Personally, I like joint Military program between two partners. Yet, I think that big multi-Partner Program like the JSF, Tornado, and Typhoon are just to much trouble…………….as for being on the pay-roll? Well, everyone is and that’s part of the problem. On your side or mine…….it makes little difference!

Note: I don’t consider any member of the F-35 Lightning Program as “Ballast”. Personally, that is a offensive comment to everyone involved……….Surely, it is not an American View. :p

Specialised aircraft without any “joint” in their name often become very popular with the service using them (Tomcat), but did not often score any worthwile export orders. The inclusion of “partners” is useful, but the concept of partnership has to be understood. I think only few partners really question the defintion of the F-35, they actually question the workshare. US companies and defence department want to have all sensitive parts for their own, actually not difficult to understand for me. But the partners want to have more out of the project than building ash-trays and landing-gear doors.

Experience shows that more partners normally results in a less optimised aircraft, which is hence less capable for a special mission. On the other hand it is build in larger numbers and more affordable to export customers, which normally have less specific requirements. Good example are the Russian aircraft MiG-23 to -29, which were designed for one customer, and proved to perform mediocre in other air forces.

What data do you have that supports that the Super Hornet requires less maintenace or offers Superior Performance to the Lightning? While, I don’t have access to classified information regarding the F-35 the people that due clearly believe that the Lightning will be vastly superior to anything flying excluding the Raptor of course………….as for American Military Programs being over budget no more than complex multi-National (i.e.European) programs like the Typhoon! So, I wouldn’t go pointing fingers just yet. Also, the F-35 would more than likely be much cheaper if it was a wholly American Product.

Aha. Please keep your national pride for yourself, I didn’t point out the failure of the US defence department over any others nation procurement.

But if “the others” are such a ballast, why did mighty Lockheed Martin and American government involve them in the first place?

Who are “the people”? Actually these people are – without exception – all on pay-roll of either LM, the defence department or a deeply involved supplier. And least you could be honest and say that we don’t know s##| about the program.

The Tomcat is retired so thats a mute point……..on the otherhand the F-35 will clearly be easier to maintain and offer higher performance than the Super Hornet. So, just as the Tomcat gave way to the Super Hornet. The Super Hornet should give way to the Lightning………Really, the Super Hornet shouldn’t have been developed in the first place!

What supports your assumption of less maintenance effort for the new fighter and generally better flight performance? By now it is just marketing and talking by the Navy and Lockheed-Martin, who both have high interest in keeping the momentum and the funding alive and kickin’. May well be that those saving disappear and that the F-35 will be another fallen star, at least in the eyes of the many “scientists” around here. I guess at least the feature of being extremely affordable is out of fashion when it comes to the JSF. It actually surprises me that US defence procurement fails with each new program to deliver on time and budget, actually normally not even land close to anything planned. Not that it works better in Europe or ever worked in Soviet Russia.

What is the more severe problem of the Navy: Having so painfully bad aircraft or spreading this hopeful estimates of future aircraft and badly fail in acomplishing them? :diablo:

There’s an account in some air combat book I thumbed through at Barnes & Nobel several years ago that surprised me a little. Back during the KAL007 incident the USAF had moved some F-15s and AWACS to somewhere over there and the pilots were told to “take advantage of any situation”. According to one of the Eagle pilots on that flight the USSR moved several Foxhounds into the area as a counter and they (the Foxhounds) “made the run down at Mach 2.6. All 620 miles of it.” I haven’t a clue what the book was called but it was full of cold war accounts. That was the only one I hadn’t heard of (not the Foxhound part anyway) and it wasn’t worth buying the book just for that but that always stuck with me. Pretty interesting. The pilot went on to say that once the higher ups heard they’d been ordered to mix it up if the opportunity presented itself the sh!t hit the fan and cooler heads prevailed.

The Foxhound has airframe, engine and general arangements optimised for high Mach-numbers. They reduced the requirement of the MiG-25 and came out with a useful aircraft, that still dominates the high-speed regime. Still, the MiG-31 is very uncomfortable in anything that comes close to a WVR-fight.

How about: http://www.eflightmanuals.com?

P.S.: Not an ad. I’m not working there.

Also to add to that the navy is fast approaching true NC capability , and vision 2020 (both AF and its USN couterpart) call for the entire system to be improved even if it is at a cost of indivigual system/systems , the object is to use multiple assets to get a formidable network which engulfes the airspace concerned and deals with any threat in a joint way with multiple sensors , attack aircrafts etc etc the object is to see the enemy from farther , be able to best position yourself to kill the enemy , to land the best possible asset to kill the enemy etc etc , the entire system basically dwarfs any one single node of that system , the F-18E/F is a truely top quality NC capable aircraft and for that alone the Navy will do well with it , it is low on maintaince , has high ready rates and bring back capability .

In this scenario the question about max dash speeds becomes relatively obsolete. The information advantage overcompensates slower speed.

BTW: What is the USN’s plan to fullfil the tasks of the F-14 in the near future? Although the large scale attack by ASM-equipped Soviet bombers is gone, there still may be a country that posseses limited ability to launch this beasty supersonic ASM. The capabilities of the Navy are not sufficient to deny a naval loss when attacked by these missiles. To be really capable and threatening the USN needs a useful and tight defence against those weapons.

It’s one thing to be limited to Mach 1.4 or so intentionally like the F-5, it’s quite another to have more power and less weight than an F-14A and almost as much power and less weight than an F-15 and fall the better part of a Mach short because of sh!tty design. And when we’re tallking about performance it’s not just speed but range, climbing ability, excess power, and so on.

Actually, the F-5 was barely able to fly supersonic. Its limited power was always a negative.
But when we talk about supersonic performance, we have to note, that even true Mach2 aircraft performed sometimes very bad. Think of North-Vietnam or all these very fast MiGs in the Middle East. Keeping in mind that the Navy will have the JSF in stock in a few years, the role of the SuperHornet makes sense: multirole, with useful but somehow limited fighter performance. It can at least carry 8 AMRAAMs at a time, so a flight of 2 can flood any incoming enemy with truly deadly missiles. As defensive fighters with support by AWACS or ship-based early warning it may prove deadly. The limitations in some performance areas don’t hurt that bad in this role.