Also video at following link.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...ath-by-mistake

'Dutch Air Force Chief gets far too excited over his new toy'.

"Well, here's another *foam* mess you've gotten me into......" (With apologies to Laurel and Hardy)

Jack

And so the next candidate for the Caption Competition was unwittingly revealed....!

"I said Phone me.. Not Foam me!" :sad:

https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/1...-tag-for-f-35/

......The Air Force’s fiscal year 2020 budget pays for the 48 F-35As in Lot 11. The current $89.2 million dollar price the Pentagon uses is calculated by separating out just the costs for the airframe and the engine from the larger total procurement cost that includes ALIS, simulators, initial spare parts, and more to get to the artificially low $89.2 million. That is far from the whole story.

The Pentagon’s own budget documents list the FY 2020 procurement cost for those 48 aircraft as more than $101 million, nearly $12 million more than the figure rolled out for press reports. Using the Navy’s charts and the same math shows that the real costs for each F-35C is more than $123 million, while each F-35B costs in excess of $166 million. But even that figure doesn’t tell the whole story........

What can you say, they are expensive. India paid $245million for each Rafale, while the French claim they cost 90million.

https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/indi....1549975118566

We had the same thing happen at MAN a few years back on the inaugural Virgin ATL service, which subsequently had to be cancelled - They've never done a water cannon salute at MAN since.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/t...lane-FOAM.html

Interesting tweet here quoting chief of the Luftwaffe's JG74 at Neuberg AB, who says Eurofighter went up against USAF F-35s in visual fight, and won four of four .

So a fighter in an air defense focused squadron beat a F-35 in a visual fight?.....I would imagine so, good for bragging rights at the bar (and on twitter) perhaps....

Reading the thread, it's.interesting that the USAF pilots were the ones who requested the fight and who stipulated the rules.

RAAF F-35 obsolete by 2030?

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-in...matic-purchase

In a startling statement reported this month, two recent Air Force chiefs assert Australia has made some grave force structure errors. It seems the RAAF needs a new bomber, as the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter now entering service is inadequate for future strike operations. The chiefs’ intervention raises questions about how this could have happened and, given growing international tensions, how such expensive strategic missteps can be avoided.........

In 2017, USAF reviewed its air combat programs and determined that, all things considered, the F-35 would be unable to penetrate defended airspace past 2030. The logic underpinning this formal report was later explained publicly by its lead author. The recent pronouncements by the retired RAAF chiefs are then unsurprising. They consider that the RAAF’s force structure is now passé, being unable to defend “our lines of communication or prevent the lodgment of a hostile power in the Indo-Pacific region.”

It suddenly seems the Air Force needs major recapitalisation, just as its force structure is being renewed at considerable cost. The retired chiefs are now calling for a “reset”, with significant new spending and possibly acquiring advanced bombers, cruise missiles, and unmanned aircraft – a laundry list reminiscent of the Howard government’s White Paper...........

An Interesting Parliamentary Question response giving the next three years delivery schedule for the UK Lightning Force.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/p...9-10-29/HL520/

At lest it looks like a possible solution to the comms interconnectivity problems the F-35 MADL and F-22 FDL. Presumably it can also act as an expendable combat node/BACN for L-16 etc.....

Alert 5 » USAF plans to use XQ-58A as datalink node between F-22 and F-35 - Military Aviation News

An extraordinary "shopping list" likely to include the B21 Raider and ABM technology. This, after our JSF purchase, required an expensive government intervention and purchase of an interim fighter and a change of mind on needing Growlers to escort JSF. The interim Super Hornet purchase and the unexpected Growler buy, were both deemed unnecessary at early stages by RAAF chiefs.

You have to ask, what's wrong with RAAF leadership? If we are going to be equipped to fight China there's a lot more than big ticket items required. Look at Taiwan for example. Air base hardening and force dispersal. I think the taxpaying public would like to see a more pragmatic RAAF first, before asking for billion dollar bombers!

After all these years of waiting, you finally came!

So the RAF & the RN will have 35 by end 2022 of which 8 are the early development aircraft? How long will it take to reach the aspirational target of 138? At 8 per year I make it 2035.

I would so like to believe that the F-35 is a wonder weapons system that will serve us as well as the Tornado did, or, in an earlier generation, the Spitfire. But we keep seeing new developments that call the whole concept into further doubt - as other posts just this month attest.

Now, here's another from defense-aerospace.com https://www.defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/207447/f_35-operational-evaluation-suspended-until-mid_2020-as-doubts-grow.html

Explaining why he's suspending operational testing until next summer, Robert Behler, Director of IOT&E (Initial Operational Test and Evaluation), saysSo, if we take that alongside the idea from Australia that the whole thing may become useless after 2030, it seems as if we have the most expensive weapons system ever produced, which will actually be in productive service for less than 10 years.

Have we all gone completely barmy?

airsound