JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

Lockheed Martin have started a travelling road show to boost flagging interest and outright withdrawal from its F-35 program.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-15/t ... et/4522230" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One of the interesting parts of this is from one of the designers of the F-16. Apparently, the F-35 will go supersonic (in clean form) but then hits an aerodynamic brick wall which limits its top speed to a paltry M1.6 (clean). That's just pathetic.

How can it escape SAMs at that speed? All its opponents in the original competition had better performance than that. It doesn't even have the stealthy nozzle the US version has.

And this is the fighter we are going to put our best and brightest into and expect them to be competitive. More than that, we expect them to win.

From an outsider's point of view, I have never had any faith in it and I think we should pull the plug on it now before we waste any more money on it.

The promoters always evade questions with excuses about security. You ask these guys how an aircraft with such limited performance could be any use at all in combat and they tell you it's a matter of technology. You pursue them for a more elaborate answer and they clam up, citing national security.

A real confidence boost. Not.

We would be better off waiting for a UAV.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Jamo »

Whilst I don't disagree that the JSF is a bit of a train wreck the Hornet was a major downgrade from the trusty old Mirage when it came to speed capability.

If you ask me that major achilles heel of this aircraft is it's pitiful range.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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What we really needed at the time was a cross between the F-15 for its range and the F/A-18 for its multi-role capability. We couldn't have both and the government got cold feet about the cost.

In the end, the Hornet cost us just as much as the F-15 would have. The F-15 was much better matched with the F-111 too.

The F/A-18 won the fly off against the F-16 largely because it had twin engined reliability. How quickly we forget.

Australia lost 43 Mirages - out of 116, with 14 pilots killed. At the time that was deemed acceptable but not now. Sure, modern jet engines are more reliable than those old Atars ever were but they're not infallible. Lose one engine in a Hornet and you'll get home. Lose one engine in an F-35 and you're going in. That's okay in the USAF where economies of scale mean you can afford it but we're still talking about pilots here.

The F-35 is a joke. "Eject! Eject! Eject!"
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

The saga continues, even the refrain is disturbingly familiar. In 2007, 4 Corners did a similar report, some of which is included in this one. Perhaps there simply wasn't enough information to make a completely new report. They used basically the same people; Peter Goon, Chris Mills and the secret person who I suspect is a retired Air Vice Marshall with the initials P.C.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/ ... 690317.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Back then though, there wasn't the level of frustration from Lockheed Martin that there is now. People were a lot more affable than the surly new boss in Fort Worth and a lot less likely to rely on the phrase "trust us".

Why should we?

Remember too that this project has a number of potentially damaging issues. The reliance on a near-total software environment means practically living in a field of near-endless bug propagation. Secondly, the program is controlled to a far greater degree than ever before by a private company. As Peter Goon says, signing up governments really means a 50 year license for Lockheed Martin to rape, pillage and plunder.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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LOL, retired Airforce strategist, Chris Mills, is using Harpoon 3 as his strategic scenario modelling environment. Looks like he's using the ANW (Advanced Naval Warfare) edition , but who knows which database he's loaded.

Maybe Chris could post his scenarios here and we could run his in-depth modelling on our laptops while eating dinner and watching the next 4 Corners broadcast. Any war gamer is going to tell you that turn and run is only an effective defence under certain circumstances anyway and only really works if the firer took a max range shot.

I thought a great contribution to the show was asking the champion of the F16 what he thought of the F35 chosen to replace it. Notice he didn't say anything about things like it also only having one engine, or the fact that the F16 is also a fly by wire aircraft and flight control software glitches would be equally important to F16 drivers as they would be to F35 drivers, or the fact that the AoA limiter restricts G load for the F16. Given that the F16 was developed to meet the LWF program (Light Weight Fighter), its not unexpected that this guy thinks the JSF is bigger and fatter.

Yeah, lets buy Flankers...or at least hold a public tender process to consider them and Rafales (was it only the one guy from France that came here to try and sell us aeroplanes? Not much of a tender process then). Why would we buy them when we already have the Super Hornets? Lets just keep the SHs in that case. That way we can have Boeing rape us into the future instead of Lockheed Martin or the French. The alternative would be to buy back the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation from Hawker and build our own Wirraways again.

Anyway, I thought the submarine replacement program was going to be the biggest ever defence spend....discuss. :p
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Montey »

What is the point in investing heavily in stealth technologies? The reality is that within the lifetime of these aircraft (possibly very early in that lifetime) someone will come up with a way to detect stealth aircraft.

The best proposition I have heard is to have a network of geostationary satellites over your territory, and approaches, that listens to radio broadcasts from the ground. When an aircraft passes below the satellites they can see a "shadow" that blocks the radio signals and hence identifies the location of a "stealth" aircraft. A variation on this is one where the detection is done by listening to the radio waves as they are reflected off the ionosphere, a bit like how the Over The Horizon Radar works.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Exar Kun »

Bah, should just reopen the F-14 production line because they're the greatest aircraft ever made. DANGER ZONE!
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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The Delta Tomcat was a mighty plane and didn't get much of a run really.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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Exar Kun wrote:Bah, should just reopen the F-14 production line because they're the greatest aircraft ever made. DANGER ZONE!
Yeah and bring back the Pig too and be done with it. I'm sure we could get the plans from somewhere to build a few.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Duke »

Durrie wrote:Yeah and bring back the Pig too and be done with it. I'm sure we could get the plans from somewhere to build a few.
+1 to that, well +1,000,000,000
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

F-14, F-111...bollocks.

Those things could never be made to work properly in a future combat environment. Their architecture is just too old. The Rafale was a contender before the Superhornet.

Even supercruising the F-111 wouldn't have made a lot of difference to its effectiveness. They looked at it. The drawings and engineering was done to put the General Electric F-110 GE-129 into it but it never materialised. In the end, the airframes were going to be the limiting factor.

There's a huge difference between the computer in the JSF/F-35 and that in an F-16 or even an F-22. The F-22's FCC hardware is very old technology by any standard and was when it was first designed. The JSF/F-35 is a COTS system. All the components in the F-22 are rated for survivability: G, temp, pulse, MTBF, etc). They are designed to be ultra-reliable. A COTS system isn't. It's designed for processing speed. Besides that the bug propagation in a system like the F-35 will be horrendous. The QC on those components is not as high as that for an F-22.

Chris Mills actually knows his stuff. He was an air warfare advisor to the RAAF. If you saw the 4 Corners program from 2007, you'd see what I mean. He and former AVM Peter Criss wargamed an attack on one of our Northern neighbours with some really interesting results.

IMHO, the next front line fighter for this country should be a UAV. The drones are coming!
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Duke »

I don't give a toss about a modern war environment. I mean how much do we really use our tactical/fighter squadrons in anger anyway?
Why waste extra taxpaying dollars to have what they already have, the so called best of the best that the world has to offer...
If it came to the crunch we would just rely on our Allies which we bow to politically (read: Bend over & take it how they want us to take it) & spend enough to keep them our Allies already.
Cause if our borders were really threatened we wouldn't stand a chance if our closest northern neighbours decided they really wanted our island.

I just want the F-111 back for the WOW factor at Airshows. :lol:
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

Well forgive me for not wanting to give up just yet.

And just for yucks, Australia would be a phenomenally difficult place to invade. We would stand a very good to excellent chance.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Durrie »

J.D. wrote: Chris Mills actually knows his stuff. He was an air warfare advisor to the RAAF. If you saw the 4 Corners program from 2007, you'd see what I mean. He and former AVM Peter Criss wargamed an attack on one of our Northern neighbours with some really interesting results.
I hope they didn't use Harpoon 3 to do it.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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It really doesn't matter. If you watch the program you'll understand that, no matter what you use to display the probability element, the end game is the same.

Not sure what people here have against Harpoon 3 anyway.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Durrie »

Ah, of course. Sorry for the confusion.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Scottie »

I agree with the notion of bringing on the drones.

I'll always have a golden halo around the F-111 and FA-18 Hornets, but they are kinda old, and unmanned warfare will be with us if it isn't already.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Exar Kun »

J.D. wrote:F-14, F-111...bollocks.
Except that the F-14 is the coolest looking plane ever built!

Agree that UAV should actually be the way we go.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

I'm unromantic about aircraft, as you can probably tell. I have my favourites but I know when they're obsolete.

That said, this is my current fave looks-wise:

Image

Not much use for us though.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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Mmmm...all F-35 jets grounded...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-23/p ... et/4535794" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Durrie »

I known its an ABC story and everything but you did read it didn't you?

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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

Yeah, I read it.

I didn't say anything because I didn't think there was any obvious conclusion to draw from it.

The engine is a relatively new type (a derivative, actually). Those kinds of failures, small though they are, are not unexpected.

I was surprised that it was the second time in a month.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

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Durrie wrote:Yeah, lets buy Flankers...or at least hold a public tender process to consider them and Rafales (was it only the one guy from France that came here to try and sell us aeroplanes? Not much of a tender process then). Why would we buy them when we already have the Super Hornets? Lets just keep the SHs in that case. That way we can have Boeing rape us into the future instead of Lockheed Martin or the French. The alternative would be to buy back the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation from Hawker and build our own Wirraways again.

Anyway, I thought the submarine replacement program was going to be the biggest ever defence spend....discuss. :p
I don't know how I managed to miss this.

The tender process was the thing which riled me the most. AIR6000 was supposed to take three or four years to complete. It was supposed to put a whole bunch of experts together - I mean people who knew what they were talking about from military strategists, IT people, link techs, production strategists, DFAT and Defence officials, fighter pilots and their COs... the whole lot.

As we now know, the day it was supposed to start was the day Howard signed us up for the F-35. If the AIR6000 committee had come to the conclusion that the F-35 was the best choice then I would accept that. I would accept their word on the matter over that of JWH every time. When politicians start short-circuiting due process, it makes us look corrupt. Australia's tender process is actually much admired overseas...or was until this.

Then they did almost the same thing with the Superhornet.

This is where politicians have to learn to keep their hands off. The tender process is supposed to be squeaky clean. What gets written off as "bureaucratic red tape" is there to ensure that taxpayers get what they pay for.

Realistically, Flankers were never going to happen. Kind of ironic when they were actually the only aircraft which really could do both roles (F-111 and F/A-18) roles really well. That was one of the primary aims of AIR6000. The difficulty was that there was no possibility of integrating them into the RAAF. Firstly, their systems are totally different to Western types and secondly, the US would never forgive us. South Korea threw around the possibility of outfitting Sukhois with Western radars, avionincs and weapons and the US response was the threaten them with trade sanctions, even before the paperwork was looked at.

The submarines are "a whole 'nother story"!!
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by J.D. »

The Fin Rev had a great article today about how we should get out of this project ASAP.

Whatever the claims for it, the F-35 has so far only met 11% of its performance targets, according to a US Congressional audit.
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Re: JSF/F-35...time to eject.

Post by Exar Kun »

Indeed we should dump it. Stick with the Super Hornet for a while and then buy something that's already in service when the time comes to replace them. It's obvious we won't see a capable system in service for a long time, if ever, if we stick with the F-35.
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