Understand all that, but I still think Boeing or whoever builds the thing, are ripping everyone off!
F35 - Money well spent.
- Thread starter PE4rocks
- Start date
Lockheed Martin.
The price of the F-35 will vary year by year as production ramps up and down. That's novel in defence but it also reflects the reality that the early ones will cost more because things aren't yet in full swing. And, ultimately, good kit costs.
The F-35 is very good, despite the detractors' comments (most of them from armchairs and keyboards - Himmler74 might be a bell-end at times but his anecdotal comments from those actually using it are they they're delighted with it).
There's reason why there are other 6th Generation projects in Western-aligned countries (Tempest, FCAS and so on). It's to prevent a monopoly, as well as to preserve/develop intellectual property.
Wasn’t it those buggers who got caught chucking back handers around?
yup, that’s me!
Still don’t mean to say I have to like the thing. To be honest it’s probably the way the US goes around pushing the sales of it. Canada being a good example.Find me a defence contractor that hasn't at least been accused of chucking money around.Wasn’t it those buggers who got caught chucking back handers around?
yup, that’s me!
The word is that LM knew how to play the presentational game better than Boeing. It gained the order but then had to do a lot of additional work to get the aircraft to squadron service. But, now it's there it works.
I agree that the usual bullying has gone on. As Magic_Mushroom noted, Typhoon is a far better fit for Canada. But plus ça change, and all that...
Notachance
LE
Brilliant, poor sock starter.
Totally agree
beefer
LE
Well all the words are there but not necessarily in the right order.
Yep, I saw it and read the technical reports,
The summary was the rubber bands kept breaking!
terminal
LE
The project concept for the F-35 was to bring the cost of the plane down using mass production based on automotive industry manufacturing management methods. In order to get as many planes as possible into the production run to enable "mass production", the US needed to a) have one plane replace as many existing models as possible, and b) have all US allies sign on to buying it as well.
So, the same plane needed different variants for conventional take off and landing, catapult and arrestor wire take off and landing, and vertical take off and landing. Trying to shoehorn all of these capabilities into one design ended up increasing the cost of all of them while doing little to bring down costs through mass production.
you have to use alloy like copper
Archimedes
LE
Why do the words 'F***', 'off' and 'Greenfly" spring to mind?
The X-32 was also going to take more work for the STOVL version to work - Boeing could only get it to do the VTOL bits of testing by removing part of the intake, which didn't impress the potential customer...
The X-32 was also going to take more work for the STOVL version to work - Boeing could only get it to do the VTOL bits of testing by removing part of the intake, which didn't impress the potential customer...
Yes, but it was a bit cheeky to show their 'If we win the contract' X-32 was going to be a near new design.
Their revised X-32 certainly looked a lot more 'right' than the Basking Shark.
Archimedes
LE
Agreed - while the F-35 and F-22 (particularly the latter) changed from the prototypes/demonstration aircraft, Boeing weren't that far away from doing the equivalent of offering a Supermarine Type 224 for the trials and offering artists impressions of the Sptifire Mk 9 for the actual service variant...
SteveLancs
Clanker
It's junk...
www.forbes.com
The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed
The U.S. Air Force’s chief of staff wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of aging F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated F-35 stealth fighters. But an affordable, lightweight fighter is exactly what the F-35 was first conceived to be.
www.forbes.com
Archimedes
LE
An admirably pithy summary of the article there...It's junk...
The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed
The U.S. Air Force’s chief of staff wants the service to develop an affordable, lightweight fighter to replace hundreds of aging F-16s and complement a small fleet of sophisticated F-35 stealth fighters. But an affordable, lightweight fighter is exactly what the F-35 was first conceived to be.
Spanks
LE
That isn't what the article says though is it?
To quote Forbes.
But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35’s very concept. “They tried to make the F-35 do too much,” said Dan Grazier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, D.C.
There’s a small-wing version for land-based operations, a big-wing version for the Navy’s catapult-equipped aircraft carriers and, for the small-deck assault ships the Marines ride in, a vertical-landing model with a downward-blasting lift engine.
The complexity added cost. Rising costs imposed delays. Delays gave developers more time to add yet more complexity to the design. Those additions added more cost. Those costs resulted in more delays. So on and so forth.
Pentagon leaders have hinted that, as part of the U.S. military’s shift in focus toward peer threats—that is, Russia and China—the Navy and Air Force might get bigger shares of the U.S. military’s roughly $700-billion annual budget. All at the Army’s expense.
“If we’re going to pull the trigger on a new fighter, now’s probably the time,” Grazier said. The Air Force could end F-35 production after just a few hundred examples and redirect tens of billions of dollars to a new fighter program.
But it’s an open question whether the Air Force will ever succeed in developing a light, cheap fighter. The new low-end jet could suffer the same fate as the last low-end jet—the F-35—and steadily gain weight, complexity and cost until it becomes, well, a high-end jet.
If that happens, as it’s happened before, then some future Air Force chief of staff might tell reporters—in, say, the year 2041—that the new F-36 is a Ferrari and you don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day.
To finally replace its 60-year-old F-16s, this future general might say, the Air Force should develop an affordable, lightweight fighter.
ThunderBox
LE
Every project and airframe has haters, always has, always will.
The F-15EX has haters as it draws away funds from the F-35 same as haters of the F-35 because it threatens their babies.
F-15EX buy was due to project delays meaning not enough fighters as the F-15s retire due to age, yes it does have a place in the hi-low mix but that’s a benefit and not a strategic reason for its purchase.
In any case, tomorrow’s chip paper written by people to say ‘I told you so’.
What we have though, if we buy the full complement, are two of the most advanced carrier forces in the world, sure they may not have the longest legs, but they are capable and in support of Typhoon, with A2A refuelling, the most potent hi-low mix airforce for its size.
UK definitely has done well with this project as we move to 6th Gen and the world challenges evolve.
The F-15EX has haters as it draws away funds from the F-35 same as haters of the F-35 because it threatens their babies.
F-15EX buy was due to project delays meaning not enough fighters as the F-15s retire due to age, yes it does have a place in the hi-low mix but that’s a benefit and not a strategic reason for its purchase.
In any case, tomorrow’s chip paper written by people to say ‘I told you so’.
What we have though, if we buy the full complement, are two of the most advanced carrier forces in the world, sure they may not have the longest legs, but they are capable and in support of Typhoon, with A2A refuelling, the most potent hi-low mix airforce for its size.
UK definitely has done well with this project as we move to 6th Gen and the world challenges evolve.
I read the magazine 'Speed and Power' in the 70s, which is where I first saw the F15 and 16. I still find it hard to relate the F15 and F16 in the low mix, despite advances. The modern versions are probably ships that some countries can only dream of. The F16's original requirement as being a technology demonstrator for a lightweight fighter has probably been the closest ever to the dream.
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