F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

[a1bill]

Engines, perhaps I should read more but I haven't seen criticism of the Typhoon cockpit. The last I saw critical about the Typhoon, was from the designer of the F-15 and F-16 [sic]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSs2kN2GpQ

[LowObservable]

The issue from now on is how we manage what has come out of the program, which is (at best) an aircraft more expensive to acquire and operate than most of the aircraft it replaces, and that (for the USAF) doesn't come close to filling the gap left by the 150 F-22s that were chopped to pay the F-35 bills.

(That was back in 2009 when Dr "Smartest Guy In the Room" Gates was assuring us that we wouldn't see a single Chinese stealth airplane before 2020.)

CM - There is not much new in the report but it is a competent summary of the current status. It could (I think) be a bit harsher in terms of the realism of Marine Corps plans, which seem to be based on the notion that the F-35B's logistics footprint will be equal to or smaller than that of the AV-8B.

Engines - To be clear, I was talking about the HUD optical chain. My understanding (for a long time) has been that the optrickery beneath the HUD combiner has always demanded a lot of space, which is why current cockpits mostly have three screens with the center one being lower. The Up Front Control and the Rafale's HLD (alias "What The Butler Saw Machine") are there to put something useful in front of the HUD box.

Optical waveguides make the HUD much smaller and more compact. The photo I posted was Elbit hardware that is planned to be adapted for the Brazilian Gripens.

And yes, there was a requirement for an HMD with a video capability, but not having a HUD has imposed some difficult requirements. The optical waveguide technology + more relaxed requirements results in much less costly video-capable HMDs.

[ORAC]

None of these "kill the programme" articles seem able to suggest an alternative, so how helpful are they, especially if you look more than a few years ahead?

CM, equally to be fair, the paper recognises it is too late to cut the entire programme, and that it doesn't know the answer - what it asks is that alternatives be looked at.....

"Conclusion

Despite plans for the F-35 to replace most of America’s fighter and attack aircraft, the platform is ill-suited to cost-effectively counter near-peer foreign militaries. The aircraft lacks the maneuverability, payload, likely ability to generate sorties, and range to effectively compete with near-peer competitors despite its lifetime costs of $1.4 trillion.

The aircraft’s survivability depends largely upon stealth characteristics that are already at risk for obsolescence against adversaries who over the next 50 years will only continue to upgrade their radar and infrared detection systems. Given the critical failings of the F-35 program and its exorbitant costs, the aircraft should be regarded as a bad bet. As such, proceeding with the full program buy of nearly 2,500 units–or any large-scale buy that approaches that number–should be avoided.

It is not too late to change course. While the outcome of the DOD’s review of its total F-35 requirement is not yet clear, the program does not enter into full-rate production until 2019. Policymakers should take this opportunity to engage in debates about the future of airpower that have the potential to provide alternatives to a full-scale F-35 program.

Airpower analysts are outlining new options to help counter near-peer adversaries. While that debate is outside the scope of this study, those options include unmanned systems, prioritizing effective munitions over expensive aircraft, and returning to a quantitatively driven approach to airpower featuring large numbers of comparatively inexpensive platforms. While these are some options, Congress and DOD should begin a dialogue and study the full range and timetables, costs, and benefits of potential alternatives to the program.

Whether this opportunity to seriously reassess DOD’s commitment to the F-35 will be seized remains to be seen. But, by staying fully committed to the F-35 program, the United States is investing unprecedented resources in the wrong aircraft, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons.".........

[a1bill]

Orac, What you are suggesting is that the umpteen air forces and governments with the classified data, are wrong. While the guessers on the internet are right. That's a big leap of faith.


LO, aren't most planes dearer than the ones built 30 years ago. Although dearer is subjective, as the F-35 is cheaper than some 4.5gen, isn't it?

[Engines]

Gents,

I'd like to come back here and respond.

a1bill, I was referring to a number of posts here on Pprune criticising the Typhoon cockpit. Like you, i've not seen anything really objective.

LO, the original requirements for the HMD were driven by lots of things. The JORD requirement was to deliver an IR imaging plus target tracking capability over a full 360 bubble around the aircraft, without the structure interfering. The requirement for what has become the monocular video camera arrived later.

The whole helmet/HMDS combination was identified as a system risk right from the start. The management of that risk was compromised by US DoD insistence on providing support to US based small businesses - these promised all sorts of things, but didn't deliver. There was a huge reluctance at senior programme level to take a proper look at European development, particularly the work being done by BAe at the time. The problems were only made worse when the helmet and display encountered (entirely predictable) problems during ejection trials.

Finally, the BAe design got a brief look in, when the programme was forced to look for an alternate supplier for the helmet. In my view, that was only used by the DoD to force the domestic suppliers to get their act together, which they apparently did. Once they did, the BAe helmet (practically current Typhoon) was ditched.

As ever, politics will often have major influence on US aircraft programmes. Nobody much likes it, but it's pretty much a fact of life.

Best Regards as ever to those managing the risks,

Engines

[LowObservable]

Orac, What you are suggesting is that the umpteen air forces and governments with the classified data, are wrong. While the guessers on the internet are right. That's a big leap of faith.

We know for certain that most of those governments don't know some of the answers and made a "big leap of faith" themselves, when they signed on to the program on the basis of JSF cost and schedule estimates that were moonshine, and with few mature programs to compare JSF against.

In most cases, today, they have access to JSF data (but on a restricted basis - I doubt, for example, that any foreign lawmaker has access equivalent to the US Congress' classified sessions) but they don't have access to the same data on alternatives, since nobody is going to hand over the crown jewels or brief at any high level of access unless there's a real competition under way.

And with the exceptions of Denmark, Japan and Korea, any such real competition has been studiously avoided (see the desperate measures of the Harper government in Canada and the mock-evaluations in Norway and the Netherlands). Denmark is undecided - although I suspect Nordic peer pressure may carry the day. The F-35 lost fair and square in Korea, until the upper levels of government (who of course were not the ones who had reviewed all the classified data) changed the rules retrospectively. And Japanese procurement of anything is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, locked in a filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD.

LO, aren't most planes dearer than the ones built 30 years ago. Although dearer is subjective, as the F-35 is cheaper than some 4.5gen, isn't it?

According to real-money, head-to-head bids in Korea, it costs substantially more than the Typhoon and F-15SE.

And as I have sometimes had to remind people, if all the military experts were always right, we'd have seen the Queen, the Kaiser and the Tsar getting together a few months back to commemorate the end of the European War of 1914.

[a1bill]

LO, Australia bought the F-111 and Hornet, we know about price jumps and delayed delivery. On a percent basis in constant year dollars, the F-35 may be less of a rise or as delayed as the F-111. That makes the F-35 a model programme in comparison.
.

[ORAC]

The RAF ordered the F-111 as well......

[KenV]

Airpower analysts are outlining new options to help counter near-peer adversaries. While that debate is outside the scope of this study, those options include unmanned systems, prioritizing effective munitions over expensive aircraft, and returning to a quantitatively driven approach to airpower featuring large numbers of comparatively inexpensive platforms. While these are some options, Congress and DOD should begin a dialogue and study the full range and timetables, costs, and benefits of potential alternatives to the program.

A few questions regarding the above:
1. Who are these nameless and faceless "airpower analysts".
2. How does one "prioritize effective munitions over expensive aircraft"? Are they talking about using cruise missiles to deliver a warhead instead of an airplane?
3. When was the last time USAF/USN/USMC relied on "a quantitatively driven approach to airpower featuring large numbers of comparatively inexpensive platforms"? Even if we go all the way back to WW2, the US relied heavily on expensive aircraft, and relied heavily on them for every war thereafter. So how do we "return" to the use of cheap airplanes if we've never relied on them in the first place?

On a related note, we used cheap tanks in WW2 to great effect. Indeed, one could argue that our massive numbers of cheap tanks ultimately beat the much better German tanks. But that came at a huge cost in American (not to mention Brit) lives. Such losses are no longer acceptable.

[a1bill]

LO, I don't know how you came to that conclusion. On the Eurofighter forum, they are talking 85-90 million euros
eurofighter @ starstreak.net ? View topic - Typhoon for South Korea?


Orac, I think it worked out with the Tornado for the UK, although there was a muddled to get there.


KenV, it's just clickbaiters being dramatic. It's hard to get noticed among the din of publications otherwise.


Why does everyone forget about the Russians in WW2? They lost a lot of cheap tanks. There is a school of thought that they won WW2 for us on the eastern front.

[PhilipG]

Talking about Tanks, it could be argued that the Sherman tank was a bit like the T34, a number being needed to take out a Tiger or Panther Tank, F22 or F35?

I am not sure what aircraft are the T34 and Shermans here? Mig 35 and Typhoon?

[KenV]

KenV, it's just clickbaiters being dramatic. It's hard to get noticed among the din of publications otherwise.

Agreed. I just asked the questions to point out the obvious, which some folks seem to have missed resulting in them taking such "analysis" seriously.

Why does everyone forget about the Russians in WW2? They lost a lot of cheap tanks. There is a school of thought that they won WW2 for us on the eastern front.

All the allies lost a lot of cheap tanks. And a whole lot of tank crews. The Russians might still find such losses acceptable (which seems doubtful), but we in the West no longer do. So no cheap equipment for us any more. And there's zero doubt that the Eastern front made the Western front possible.

[KenV]

Talking about Tanks, it could be argued that the Sherman tank was a bit like the T34, a number being needed to take out a Tiger or Panther Tank, F22 or F35?

I am not sure what aircraft are the T34 and Shermans here? Mig 35 and Typhoon?

As I stated in my original post, no one has "gone cheap" with airplanes. Every force that has used air power with any degree of success has NOT "gone cheap" and has instead created fleets of expensive platforms. The idea of "cheap air fleets" seems to be a myth with zero examples to support it.

And one reason for that is the crew. It takes YEARS to train a pilot and years of experience before that pilot is any good. Even if we could buy a very large number of airplanes cheaply, we could not train enough pilots to operate them and could certainly not replace those pilots when they got shot out of the sky, even if we could replace the airplanes. The Japanese made that mistake in WW2. They did not have an effective pilot training pipeline and while they could replace their aircraft losses after Midway, they were never able to replace their pilot losses.

[glad rag]

The idea of "cheap air fleets" seems to be a myth with zero examples to support it.

A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog) | Info, Budget/Costs, Retirement, Specs


F-35 Lightning II JSF | Info, Variants, AN/APG-81, Costs/Budget, Specs

"coughs"

[PhilipG]

Ken,
I think that I was trying to say that if it is taken as read that 5th generation planes are so much better than 4th or 4.5 generation aircraft, with an 8:1 kill ratio over non 5th generation, then you are as I read it suggesting that any country not training pilots for 5th generation is wasting time, as they will be pure cannon fodder, albeit expensive cannon fodder?

[Lonewolf_50]

From a friend who has a reserve friend somewhat familiar with the program ... the helmets are apparently form fitted, and get locked up in a box once you leave. No more having your helmet hanging in your helmet bag in your locker ... as I understand this second hand source, as we do now with form fit helmets you don't have helmets in a pool.

I like the comparison Engines made with the NVG kits and the challenges they posed to the flight equipment support concept. Seems very apt.

[Biggus]

If I could stay off topic for a brief while.....

I don't think it fair to compare the Sherman and T-34, at least in terms of anything other than them both being mass produced, and therefore "cheap". The T-34 was a far better tank than the Sherman. When the Germans first encountered the T-34/76 in 1941 it came as a shock. With its sloped armour and 76mm gun, compared to German tanks with vertical armour and 50mm guns, it outclassed everything the Germans had. It was the encounter with the T-34 that led the Germans to develop the Panther and Tiger in the first place.

By the time that Shermans reached European shores, the T-34 had moved onto the T-34/85, which had a 85mm gun that was certainly capable of taking out Panthers.

So, in June 1944 the Allies had poorly armoured and armed Shermans, while the Russians had better armoured and armed T-34/85s.

The Allies relied on Tank destroyers, and in the Brits case Shermans armed with a 17pdr gun, "Fireflies" to take out German tanks.

As for the Russians effectively winning the second world war, they pretty much did. The much vaunted "North African" campaign never involved more than a handful of German Divisions. As for the invasion of Europe, I read somewhere once that at least 5 times as many German divisions were destroyed on the Eastern front compared to in the West. This link shows where the bulk of the German forces were deployed.

Number of German divisions by front in World War II

I should point out that:

I'm not Russian

I'm not trying to bash the Americans (or indeed the Brits).

I'm not trying to denigrate the contribution made to the war effort by Americans, Brits, French, Poles, etc, etc...

I'm just trying to stick to the facts, which are that the Russians broke the back of the German armies - a fact that is rarely acknowledged in the West

[ORAC]

The Russians didn't win the war in Europe, the Americans did. Why?

The Germans vs the rest was the start, but in 1945 it wad the USA vs the Russians (aka the race for Berlin). The question being, could the Russians have kept going through the Allies to the Channel?

Fact, the Russians knew the USA had the bomb, but would they use it? In the short period after Trinity they invade the Kuril Islands and were sweeping south, after Hiroshima they stopped - now they knew the USA would use them and their conventional superiority in Europe meant nothing.

[Engines]

Lonewolf,

Thanks for coming back and making a very good point about form fit helmets that I'd completely forgotten about. Yes, those inners will be unique to a person, and not in a pool.

I think that as things like HMDS become more widely used (and they will) then the lessons learned with NVGs will have to be applied. A few years ago, it quickly became apparent that getting NVGs properly serviced, fixed and set up was well beyond what the SE trade had been trained to do. So, we had to stop treating NVGs as bit of 'flight equipment' and start treating them as avionics kit. So that's what we did.

The avionics 'guts' of future helmets are a very big step along the same path, in my view, every bit as complex and dependent on maintenance as the black boxes and software fitted in the aircraft.

However, I'm hopeful. People at the front line (and those devising support systems) are intelligent, adaptable and ingenious. Honestly, sorting out how to maintain and service these items isn't rocket science.

Best Regards as ever to those in the workshops

Engines

[downsizer]

Engines,

Who is "we" when you mention 'gogs and the SE trade? Do you mean the RN, the RAF or both?