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Last year in an interview (DODBuzz) admiral Greenert “painted a fairly bleak picture of the value of manned stealthy combat aircraft, which seems like a vote of no confidence for the Joint Strike Fighter program in regards to its effectiveness, utility and need.”
The Limits of Stealth
And in an opinion article in Proceedings Magazine of the US Naval Institute admiral Greenert wrote: “The rapid expansion of computing power also ushers in new sensors and methods that will make stealth and its advantages increasingly difficult to maintain above and below the water.”
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“For example, an aircraft or ship is designed to have a small signature or radar return when it is approaching a threat sensor—or has a “nose-on” aspect. Improved computer processing will produce new techniques that can detect stealth platforms at target aspects from which they have higher radar returns. Multiple active radars, for instance, can combine their returns through a battle-management computer so radar detections from a stealth platform’s less-stealthy side, underside, or rear aspect can be shared and correlated to allow the stealth platform to be detected and attacked. Similarly, passive radar receivers can capture the electromagnetic energy that comes from transmitters of opportunity—such as cell-phone or TV towers—and bounces off a stealth platform at a variety of angles. With better processing in the future, those weak, fragmented signals can be combined to create actionable target information.
Those developments do not herald the end of stealth, but they do show the limits of stealth design in getting platforms close enough to use short-range weapons. Maintaining stealth in the face of new and diverse counterdetection methods would require significantly higher fiscal investments in our next generation of platforms. It is time to consider shifting our focus from platforms that rely solely on stealth to also include concepts for operating farther from adversaries using standoff weapons and unmanned systems—or employing electronic-warfare payloads to confuse or jam threat sensors rather than trying to hide from them.” So far US Navy admiral Jonathan Greenert.
The relative small production quantity of F-35C (planning only 260); the fact that the US Navy will be the only operator; in combination with the technical problems; the delays of the Initial Operational Capability until 2019; the continuation of the production of the successful F/A-18 Super Hornet and the planned accelerated development of X-47B like carrier launched unmanned stealth aircraft are a combined, but growing and serious threat to the continuation of the F-35C development and production.
Source:
Prceedings, July 2012; Vol 138/7/1313; US Naval Institute; Admiral Jonathan Greenert; “Payloads over Platforms; charting a new course”
DODBuzz; 3-jul-2012; “Did CNO just take a big swipe at F-35?”
Reuters; 12-mar-2013; Cutting whole U.S. Navy buy of F-35s would hurt: top officer
Prices soar, enthusiasm dives for F-35 Lightning; pilots worry about visibility problem - Washington Times
Also interesting how General Bogdan, Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations from 2007 to 2011, and the Boss of the USMC all seem to come to the conclusion that the JSF has basically given up on the joint part and developed into 3 separate fighters hampered too much by their commonality which is a big reason for the price inflation.
The US NAVY Admiral basically proposes to give up entirely on the A version and also doubts the value of the B, the USAF on the other hand prefers the A version because they want a light weight fighter, which is kind of ironic since it is anything but light.
Retired Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations from 2007 to 2011, wrote a recent article for his new employer, the Hoover Institution, on how to reduce military costs. One idea: scrap the F-35A.
“My whole idea there was, even though there are a lot of commonalities, if you had one conventional takeoff-and-landing [feature], would you save on training pipeline? Would you save on the depot level work because of the fact you just have that one variant going through rework lines and perhaps logistics would come down?” Adm. Roughead told The Washington Times. “And then software changes would be more common to that one variant.”
Adm. Roughead, a career surface ship and fleet commander, said he canceled the DDG 1000, a next-generation destroyer, in 2008 because of projected long-term costs.
Pentagon officials have said in audit reports that the F-35’s 30-year, $1 trillion operating bill is not affordable.
“Both the Navy and the Air Force would fly the C,” Adm. Roughead said of his proposal. “You need the [F-35] coming off of aircraft carriers simply because of what the environments are going to be 10, 20, 30 years from now.
“You’ve got to stay with the carrier variant. But because it’s a conventional takeoff-and-landing aircraft, can you then make that one of two, as opposed to one of three, variants?”
The Air Force fighter community wants its own lighter-weight plane. And it is doing some second-guessing of its own on why the Pentagon agreed to a special vertical landing-and-takeoff Marine Corps version, the F-35B.
Read more:
Prices soar, enthusiasm dives for F-35 Lightning; pilots worry about visibility problem - Washington Times
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http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/652948.pdf
Also the last intermediate GAO rapport certainly had some positive notes
on the technical front with a lot of promises that many of the ongoing issues seem to have a solution in the future but when it comes to price the promises become rather vague and doubtful, as it stands no JSF batch pre 2017 will have a then year dollar average unit fly away price below 160 million$, this means nowhere near the 67million$ (more like 112 million$ in 2001$), post 2017 when production-rate goes up they somehow hope for a very drastic price reduction substantiated by exactly nothing, going on previous estimates unit prices will even go further up until 2019-2022 after which it would level of.
Not too long ago they hoped for an eventual baseline 2001 unit flyaway price of 106million$.
As things stand now the long term price projections are nothing short of voodoo science, nobody in their right mind can predict price levels more than 10 years into the future, we can only spot a trend and predict from that further forward, in the F35's case things look rather bleak on that front, not even thinking about the operational costs here.
Best thing about the JSF, the whole Nothrop-EODAS package, is now ready to be implemented on other platforms (acc. to Northrop themselves), pretty much negating the need for the JSF as a whole.
F16XL+EODAS or F18SSH+EODAS or any other platform which can get the Northrop system is pretty much as good as the F35, apart from the highly doubtful stealth characteristics and most likely cheaper to operate and with better flight and fight characteristics.