J24 – As has been painstakingly explained to you, your argument is undermined because your evidence on the cost side of the cost-effectiveness equation is rubbish, sourced from people who give no sign of understanding the basics of defense pricing.

And of course, on the effectiveness side, one might note that the F-35A has zero effectiveness until it is operational and, today, the USAF does not have the confidence to announce when that is expected to happen. And by that time, who knows what tactics, weapons and countermeasures will have been developed to destroy, degrade or circumvent systems which are basically Aegis on wheels, impotent on the move and rather visible when stopped.

And finally, you might want to sort out whether the JAS 39 is a Griffin or a Griffon if you want anyone to take you seriously. But you’ve been rabbiting on for long enough to have got the point if you wanted to. Ignore function GO!

So if the F-35 could be quickly demonstrated to be the price leader, in addition to being stealthy, surely the Canadian Government could have held a competition and silenced the critics permanently.

Of course, they could not do so because the F-35’s price will be relatively high under the best possible circumstances, and the only uncertainty is how far the cost will increase.

The costs cited in the article for the F-35 don’t have any basis attached to them (US flyaway? URF? Complete in-service package?) and are therefore not comparable, which undermines the entire point of the story. Talk about a house of cards.

Spud – Don’t believe every chart you see.

Well, I never believe yours unless I have them sourced elsewhere. All my schedule documents up to 2009 show Marine IOC while B2 is still in DT, some with a short Op Assessment of B1. They show USAF IOC following a mini-OT&E of Block 2, and USN IOC after B3 IOT&E.

Other docs from 2009/2010 show USAF IOC after SDD (Blk3) and USMC after Blk2 release.

2009 – I doubt that. One of the post-2010 changes was that the USAF and USN went to a common IOC date with Block 3 and the USMC settled on Block 2B – which is now the first Block to permit supersonic flight and weapon carriage.

And now you’re the one citing vague “other documents”…

What we are seeing there is an outdated plan in which the Marines would go IOC with an operational assessment of Block 1 or early 2 (which were intended to have weapons) and the AF went to IOC after an IOT&E of full Block 2 (which at that time had more capability than today’s 2B).

However, since then, capes have been slipped from 1 to 2, then to late Block 2, and from 2 to 3, and the AF has joined the Navy in pegging IOC to Block 3, and the formal Block 2 IOT&E has gone away. But this has loaded more stuff into the Block 3 stage and made it longer and more risky. Hence 2019.

IOT&E (or Opeval if you are in the Navy) is a prerequisite for IOC, because it demonstrates that the aircraft is safe and effective in the hands of ordinary pilots and maintainers. So without IOT&E, which according to the SAR is not complete until 2019, you can’t field independent, operational units and a large fleet of aircraft would be unusable.

…and now it’s time to say good night and bit a fond but befuddled adieu to the “F35 debate” and to this site. It was good while it lasted, but I think I’m going to jump off a building

Be our guest as long as you don’t make an icky mess on my car. However, I think the last task might strain your mental resources… you have to find the stairs and get through doors and stuff.

Seriously, what did this latest specimen of Trolliculus australiensis bring to this discussion, aside from the usual implied I-know-more-than-you (pretty silly really – no way to verify that, is there? On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog) and blind faith in every JSF marketing .ppt?

Not to mention that the list of amateurs who value platform agility and missile kinematics includes the air forces of the UK, France, Russia, Sweden and another one I can’t think of who operates the F-22.

Spud,

Let me explain.

Target ID issues have been involved in US forces shooting down an airliner with 290 people aboard, two Blackhawks with 26 people on board and an RAF Tornado. That we know about and that I can recall off the top of my head.

So what combination of “600 parameters”, processed at commercial-computer speed, declares that blob 40-60 miles away as a hostile? Majority vote? Two-thirds? Or a pile of code? Either way, the pilot’s got to take it on trust.

Now, when the blue-on-blue or civvy shootdown happens and the excuse is “well. we tested it all in our big computer model and the subset of scenarios we could fit into a few dozen CATBird flights seemed to be OK”, that sounds weak.

More parameters is not what you want. You need good sensors that will, under as many circumstances as possible, give you two or more independent ID criteria, and I stress “independent”… the more processing you throw into the software soup of the CIP, and the less you do at the front end, the more you have to guard against SW bugs.

I was at a UCAV symposium some years ago where a speaker whose specialty was the law and ethics of war suggested that a manufacturer’s executives could be on the hook for war crimes if their machine ID’d a school bus as a TEL.