Looks like the Stratfor site may have been spreading disinformation with digital modification of the satellite picture of the “attack” on the helicopters!

https://twitter.com/WarfareWW/status/735378840411885569 (thanks to someone near the Gobi desert 😉

Other signs that all was not what it seemed at face value was no other new agency picked it up other than the one linked to ISIS and ISIS, usually quick to shout about attacks, said nothing ;- )

Many took the report at face value, but look at the comments and how old photos were cobbled together!

….it’s increasingly difficult in this digital age to get away with straight lies as in the Gulf of Tonkin incident which was wholly made up to justify intervention in Viet Nam as proved in the NSA documents publically available in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act.

……the *******s who did this because they know best (actually they don’t) and care nothing for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people as a result of their lies are the one who should be in the dock at the International Criminal Court….trouble is many will retire and the truth will out as it always does years later when everyone’s old and no one alive cares!

The financial and resource backers (we know who you are) of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and ISIS and who still continue to pump arms and weapons to them into Syria to the “moderate terrorists” (unbelievable they can say this with a straight face!) are responsible for the destruction of a country and society, the death of hundreds of thousands of people as a result of the war (and no it wasn’t Assad who is responsible for this but the “moderate terrorists (!)” like Al Nusra, ISIS etc.), millions of refugees, destruction of historically important sites (historical Souk or market at Aleppo, Palmyra etc.).

It’s crazy those still pumping arms and weapon into Syria to “moderate terrorists” giving them MANPADS will come back to bite when they start shooting down civilian planes as well as coalition aircraft……those re-living the cold war through proxy (even if with “moderate terrorists”) should know the Russians, whatever you might think of Putin and his regime, are not the ones who started this in Syria and the Russians are the ones who given ISIS more of a pasting in 5 months than others did in years!

As for the Russian civilian plane full of holidaymakers flying back from holiday in Red Sea resorts blown out of the sky by a ISIS bomb, the most likely route for ingress to Sinai was a relatively short crossing by boat from Jordan (or Saudi) and we can guess from the countries bordering the Gulf of Aqaba which intelligence agencies were responsible for facilitating that ingress.

The whole of Egyptian tourism is wrecked as result with severe consequences for their economy and looks like Turkey is heading the same way. The Wahhabi backers from Saudi and Qatar care nothing for this because as long as they are doing well (they never go on suicide missions do they? Leaving it to young brainwashed cannon fodder while they slum it in their boltholes in the west enjoying wine, women (or boys) and song in the decadent West! If it all goes South soon, it’ll be under the 30 years old, inexperienced Prince Mohammed (son of King Salman)and “educated” wholly in Saudi, who is responsible for the death of thousands of civilians in their current adventure in Yemen but relatively unreported in the media! Lampposts in the street when the regime falls might yet come into play by their great unwashed for a Gaddafi style “retribution” see their spat here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYY_ws6axKo

Their paid helpers like Erdogan and his family have had their hand in the till since becoming mayor of Istanbul in 1994 and later Prime Minister and dogged with corruption (first as Mayor) leading him to ban twitter to stop people hearing the tape recordings of his dodgy dealings and the recent take over of the newspaper that broke the 2013 corruption scandal to the world (to stop them exposing more corruption)…..power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I am laughing my a** off for the anti-F-35 guys so invested in hate they see every win for the JSF as either rigged or fake..

You are missing the point……what people are saying that it’s not the worth the money (pretend it’s your money you’re spending and not a

bottomless pit called the taxpayer) and not that the F-35 won’t (eventually) perform its mission requirements.

…and that is only because throw enough (of other people’s) money at it and it will be made to perform its basic mission requirements (key

performance indicators watered down maybe, but nevertheless performed).

Can’t wait till the F-35 meets these competitors at Red Flag and completely annihilates them.

Good to know that at some point (around 2020?) the F-35 will be fully operational for combat duties and problems such as only one aircraft

out of six been able to take off will have been sorted out!

Hops mate,

Forget all that tosh….the F-35 will (eventually) work out just fine for the US because it alone can afford to throw lost of money at it with a $600 billion annual budget, and operate the short legged strike aircraft with the support of hundreds of tankers……other countries can’t!

……never mind that well within its lifetime effective counters to it will have been implemented that will diminish and devalue its main selling point of low observability

It is by no means the game changer the LockMart PR teams would like to have us believe with ludicrous and spurious claims to impress gullible politicians to sign up for this so-called silver bullet (for a trillion and half dollar program it had better be really good!)

What is being contended is not that F-35 won’t perform a certain strike mission for US expeditionary forces operating with the help of a 500 hundred tanker fleet…..it will…..instead what is being argued is that it is not necessarily the best solution for other air forces without a $600 billion budget.

Why? Because the cost (life time operating and procurement costs……by the way no way the F-35 will cost the Danes $82m in 2020…..more like £100m cost to buy…….that cost of buying vastly understates the actual cost of operating and support over its lifetime that will be difficult for many air forces to justify for the mission they require, which are mainly air policing and not “day one” strike into a heavily defended AD system with say S-400 or S-500 systems.

The questions being asked might hurt because they are challenging and fiving honest answer might not help and be even damaging to say LockMart

(by the way good job and good strategy to operate plants and offices in 40-odd states in America to spread a little bit of that pork barrel spending).

Please just answer the question……if you don’t know say I don’t know!

Why are the Danes using half the life time operating costs of the Norwegians? If there are valid reasons to use this assumption what are they? Thanks.

Once again the standards of what is and is not absurd about the F-35 thread knows no bounds.

Deleting Tonys insinuations is probably equally wise, but we would never stand for such things. If you cant scream conspiracy on the internet, what’s the point?

Classic trolling……ignore the salient points and distract with irrelevant matters.

Again, why are the Danes using half the life time operating costs of the Norwegians? If there are valid reasons to use this assumption what are they? Tag.

You seem to be making plenty of assumptions…

Here’s a thought. Read the report and site specifics.

The onus is on you to disprove it. Ozair already debunked one of your conspiracy claims, and undaunted you just double down more

Sure I will when I get a chance over the coming weeks…..I work full time unlike others whose full time job is this! But no matter! ; – )

Not sure how many reports you’ve been involved in writing for commercial purposes, but while we can’t change actual physical specifics, we can, depending on the data used and assumptions made, come to a more acceptable conclusion, and meanwhile cover our backsides with lots of caveats in case challenged on some of the assumptions.

(a minor point some detailed information used to provide the data used in the report might not be available for public release).

Please also bear in mind there is limited data available for operating costs of the current F-35 fleet…. the Marines are “operating” about 10 F-35B?

Plenty of assumptions have been made on future software maintenance and development costs……the real truth is no one really know what the future software costs will be….. but I would not be surprised if they are nothing like F16 costs + a little bit more, but will be quite a bit more than operating a twin engine F-15E (see not really that bad! ; -)

(off the top of my head was it the marines that skipped a software update?…and came out with a lovely quote that they didn’t have the problem of only 1 in 6 planes not being able to take off because they didn’t implement the flawed update? Perhaps someone could kindly refresh us and provide more information on this?).

Because most European air forces would put the F-35 over the Eurocanards & Teens at the air-to-air role as well.

😀

Hi LockMart bots…..Jessmo23, Scar, 5aaab_god etc. or whoever is still on duty for this shift! 😀

Just because you need to talk up the F-35 does not make your PR puffs any more true!

Even the most die-hard F-35 fan would agree that if ever there is to be a future manned VTOL aircraft successor for the F-35B for the Marines it won’t be “joint” with the Air Force and Navy successors to the F-35A and F-35C…..a basic fundamental mistake in design has been made, resulting in compromising the differing capabilities required by the different services into one cramped airframe….but while you’re earning your crust from LM it’s hard to come out and say this out loud!

Source http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/feature/173812/marines-declared-f_35-ioc-despite-deficiencies-that-%E2%80%9Cpreclude-mission-readiness%E2%80%9D.html

Marines Declared F-35 IOC Despite Deficiencies That “Preclude Mission Readiness”

The Marine Corps declared Initial Operational Capability of their Lockheed F-35B fighter last July despite a number of deficiencies “that preclude aircraft mission readiness in support of …. initial operating capabilities.”

That admission, contained in a May 12 contract announcement (see below), contradicts most statements made at the time, and since, by the Marine Corps, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) and prime contractor Lockheed Martin claiming that IOC meant the F-35B was ready for “worldwide deployment” and combat.

While this was generally accepted as a public relations exercise with no real foundation in fact, the Pentagon’s admission, albeit indirect, that the aircraft were so deficient they did not meet IOC standards should be a major embarrassment for the Corps, JPO and Lockheed Martin, as well as other senior Pentagon officials who at the time made enthusiastic statements which today seem wildly excessive.

Furthermore, the fact that the Pentagon must now pay Lockheed $10.5 million (added by me: just the initial payment…..usually payments for fixes broken down into smaller amounts to “help the medicine go down”) to fix those deficiencies should also raise eyebrows, as it is the first time that deficiencies in IOC aircraft are disclosed.

There has been no word from the Marine Corps or the JPO to suggest that the aircraft in the IOC squadron had any deficiencies, and the various Congressional committees briefed on the F-35 program were apparently not informed of them.

The deficiencies are apparently substantial in both number and complexity.

The contract announcement states that Lockheed will supply “61 retrofit kits to correct deficiencies,” implying that each IOC aircraft has an average of 6.1 deficiencies since the IOC squadron, VMFA-121, operates ten F-35Bs.

The announcement also notes that work will not be completed before January 2019 – three years and a half after IOC – which again implies that these are not superficial defects that can be quickly fixed.

It is probable that the $10.5 million price tag announced May 12 is only an initial payment, as the JPO has a habit of breaking contracts down into smaller awards, although this is speculation on our part.

Have a nice weekend guys!

PS Jessmo, I also love Stan Lee and read all the Marvel (and DC) comics when young ;- ) but do consider writers who have books without pictures…..Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (favourite along with War and Peace) or Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky (hard going for some but redeemed by a passage in the middle which imagines what Christ might say were he to come back today (something like “Jesus freaking Christ” or probably won’t say anything just Jesus wept!) …..I know I know…pesky commie reds *******s but still good writers!