The F-35 Can’t Fight at Long Range, Either

I do research on molecular biology, you could say that every meeting with our project leaders goes like that.

Specially that part like:

"Why did you do X?"

"(I didnt' wanted to but...) As per your request, you said it was a really important feature."

"No way, scrap it, how come you thought X was a good idea! Come on!"

Engineer: "We can't get the engine to work with the current airframe design if we use stealthy engine nozzles. It's going to require a significant re-design."

Manager: "Will it work with old style round nozzles? Then use those."

i vaguely remember reading something/somewhere that less stealthy round instead of stealthier flat was a cost cutting decision.

The problem is that the F-35 had requirements that fundamentally conflict with each other.

It had to have a STOVL configuration, which probably dictated the nozzle design. But it also had to be 'stealthy', so the nozzle design and the wide fuselage needed for the STOVL requirement, negatively affected the stealth requirement. So much so that the stealth rating of the F-35 was downgraded.

It was also supposed to be more maneuverable than the F-16, but the other requirements resulted in aerodynamic performance that was less than what was originally planned. So much so that it lost a mock dogfight against a F-16. Granted that test is not the end of the story but it's not a good sign.

Then there's the fact that the military and Congress inexplicably decided that they'd throw the normal testing and validation phase out the window in favor of 'concurrency' where they're putting the aircraft into production before testing is done. This has the dual downsides of ensuring expensive retrofits when problems are identified but it commits the government even more deeply to a weapons system that may ultimately never perform as billed.

The rest of the 20 different systems he compares the F-35 to either would bankrupt Russia if they were to ever put them into mass production, or the comparisons themselves isolate one feature of the F-35 against some long-shot (probably exaggerated) capability of such-and-such Russian system. I could say that the F-35 could use its low-observable phased array radar to detect the Su-35 from twice the distance of the latter without triggering the enemy's RWR, fire off an AIM-120 and turn around before the Su-35 detected it. And pretty much every shortcoming for the F-35 (sensors, supercruise, stealth) he brought up is far worse for the F-16, A-10, and AV-8B which the F-35 is intended to replace.

Oh, they didn't overlook it. The mere fact that he assumes that only flat nozzles are stealthy tells me that the author has not done his research.

From my reading of this article, the author accepts the absolute most pessimistic estimates of the F-35 and also accepts the most optimistic estimates and statements of the capabilities of other aircraft and radar systems, without questioning these estimates. For example, take this line:

"Tehran insists its Ghadir radar can spot jets more than 300 miles away."

Tehran also insisted that their Qahar 313 is real, when it's a laughable fake: http://www.thewire.com/global/2013/02/iran-new-stealth-fight....

Now, just because the Qahar 313 is likely fake, that doesn't mean their Ghadir radar can't spot aircraft at 300+ miles. But shouldn't the Qahar fake make a "security analyst" like the author take a closer look at subsequent claims by the same government?

Better fighters have been produced in far less time for far less money. I think it's receiving so much attention on HN because it's an example of poor engineering.

$1.5 trillion / 318.9 million people in the USA = $4,703.67 per person!

I want a refund!

In this age of austerity having a fighter that cost several times more than the previous generation and yet can't do the things that it's supposed to do in the apogee of pork barrel waste. The project should have been killed years ago and yet here we are still throwing money at the thing hoping it will fly.

The Navy has had fun too with the Zumwalt-class destroyer which ended up cancelled after two. They haven't had much luck with submarines either.

Weapons programs are expensive and only more so as they suffer feature creep. We all know how expensive and annoying that is in software development, in the military its just measured in billions.

You can toss NASA into the mix, from the shuttle to many proposed replacements. Government tends to spend big and fail big with a few good things leaking through.

However if you want to get into real government boondoggles simply go look at transportation projects, from light rail to tunnels and finally bridges.

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/the-pentagons-concurrency-m...

You can see the F35 is the workhorse there. If it's a dud it's a huge dud.

The premise of the question is dubious. Similarly problem-plagued programs -- that have been far less expensive -- have gotten similar attention at similar stages of their lifecycle, some of which have been subsequently abandoned, others of which have dealt with the early problems to become reasonably useful.

OTOH, the fact that the manned combat aircraft seem to be reaching a point where the expense of making them minimally survivable dwarfs their utility, similar to what happened with battleships several decades ago, probably mean that there will be more triggers for attention paid to manned combat aircraft programs, both in terms of problems and overall expense, which draws attention on its own.

The other recent vehicle criticism that comes to mind has been over how much of the budget went into acquiring light vehicles such as hummers, and other RPG & IED bait.

Unlike with the F-35, this was actively costing lives, so something got done. We've slapped net armor onto a bunch of things. MRAPs have "Mine-Resistant" right in the acronym.

Look at the F-111B program, the attempt to build an F-111 variant for carrier use. The F-111B was too big, too unmaneuverable, and had too many other problems so after about 6 years with an initial production of 7 aircraft the program was cancelled. The Navy went back to the drawing board, sought out new aircraft proposals, and eventually ended up with the F-14 to fulfill that role. There's a long history of mistakes and bad designs in military history, but in the US at least most of those mistakes are accepted by the top brass, work arounds are developed, and better systems are procured as replacements. It's a history of lessons learned and applied to future generations of weapons systems.

The F-35 on the other hand appears to not only be enormously flawed but government leadership has consistently refused to address or accept those flaws, and has instead doubled down on the program. The F-35 was sold based on some simple promises: that it would be cheaper than alternatives; that having a common design with 3 variants would reduce costs, increase reliability, and increase capabilities; and that it would be a next generation multi-role fighter capable of easily gaining the upper hand against any competitor in any theater in the world. All of those promises have been broken, utterly. The reality is that there are three completely different planes that have similar names, but the commonality between the different "variants" is only around 30%. Worse, the plane is hugely expensive to produce and even more expensive to operate, with a dismally low "duty cycle" (with a ratio of 3-5 hours of corrective maintenance needed for every single hour of flight time). Slowly but surely the cost of the F-35 is approaching the cost of the F-22 (which is a vastly more capable aircraft). And now we see that the planes aren't actually very good at their job either.

It's like going to the car dealership and trading in your beloved and trustworthy family automobile then the salesman selling you on the idea of a fun but inexpensive and reliable high performance sports car. Then when you get the car you realize that it's a lemon, it has the performance of a Geo Metro but the gas mileage of a HUMVEE, it's in the shop every week for some new problem or other, and then when you check the paperwork you see some stuff you didn't notice when you signed and it actually cost 3x more than you thought. That situation would cause anyone to be pissed off. Unfortunately, the Pentagon is so in bed with LockMart/Boeing that they refuse to criticize it or do anything about it.

Surely so. Even with current aviation technology, the lack of an onboard bag of meat that dies at high accelerations should be a huge advantage.

Probably. Do we really have an answer to a swarm of drones in a very spread out pattern, each with 2-4 long range missiles?

"The official report details how the F15 was able to lock on to the helicopters around 64 km. However did not get visual ID till 6-9 km.(Beyond-visual range combat wasn't practiced at this typical exercise) "

But why would fighter fly low? It would just shoot a missile from 10km height - unreachable height for helicopter and for many anti-aircraft missiles.

F-35 on the left, Chinese J-20 on the right. We don't have to copy Chinese designs, they already copied ours.

Everyone that paid for the promises that it could do all this stuff.

Meanwhile the F-35 is a fiasco for US and NATO force projection. The whole point of modern weapons - ugly and expensive as they are - is that they're supposed to be so intimidating you barely need to use them.

The F-35 fails to continue that tradition. The political consequences are going to be a lot more significant than the military ones.