F35 Lightning.....
 

Can't fly within 25nm of an active thunderstorm. They may want to re-think the name of this lemon...

ABC Four Corners questions Australia's acquisition process of the F35.

Senator John Hills 2002 estimated unit cost of $40 Million a shown as a massive guestimate.

Canadian acquisition of F35 accused of being undemocratic. Canada Reconsidering the purchase of any F35s.

Lockheed Software engineer rewarded for discovering software issues, then transferred to another department. Lockheed GM "no comment"

Air Power Australia represented as being uninformed of capabilities of the F35, as explanation of their predicted massive losses of F35s in war game simulations against Chinese F 35s.

The F35 has failed to deliver performance requirements and looks like it never will meet these specifications.

See ABC iview for this crucial story on the F35.

F35 JSF Good Lord
 

:ouch:

Oh dear...........Four Corners tonight, it'll be repeated.

So will the Super Hornet become the next F111, in service for over 50 years because there's nothing better?

Lockheed are very very good at one thing and one thing only these days: Extracting money from the taxpayer.

Do you know that Lockheed always sues for damages if it loses a contract - as a matter of corporate policy?

Given the way more advanced drones are coming up, they might not have to hang out that long. That said, its a decent enough aircraft for a core of our needed capabilities for our defence.

I had this argument with a mate the other day. It seems pretty obvious to any outside observers that the F-35 is over promised, over priced and under performing (crippled stealth, poor performance, compromises to support the B and C models). If it smells like marketing....

The telling thing is the way the decision was made, no evaluation, no tender, just sign up to make the US happy. Hardly seems like we would get bang for buck if we only buy uncle sam and they know it. If the flankers (especially the new PAK-FA versions) are going to be so good and covering the whole region, why not take up a license to build Aus Flankers here, we could have 150 of them with money to spare instead of the F-35s plus a home industry. I know it would never happen as a US ally, but its certainly a better cost option.

That said, has their been a weapons program since WW2 that did not have significant cost blowouts, overhyped delivery and late completion? Is this just special because its the biggest one yet?

Seems to me the suits running aerospace companies all have something in common.

They have no idea.

It's all dollars, cents and stocks to them.

Why wouldn't it happen? the yanks bought some fulcrums to help the russian economy a few years back.



For the politicians, the JSF sign up wasn't about an in depth analysis about capability, it was about securing jobs here in oz....even if we only building the pilots pee tube, and access to technology for use by australian companies.

I'm not convinced this is right or wrong, just merely pointing out that your observations governing the decision making process may be a little skewed. Keep in mind how slow our politicians were to sign for an actual order.

Sure i'd love to see us with a bunch of SU-30 MKK's, great bloody aeroplane, built russian tough, but the JSF program actually shows some government interest in aircraft manufacturing capabilty in oz. Pity about their thoughts on aviation management...but i digress somewhat.

The beaurocratic bullshoe surrounding our defence air decisions is well documented....maybe in view of the guvmints manufacturing desires, we would have been better purchasing the rights to the Caribous design and modernising it......at least we'd have that capability NOW, and over this summer we have needed it!

Enjoy...i'm off to watch the walking dead :eek:

Jas

The F111 entered service with the USAF in 1967 and the RAAF in 1973! I'll give you 40 yrs but not 50.

Dr

Ahhhhh, but who'd argue that it couldn't do 50 years? ;)

Should have bought the Iranian stealth fighter:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/...48_634x286.jpg

Fake Stealth Fighter

F35 Stealth Fighter
 

Dunno about the fighter, but most of what comes out of the interviewers mouth is dribble put there by LC and SLIC. how reliable is that?

From the limited, but expert opinion I hear, the JSF will eventually be a success.

If one thinks back far enough other great aircraft went through he same process.

Storm in teacup story.

Sure it will be great after it kills pilots and gouges the respective governments for several hundred billion more. look at the development costs of the last 4 fighters bought online in the USA. I don't even want to mention the abortion that is called Osprey.

Spend the money on building the economy independent of the Military Industrial Complex.

I seem to remember the ABC dumping s**t on the F111.

The f-35, F-22 and Osprey have had massive cost over runs and major delays. The f-35 delay so far is perhaps just the beginning. The senate is starting to see that some versions may be as late as 20 years or more!!!!

They epitomise the military industrial complex and are more effective at draining the public purse than actually achieving their design goal.

Tax payers in Canada, Aus,UK and USA should be up in arms but we are too passive.

How do you use a touch screen when you are pulling 6g??

Ummm, why are they in business? Why is anyone in business? Making quality/cheap fighter planes is not the number 1 reason.

More pertinent question is to ask why our government allows itself to get into this situation. The aerospace companies (like most defence companies) have to play the silly games invented by pollies and organisations like DMO. In this case, with no competitive tender - why does anyone think we'd get anything that remotely represented value?

Shamelessly stolen from another forum

Pretty well sums up defence procurement

It's a flying computer program. Are we getting the source code? No? NEXT!

I never understand why military projects get away with that.

Award a contract to build new submarines to the same mob that built the last ones you're not happy about: not a word.

Buy an unproven aircraft without tender process and with costs skyrocketing and serious reservations about its performance: not a word.

Build a broadband network for less money than either of them, one with a (admittedly long) return on investment and useful all the time to just about every Australian: WHAT A WASTE, IT WILL KILL THE ECONOMY WHAT SOCIALIST STATE WE'VE BECOME WE WILL ALL BE DIRT POOR SOON!!!! :ugh:

W.T.F? :eek:

What they actually did was buy a few MiG-29s from Moldova to avoid them possibly falling into the hands of an undesirable third party country. They then stripped them down, studied the hell out of them, and put a few back together to practice against.