>The U.S. Air Force is thinking about starting from scratch on a new, lightweight fighter that could ease the financial burden brought on by the troubled but capable F-35.
>The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may be the Air Force’s “quarterback in the sky,” but it’s also expensive to operate and, to date, still riddled with issues.
>However, 14 years after the F-35 first took to the sky, it has still not been authorized to move into full-rate production thanks to a litany of bugs and issues that have plagued the aircraft program since its inception.
>Even with all of the F-35’s headaches addressed, one more looming problem remains–the price of operating the aircraft. Thanks to state-of-the-art stealth technology and radar-absorbent coating that needs frequent touch-ups, the F-35 costs around $44,000 per hour of flight. Compare that to the expected $20,000 per hour for the F-15EX, and you start to realize just how pricey the Joint Strike Fighter really is. With an operational lifespan of around 8,000 hours (compared to 20,000 in the F-15EX) and the figures climb ever higher–as it will take more aircraft to fly the same number of hours when using an F-35 instead of an advanced 4th-gen jet like the Eagle.
I’m really curious how the swiss army decided that this thing is the cheapest plane they could get.
Or in other words, with the information available it’s hard to see this as anything else than them trying to get the most advanced shiniest toy no matter what it’s actually going to be used for.
Nein
Yeah… I am usually pro military and all but this decision is questionable at best even for me.
It’s just a farce from top to bottom.
Sukhoï Su-57 is far better
I do hope that there will be another vote ~~for~~ against it.
Most if not all of the so-called critics never tested any of the involved aircrafts, not have ever been in charge of any country’s military defense. I highly doubt that they have all the necessary information.
> You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our ‘high end’ [fighter], we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight… We don’t want to burn up capability now and wish we had it later.”
They basically just want to create a new airplane with the intel they gathered making the F35, that would be cheaper to fly for low stake mission.
They are not replacing the F35, for such a small air force it makes sense for us to have only ferraris. The US being much bigger can afford having multiple platform for different missions.
Getting ready for the downvotes from the I-criticize-everything-army-related-per-se-brigade, but maybe one or two users actually want to read a different opinion.
yes, the price per hour of flying is expensive, but one thing that almost never gets mentioned is the fact that our swiss pilots will have to spend **significantly** less time in the air with this jet. this is partly due to the high-end simulators that are included in the deal but mostly down to the state-of-the-art sensors that the F-35 features. To quote the article:
>Like the F-22, stealth was an intrinsic part of the F-35’s design, but the aircraft surpasses its Raptor sibling in the realm of data fusion and pilot awareness. The F-35 can take data feeds from sensors all around it, including land-based assets, ships, or drones, and blend all of the information with its own suite of on-board sensors. The result is a single, streamlined view of the battlespace that pilots can access directly through their heads-up displays and augmented reality headsets. Pilots can even look directly through the bottom of their aircraft using the F-35’s pilot display and on-board cameras while flying at night. Some have gone so far as to describe the F-35’s “God’s eye view” as similar to using cheat codes on a video game when compared to its 4th generation predecessors.
Well, this is what you get from a 5th generation fighter jet. All the other candidates are 4th generation jets. It’s literally in a league of its own. This also means that the Swiss Air Force can use them up until the 2060’s which would be impossible with the F-35’s competitors.
We should have gone for the french Rafale.
The F-35 was made into the classic “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau”. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but that’s what always happens, because the USAF only ever builds one new fighter at a time.
The same airframe is not (and cannot be) the best at all roles. But that’s what they demand. The F-35 is supposed to be an air superiority fighter, it’s supposed to be a ground attack aircraft, it’s supposed to be VTOL, it’s supposed to be…
No surprise: it’s not great at any of those things, and it’s downright terrible at some of them (like: replacing the A-10). Plus, the resulting complexity makes it into a classic “hangar queen”.
So they’re going to try again. Define a simple, cheap, lightweight fighter. But then: it will need to be the best fighter. By the way, the A-10 is now *really* old – the new plane needs to handle ground attack. Oh, we also need it to do X, Y and Z. That’s how it is with the F-35, and that’s how it’s going to be with whatever the new aircraft will be called.
As for Switzerland: We need a lightly armed jet for police duties. The F-35 is about the dumbest of all possible choices.
Im not a big fan of the f-35 but it’s the Same Story for every new jet the us adopts
Never forget that there is a battle of giants with virtually infinite lobbying capacity and political relays at play in the US.
Every few weeks, news of how catastrophic the F-35 programme is emerges, only to be countered a couple of weeks later by another communication campaign highlighting how on the contrary everything is perfect and actually operation costs are sinking and so on…
If Boeing goes belly up, it’s pretty much the entire economy of the Pacific North-West that tanks.
So you know, Boeing has been doing so well on its newest airliners that juicy military contracts, say to replace those “failing F-35s” would do a lot of good.
I just want to add something people seems to forget, the mantainance costs are LEGALLY BINDING, if it really does cost more than contracted to fly, Lockheed Martin will have to foot the bill. Just one thing more to consider…
No wall of text from me today, unfortunately I am from mobile 🙁
14 comments
>The U.S. Air Force is thinking about starting from scratch on a new, lightweight fighter that could ease the financial burden brought on by the troubled but capable F-35.
>The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter may be the Air Force’s “quarterback in the sky,” but it’s also expensive to operate and, to date, still riddled with issues.
>However, 14 years after the F-35 first took to the sky, it has still not been authorized to move into full-rate production thanks to a litany of bugs and issues that have plagued the aircraft program since its inception.
>Even with all of the F-35’s headaches addressed, one more looming problem remains–the price of operating the aircraft. Thanks to state-of-the-art stealth technology and radar-absorbent coating that needs frequent touch-ups, the F-35 costs around $44,000 per hour of flight. Compare that to the expected $20,000 per hour for the F-15EX, and you start to realize just how pricey the Joint Strike Fighter really is. With an operational lifespan of around 8,000 hours (compared to 20,000 in the F-15EX) and the figures climb ever higher–as it will take more aircraft to fly the same number of hours when using an F-35 instead of an advanced 4th-gen jet like the Eagle.
I’m really curious how the swiss army decided that this thing is the cheapest plane they could get.
Or in other words, with the information available it’s hard to see this as anything else than them trying to get the most advanced shiniest toy no matter what it’s actually going to be used for.
Nein
Yeah… I am usually pro military and all but this decision is questionable at best even for me.
It’s just a farce from top to bottom.
Sukhoï Su-57 is far better
I do hope that there will be another vote ~~for~~ against it.
Most if not all of the so-called critics never tested any of the involved aircrafts, not have ever been in charge of any country’s military defense. I highly doubt that they have all the necessary information.
> You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our ‘high end’ [fighter], we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight… We don’t want to burn up capability now and wish we had it later.”
They basically just want to create a new airplane with the intel they gathered making the F35, that would be cheaper to fly for low stake mission.
They are not replacing the F35, for such a small air force it makes sense for us to have only ferraris. The US being much bigger can afford having multiple platform for different missions.
Getting ready for the downvotes from the I-criticize-everything-army-related-per-se-brigade, but maybe one or two users actually want to read a different opinion.
yes, the price per hour of flying is expensive, but one thing that almost never gets mentioned is the fact that our swiss pilots will have to spend **significantly** less time in the air with this jet. this is partly due to the high-end simulators that are included in the deal but mostly down to the state-of-the-art sensors that the F-35 features. To quote the article:
>Like the F-22, stealth was an intrinsic part of the F-35’s design, but the aircraft surpasses its Raptor sibling in the realm of data fusion and pilot awareness. The F-35 can take data feeds from sensors all around it, including land-based assets, ships, or drones, and blend all of the information with its own suite of on-board sensors. The result is a single, streamlined view of the battlespace that pilots can access directly through their heads-up displays and augmented reality headsets. Pilots can even look directly through the bottom of their aircraft using the F-35’s pilot display and on-board cameras while flying at night. Some have gone so far as to describe the F-35’s “God’s eye view” as similar to using cheat codes on a video game when compared to its 4th generation predecessors.
Well, this is what you get from a 5th generation fighter jet. All the other candidates are 4th generation jets. It’s literally in a league of its own. This also means that the Swiss Air Force can use them up until the 2060’s which would be impossible with the F-35’s competitors.
We should have gone for the french Rafale.
The F-35 was made into the classic “Eierlegende Wollmilchsau”. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but that’s what always happens, because the USAF only ever builds one new fighter at a time.
The same airframe is not (and cannot be) the best at all roles. But that’s what they demand. The F-35 is supposed to be an air superiority fighter, it’s supposed to be a ground attack aircraft, it’s supposed to be VTOL, it’s supposed to be…
No surprise: it’s not great at any of those things, and it’s downright terrible at some of them (like: replacing the A-10). Plus, the resulting complexity makes it into a classic “hangar queen”.
So they’re going to try again. Define a simple, cheap, lightweight fighter. But then: it will need to be the best fighter. By the way, the A-10 is now *really* old – the new plane needs to handle ground attack. Oh, we also need it to do X, Y and Z. That’s how it is with the F-35, and that’s how it’s going to be with whatever the new aircraft will be called.
As for Switzerland: We need a lightly armed jet for police duties. The F-35 is about the dumbest of all possible choices.
Im not a big fan of the f-35 but it’s the Same Story for every new jet the us adopts
Never forget that there is a battle of giants with virtually infinite lobbying capacity and political relays at play in the US.
Every few weeks, news of how catastrophic the F-35 programme is emerges, only to be countered a couple of weeks later by another communication campaign highlighting how on the contrary everything is perfect and actually operation costs are sinking and so on…
If Boeing goes belly up, it’s pretty much the entire economy of the Pacific North-West that tanks.
So you know, Boeing has been doing so well on its newest airliners that juicy military contracts, say to replace those “failing F-35s” would do a lot of good.
I just want to add something people seems to forget, the mantainance costs are LEGALLY BINDING, if it really does cost more than contracted to fly, Lockheed Martin will have to foot the bill. Just one thing more to consider…
No wall of text from me today, unfortunately I am from mobile 🙁