The F-35 prevails
American Thinker,
by
J.R. Dunn
Original Article
Posted By: DVC,
11/1/2019 1:40:17 AM
In the past, it was generally the case that attacks on U.S. weapons systems came from the Left. Numerous useful weapons, including the AGM-65 Maverick, the M-1 Abrams, the M-2 Bradley, the B-1 Lancer, the AGM-86 ALCM, and the MGM-31 Pershing, have been attacked, ridiculed, and downplayed by leftist interests. In some cases, as with the B-1, they were quite successful. (It was canceled outright by Jimmy Carter, though later revived by Ronald Reagan.)
In recent years, these campaigns have expanded to include the right. The F-22 Raptor, after a lengthy campaign, was canceled
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Rob_NC 11/1/2019 3:03:57 AM (No. 223623)
Oh how could you miss the ground pounders best friend.....
Brrrrrrrup..
A10...
5 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
PChristopher 11/1/2019 3:39:06 AM (No. 223635)
It was canceled outright by Jimmy Carter... Wow! I suppose next you'll tell me that Carter gave away the Panama Canal! Oh, wait...that's right...that's a different reason I vehemently dislike him!
5 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
worried 11/1/2019 6:44:55 AM (No. 223703)
Turns out the F22 was cheaper to manufacture than the F35 turned out to be, after all the cost overruns and problems. The cost was one of the reasons Zero touted for dumping the Raptor. Not knocking the F35, but the F22would have been adequate at the time.
1 person likes this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
paral04 11/1/2019 9:21:41 AM (No. 223849)
Why does Congress have any input on how the Defense Department arms itself? Most of the members know nothing about warfare and/or are corrupt and want their buddies to sell to the government. This needs to stop.
3 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DVC 11/1/2019 11:42:30 AM (No. 224038)
#3, the F-22 is an air superiority fighter, all capabilities focused on it's air-to-air cababilities. It has little to no air-to-ground capability. The F-35 is primarily an air-to-ground system, with, it turns out, a substantial air-to-air capability, sort of "as a free bonus". The pair of stealthy aircraft were intended to work together to provide the way forward in the air battles of the future.
And the cost overruns on the F-35 are largely built in to the modern requirements for any large weapons systtem in the USA. Basically, essentially ALL Dems vote against ALL weapons expendatures, except those which directly bring jobs into their district. So, it has become necessary to divide up the construction and development into as many possible Congressional districts for the purely political reason that otherwise NOTHING will ever get built. So, there are a myriad of subcontractors, many minority and female owned and relatively incompetent, but MANDATED to be used.
Add in that the money voted is never adequate. Say that you could build the first 300 aircraft for $24 billion, total, and if you were given the whole $24 billion as one contract, guaranteed, you could hire 10,000 engineers and designers and complete the design in 2 years, and build the first batch in another 2 years, finish the contract in 6 years. All hypothetical rough numbers, but not way out of line.
What actually happens is that Congress is barely able to scratch together political support, by bribing dozens of Dems with work in their district in unnecessary and often incompetent subcontractors, maybe $250 million for the program. OK, this is enough to get things started but you can hire 200 engineers, in different states, and they can start fiddling around, short of money all the time. Ten years later you have a design roughed out, and are nearing first prototype, and suddenly, the battlefield had changed or the technology has changed (hey, it has been a decade!) so a bunch of work must be scrapped to meet new requirements impressed by the military, and newer technology. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, hire more minority and females, and spread the money around more and more, and EVENTUALLY you MIGHT get an aircraft.
The modern military procurement process for larger programs is POLITICALLY BROKEN, largely by Demonrats who hate the military, and want to spend NO money on the military, ever, given their choice.
Spending money in their districts is the only way to get the votes needed in many/most Dem districts, whether it makes any engineering sense at all.
Meanwhile, the Enemedia continuously reports on how horrible, expensive and slow the process is and how the subcontractors (surprise!) are always making mistakes that need to be (expensively) fixed.
2 people like this.
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Comments:
The F-35 is proving to be a very good aircraft, as I and many others predicted. Yet every development hiccup, which WILL happen in a system this complex, was exaggerated, and there were claims that all issues would be impossible to fix. There are always some fool who repeats some ancient foolishness, like the genius who keeps posting that the F-35 "can't fly in the rain". This was a exaggeration the first time it was told about the F-22, not the F-35, the early stealthy skin coatings were not as durable as desired against rain at 400 mph. The F-35 uses different surface technology, and totally avoids the problem, has never had issues with rain.
A nephew flies the USMC F-35B, and has nothing but good things to say about the advanced technology, although at times he misses some of the challenges of flying the old Harrier, because the F-35 is much easier to fly.
In any case, never forget that not only did Obama order the F-22 out of production when it was doing very well, but he ordered that all the VERY EXPENSIVE tooling to make the aircraft be destroyed. He did this with the intent to make a very high bar (the huge expense of reproducing this tooling) to ever bring the F-22 back into production. Obama was a truly anti-American President, intent on doing the most possible harm to the country that he could. And his criminal, traitorous minions did his bidding against Trump, too.