2004

2009

2016

just keep in mind its all purely fictional!.

hahaha
Leonardo da Vinci’s work was fictional. he was a genius that was limited by the technology of his time
Fuller and Liddell Hart’s work was fictional, when they conceptualised what later became Blitzkrieg tactics. the technology was there, but no one was willing to try it

the technology Plummer is proposing is achievable today, has already been created, or will be created soon
while the tactics he is proposing will be effective and feasable
in essence Plummer has invented the new tank and the Blitzkrieg tactics to go with them

most people will fail to understand this, and think of such idea’s as absurd and delusional
but then most people are complete idiots

http://aviationweek.com/defense/manufacturing-tech-key-driving-down-f-35-costs

If the F-35 goes TU as a program under a Hillary/Cruze/Trump whitehouse, LM could very well be in a strained financial situation, past recoverability. Yet LM is the SOLE company whose existing manufacturing capacity has been funded, by the SDD effort, towards something like a modern level of manufacturing capacity and variable/small lot, JIT, lean lines.
Losing that will set America back at least 10-15 years in terms of advanced military manufacturing ability.
The problem is that, tactically and as a function of service economics, the F-35 as a global airframe choice to follow on to the F-16 is just a really bad idea.
1. Because you want ONE CONFIGURATION of airframe, useable across all three services. You already have this in key elements of subsystems like the sensors and MADL datalink. But if you could pull a reverse A-7/F-4 and move USAF jets to sea using JPALS and Delta Path (or a UCAV) to deskill the pilot requirements to carqual, you could SOLVE IMMEDIATELY the entire ‘my other fighter is at home in the garage because I can’t deploy it here.’ and suddenly look at an 800 or even 500 jet air force instead of the monstrous 2,200 airframe one we face today.
2. Everything needs to be common _and present_ for NCW as a ‘system of systems’ synergant to really work. If your E-2 cannot penetrate due to threat or distance, you have no BMC3. If your EA-18s are at RB-66 (Vietnam) equivalent risk you have no roll back command and advanced signal characterization thumbprint and technique build of MALD-Js as standforward jammers. If your carrier is 1,000nm offshore due to ICD threats and your target has another 1,000nm of backfield (Persian Gulf killsac gutter, China and Ukraine) in which to clutter hide key targets like DF-21 TELs, your pilots are going to be operating, daily, _beyond their 8-10 hour endurance levels_. We have already done this, once, in OEF Afghanistan. Pilots coming home from 12-15hr sorties were a danger to everyone coming aboard and had to be retired to a planning cell for a couple days to recoup. And of course all of this assumes that tank-forward is practical when in fact, thanks to J-20 and T-50, they may also be pushed off.
3. Nobody is thinking (system) configurationally or on a shorter than 2-3hr time response curve. PLANNED missions in Enduring Freedom AfG were on an 11hr interval. Unfragged ’emergency requests’ were as much as 17 hours out. This is tactically worthless if you are forced to drop troops into a meat grinder of a failed state condition with nukes on the loose as the Worst Case Scenario of Pakistan and North Korea represent.
At the same time, if you want to really control costs, control airframe size. This is particularly important as we peak out on avker propulsion (energy density) efficiencies with VAATE/ADVENT technology.
The two key drivers on airframe weight as price scaling are pilot and weapons. No pilot = no environment bubble, no heavy A2A weapons suite, no 9G structure and no need for massive burner and tails to move the jet around. It also means no 8-10 hour mission limit with 3 (each direction) spent in airliner mode, transiting to and from the combat area. And only 1-2 actually on-station, vacuuming the battlespace for targets, at a 1,000nm radius.
Weapons also need to be offboard so that we can move towards super or hypersonics in a 10-15ft and 2,500lb weapon class while having 20 minutes to 300 or 800 nautical miles, depending on profile.
Stealth buys you height and height buys you sensor graze/squint lines. When you can spot a target from 60-80nm out and put a hypersonic weapon on it on a Pizza Hut (30 minutes or your next one is free!) delivery schedules, you have conquered the radius vs. time issue (using a sub or CABS airframe, offshore). When you have a targeting drone that can put 500 knots on the clock while still having some fraction of a Predator’s max 42 hour endurance (say 15hrs), suddenly the enemy is operating on YOUR SCHEDULE as a function of not being able to maneuver and resupply between raids.
ARGUMENT:
The F-35 supplies none of the above. And it’s production economics are always going to be scaled around a 2,450 jet force which is simply unaffordable in an airframe whose principle utilization is going to be DEAD before conventional airframes flow in to do the meat and taters normal missions (OBAS, CAS, etc.) while _Missiles_ solve for the INT HDBT static targets.
Think systemically, and the process for getting there, through mixed offboard weapons and standoff UCAVs using the same datalinks as the F-35 _must have working_ to survive, become possible at mission radii where pilots simply cannot endure and be useful.
CONCLUSION:
Where A2AD begins at 1,500nm with BASM attacks on Carriers and Airbases.
Where the 2030 Air Defense is centered around 1MW class Solid State Lasers with 15-20km, eyeblink, ranges and sortie losses per day approach 50%.
You cannot see the F-35 as a useful solution. It is anachronistic and obsolescent. It was so the very moment, in 1994, when it’s mission elements need study was first set to paper. Oh, wait…