Rep. Adam Smith want to CANX F35

[Vonz90]

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/ho ... y-at-f-35s

Regardless of one's opinion of the F35, it is funny that throwing 1.5 Trillion at their buddies in one year is fine if they call it stimulus, but 1.5 Trillion over thirty years for 3000 jets is wasteful.

[BDK]

I don’t understand military procurement. It seems like it would be far less wasteful to buy 3000 in one order. In 30 years, it seems like fighter jets might be outdated as a concept

[BDK]

A la Bismarck. It was an incredible battle ship, sunk by planes in short order.

[Vonz90]

I don’t understand military procurement. It seems like it would be far less wasteful to buy 3000 in one order. In 30 years, it seems like fighter jets might be outdated as a concept

They cannot build them that fast first off and while one could build a line and infrastructure to do that, it would just be sitting idle on year 2 so the extra sunk costs would be huge. Also, spreading them out allows them to upgrade the latter batches based on new technologies and what they learn from the early batches.

30 years is the planned product lifetime, so the initial order will be retired in 30 years (nominally, F15 and F16s are still in service but not the early ones).

[randy]

We have wasted a spectacular amount of money on weapons systems that either haven’t worked at all or who have not lived up to their promise," Smith said.

Said about every major weapons system the US has deployed since 1945. Usually by someone that's never served one day in uniform.

I don't have the current details about how well the F-35 does or does not do it's job. It came off the drawing board long after I got out.

However, I've heard the same thing about every weapon system we did field while I was in: Stealth won't work. The M-1 will get chewed to pieces by the cheaper and tougher Soviet tanks they will face. Even the F-16 was too expensive and should be replaced by a western version of the Mig-21 and we should replace the A-10 with a cheaper prop driven ground attack aircraft we can build in mass quantities. (they never included, to quote Col. Trautman, "a good supply of body bags"). Our electronics won't work and Soviet Air Defense supplied to everyone in the world would sweep the skies.

So excuse me if I take the critics, particularly politicians with no service, and retired Generals telling what will keep their consulting gigs paying, with a large grain of salt.

[Netpackrat]

So they want to cancel it; maybe it could have been done better, but what do we have in the pipeline to replace it, and more to the point to replace the decades old designs it is to be a replacement for? Bueller?

Besides what Vonz said about production volumes and timelines, even if we COULD get them all built in one shot in a couple of years, there are a lot of other issues. Ranging from spare parts availability later on (much easier to procure parts for something that is still in production), to the possibility that we may someday NEED to produce them in even greater volumes should an actual shooting war against near-peer adversaries occur. If we built them all in one shot and then shut down the production line, it's going to be far more difficult to restart that from scratch than it is to either increase throughput on the existing line, or to add additional production lines of something that is still in current production with an experienced workforce available to train and supervise workers on the new lines.

[randy]

... Ranging from spare parts availability later on (much easier to procure parts for something that is still in production),

To that point, I've seen recent news reports where the AF is bidding for contractors to come in and reverse engineer parts of the B-2 bomber so they can produce spares. Apparently the actual blue prints and specs have gone missing since the production line was shut down.

[Vonz90]

We have wasted a spectacular amount of money on weapons systems that either haven’t worked at all or who have not lived up to their promise," Smith said.

Said about every major weapons system the US has deployed since 1945. Usually by someone that's never served one day in uniform.

I don't have the current details about how well the F-35 does or does not do it's job. It came off the drawing board long after I got out.

.......

So excuse me if I take the critics, particularly politicians with no service, and retired Generals telling what will keep their consulting gigs paying, with a large grain of salt.

+ 1, crap like that gets spread around so thick that a lot of people serving even believe it (about systems they don't work with). Remember in GW1 the media was shocked to find out our stuff actually worked better than advertised.

I'm not a brown shoe so no expert on the F35, and I am sure
It has some issues and trade offs because everything does, but I am also sure it is better than the alternatives.

[Greg]

... Ranging from spare parts availability later on (much easier to procure parts for something that is still in production),

To that point, I've seen recent news reports where the AF is bidding for contractors to come in and reverse engineer parts of the B-2 bomber so they can produce spares. Apparently the actual blue prints and specs have gone missing since the production line was shut down.

"Gone missing". Lol.

[blackeagle603]

Much of the expense is due to the start and stop nature of procurement. A lot to be said for turning a line on and keeping running it steady if even at a lower rate.