The EA-18G – The diet coke of jammers. Draggy and will need a sip from the taker to pull around all of its legacy jamming gear that the Navy said was not credible to the threat years ago….
Yup- some good points in that article. Of course some damn bad ones too and a few cheap shots.
It is terrible that Lockheed Martin could be so criminal in their fielding of combat aircraft. Should we worry? After all, this is the same crew promoting the Just So Farcical.
Some bad points in that metrics for jet maintenance have gone down not up. For example a recent deployment did 100% MC rates. Interesting too is that F-22 problems are in some ways F-35 problems. After all, the post SWAT design was locked down already on aircraft like BF-1, AF-1 etc (AA-1 being a pre SWAT design)—by the time that USAF showed F-22 L.O. maintenance hours climb in the L.O. refurb barn at the unit level in 2006-8. A learning curve that has now been figured out.
Interesting too because the F-22 is designed to be maintenance friendly. Only 5 percent of maintenance actions require L.O. refurb. F-35 claimed only one percent of maintenance actions required refurb of L.O. After 2006-08 F-22 maintenance experience events, this went up to two percent (surprise, surprise). 1-2 percent is quite good. Yet remember the F-35 has to be export friendly too. What kind of RAM and RAS will it have and of what quality compared to the F-22? The F-35 won’t be matching the L.O. capability of the F-22 and certainly won’t have extreme super-cruise or extreme altitude to do things. Oh! Thats right! The F-22 and F-35 are supposed to work together! If only some would tell that to the marketing weenies.
Engines work steady and so on the F-22. Maintenance supers don’t have much problem with them. Avionics problems have been worked on more. And yes the avionics of the F-35 are supposed to learn from the F-22 issues. Yet the F-35 will have over three times the amount of software to qualify. Hmmm.
Cheap shots? The F-22 aircraft mishaps and the pilot/locked canopy event. The WashPost will have a field day when single engine F-35s take their newish engine type out and lawn dart a few just for the sake of statistics.
Also that the F-22 has never been used in Afghanistan or Iraq. Neither have nuclear ballistic missiles. And well Operations: USELESS DIRT 1 and 2 don’t provide any credible defense for the U.S. And once the F-22 has done its work, legacy aircraft can do what they want. No need for a gold plated F-35. An OV-10 is more relevant for turd world dirt insurg hunts.
Not a bad article, but not unexpected from the daisies at the WashPost. When the F-22 is gone, guess what they are going to beat on next?;)
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