Originally Posted by
Asturias56
JFZ, perhaps if you could give us an illustration of what you see as a a "balanced view" it might help us understand your viewpoint?
I hinted at it in my email - e.g. is a balanced view being taken of the cost and difficulty of an LO solution, and how that difficulty could have been seen three times in three bespoke aircraft etc.
And to what extent is the LO worth it? Looking at open source info, if it’s a “metal marble”, then is it useful to have an aircraft costing £100m that is detected/tracked at a range of tens of Km if they other side are lucky, vs a £80m F18 which is seen & tracked and shot down by the same systems at 200+km. Of course its more complex but you rarely see articles recognising the benefits of LO.
Other questions are could it have been done quicker and cheaper through better mgt, or are the signs there that de-risking was comprehensive enough whilst never likely to capture & remove every dev problem in such a bold project, and broadly it does do what it should. It’s no F111B with flaws that would drive cancellation for instance. I suspect they possibly did overlap dev and prod too much, but who is to say what is right - wait too long and obsolescence is an even bigger challenge.
My request is simply based on the fact that a google pulls up loads of what I suspect are pretty ill informed castigations of F35, with stuff about EO tracking and stealth not working etc. It’s simplistic drivel quite often and obviously not so simple.
I read the latest GAO report and found it quite amusing - they sound quite like the NAO!
Their recommendation to delay the latest development investment in batch 4 in case its takes longer than expected is a particular gem. When you look at the meat of their concern it can sound like they are not practitioners. You can almost see the eyebrows raising as the DoD wrote its response.....
I have no experience of the F35 programme so could be completely mistaken of course.