Originally Posted by Lonewolf_50
Ken, I will suggest that perhaps the A-10 mission, if it is to be taken over, will be assumed by rotary wing. There is a certain amount of doctrinal nonsense that somehow helicopter, airborne fires, don't provide close air support on the battlefield. Also, with the new guidance sysetms on weapons, that A-10 mission may not be delivered from comparatively low altitude, with a gun, should fixed wing be called on for close in fire support
I fully realize that, I was commenting on how the F35 was initially conceived and sold which means, a CAS platform, something it most certainly is not.
At best it is a bomber, striker with limited A2A capabilities.
The best solution for countries like mine is not the F35 but a combination of UCAV (predator, X47 and TARANIS) and more importantly an ever growing list of potent stand off weapons, pretty much negating the need for the F35.
This point was already clearly made by Admirals and Generals in the US not too long ago.
Also I don't doubt that in time they will get all the bells and whistles working like they where supposed to be, the F35 will probably be no more different than any of the other complex weapon system in that regard.
That still leaves us with a fighter which is not a replacement for our F16 or F18, it is already completely compromised due to its complexity, price, operating costs and most important contractual limitations put on it by LM, Northrop and the US government.
BTW, this is what some high placed ex LM Skunkwork employees had to say about the JSF;
The Aviationist » Two former Skunk Works members seem to know why the F-35 program is a mess
Bob Murphy, who joined the Skunk Works in 1954, managed flight-test on the U-2 and became deputy director of operations, illustrated the troubles faced by the Joint Strike Fighter to Batey.
“Because of bureaucracy”, […] “once you get all these organizations involved-all the different Air Force bases across the country, and every contractor that makes a screw for the airplane-when they have meetings, everybody comes to every meeting, and nothing ever gets settled. It’s crazy! If you’ve got 300 people in a meeting, what the hell do you solve? Nothing,” Murphy stated.
But F-35′s cost overruns and slippage were are also due to the philosophy which brought to the three different F-35 versions, as explained again by Brown:
“In the mid-1960s, there was a proposal by the Secretary of Defense to combine the F-14 and F-15 programs, so we did some analysis”, […] “the Air Force wanted 200 F-15s and the Navy wanted 200 F-14s.
If you designed an airplane for each individual service to do what they wanted, each airplane would weight about 40,000lb, but if you combined them so one airplane could do the job that was needed for each service, the weight suddenly went up to about 70,000lb-and back then it was generally accepted that airplanes cost about a thousand dollars per pound of weight.
The cost savings on producing 400 of one airplane rather than 200 of two was about 10 percent, so it was clearly much more cost-effective to have two separate airplanes doing their own job best.
So how we manage, on the F-35, to suddenly reverse that idea is not clear to me.”
It’s a shame that the experience made on some of the most advanced and adveniristic projects ever made in aviation history did not guide LM and the U.S. Air Force and Navy through the development of the Lightning II.
Basically a new 70,000lbs fighter with a 43,000lbs engine is not a replacement for what was originally a true LWF like the F16.
Once the point of MLU is reached , it's anyones guess what is going to happen with the weight and level of complexity in this already compromised fighter.