T. Belman. Perhaps Israel won’t be buying these planes after all. Israell must know all these things and believes they will be corrected or is placing orders as political support knowing that they will never be delivered.
But the problem remains. The Russian S-300 and S-400 prevent F-16 from flying in areas it is deployed.
By David Archibald, AMERICAN THINKER
The F-35 has been around as long as global warming. The aircraft had its origin in the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program started by the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy in 1993. The word “Strike” in the designation of this program indicates that it was oriented toward developing a light bomber. The following year, the JAST program absorbed the Common Affordable Lightweight Fighter program and a separate short take-off/vertical landing program. This became the Joint Strike Fighter program, with the aim of producing a common airframe and engine across the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Marine Corps. This aircraft was claimed to be 20 percent cheaper to acquire and operate than legacy aircraft such as the F-16. That was the intent. Lockheed Martin won the flyoff against Boeing in 2001.
Many years then passed. The production prototype F-35 first flew in 2006.
The flying characteristics of an aircraft can be determined from its statistics – that is, things like the weight divided by the wing area, weight relative to thrust, etc. The F-35 was still a light bomber. Its engine is optimized for operating at about 20,000 feet. By 2008, simulations had shown that the F-35 was not fit to be a fighter aircraft. This was in a RAND study by Dr. John Stillion, which concluded that the F-35 “can’t turn, can’t climb, can’t run.”
Now, ten years after the F-35 first flew, it remains in development, though 180 have been built. None of those aircraft can operate in combat; all will have to be modified if and when the final design has been settled on. There is not much point in doing that, because the F-35 has a number of show-stoppers that would kill it instantly in a rational world. These include:
The F-35’s engine is failing at too high a rate, and its reliability is not improving fast enough to be approved for operational use. The F-35 has a poorly designed, unreliable engine – the largest, hottest, and heaviest engine ever put in a fighter plane. It is a highly stressed derivative of the F119 engine, which powers the F-22. Because of the need to drive the F-35B lift fan, it is about 2,000 lbs heavier than other combat jet engines of comparable thrust.
The project recognized the engine’s limitations in 2012 by announcing an intention to change performance specifications for the F-35A, reducing sustained turn performance from 9.0g to 4.6g and extending the time for acceleration from 0.8 Mach to 1.2 Mach by 8 seconds. As in September 2014, the Government Accountability Office reported that “[d]ata provided by Pratt & Whitney indicate that the mean flight hours between failure for the F-35A engine is about 21 percent of where the engine was expected to be at this point in the program.” But engine reliability is not improving; it has flatlined.
The F-35 requires a runway at least 8,000 feet long to operate from. By comparison, the F-16’s minimum runway length requirement is 3,000 feet.
The F-35’s operating cost of $50,000 per hour means that we won’t be able to afford to give its pilots enough flying time to be fully proficient. The same problem afflicts the F-22 with its $70,000-per-hour operating cost. Raptor pilots get 10 to 12 hours per month in the cockpit when 20 hours are needed to be able to make split-second decisions in combat.
Being designed as a light bomber, the F-35 is less maneuverable than fighter designs up to 50 years old and will be shot out of the sky by modern fighter aircraft. Thus, it wasn’t a surprise when an F-16 outflew an F-35 in mock combat in early 2015, a result entirely predictable from simulation. What is telling is that the F-35 is not being flown against other aircraft types on an at least monthly basis. The latest derivative of the Su-27 Flanker, the Su-35, is expected to be able to shoot down 2.4 F-35s for every Su-35 lost. China is in the process of acquiring 24 Su-35s. In combat, those 24 Chinese Su-35s will shoot down 58 F-35s before all being shot down themselves. The Russians have followed the Su-35 with the T-50, which will be close to the F-22 in combat effectiveness but without the cost of maintaining the radar-absorbant material (RAM) coating.
The F-35 uses its fuel for cooling its electronics. The aircraft won’t start if its fuel is too warm, making deployment in warmer regions problematic. At the Yuma and Luke U.S. Air Force bases in Arizona, fuel trucks for the F-35 are painted white, parked in covered bays, and chilled with water mist systems because the jet won’t even start if the fuel is already too warm to cool the electronics.
The F-35 has a logistics system (ALIS) that requires an internet connection to a centralized maintenance system in the United States. ALIS is kept permanently informed of each aircraft’s technical status and maintenance requirements. ALIS can, and has, prevented aircraft taking off because of an incomplete data file. If the internet link is down, the aircraft can’t fly even if there is nothing wrong with it. This is one of the more bizarre problems. It could lead to a situation in which enemy aircraft are inbound and the F-35s are refueled and ready to go but can’t take off to meet the threat.
Those are the known show-stoppers; the F-35 has many other mere deficiencies. Embarrased by having 180 aircraft that can’t actually fight, the head of the F-35 program, General Bogden, has decided to make December 2016 the make-or-break date for the program.The Department of Defense has started backing away from it and is contemplating buying more F-15s and F-16s to fill the USAF’s capability gap.This may be the year that the F-35 nightmare ends.
David Archibald is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery 2014).
At the time of this happening the article I posted said that the IDF leadership felt that all our planes would be shot down.
@ mrg3105: I tend to agree on this.
Our pilots, aircraft and whatever else rank top in the world. I doubt very much we moved back for tactical reasons. Still, I am not privy to details.
@ Ted Belman:
No, they didn’t ‘high tailed out of there’. They disengaged per ROE agreed on when Natanyahu visited Moscow. It must be born in mind that Syrians still have combat aircraft, and they also fly from time to time, so Israel is avoiding any potential cause of engaging them.
Keep in mind that Israeli Jets over Syria high tailed it when challenged by Russian jets.
@ Ted Belman:
Surely you don’t expect an erudite answer to this question in a public forum 🙂
@ Ted Belman:Greeks have the S300 and Israel has war gamed against it.
This is public knowledge if not widely known, otherwise I would not post it.
On that I am sure we have the tools in place. We can be proud of the terrific young people working for Rafael and other specialized locations.
So far it seems that the Russians avoid trying the systems.
@ mrg3105:
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
How is Israel to deal with the S300 and S400?
@ mrg3105: Very good overall review!
The company’s Engineering Excellence Group and Senior -Fellow engineers were asked by Corporate to evaluate the Program sometime in the late 80’s. We concluded that it would not be wise to enter bids in response to the main contractors requests. Details were circulated to Corporate only.
The F-35 concoction never had a chance.
Having said that it is a nice item for a case study for junior engineers on how NOT to design and build a frying pan while trying for a military aircraft.
Only as supplementary note I will add that LO coatings maintenance alone are a dangerous and very expensive nightmare. I do not recall the number of radar observations mark the need for a full LO treatment, but they are not many.
Should our military insist on buying that, I wonder who will maintain the skins?
Israel does not need the F-35.
@ mrg3105:
Thank you for your erudite comment
Actually the F-35 program began a couple of years after the end of the Vietnam War as a USAF study which determined that for future overseas deployments a common jet engine would be a massive money saver in terms of logistics. In the early 80s the USN was persuaded to join this program for the common jet engine, while the USMC joined in the late 1990s because no jet engine then being evaluated would suit the AV-8Bs.
The first requirement of any design is its affordability.
This doesn’t just mean the ability to purchase the systems using the existing budget, but the ability to purchase ENOUGH systems. The other affordability component is Value, i.e. that the system bought actually provides value when operated. How does one determine value of a military system? If the F-35 costs $150 million per unit, then its value would be redeemed by destroying at least $151 million worth of enemy assets. A currently developed Russian top line fighter-bombar (‘strike fighter’) is estimated to cost ~$50-60 million (USD) so an F-35, EVERY F-35, would need to destroy three Sukhoi aircraft during their 20-30 year service life (likely 40 year) to produce value-for-money to the US tax payer. But of course they won’t. Most of the targets in Syria for example are barely worth the cost of an F-16 take off and landing. A mission (sortie) operating cost of an F-16 is about $27,000, but an ISIS mortar position is worth ~$2,000. This is why the anti-ISIS campaign has been going after buildings and building equipment, and now oil tankers to show that the effort is offering value for money to the Congress, given most politicians only understand this type of accounting, and not a military one of reaching threat objectives.
Does Israel need the F-35? Absolutely not. The F-35 lacks the range to reach Iran, arguably the last serious threat to Israel in the region. It needs refueler tankers, but this creates mission vulnerability. Would the F-35s provide the technology to evade detection in Iran’s airspace? Only in a specific radar envalope, and this can’t be achieved on long range missions, and due to the location of targets in Iran and Iranian geography/topography. These targets are best approached by high altitude strikes using guided weapons, not low level interdictions the JSF was designed for when that project started during the late Cold War, when the enemy was the dense Soviet air defence in Germany.
Lastly, there is technology. The F-35 is overdesigned, i.e. it has every bell and whistle and then some, including many redundencies that the IDF just doesn’t need or share with the US forces. This is because the Pentagon has a fascination for the Advanced Technology, but not for Affordable Technology. Israel on the other hand needs to consider affordability as requirement #1.
@ Bert:
Better still give it to them and await a run in with Israel’s F-15′.
One of the biggest white elephants ever.
It was known to those in the system for many years.
And consequently… the Israeli military… will buy some.
The hope of “redesign it” is utterly baseless. Not at a rational cost. If at all.
Can’t we sell the F35 to Iran considering they they will have over $100 billion to spend?