Originally Posted by
busdriver02
If all you're interested in is defending your own airspace and providing CAS in semi-permissive environments, the F-35 is massive overkill.
I think this point needs repeating. The fighters are hardly the only CAS/airborne fires resource in the year 2014, and 20 years from now that won't have changed. As more smart munitions are made available to other platforms, how often to you think they'll call in the Lightning for CAS? It isn't the only show in town.
The CAS via P-47 strafing has gotten some upgrades. While wish the A-10 would stay around for longer, the F-35 will be a capable -- even if NOT OPTIMAL -- CAS asset. Its original name was Joint STRIKE Fighter. That mission it will serve well if it ever actually goes IOC.
The NATO & allied nations who signed up for the F-35 program a decade and more ago made the presumption (as we in the US did) that any significant military operation we'll do in the future will be with allies. That is a political assumption that becomes a fact for planning, and if we look at how the last 15 years of real ops have played out, it is the political fact of major military operations and thus was a valid and necessary planning assumption well made.
This aircraft isn't just about what mission it does. It's been immersed in politics, at home and abroad, since before the fly off and is part of keeping the defense industrial base warm. If you don't keep the DIB warm, it dies, now that we have gotten a lot of tech generations away from beating plowshares into swords.
The Joint/Politicsl/Congressional premise of JSF was that one size fits all, with "mods" for tailored needs, and heaps of savings via "commonality" on the logistics and support side. I suspect similar belief was embedded in the political decisions in other nations as future forecasting and planning went on. I found out back in the 90's that after the much trumpeted "parts commonality" spiel about the SH-60 Seahawks and the UH-60 Blackhawk, the actual parts commonality between then was less than 40%. Food for thought as one considers the "parts commonality" of F-35A, B, C, and export versions.
Crystal balls are generally murky. The F-35 case illustrates beautifully.
When you commit to a serious warplane program, you commit to multiple decades of ops, support, and of course the upgrade cycle that take your bird through two or three decades of service. At least, that's what the last 40 years of conventional wisdom has taught the acquisition communities.
Is that conventional wisdom right or wrong?
Your opinions are all over the map on that, I suspect, but I'd like to hear them.
Aside:
I read Fallow's piece. (I get
Atlantic in print version each month). The cover story (and his core sales line) is misleading. Defining victory is a political line. The military function and its core competency is use of force to accomplish a subordinate objective to the larger political objective. Calling the Iraq War a "loss" and blaming it on the armed forces is bizarre.
Saddam was removed, as desired, and Iraq was changed. A long list of political decisions led to the mess it became, and remains, but Fallows uses the standard scape goating short hand. No surprise. That a variety of operational messes were also made in trying to polish the turd is hardly surprising. When the Sec Def ignores the Chief of Staff of the Army, Shinseki, in terms of "Sir, if you want to do this, it takes this to achieve it" and tries to do it on the cheap .... you get what you pay for.
I was more intrigued with his commentary that quoted Admiral Mullen's cogent observations, and James Webb's similar concerns: the unintended irony of what has happened to the vision of the American Military reformers (POst Viet Nam, "all volunteer force."
They tried to make a better Army, and one that could not be used and abused the way it was in Viet Nam. Sadly, it has happened again. It just doesn't piss people off via the Draft ...
Fallows bitches in the piece about a lack of "reforms" when there was a major "reform" episode begun in 2005-2006 as Patraeus came back and worked with joint services on improved COIN doctrine.
Fallows of course only tells half of the story. He's got an axe to grind. Likewise, he overlooks a variety of things being done to structurally change the armed forces that get in the way of "reforms" since none of that happens in isolation.
The result of the past 40, years, as he sees it, is that we have an Army (armed force) further alienated from the people whom it serves, less representative of whom it serves ... which was one of the issues they were wrestling with Post Viet Nam.
A sad irony, and quite possibly true, in terms of who serves and who is familiar with what it's all about. Maybe you Can't Have It All, and that if you will have one, the forces we have are a better fit.
The result is a tool more easily used and abused by our politicians with less pushback from the public. <=== That is true for both parties, and is the core issue that needs fixing. But that's a political fix, not a military fix. Fallows however blames the military services. (Yes, he's a good writer, but I also think he's a true
).
How does this aside tie into the F-35 program? The acquisition system tries to make its large programs watertight, by getting as many districts of as many Congressional areas involved as is practical. Fallows covers this well enough.
And then the military gets blamed.
Gee, who set this whole game up, rigged that way? Congress. Fallows once again rails against the "military industrial complex" but the most culpable group in that whole show gets left out of that old warning by Ike: Congress. Cpmgress is in bed with them all, and both. Ike's little warning was to both houses of Congress, and Congress has demonstrated for fifty years that it ignores Presidents whenever possible. All that is left is a sound byte that is dishonestly parroted by people with an axe to grind.
As PJ O'Rourke once referred to our government, it is a Parliament of Whores. The F-35 is the next bastard child of standard political fcuking around.
It won't be the last.
And it won't be cancelled.