The
moment of truth is arriving for this bird and it is not particularly
promising. I will also argue that it is also unnecessary.
Drone
technology is advancing in leaps and it is just too huge an advantage
to get rid of the on board pilot to not think that is exactly what is
about to happen. We need to build a hot drone fighter that is able
to blow everything out of the sky long before China or anyone else
does.
From
this article, it is clear that the real fight has begun for this
bird. Canada has already canceled their participation and it is a
gimme that others are thinking it through. Expect more and expect a
final cancellation however unpleasant that may be.
What
is flying today can carry us forward into the age of fighter drones
quite handily.
There's No Way The
F-35 Will Ever Match The Eurofighter In Aerial Combat
David Cenciotti, The
Aviationist
Feb. 13, 2013,
In an interesting
piece by Flight’s Dave Majumdar, Bill Flynn, Lockheed test pilot
responsible for flight envelope expansion activities for the F-35,
claimed that all three variants of the Joint Strike Fighter will have
better kinematic performance than any fourth-generation fighter plane
with combat payload, including the Eurofighter Typhoon (that during
last year’s Red Flag Alaska achieved several simulated kills
against the F-22 Raptor) and the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
“In terms of
instantaneous and sustained turn rates and just about every other
performance metric, the F-35 variants match or considerably exceed
the capabilities of every fourth-generation fighter,” Flynn said.
According to the
Lockheed pilot, (besides its stealthiness) the F-35 features better
transonic acceleration and high AOA (angle-of-attack) flight
performance than an armed Typhoon or Super Hornet.
As Majumdar says in
his article, such claims are strongly disputed by other sources.
Among them an experienced Eurofighter Typhoon industry test pilot,
who tried to debunk all Flynn’s “theories” about the alleged
superior F-35 performance.
Here’s what he wrote
to The Aviationist:
No doubt the F-35 will
be, when available, a very capable aircraft: its stealth design,
extended range, internal carriage of stores and a variety of
integrated sensors are definitely the ingredients for success in
modern air-to-ground operations.
However, when time
comes for air dominance, some other ingredients like thrust to weight
ratio and wing loading tend to regulate the sky. And in that nothing
comes close to a Typhoon, except an F-22 which has very similar
values. The F-35 thrust to weight ratio is way lower and its
energy-maneuverability diagrams match those of the F/A-18, which is
an excellent result for a single engine aircraft loaded with several
thousand pounds of fuel and significant armament.
But it also means that
starting from medium altitude and above, there is no story with a
similarly loaded Typhoon.
Dealing with the
transonic acceleration:
Transonic acceleration
is excellent in the F-35, as it is for the Typhoon and better than in
an F/A-18 or F-16, but mainly due to its low drag characteristics
than to its powerplant. That means that immediately after the
transonic regime, the F-35 would stop accelerating and struggle
forever to reach a non operationally suitable Mach 1.6.
The Typhoon will
continue to accelerate supersonic with an impressive steady pull,
giving more range to its BVR (Beyond Visual Range) armament.
For what concerns AOA:
Angle-of-attack is
remarkably high in the F-35, as it is for all the twin tailed
aircraft, but of course it can not be exploited in the supersonic
regime, where the limiting load factor is achieved at low values of
AoA.
Also in the subsonic
regime, the angle-of-attack itself doesn’t mean that much,
especially if past a modest 12° AoA you are literally going to fall
of the sky! Excessive energy bleeding rates would operationally limit
the F-35 well before its ultimate AoA is reached.
Eurofighter superb
engine-airframe matching, in combination with it’s High
Off-Bore-Sight armament supported by Helmet Cueing, has already
and consistently proven winning against any agile fighter.
Last, the F-35 is
capable of supersonic carriage of bombs in the bomb bay, but the fuel
penalty becomes almost unaffordable, while delivery is limited to
subsonic speeds by the armament itself as is for the Typhoon.
Concluding (highlight
mine):
[...] it is in the
facts that while the Typhoon can do most of the F-35 air-to-ground
mission, vice versa the F-35 remains way far from a true swing role
capability, and not even talking of regulating the skies.
Provided that the F-35
will be able to solve all its problems, and that the raising
costs will not lead to a death spiral of order cuts, both
the British RAF and the Italian Air Force will be
equipped with both the JSF and the Typhoon.
Mock aerial combat
training will tell us who’s better in aerial combat.
The F-35 Folly: How
Our Own Fighter Jets Are Killing Us
Tuesday, 19 February
2013 15:08
By Thom Hartmann
This is a story about
political dysfunction in Washington.
Say hello to the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter program.
The F-35 joint strike
jet fighter is one of the costliest weapons programs in human
history, with each plane costing $90 million and the
project taking more than a decade to complete.
The price tag of the
entire program has nearly doubled since 2001, coming in at a
staggering $396 billion dollars. And, thanks to a number of
production delays and safety concerns, that price tag is still
rising.
When you combine the
price tag of the program with Government Accountability Office
estimated operating and maintenance costs of the planes– the total
cost of the program reaches over $1 trillion.
And here's the really
tragic and absurd part of this story. Thanks to the decade of delays,
the technology in the F-35, once thought to be the best of the best,
is now outdated.
The F-35 program is
one of several in the current Pentagon budget that is stuck in the
last century, and has failed to adapt to changes in modern day
warfare.
Yet, Pentagon
officials, like current Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, are still
pressing for nearly 2,500 of these absurdly expensive and
already-obsolete F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.
At a press conference
in Ottawa, Canada last Spring, Panetta told reporters that, “As
part of the defense strategy that the United States went through and
has put in place, we have made very clear that we are 100 percent
committed to the development of the F-35. It’s a fifth-generation
fighter, [and] we absolutely need it for the future.”
What Panetta didn't
point out is that over the course of the F-35 program, the world has
changed. The F-35 is supposed to be the future of U.S. tactical
airpower, but the fact is the entire program is a relic of the Cold
War. Rather than face the current threats of today, like cyber
warfare, we continue to pour billions, and potentially trillions,
into the bottomless pits of projects like the F-35.
On March 1st, if
lawmakers fail to reach a new federal budget deal, the automatic
sequester cuts will go into effect. Under these cuts, a variety of
federal agencies and programs will lose funding, including the
Pentagon. If those sequester cuts go into effect, the Pentagon will
face more than $500 billion in spending cuts.
Cue Republican war
hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham. Appearing on Fox News Sunday over the
weekend, Graham said that, in order to avoid the looming
sequester budget cuts that would, he said, "destroy" the
military , we should instead eliminate healthcare to the 30 million
Americans who are covered under Obamacare.
Instead of taking
healthcare away from millions of Americans, lawmakers in Washington
should kill the zombie of the F-35.
The Pentagon is
facingt $500 billion in budget cuts if the sequester goes into
effect. And, amazingly, that's about the amount left in the Pentagon
budget for the F-35.
The fact of the matter
is eliminating the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program really won’t
put a dent in America’s military power.
As Congressman Justin
Amash of Michigan, one of the few Republicans in favor of defense
cuts, put it, quote, “We are spending maybe 45% of the world's
budget on defense. If we drop to 42% or 43%, would we be suddenly in
danger of some kind of invasion?”
No. We wouldn’t be.
But it would put a
dent in the wallets of America’s war profiteers, which really
concerns Republicans who are heavily funded by them, people like
Senator Lindsey Graham.
And they sure can
afford to fund Graham and his congressional buddies. In the past ten
years, the defense industry has seen record profits.
In 2011, the combined
profits of the five largest U.S.-based contractors were a staggering
$13.4 billion. And, despite going through a recession that devastated
both families and business across the country, the defense industry
is still making record profits.
FDR said during World
War II that, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire
created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.”
But, in this new age
of never-ending war, war profiteers are cashing in like never before.
Glance across the Potomac from our nation’s capital, and you'll see
virtual castles – thirty and forty room mansions in secure, gated
communities - all belonging to the executives and lobbyists of
today's war profiteers.
And thanks to these
war profiteers and the Republican war hawks they own, it’s
ingrained in the American psyche that any decrease in military
spending means an automatic increase in the danger that Americans
face in their everyday lives.
America has finally
fulfilled President Eisenhower's warning in his famous 1961
farewell address.
America is the
strongest military power in the world. And that’s not going to
change anytime soon.
But while our defense
contractors are prospering, working people across America are
hurting. Schools and infrastructure are in shambles. We're slipping
behind the rest of the developed world in virtually every available
measure of national health and wealth.
It’s time to ground
the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and other wasteful defense
spending projects for good, and use that money to rebuild our
economy, and to rebuild the middle class.
Which is
the true investment in our future security.
Copyright, Truthout.
May not be reprinted without permission of the author.
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