[rubixcube]

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past decade, you must at least have some idea as to what is going on with US government's most expensive military project, the F-35.
Here's an article for more information: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100614024

As a citizen of Canada and an aviation buff, I am concerned with this countries future air combat ability after the cf-18's have been retired. After reading the specs on the new aircraft I am not too impressed.
 
What does everyone else think? Is this plane worth the colossal sized price tag?

[Axem]

As over heard in a Conservative meeting:

"Hey guys, I got a great idea. Wonderful idea.

Let's replace these aging CF-18s with ultra-modern jets that don't have the communication equipment required to communicate with our forces, can't refuel with the planes we have now, but in the interests of saving money, lets only buy the bare minimum of what we need. They're so invincible they couldn't possibly crash or have any sort of problems.

And to slant the project into a no-bid in everything but name, lets say we can only require a plane that does stealth, has the letters 35 in it, and designation starts with an F.

Also we could leave off buying the engines for now. We'll get those on a Boxing day sale!"

[Suongadon]

Hey, at least you guys can afford to buy this ... thing.

Is this plane worth the colossal sized price tag?

I try to pretend that everything the US military spends money on is like shoes, the more expensive the better. Otherwise its basically  all day, every day.

This project seems to be a disaster all around. Lock it in the basement and start over. (Also: refund?)

[Axem]

Yeah, we can afford a billion dollar jet program. But a two million dollar globally praised lake research project (2/3rds of which gets covered by user fees anyway) was too much and was going to be shut down until Ontario said, "Whatever, we'll take it over".

_{(Bizzaro bonus points to that since closing the research project would have cost fifty million since the lakes needed to be returned to their original state!)}

It just makes me think of Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Talk about your socialist hippie, amiright?

[Trivial Psychic]

I watched a TV special last Friday regarding the Canadian government's relationship with the F-35, and it indicated at the end of the program that there still exists an escape clause for Canada, and that no final decisions have been made and no funds have been paid.  Independent government audits also confirm the deceptive price tag per plane that was given initially, and the actual cost that would take place if its signed-off on.

In terms of what aircraft I feel Canada should choose, I was initially pleasantly surprised when the F-35 was announced as Canada's choice.  Unfortunately, as time went on, delays mounted, costs ballooned, and shortcomings became evident, I began to lose my faith in it.  Knowing what I know now, had it been my decision eight years ago or so, I would have steered towards the F-18E.  I have heard that it has some capability shortcomings over the previous models, but the fact is that its an aircraft that technicians are already loosely familiar with, it has the 2-engine reliability, and its a far less costly alternative.  I've even read that it can boast some miniscule degree of stealth capabilities, due to its main body shape and slightly radar-absorbing coverings.

I think that they should have given the F-35 a pair of lighter engines instead of the single unit, kept the wingspan of the Navy version for all variants, and downgraded the stealth requirement, allowing it to carry more weapons and fuel externally, but perform limited stealth missions in "striped-down" mode.

[Axem]

Yeah, I was kind of the same way. "Oooh, F-35. Recent military hardware, in MY Canadian military?" But then all those stories about the shortcomings and added costs that kept going up came through and... yeah. Not that big of a big fan anymore. Give me something tried and tested.

What's really mind boggling is how they (as in the entire JSF program) set up manufacturing it. If everyone buys them, the cost goes down and the countries get some jobs dedicated to building parts of it. But with costs ballooning and countries bowing out, it only makes the costs go up! Which is going to make other countries rethink their plans, lower orders and costs will go- you get the idea. It's only going to get worse.

But with the Conservatives in power, its going to take some mighty huge pressure to make them back off of any proposal, especially with that majority of theirs.

[Suongadon]

re: Hawt bald old guy who I would totally use a time machine to go back and [redacted]* Eisenhower quote: The last lines of that speech always kills me.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

_*not

I think that they should have given the F-35 a pair of lighter engines instead of the single unit, kept the wingspan of the Navy version for all variants, and downgraded the stealth requirement, allowing it to carry more weapons and fuel externally, but perform limited stealth missions in "striped-down" mode.

Cut the stealth capabilities and it might(how much of a downgrade are we talking about?) not be able to beat the current soviet anti-air systems. Then it would just be a useless downgrade to in service planes. (If only because of the price tag)

Hah. Derp a Derp, I do.

[Black Wolf]

We're in a very similar boat to Canada here in Aus - committed to the program, but buying a bunch of stopgap planes because it keeps getting delayed and delayed. And not even the right stopgap planes. We bought F/A 18 Super Hornets to replace our (awesome but old) F-111s. They're way too short range to be of any use in an Australian setting, and too bloody expensive for a stopgap. We should have bought F-15 Es for half the price, or upgraded variants of them like the F-15K, and then maintained a medium range strike capacity alongside the main fleet of F-35s if they ever turn up. Admittedly, there are cost issues associated with running two different aircraft, but they're not that bad, and since the government is insiting that we wont buy STOVL F-35s for our new LHDs, we lack any kind of medium-long range force projection capabilities from the air.

There are big on-paper advantages to the 35 of course - in our case, they wanted a single aircraft fleet, and the F-35 is the best option for that. But we're not even going to get them until 2020 and I don't care what anyone says, with the F-111s retired we do have an air capability gap right now.

[Fury]

I would think that the age of pilotable military plans is nearing its end. Drones are more and more involved with various operations and from what I hear, militaries aren't telling even half the story how much drones have been used lately. Sooner or later F-35 and any potential successors are obsolete, replaced by drones.

[Dysko]

Italy bought the F-35 too, and in the last months it was an highly debated subject due to the incoming elections.

AleniaAermacchi will build the Italian fighters, with an estimated creation of 10'000 jobs (and, being an aerospace engineer student close to graduation, I'm very interested in this ).
On the other hand, I think the F-35 is... unnecessary for Italy (for the Air Force, at least). The Italian Air Force will need to replace the Tornado IDS bombers and the flying wrecks named AMX, used for light attack. The Tornados can be replaced by building more Eurofighter Typhoons, and the AMXs can be replaced with an attack version of the Aermacchi M346 advanced trainer, a spin-off of the Yakovlev Yak-130 advanced trainer (just to give you an idea of how much sh1tty the AMX is, it is so underpowered that the hydraulic system can't feed both the flying controls and the Vulcan cannon at the same time. Choose: fire the cannon, or fly the plane?). This way there would still be new jobs created, and maybe we shouldn't have had the need to buy KC-767 tankers with the boom refueling system, since all other Italian airplanes use the hose-and-drogue system for which a pod under the wing of a C-130 is enough...
The problem would be the Italian Navy: the Harriers carried on board the Garibaldi and the Cavour carriers are getting old quickly, and the F-35 is the only airplane that could replace them.

[Spoon]

Same story in the Netherlands.
But after doing the maths its been concluded that stepping out of the program at this stage would cost us more money than going through with it...

They should have gone with the Gripen years ago, that would have been such a cheap deal.

[Mars]

I feel like the rest of world is experiencing what it's like to be involved in a US military project. (They're nearly all like this)

[Flaser]

Meanwhile in Soviet Russia, the PAK-FA is slowly shaping up.

While a lot of clueless PR flaks, so called "experts" decry the Russian designs for its sub-par stealth, other cooler heads, have pointed out that the Russians are well known for taking an evolutionary process to their planes, keeping projects tight and focused on specific aims and thereby mitigating risks.

The current PAK-FA does *not* et all like what its final form might look like. The Russians decided not to employ (the very expensive) stealth features (mainly applying radar absorbent materials - RAM) on the plane, until they're satisfied with the rest of the plane's performance. It's important to note though, that they've demonstrated a mature understanding and mastery of RAM application in the past, which reinforces the notion that the lack of it on the PAK-FA prototypes was a conscious, likely cost related decision on their part.

One area that has been admittedly lagging was the development of the super cruising engine, albeit even current Saturn designs would make the plane a formidable combatant, especially for interception and air-defense roles where sustained supercuirse is not as great an asset as in offensive roles.

Even if the PAK-FA turns out to be a sub-par fighter compared to the F-22 (something that's debatable, but will only be decided by time... especially since both planes' actual characteristics are highly classified), the fact that it has  massively lower per unit cost (and development cost so far), could mean that Asian and Russian forces could field them in a significantly greater number than could NATO its own stealth designs.

PAK-FA: ~$50-60 million/unit
F-22: ~$150 million/unit
F-35: ~$100-240 million/unit

When compared to the F-35, the PAK-FA blows the later out of the water... in several ways (flight range, radar performance, dogfighting capability), not the least being a bigger platform with massive growth potential, if its predecessor the Su-27 family is anything to go by.

[The E]

Also, russian plane designs look unbelievably cool.

[Trivial Psychic]

We're in a very similar boat to Canada here in Aus - committed to the program, but buying a bunch of stopgap planes because it keeps getting delayed and delayed. And not even the right stopgap planes. We bought F/A 18 Super Hornets to replace our (awesome but old) F-111s. They're way too short range to be of any use in an Australian setting, and too bloody expensive for a stopgap. We should have bought F-15 Es for half the price, or upgraded variants of them like the F-15K, and then maintained a medium range strike capacity alongside the main fleet of F-35s if they ever turn up. Admittedly, there are cost issues associated with running two different aircraft, but they're not that bad, and since the government is insiting that we wont buy STOVL F-35s for our new LHDs, we lack any kind of medium-long range force projection capabilities from the air.

There are big on-paper advantages to the 35 of course - in our case, they wanted a single aircraft fleet, and the F-35 is the best option for that. But we're not even going to get them until 2020 and I don't care what anyone says, with the F-111s retired we do have an air capability gap right now.

Perhaps you should have chosen the F-22... despite its rumored control difficulties... and cost.

[Dragon]

F-22: ~$150 million/unit
F-35: ~$100-240 million/unit

Wasn't the JSF supposed to be cheaper than Raptor? It is somewhat less capable than F-22 and might end up costing... nearly twice as much? Epic fail, anyone?

[General Battuta]

Literally every time (I am making this up but I'm pretty sure it's true) the military has set out to make a system that Will Do Everything it has turned into a preposterously expensive and underperforming cluster****.

[Grizzly]

From my very very very limited experience with military hardware, the best planes and systems in general are designed to counter a very specific problem. The F-15, for example, was build to counter the (inaccurate assessments of the) Mig-25 Foxbat, and is really really good. The JSF, on the other hand, has been created in a time where all the enemies we have are vastly inferior technology wise then we are, and simply sets out to be the best fighter ever. Which sucks.

[An4ximandros]

 So you could say it sets out to be the worst fighter then?

[Al-Rik]

Literally every time (I am making this up but I'm pretty sure it's true) the military has set out to make a system that Will Do Everything it has turned into a preposterously expensive and underperforming cluster****.

That reminds me of the Eurofighter Typhoon: During the 80s it started with the codename "Jäger90" and was planned to replace the ageing Phantoms of the German Airforce during the 90s.
Because it was a joint venture between different European nations the plane should fill different roles and was designed to do them all...
Well, it didn't went well, the project became more and more expensive and took much longer than expected.