Deep Intel on the F-35 

Wait until people in the 1950s find out how much the B-52 will cost for maintenance and production over the entire life of the program . . .

Oh

@@amygdalohippocampus haha....yes. And still money well spent

Legendary comment!!! I see why you are a 4 star armchair General!!!

Smart move involving allies in the build that is the key to long term affordablity

just do what the apache does, RWR automatically tells you what directions youre being locked/fired at from.

Much better than the Gronk. Bronk? You know who I mean.

If you’ve ever said “I stand with Ukraine” or used the flag in your social media bio… it’s probably just you.

@@jabroni6199 I never have but thank you for your valuable input

@@Tuffpaddy03 anytime bud

Russia is terrified of the F-35, that's why they had Pierre Sprey shit-talk about it on Russia Today

@@tostadatheviking7828 who is Pierre ghay?

Because it’s a fantastic aircraft or because the pilots want to be part of a massive program?

@@stevenaylor5163 Boeing shill enters the chat

@@stevenaylor5163 Forget about all the combat capabilities for a bit and just think about basic safety, ease of flight, and being able to return and land easily without mishaps. No other fighter in history compares well with the F-35A especially, nor do they compare well with the F-35B and F-35C when it comes to safety. Pilots don’t care about massive programs or newness over safety.

Thanks, that means a lot from someone involved in the program for so long.

@@TheMergeMedia YW! One of the pre F35 programs I don’t recall you mentioning was the A12, aka “the flying dorito”. If ever there was a masterclass in defense procurement malpractice, it was the A12. Fun fact, most of the F35’s engineering work in Ft Worth was at the offsite twin cube buildings that were built for the A12. I think this would be a great subject for you and Ward to cover in the future. That program ruined many careers and set Naval Aviation back at least a decade.

thank you!

Frankly fighter development programs are not one year marvels, they consume a decade or more... Within that decade or more technology advances, technology does not stop for a fighter development program... It is what it is...

JPO/Congress/Alcoa screwed Lockheed by mandating a certain % of 7085 aluminum for each F-35, when Lockheed and Boeing had already proven that they could use more engineered carbon fiber structures for bulkheads, ribs, spars, tail booms, etc. As a result, the first 6 F-35s were overweight pigs by thousands of pounds, unable to meet the program KPPs. They fired the JPO head, brought in Rick Abell from retirement as part of the SWAT weight loss program, who looked at everything and asked why they never let Lockheed build it the way they had planned? They went to an all carbon fiber quad tail for structures, and cut the weight down substantially, while increasing strength and service life. RCS dropped lower than F-22's as well at that point, since CF is RF transparent.

Details of the F-22 are harder to come by, but then it has only one operator, the US Air Force. The F-35 by contrast has many users and was designed from the start to have foreign production partners and a wide range of export customers. Apart from the usual suspects like Canada, Israel and the UK, the F-35 is being actively sold to countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and Thailand. As to which strategy - close secrecy or prolific export sales, makes the most sense for the safety and security of the USA, it's not simple to answer. The F-22 is full of technology that is still secret, but the project became expensive and thus vulnerable to cuts originating from inside the US political system. So the US cut back heavily on the number purchased, making them even more expensive per unit actually produced. The end result is that there aren't many of them in the air. Even a few losses would make it hard to justify continuing to operate the F-22, whatever its strengths as a weapon system. The F-35 by contrast became famous as the project it was impossible to stop. So many US states were involved in the project and so many allies had ordered it that politically it was bullet proof. As a result there are lot of them out there now whatever its actual qualities good or bad. Numerous far flung allies of the US such as Japan and Australia operate them. One way of achieving this was by reassuring existing and potential customers of how wonderful it is, and boasting of its many exotic features! Secrecy has to be compromised to some degree if you are going with this strategy.

DAS has zero to do with stealth though. DAS is a situational awareness tool for the pilot, not a targeting system. That's what the EOTS is for, since it has FLIR and a laser designator. So EOTS allows the pilot to look at stuff for targeting, etc.

@@yxeaviationphotog the distributed aperture system is stated to be capable of detecting AND tracking both ground and air launched missiles, tactical ballistic missiles, aircraft, and allowing for missiles to be cued based on the information from its sensors, allowing for 360 degree shots to be made. There are a couple videos on YT demonstrating such from about 10 years back, and Raytheon claims to have improved the system as much as twice or so.

DAS is an evolution of the F-22's IR MAWS. The fidelity of the newer IR cameras made it a situational awareness and sensor-cueing system as well.

Great correction, thanks for holding my feet to fire so bad info isn't propagated.

thanks!!!

Thanks, will do!

One other thing that you forgot to mention: the 2070 lifetime cost is calculated in 2070 dollars, including speculated inflation rate. Back-adjusting to FY2023 US dollars puts the F-35's total lifetime cost at about $675 billion in today's dollars - certainly not cheap, but also not the staggering $1.2 trillion the media screams about. If you do the math, that also means the latest cost growth in the F-35 program is basically owed *entirely* to inflation adjustment. These lifetime cost calculations started in the 1970s as part of the general Congressional push to exert more control over the US military, after the debacle of Vietnam, failure of programs like the F-111B, XB-70, and B-1A, as well as other programs like the Spruance- class DDs and Ticonderoga-class CGs failing to deliver on promised cost savings or going over budget. Amusingly though, this increased reporting requirement has actually only helped to obscure the true state of acquisition further, especially in relation to stuff in the 1950s and 1960s. At a time when the ends justified the means and reporting was incredibly-opaque, 25%+ cost overruns and schedule slips of half a year or more were basically the norm. But because there was no reporting, nobody realizes that the 1950s were an era of great progress as much because we threw massive amounts of shit at the wall as because of any particularly-competent program management.

I made a similar comment elsewhere but you nailed it. Ward just laps up the stupid "lifetime cost" schtick and tries to divide it and come up with a cost per airframe too?? Absurd, but what else do you expect from someone who's stuck in the glory days of 1986...?

And the 1000th was delivered on 8 February.

Ambhibious Landing ships will not even come in Range to attack mainland China. If the Attack is expected. You'd have to send in B-2 Bombers, or if given 20 years from now, B-21's. Remember: the Fuel capacity of the B-variant is compromized without external fuel tanks or Mid air refueling, (Which should happen outside of China's weapon range).

@@Gunni1972 I never said they'd be attacking mainland china

thanks!!

Gotcha 🇷🇺 🤖

They sound like Thor the thunder God. I've also had them fly over my house in NSW doing touch and goes at the local airport, loudest plane I've ever heard.

Thanks so much for the generous support!

Thank you!

F-4 and multiple other programs were bigger than F-16. 5,195 F-4s were built. We’ll need to make 500 more F-16s to reach F-4 numbers.

@@LRRPFco52, but not in terms of costs, new tech introduction, distributed production, etc...i.e. from a Program Management perspective.

to be fair, the program management (lack thereof) is pretty important to understanding why the program derailed as it did. I've looked into similar programs of the time and nature like the Ford and Zumwalt classes, and having heard from people involved it seems a lot of programs silently suffered a similar case, and in the Zumwalt's case an otherwise revolutionary ship didn't make it because of poorly it was managed and damaged the perception of such programs. The fact that the people who caused the death of such a program were never publicly outed is a crime in my book

It just started you haven't even watched all of it.

Thanks!

That'll be next. Thanks for watching/listening, Austin!

Yeah, the original YF-35 had a manually operated, side-hinged canopy for cost savings. Is the Pentagon telling me that for all the additional problems and system requirements that stemmed from the front-hinged canopy, the same problem couldn’t be solved the same way it was solved on the low cost YF-35 that could also operate STOVL? How much Air Farce dick do I have to suck to get my tax dollars back?

@@chrisbullard5901 "YF-35"(sic) X-35 "the low cost YF-35"(sic) If you think $375,000,000 is "low cost" you must be a civil servant. By the way how many MMH are saved by the front hinged canopy when pulling the seat?

Probably, but the ISS would like an honorable mention. At least the F-35 program has some utility.

And you added to the quality how?

Seriously. Lots of boomers and reformers who can't accept their their holy Warthog is obsolete.

@@fl1tz4r It was cool in Transformers, but still couldn't kill what it shot at. Metaphorically applies to A-10 IRL