Rep. Adam Smith want to CANX F35

[randy]

The blind drive for a one size fits all USAF-USN-USMC silliness is the worst of it.

McNamara is dead but the poison he infected the Defense Establishment with still lives on.

[Langenator]

I think a Navy-AF lash-up could have worked, with far less trouble. (Just do it the way the F-4 Phantom worked out - design/build the Navy version, then you can remove the hook, folding wings, and lighten up some components because it won't be slamming into carrier decks.) But you're still designing a straight ahead fighter plane (although you're still stuffing in stealth stuff and untested and undeveloped electronic systems, which will have their own teething problems).

It's the Marines and their VSTOL requirement that exponentially increased the level of difficulty with the airframe. I'm a ground pounder, but IMHO, VSTOL presents such unique challenges that it really requires its own dedicated aircraft. The Marines' problem is that they don't buy enough of them to spread the development costs over enough planes to make it affordable. (They had much the same issue with their attempted replacement for the AAVP-7.) So someone got the bright idea for them to piggyback on the Navy and AF's new plane.

[blackeagle603]

Concur, that VSTOL rqmt was a real "what doesn't belong in this picture" sort of visual intelligence test

[Vonz90]

I think a Navy-AF lash-up could have worked, with far less trouble. (Just do it the way the F-4 Phantom worked out - design/build the Navy version, then you can remove the hook, folding wings, and lighten up some components because it won't be slamming into carrier decks.) But you're still designing a straight ahead fighter plane (although you're still stuffing in stealth stuff and untested and undeveloped electronic systems, which will have their own teething problems).

It's the Marines and their VSTOL requirement that exponentially increased the level of difficulty with the airframe. I'm a ground pounder, but IMHO, VSTOL presents such unique challenges that it really requires its own dedicated aircraft. The Marines' problem is that they don't buy enough of them to spread the development costs over enough planes to make it affordable. (They had much the same issue with their attempted replacement for the AAVP-7.) So someone got the bright idea for them to piggyback on the Navy and AF's new plane.

The C version (Navy) actually gave less trouble than the B version (Marine) from what I understand. It would have not been too bad if (like the F4) they started with the Navy version and then adapted to the AF, but the AF had a much bigger buy and did not want to compromise on anything.

So the AF got their plane, which is unsuitable for carrier ops, and the a new one had to be designed within that skin for the Navy (completely new wings though). The Marines had to take what they could get and the AV8B is so low in performance other than VSTOL that it isn't too hard to upgrade over it.

[Johnnyreb]

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.

I want to point out that nothing I said applies to the LCS which is a piece of sh** and need to be canceled and the ships sold for scrap. The problem with it is not so much that it does not work (it doesn't) but that the concept is so flawed that even if it worked as advertised it adds no useful capabilities to the fleet.

I say that as a former SWO who has been against it from day 1. The powers that be are slowly catching up to my position but way too late.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... lure-58837

I forget where I read about it. But some time in the past year I read that even the Navy had figured out the Littoral Combat ships were crap and had decided to mothball them. Of course, those things, 24 of them, were supposed to be the replacement for the 50 Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates, none of which are still in service. I think is was just 4 of them that were actually built. So now there is apparently no replacement.

[BDK]

So what does having these do for us? To fight near peers, do they have equally limited capacities?

Seems like we should have something focused on fighting savages, which we will be doing for a very long time, and that has to be focused on killing the enemy as cheaply as possible. We have to get our kill cost below their replacement cost. We are on the wrong side of that, right now.

And, we need something else to keep near peers out of Taiwan and the Baltics/Balkans

[Vonz90]

So what does having these do for us? To fight near peers, do they have equally limited capacities?

Seems like we should have something focused on fighting savages, which we will be doing for a very long time, and that has to be focused on killing the enemy as cheaply as possible. We have to get our kill cost below their replacement cost. We are on the wrong side of that, right now.

And, we need something else to keep near peers out of Taiwan and the Baltics/Balkans

The LCS is neither fish nor fowl. If it were cheaper and had decent range and sea keeping, I would be okay with them as the low end of a low/high mix. But they are as expensive as a significantly more capable ship without the ability to sustain a deployment or defend itself in a non permissive environment.

[blackeagle603]

But they are as expensive as a significantly more capable ship without the ability to sustain a deployment or defend itself in a non permissive environment.

^^what he said^^

For my (tax) money I'd rather see more "outdated" Tico class Aegis come online -- but I'm sort of a myopic Alpha Whiskey oriented old AEW guy. Or a mess of frigates with some Aegis tech trickled down to that class.

[Vonz90]

To flush this out a bit, an Arliegh Burk is running $936M, the LCS ships are running about $700M each. We have spent about $21B on the LCS so far, so we could have had 22 additional DDGs for the cost of the 32 LCS ships which add no significant combat power.

It is mind boggling that we bought into this boondoggle.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ingal ... r-BB169Rh3

[Windy Wilson]

For my (tax) money I'd rather see more "outdated" Tico class Aegis come online -- but I'm sort of a myopic Alpha Whiskey oriented old AEW guy. Or a mess of frigates with some Aegis tech trickled down to that class.

As someone allegedly named Stalin is alleged to have once said, "Quantity has a quality all its own," Too many of something cheap can beat too few of something expensive.

Wasn't the F-4 Phantom one of MacNamara's bright ideas? As I understand it, it was designed with the idea that missiles were the way of the future, and machine guns and cannon were outdated, so no guns. Once it was discovered that cannon were still useful against other airplanes, a pod was mounted to the Phantom so it could shoot more than 2- 4 missiles in a dog fight.