Point taken.

How is the F35 going to help us win over what is in use right now?

As I said, Combination, see above.

Current fleet is doing a fine job.

War is changing. Combination, see above. Don't spend money we don't have to.

Agreed, but the F35 is not the answer. it's a plane for yesterday's war. it's too expensive.


Obsolete in terms of what will be needed in the future agains the cost now.

It's a corporate welfare jobs program that gets politicians re-elected.

In another life, I did DoD billing. The only greater waster of money than DoD contracting is DoEd.

The question that must be answered before gobs of taxpayor money goes down the tubes is "What real (not made up) threat requires this expense?" What cannot be done with our existing equipment? I find it ridiculous to get this far out on spending when the Def Dept et al. has chewed up so much money for so long.

Make us money? Who sees that money? A limited number of shareholders, and a small percentage of the populace that works for mfr. / contractor. The gen public will not see any benefit on sales of these planes.

How about putting that money into college scholarships to our kids? Lessons can be learned from other countries that do not believe a massive military budget is necessary for quality of life the people.

Patriotism does not equal militarism. Nor the opposite. Lest one gets jiggy and fires off comments of naive or wuss, I am ex Army brat, father first in that branch to have his name on the fuselage of an F15; and am also ex Airborne Infantry myself....

So if we axe the JSF program, what fills the void when the current fleet is no longer viable? You advocate a mix of manned and unmanned; what will the manned portion look like?

Shaun, do some deeper research into our current fleet. Most are decades old, with some support and cargo aircraft dating back to the 1950s. Aircraft have a design life, some of these planes have exceeded it several times over. Eventually you reach the point of diminishing returns, sinking millions into repairing and updating an aircraft that will remain obsolete, even post upgrade.

slight hijack

The last thing in the world we need are more kids going to college who would be better served by going to trade school or digging ditches or working at Starbucks. College is not for everyone and student loan debt in another shoe to drop in the near future. College tuitions are outrageous and climbing way faster than inflation precisely because no one pays with their own money. Taxpayers should not be furthering this trend.

What do you want the manned aircraft to do?

Who will it fight?

How much tax dollar money is in the F35 program to date?

How much does each plane cost?

in my past life i had a secret clearance to go into project mercury/los alamos/sandia labs/white sands missile range/yuma proving grounds/ and every A.F.B. here in the S.W. right on up to the flightline yellow line OF DEATH! aka "if ya cross that yellow line YOU WILL BE SHOT!"


we built nuklar bomb triggers/machined RADIATED PARTS/built nuklar icbm nose cones/fuel cells for patriots/f-117 wing flap actuators/tomahawk components/phlanx mini guns and on and on and on all the way down to seal team suppressors and .45 frames.


if it went BOOM or BANG we had our fingers in to it.

my take on this.....................


THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN OVERWHELMING SUPREME BAD AZZ SHOCK AND AWE FIREPOWER SO WE CAN BLOW THE LIVING SHEET OUT OF OUR ENEMY AND BOMB HIM BACK INTO THE STONE AGE!



and yes.................I LOVED GENERAL CURTIS LEMAY AND RONALD RAY-GUN!



and there aint NOTHING BETTER THAN SONIC BOOMS.............."THE SOUND OF FREEDOM!"



and i LOVE MOABS!



and i made a BOATLOAD OF $$$$$$$ OUT OF ALL OF THIS!



and we(the u.s.a.) are THE BADDEST AZZ'Z THAT EVER WALKED THRU THE VALLEY OF DEATH!



and that gives me a nice warm fuzzy when i go to sleep at night next to MY HK!


I LOVE F-35's and they are stationed at LUKE A.F. B> and their flight path northbound to nellis a.f.b. is just west of where i live. and i work with an ex F-15 CREW CHIEF and the stories he has to tell will make yer sphincter slap shut a MACH 10!



and i like PUPPIES!

Precisely what they are doing now. Unmanned aircraft have the greatest benefit in the first strike/high risk arena (Wild Weasel roles, Shock and Awe, that type). Once you have Americans and allies on the ground, I'll take a pair of human eyeballs over a long-lense with narrow veiw.

I'm not even going to go into the potential moral issues of fighting a war and killing from thousands of miles away.

Whomever needs fought. Did anyone think we would be fighting the Taliban in 1999?

We were caught with our pants around our ankles in 1941; thousands died. We weren't ready for the insurgent/IED threat in OEF and OIF and again, soldiers paid with their lives.

Anyone with half a brain (like me) can see the weaknesses in all these techno-gee-whizz weapon systems. You can bet your sweet ass that large nation states are working their butts off to negate their effectiveness. One gets snippets of these defences in the news....if you know what to look for.

A manned aircraft can be navigated to its target area.....if the services still teach that.
Can the same be said of unmanned systems?

I can't tell you, I'm sure dramatically more than it should. Both the F35 and F22 programs are a story of how not to do government procurement. But that doesn't change the need. Just a quick list of active attack aircraft and their EIS dates:

A-10 - 1977
B-1 - 1986
B-2 - 1997
B-52 - 1955
F-15 - 1976
F-15E Strike Eagle - 1988
F-16 - 1978
F-18 - 1983
F-18 Super Hornet - 1999
AV-8B Harrier - 1985

Airplanes don't last forever......

Strictly from a performance perspective, are the current aircraft failing right now?




That's the point. Throwing money at an imaginary enemy isn't the answer, that's what politicians do to get re-elected.

Is the F35 just a fund raising program, or does our Intelligence (all agencies) have an enemy that we need the F35 for. We put billions into Intelligence for a reason.

Take some time, who is this enemy and in what kind of war do we need the F35? Surely if we are spending a few billion $ on this plane, it should be an easy question to answer with definitive facts, not unicorns over rainbows, though they can be formidable.

The bigger question / issue is: Defense spending is a job producer - It also develops allot of innovation that trickles down in other areas.

The F22 was to be the end all be all. The F35 maybe the last of manned aircraft. The US like Russia, China, UK and France are the largest producers of arms that are sold across the world. It's unfortunate that the amount of taxpayer money spent on defense and defense related industries: it could go elsewhere or better yet: saved.

you should look it up.

Sure, planes get old. Do we need to replace them with F35s?

I'm aware there are people who think the Military Industrial Complex is money well spent. Look at how well it performed for the U.S.S.R.

I feel mikester nailed it pretty good in his post early on...

To add another perspective...

I work with tech as my job... computers (tech) F's up every day... if it didn't I (and many other people on this BBS) would be out of a job.

Do we really want robots (drones) flying around with missiles and bombs? "Opps, bug in the software... sorry we blew up your hospital!"

And why is it we never hear about the possibility of someone hacking into our drone and using it against us?

I'm one of the few nutjob liberals on this BBS... but I am also pragmatic (I have a shotspoon in the closet and a 9mm under the bed) and while I would like to see free college and clean energy we NEED the best military in the world.. so keep on building those fighters, carriers, subs, thank you very much.

And I like puppy's

Let's put this another way. If each of these aircraft were brand new today, what enemy aircraft would beat them now.

What enemy aircraft would 5 years from now? In what scenario?

What he said!

You could argue the pilot is both the biggest asset and the biggest liability of any modern aircraft. The machines can fly much harder and turn faster than any human can withstand. We limit aircraft performance for our vulnerabilities. However, humans bring real-time processing that no machine can match (...yet.)

As drone technology matures, I think input gathered from remotely manned aircraft will all but put a pilot in the seat. I've been in a few simulators. They are amazing and simply blur the difference between sitting in the cockpit and sitting in a trailer. In a recent NPR spot, they said "...current drone technology is where the computer was in 1980." If we spent serious money creating a remote vehicle unhindered by human physical constraints, you could really get some bad azz shock and awe performance. My guess is that we are well down that road in some skunks works sort of way.

Just the C130! err....
 

C130 motors strong... Cessna 182 et al... Keep em maintained and they will go forever. Just not as sexy as new....

Drone Hacked By University Of Texas At Austin Research Group

Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones - WSJ.com