LO,
Totally agree on cost & schedule.
If Typhoon had cost the UK the £7bn forecast in 1988 instead of the £22bn the NAO think it cost us (= 60% of 37bn
http://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/upl...03/1011755.pdf), and had entered Service in the late 90s then we might still have an Air Force rather than a couple of QRA dets. Even using today's money, take off the $2.5bn we paid to be a Level 1 development partner of the F-35, and spend the rest on procuring F-35s at today's (rapidly reducing) price tag of around $130m and we could buy over 425 of them, rather than the 160 Typhoons we got. But that money's spent and gone so it's all rather academic.
You're right to be skeptical of experts. But shouldn't you be equally, if not more, skeptical of journalists, openly biased and agenda-carrying 'analysts' like Kopp, and the ravings of ignorant web bloggers and Dassault's
PR folks? With all due respect I don't think this is a Concorde thing. This is every single western Air Force who are in the market to buy a new multirole fighter (apart from France) doing due diligence with their scientific and military experts and coming to the conclusion that while they may not like the price tag much they think the jet's worth it.
You can call the F-35 whatever Gen you want. Call it 2nd Gen - I don't care. But there are major tactical benefits to flying an airplane with a very small radar cross section, that has some fantastic sensors and that has a cockpit that is a pilot's dream in terms of intuitiveness and information displayed. You can nit-pick all you want about niche capabilities like HDTV or Rover - but they didn't exist when the requirements for F-35 were written, and requirements creep is a major cause of cost and schedule over-runs so aren't you talking yourself in circles? Finally, if the not-terribly-mighty F-3 was good enough for QRA against biz jets, then to suggest that an F-35 isn't good enough seems very odd to me.
Respectfully,
Single Seat, Single Engine, The Only Way To Fly