Raymond “Chip” Dudderar is a retired U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot. For nearly three decades he flew Navy A-7s and F/A-18s — and also Marine Corps AV-8 Harrier jump jets as an exchange pilot. Retiring in 1996, Dudderar pursued a second career with the Department of Justice, investigating the Navy’s botched, multi-billion-dollar A-12 stealth warplane program, which spawned several nasty lawsuits pitting the government against the contractors.
In his capacity as an air power consultant, in 2010 Dudderar penned informal, unclassified analyses for Navy admirals outlining the problems with another pricey, problematic airplane development: the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is costing more than $400 billion just to design and buy 2,400 copies for the Air Force, Navy and Marines. The Navy foots the bill for the Marines’ new weapons.
Dudderar focused his attention on the Marines’ F-35B jump jet model, a supposed successor to the Short Takeoff Vertical Landing (STOVL) Harrier that has run into particularly serious managerial, design and performance problems—even warranting a yearlong Pentagon “probation” a few years ago.
He drew on experience overseeing a Harrier detachment in some of the same conditions in which the Marines expect the new F-35B to function. “I learned first-hand … about the foolishness of the STOVL concept in a true operational environment,” Dudderar tells War is Boring. “I have tried to alert the Navy and others of the these fatal flaws that are now coming home to roost in the F-35.”
What follows is the first [and second] of Dudderar’s warnings to the Navy, edited for style and clarity.
Test Pilot Tried to Warn Navy About Troubled Stealth Jet
Vertical-landing F-35B is the wrong airplane for the wrong mission, Chip Dudderar told officers.
Marines’ Stealth Fighter Repeating Navy Jet’s Embarrassing History
F-35B making same mistakes as canceled A-12, test pilot Chip Dudderar warned