counterinsurgency, the cost of actually modern tech is more of a problem, given that the cheap old stuff is still far superior to anything a Taliban commander can put in the field, and given that guerilla warfare has as it's aim not tactical victories, but increasing the cost to the bigger party into politically untenable regions.
It is very much obsolete in the sense that the US also requires air capabilities for large, near-equal conflicts, and there is no unsurprising way for A-10s to be useful there. In summary: keep enough A-10s around for CAS against outclassed opponents, but don't plan on having enough to take on China, seems like a wise strategy.
Is that the reason? I thought it was the need to counter the Chinese strategy of mass producing fighters with an idea of overwhelming western fighters through sheer weight of number. F35 is weak on per hour running cost and uptime per unit, and loses to the F15 variant if you are looking to scale.
The f35 can operate in a similar role to an e8 alongside a mix of cheaper aircraft.
> F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.
But also this. Which touches on F35 being very complicated to develop for, and taking ages to integrate weapons vs F15s. And some operational considerations like not wanting to retrain F15 pilots.
Look at USAF 4+1 for next 15 years of procurement. Basically F35A, F15EX, F16CD, A10s and +1 being F22s that will be replaced by NGAD.
Read between the line consideration is F35/F22 was made for Europe/RU theatre, lacks range in PRC theatre without tanking, which are vunerable to J20s with longer range and air to air. Hence NGAD being mid sized bomber, and acquiring 100 B21s that cost as much as 1000 F35s.
>Adding new F-15s was not an Air Force idea, but instead came out of the Pentagon’s Cost and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE, and was endorsed by former Defense Secretary James Mattis. While the Air Force’s long-held position has been to invest only in fifth generation fighter technology, it has defended the plan to buy new F-15s as a way to maintain fighter capacity, given the aging of the F-15C fleet and the slow pace of F-35 acquisitions.
>While the Air Force is adamant that buying F-15EXs will not reduce the requirement to build 1,763 F-35s, history and the Air Force’s own budget request suggests otherwise. The 2020 budget submission shows the Air Force buying 24 fewer F-35s over the next five years compared to last year’s plan.
Further reading: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/f-15ex-vs-f-35a/
FYI your argument was going so well until you employed this fallacy. What GP does or doesn't understand is entirely irrelevant, not to mention that mind-reading is forbidden, not really, but it is also fallacy. Only what is stated is relevant. Now if you'll just accept this, I actually do not want to argue. I was hoping you would not mind answering my questions, because I do not understand.
> It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment.
Obviously, we have a modern air defense, and the F-35 and F-22, among other elements, are a part of it. Who else does? Russia? North Korea? China? I'm just curious who threatens our 50 year old technology. IOW, besides our allies, who has 4th and/or 5th gen aircraft that we need to shore up against and not let them wreck our jalopies?
> The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
same question, who, other than our allies, is operating 5th gen aircraft that we should be concerned about? I'm not making any point. I really don't know. Appreciated.
In the specific case of the A-10, it was designed for a world that had extremely primitive sensor systems that couldn’t even reliably lock onto a plane when looking straight at it. We aren’t in that world anymore. Not only is the terminal guidance sophisticated and reliable but the warheads are designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the A-10. Everyone has had 50 years to work on that problem.
Modern Russian and Chinese systems effortlessly deal with an A-10; it lacks the power systems to support modern counter-measures against modern systems. It isn’t upgradable like that because that wasn’t a design objective.
Modern military aircraft like the F-35 have critical combat roles that don’t involve dogfighting. Their sensor suites and processing capabilities are at least as important as any other particular feature, and other aircraft don’t have that. Their systems can measure and exploit their environment to an astonishing degree.
The Ukrainian air force with mostly su-24's and su-27's should not exist or even be able to operate against Russia's supposed air defense capabilities(s-400, s-300, Tor, manpads) but war is almost always a battle of information and the stealth and network capabilities the F-35 has puts it a league of its own. One which only the f-22 could transcend but the raw number of F-35's being pumped out negates that advantage to a degree
one side has untouchable radars and AWACS.
At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.
Though probably someone already published their routes, but I too lazy to check, honestly. Still my point stands - As can be downed (and everyone would clap, especially in the US) while Es "NO YOU DONT THATS ARTICLE 5"
Over distances of 600km the vertical offset due to earth's curvature is about 20km. If it flies at it's operational ceiling of 14km, it can offset most of that but wouldn't have direct line of sight on planes at extreme range flying below 6km. If it has over the horizon capability though, which honestly seems highly likely for a recently updated system, then it should be able to compensate for the remaining shadow with some loss of resolution. Which I'm guessing is why it's estimated range is considered 600km. I'm sure the military analysts making those estimates know about these effects.
Anyway, southern Ukraine can be directly radar imaged from over Crimea so it's really not an issue. It's petty clear Russia can have full radar coverage of all of Ukraine without having to put their air radar assets close to Ukraine.
It is of course possible Ukraine might decide to try a long range anti-air strike, but I think that's unlikely due to the possibility of hitting a civilian plane, or the target coming down on a civilian area.
The A-10 is better at close air support
That doesn't leave you with many viable use cases.
But yeah... if you've wiped out your enemy's air defenses (or they never had them) including man-portable rocket launchers and all they've got left is a column of unarmored trucks then absolutely, the A-10 going to be devastating.
The Gun [1] penetrates 76 mm armor at 300 m range, which would surely hurt a bit. I'm not sure how successive rounds interact with thicker armor, but would hate to be the one to find out on the ground. :/
I find it almost hard to believe that it can fire 65 rounds per second, where each round weighs almost 400 g, and all of that while flying. It's an incredible piece of Very Angry Engineering.
The US Army is even on the record that they would fly the A-10 themselves if the USAF retired them[1], which played in to USAF keeping the A-10 "indefinitely".
>Sources say the Army is interested in obtaining A-10s should the Air Force decide to retire the twin-engine jets, which have been flying since the 1970s.[1]
The A-10 is adored and respected by our service members, so it's absolutely not obsolete and not retiring any time soon.
[1]: https://archive.ph/20130915210441/http://www.defensenews.com...
Thinking of it, do yoi think attavk helicopters are obsolete as well? Or MBTs? Just because there arebportable missiles out there that can hurt those?
F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16C/D Fighting Falcons, F/A-18C/D/E/F Hornets and Super Hornets, B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits, and US Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles among others are perfectly capable of performing the alpha strikes necessary to severely damage and destroy enemy defences and infrastructure and clear the way. A-10s along with other "vulnerable" CAS assets like the AC-130 Spooky and US Army AH-64 Apache then perform their missions with impunity.
The answer? Don't use fighters vulnerable against modern AA against modern AA.
Benefit of the A-10? Lower speed, longer loitering in CAS, something quite valuable in combined arms. And faster than attack helicopters, so A-10s can move faster between mission sites.
It is almost as if certain tools have certain use cases.
And tgat an organization as large as the US military
might what to have those tools for all the use cases
they might run into.
So people who point out the A-10's weaknesses aren't saying the A-10 has literally no value at all, because it clearly does. They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives.
Benefit of the A-10? Lower speed, longer loitering in CAS,
something quite valuable in combined arms. And faster than
attack helicopters, so A-10s can move faster between mission sites.
1. Are willing to challenge the US military in direct combat
2. Can't scrape together $100K for a rocket launcher
3. Don't have sympathetic allies that will be happy to give them rocket launchers for free in order to harass the US by proxy
USAF already investigated and answered that question: The F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, but the plan was axed in favor of keeping the A-10 indefinitely upon finding the operational risks and costs of flying the F-35 for CAS missions were not feasible.
Among the problems noted were: More dollars spent per flight hour, higher airframe cost (both in dollars and potential technology leakage) assuming an airframe loss, inferior protections afforded to the pilot, inferior airframe robustness and sturdiness, inferior payload, inferior flight range (and thus loitering time), and too fast minimum airspeed.
In fact, the F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, F-15C/D and potentially -E, F-16C/D, F/A-18C/D/E/F, F-22, and AV-8. The only aircraft the F-35 has thus far successfully replaced is the AV-8 owing to STOVL being a unique and niche capability. In all other cases the F-35 has at best complimented the preceding aircraft, and at worst failed as their replacement.
Yes, the A-10 is insanely superior for CAS, for all of the reasons you mentioned. If your enemy is so impoverished and cut off from allies that it doesn't have dirt cheap MANPADs or anything else from the last several decades of anti-aircraft technology.
There are of course mitigation strategies for AA. Combined arms are a thing. SEAD is a thing. Utilizing weather/darkness/terrain is a thing. Cutting your enemies off from arms shipments is a thing. Hammering them with CAS until they have proven they can actually thwart it is a thing.
It's just that a lot of those mitigations start to break down when your foe's AA is "a dude carrying a cheap, essentially fire-and-forget portable weapon who can duck back into a cave, a house, or a literal hole in the ground and instantly blend back in with the populace or otherwise become effectively invisible."
This isn't theory.
You can see countless examples for yourself of Russian choppers and slow (but faster than A-10, I think) Su-25 getting absolutely wrecked in Ukraine in exactly the manner I have described. As a result, the fight has largely turned into a ground war with Russia chucking missiles at Ukraine but only from safely within Russian airspace. And this is Russia's military we're talking about; they have copiously demonstrated that they're not particularly concerned about the casualties they're racking up. The US tends to be far more conservative and risk-averse.
You can say that the US would utilize combined arms, SEAD, etc more effectively than Russia. I'd agree; it'd be hard to do much worse. But the fundamental reality is that AA (particularly against unstealthy foes) has gotten really good, really cheap, really portable, and much harder to suppress.
If the F-35 has any of its weapons though, then the F-16 gets pasted by a missile the F-35 fires whenever it wants because it can essentially shoot behind itself.
In reality the F-16 gets killed without ever knowing it's being tracked.
It's like you give zero credit for either stealth or that fancy radar, which are pretty important in a modern air superiority role.