Well said. It’s pretty exasperating trying to pick serious points out of most of these threads. There is so much rubbish to scroll through.

Maybe it wasn’t your intention, but you put ‘pilot training’ at the top of the list, right where it should be.

IMO, one of the biggest problems today is in defence procurement itself…. A wooden relic, and our forces end up with not much more. The development timescales of military equipment are way too long…. At least twice as long as they should be. Modern design and analysis tools are excellent, but we don’t seem to realise the gains they offer, and the hardware goes operational as it become obsolete.

Who could believe that with military communications equipment that cost squillions, forces personnel end up in war zones relying on commercial sat. phones! Yet in the development timescale of the offending equipment, three generations of private venture mil. comms devices can be developed, produced, make profit, gain experience for the developer, be used in operation, and then go obsolete. The same thing can happen with aircraft.

So what “far less expensive aircraft as fighters and aircraft for CAS” would you suggest?

The export flyaway cost of the F-35A is $58.7 million (nothing official on the F-35B or F-35C yet but lets ballpark it at ~$70 million).

Keep in mind that the UK F-35Bs are to replace its Harriers…

You should ask military people those questions.

Right now we have a new operational aircraft, Typhoon, for these roles. I think we have a breathing space and do not need to commit to anything…. YET.

I think the F-35B is to replace the Sea Harrier FA2, and it was a mistake to get rid of them when Hoon did. I think this forces UK to look at least at the F-35B now, and perhaps affects interest in other F35 variants. Will the RAF get the B too?

I think the current UK government have never shown competence in these matters, and make unsafe decisions.

Until the F-35 flies and is tested in a form closer to what the customers have actually signed up for, this back and forth fanboy debate about the performance of the plane is conjecture at best and meaningless at worst.

This thread is no better than the ongoing “Pak-FA Saga” threads when it comes to conjecture. Lockheed Martin will only silence its detractors when it can show that the actual hardware it is building can perform as well as they claim it will.

Until then folks…….

I’ve been tempted to write something like this. Bgnewf said it better. There is a lot of silly banter in all these threads on many subjects where the really important differences between one aircraft/missile/radar and another are known only by people who are not allowed to post here. Some of the comment is written in rather poor English, and I am afraid is sometimes hard to follow. People of many different countries are posting, so it should be expected, and we should admire those who try to use languages other than their own.

Speaking as a UK taxpayer who is concerned about what kind of equipment we send our forces to war with, and how much it costs, I still don’t much like the F-35. Some of the research this thread has prompted me to make has changed my view of JSF, and I now acknowledge it is looking like a pretty incredible piece of engineering. I don’t think it’s conceptually appropriate for UK, though. I think we could have a few, very stealthy, pure attack aircraft, stealthy cruise missiles, but use far less expensive aircraft as fighters and aircraft for CAS, and have a few more of them. This is my opinion. I am not saying it is correct. I am just airing a view.

Please, let’s try to avoid phrases and words like “As a matter of fact”, “the truth is” “ignorant”, “fool”, etc…

Dunno what happened here….. I was postin in another thread !

It can take off & land conventionally, but needs a normal runway for that. Otherwise, AFAIK, as Sens says, STO & VL, & they – especially VL – have problems on a dusty surface.

Of course they do. All VL aircraft do….. even helicopters. Recirculation of hot, burned gas, and any loose ground debris is a problem. Rolling vertical landing avoids this. I am no JSF fan, but the lift fan with intake on top is probably more sensible for these problems. It’s still a horrible contraption.

Well, it’s dark, but you’d think military IR equipment would work. Maybe the condition of the dinghy indicated the collision damage was too bad. ‘Hope the search is resumed ASAP.

The sea isn’t that cold at this time of the year, and pilots wear immersion suits that are considerably toughened by their G suits.