hopsalotFunny someone should mention Concorde.
The program has been under full-scale development for ten years. It was supposed to be in service by now, but nobody can guarantee a date. About four years in, weight and performance problems led to a complete redesign so the first prototype was not representative.
But the press releases inform us that flight testing is going well and all the world’s leading operators have signed commitments. How can they be wrong?
The opposition to the project is confined to a few journalists and a handful of independent analysts who claim that its acquisition and operating costs will be unaffordable and that its very expensive technology is advantageous over a small range of likely missions.
They’re clearly misguided fanatics.
Enough of this malarkey. I am now jamming people who contribute nothing but wind here, and advise others to do the same.
PS That comment about Paul Bevilaqua was hilarious, for reasons that I am not at liberty to discuss at this time.
I assume you are familiar with the saying that a broken clock is still right twice a day.
Various critics have attacked essentially every program that offered a step change in capability. The F-15, Apache, M-1 Abrams, and so forth were all subjects of attacks before they were essentially universally accepted as outstanding systems.
Given the essentially universal criticism of major new programs and the fact that some programs do ultimately fail, it is inevitable that the critics are occasionally right, but that says nothing about their overall success rate.
hopsalotThat is funny but if the F-35 is such a technological breakthrough as claimed then it would be feasible for India to wait that year and subsequently get an aircraft considerably more advanced than their pick, the Rafale? Or maybe, just maybe it ain’t that much worth waiting for?
You are really reaching here.
There is always something else coming down the pipe. Sooner or later you have to make a choice and live with it. They aren’t going to delay a program they have been working on for 10+ years to include the possibility of yet another competitor right at the end unless they have no choice.
hopsalotYou assume no one around here is a professional themselves.
I know for certain that assumption is incorrect.
No.
Lets take the F-35 for example.
No-one of a technically sound background would volunteer the idea of combining the CTOL/CATOBAR requirements with the STOVL requirements.
That combination was primarily driven by three groups:
– the idiots in congress who thought 1 program would be cheaper and ‘good enough’.
– the idiots in the pentagon who didn’t have either the balls or sense to argue with congress otherwise and want shiny new aircraft more than they wanted the best possible aircraft.
– the Lockheed Martin board who correctly recognised that 2.5 branches of the US military would be deeply tied to the combined requirements JSF and that the program would become almost un-cancellable as a result. Having the most technically complex solution would also aid in fattening profit margins. Therefore, they happily provided additional ‘information’ that would guide the two former groups down the ‘joint’ track.Now, you can choose to believe whatever you want, but you ask most other aerospace engineers of suitable experience and they will tell you much the same. The A and C variants of JSF are hideously compromised by the B. Including B with A and C happened for the reasons I bulleted above.
Forgive me for being new here, are you the one who was proposing shooting missiles at operational aircraft with pilots on board as part of a test program a little while ago?
Let me just say that there are some professionals scattered around the various messageboards, though not half as many as there are claimed to be. When they do show up you can generally tell who they are pretty quickly and they are not the ones driving some of the silly debates you see taking place.
On the subject of the F-35’s original requirements I don’t think the two of us can have a reasonable discussion. Yes, there were compromises made to accommodate the needs of all the intended operators. (There always are.) This simple fact has been blown way out of proportion by some. The F-35 was intended to replace several jack-of-all-trades aircraft. That is what it will do.
hopsalotAir forces which are buying late, expensive and immature aircraft are buying promises, not real capabilities.
If we were to judge according the operators then here is my example: India has launched MRCA, shortlisted Typhoon and Rafale, then rejected offer for F-35 and chosen Rafale instead, plus picked T-50 (FGFA) as their next gen fighter. What does it mean? T-50 > Rafale > F-35?
Ah yes, promises.
Naturally that doesn’t apply to the T-50 now does it? That aircraft is a 100% guaranteed sure thing. No “promises” at all there.
On the subject of India:
First, you can’t simply rank fighters in that manner. Different aircraft fulfill different requirements. India does not regard the T-50 as a replacement for the MMRCA winner. Both programs are expected to run concurrently.
Second, the F-35 was never part that competition. It quite simply wasn’t ready in time to take participate and it should be no surprise that having reached a decision India is unlikely to re-open the competition so that a new competitor could enter, and that assumes the US ever actually offered the F-35.
That is simply common sense. Re-running all the calculations with the F-35 included would likely add a year or more to the process and India needs its new jets yesterday.
Additionally, US/India defense cooperation is still a work in progress. India has purchased some US systems in recent years but hasn’t yet committed a major portion of their combat force structure to a US system.
hopsalotMr Two Posts
The reasoning in style “Netherlands and Turkey have ordered it so it must be good” seems to be quite popular in recent time.
Guess what, that doesn’t mean squat. All world’s air forces call themselves professionals. All believe to be informed, competent or making the best decisions. And yet they come to completely different conclusions.
Indian AF, are they not informed or competent? Yet they have rejected any possibility to step into the F-35 purchase in favor of the Rafale… or are Indians not professionals?
Any attempts to disregard politics are futile. Politics and money are primary factors. Industrial relations are being kept and maintained for decades. An ex-F-16 user is much more prone to go for an F-35 while an ex-Jaguar used will likely opt for a Typhoon. That doesn’t mean anything about the qualities of either aircraft..
And regarding the air forces getting the aircraft they want, well… Swiss AF wanted Rafales and are getting Gripens. Brazilian industry wanted Gripens and might end up with Rafales.. Lots of factors involved, incl. bribes.
It is no secret that not all forces are equally professional. In some cases it is essentially a cultural issue (Saudi), and in other cases a force may simply be so small that maintaining institutional knowledge is very difficult. (An air force with 6, 8, 10 jets etc will inevitably struggle to maintain a full suite of capabilities and expertise.)
The F-35 doesn’t need to be selected by every force on earth for every mission-set. Clearly that isn’t going got happen for a variety of reasons.
That is not the same thing as essentially concluding that the competitions that are taking place around the world are a sham. Industrial concerns factor into decisions, as do politics, history, budgets, and yes, occasionally bribes.
That doesn’t mean that capability isn’t a huge factor in these decisions. Again, these forces aren’t buying a late, expensive, immature aircraft because they don’t like the capabilities it offers.
hopsalotAgain, my point is not that professionals do not make mistakes, but rather that their overall track record is overwhelmingly good. The F-4, despite the gun decision, went on to be a hugely successful design. Clear-cut mistakes are the exception to the rule, not the rule.
Additionally, it is one thing to have reasonable critiques of decisions but quite another to simply accuse those making the decisions of being incompetent or liars, especially when those charges are coming from someone in a position of ignorance about the factors contributing to the decisions being made.
Secondary to this, some on this and other messageboards would have you believe that every pilot that says something favorable about the F-35 is simply lying because he has to. As the numbers of pilots speaking publicly about the F-35’s performance has grown those charges have become increasingly absurd. If a pilot is going to go on the record, by name, he is not going to lie. He might put a positive spin on things, but that is all.
There isn’t some vast conspiracy afoot.
The truth is actually fairly close to the “official” story. The F-35 offers capabilities that many forces around the world believe will prove extremely valuable. They aren’t making these assessments based on powerpoint or marketing. Anyone purchasing the F-35 has access to detailed information about its capabilities and they have ample opportunity to ask questions to fill in any gaps. The people making these assessments already have experience with real fighter jets, real SAM systems, real radars, and in many cases real combat operations.
If the Japanese say they made the decision primarily on capability… they did. They picked the least mature design in the competition, but they wanted the most capable.
The same is true of the Israelis. They have access to essentially anything the US will export, and what did they pick? They identified a specific area where they felt the F-35 would fail to meet their requirements (again, based on detailed knowledge of its capabilities)… and it is being addressed.
etc etc etc
hopsalotMr 236 posts,
Yes, professionals make mistakes. Nobody ever suggested that they didn’t.
I guess we might as well assign equal weight to the opinions of informed professionals who have years if not decades of experience in their fields as we do messageboard posters and media critics huh?
Lets be frank, the gulf in knowledge and experience between the two groups is vast and no amount of googling will allow an internet critic to approach even an entry level of competence by the standards of a professional.
As I said before, it is perfectly valid to debate the specifics of decisions, but simply accusing a dozen highly professional forces of being some combination of:
Incompetent
Lying
Confused by marketing/powerpoint
or
Forced by political pressure to purchase an aircraft they don’t want
because they made a decision that doesn’t fit well into your simplistic nationalist worldview is childish.
These forces absolutely, unquestionably, know vastly more than you do and they are making the best decisions they can based on the information they have.
If that doesn’t suit your reality then it is your reality that needs revision.
hopsalotI really love how random people on the internet think they know better than all of the professional forces that have decided to purchase the F-35.
Sure, it is all politics.
No, stealth doesn’t really “work,” or will be made obsolete shortly anyway.
No, the F-35 doesn’t fly well. All of the pilots that say it does are just lying to save their jobs.
None of the highly professional forces that have decided to procure the F-35 despite its well publicized programmatic problems know what they are doing or what the F-35 will offer. The Israelis, Japanese, and the F-35 program partners just accept LM’s marketing at face value and are happy committing a big chunk of their future defense spending to an aircraft they don’t understand.
Do you have any idea how childish all of this is?
You can debate specifics all you want, and that is perfectly reasonable, but if you seriously think a country commits billions of dollars to an aircraft that they either don’t understand or don’t think meets their needs you are simply unwilling to deal with reality.
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