Hopefully, Congress will not reduce F-35 yearly quantities until after production efficiencies are incorporated into the build sequence and unit cost has stabilized.

Worthy sentiments but the wrong way to go about it. The time to plan for rates that the customers can afford was yesterday, but failing that, now. It’s entirely possible to build at lower rates than the F-35 program fantasizes about, without a vast increase in unit cost (even the full-rate cost/lb is still high). The priority should be on testing and freezing the design (not on bogus MCAS Potemkin IOCs) which allows you to get rid of the production engineering apparatus early. Then, prioritize lean over automated and shed overhead all the way up the food chain.

Exactly. It has also broken the Pentagon’s bank. The price of its acquisition on the current plan is foregoing all other major new systems and still going into 2030 with 50 per cent of USAF TacAir assets being 35+ years old.

Contrariwise, Tu-22M, Spud’s proposed standard is an excellent idea…

… as long as your paycheck comes from the JSF program, whose shills and bunco-artist marketeers can conflate their optimistic costs with their fantasy assessments of effectiveness, thereby creating a critical mass of waffle large enough to demolish Alderaan three times over.

It’s been busy, however…

..Can’t fly, turn, climb BS goes to fans

Well, yes, it can fly, turn and climb. The point was that its kinematics are no great advance on 16/18 and therefore unexciting against more contemporary aircraft.
The context was always “can’t do these things well enough to control the engagement”.

..EODAS goes to fans
..Helmet goes to fans

Neither of those things has been validated as working together, let alone doing anything tactically useful.

..VLO airframe goes to fans

Define VLO. But it’s not controversial that the F-35 is stealthy – the question is whether the stealth is worth the trades.

..Superb radar goes to fans
..Superb RwR goes to fans

How much better than a 2018-IOC version of anything else?

..A2A performance goes to fans

On what basis? Powerpoints from people who have been proven to make inaccurate claims?

… and so on.

Really, you should try not to get so excited.

US Navy’s answer to surface warships appears to be better ASuW missiles. And if you do launch them from a fighter you exit the scene immediately rather than hanging around giving them EW support.

Horde is not Kopp.

That aside, APA’s advocacy has changed over the years, but then, so has the threat.

APA has concluded that only F-22-like stealth + high performance will sustain air dominance against double-digit SAMs, counter-LO technology and a threat force including Su-35S (or equivalents) and J-20/T-50. They therefore adhere to the view that the US should revive and update F-22 (think B-1) and that Australia should acquire it.

You can disagree with this point of view if you like, but it is founded in threat assessment, logic, analysis and high-level simulation. And yes, Virginia, there are a hell of a lot of serious people out there, who don’t all work for the competition, who at least agree with APA that the plan to base airpower for decades on the F-35 is flawed programatically, operationally and strategically, and that we need a Plan B, even if they don’t agree that Plan B is an F-22.

And by the way, APA (like other critics) has been proven right on the programmatic bit, while the program leaders and fans were wrong. Operationally, note users like the USN diverging discreetly from the orthodoxy (pushed by shills) that the F-35 is the ultimate answer to all air combat questions. Strategically – it’s early to call, but watch for USAF to pull back from the PoR production rates to protect other things that are (even today) more important.

Spud – I take it that you have read “1984”?

How can LM have stated that six major elements of CPFH (upper slide) are half or less of an F-16, and that O&S overall is 80 per cent of an F-16, and not be claiming a lower CPFH?

To put it another way, how in the **** are those very specific claims compatible with a CPFH that is not lower than an F-16?

Actually, I’m not sure that the people making those claims lied. Because I don’t think that in 2007 (or 2008, 2009 or 2010 for that matter) anyone in charge, from Burbage and Davis/Heinz all the way up to Gates, had a scintilla of a ghost of a clue how much the airplane would cost to build, let alone how much it would cost to fix. The people who were lying were lower down the chain, telling their bosses or their customer (if they were subs) that everything was going great.