Browbeating Congress on F-22 looking dumber than ever
Before going farther down this cracked and broken path, the Pentagon needs to take a hard look at the consequences. On schedule and affordability, the JSF program is already a failure. In terms of capabilities and the long-term benefits of commonality, the jury is still out. And even if the F-35 delivers on everything it promised, the world has changed since 2001.
One problem is the lack of competition. Including the F-22, Lockheed will have been the sole U.S. producer of all-new fighters for 50 years by the time a “sixth-generation” aircraft comes along—no earlier than 2030—with significant consequences for the industrial base.
Faced with an ill-defined, but unacceptable trillion-dollar sustainment cost estimate for the F-35 fleet, the new tough-talking leader of the joint program office is considering abandoning the contractor-run support system and opening it to competition, including from government depots.
That might work long term, but it would do little to help warfighters stay ahead of threats through the 2020s. By 2021, U.S. forces will be operating only a fraction of the 2,400-plus F-35s they plan to buy. The bulk of U.S. fleets will comprise the same F-15s, F-16s and F/A-18s of 2001.
Some portion of that force will have been upgraded with the latest radars, avionics and weapons—at a cost that was not anticipated when the F-35 contract was awarded. But, for the most part, their airframes and engines will date back to the 1980s and 1990s, with all the costs and issues that come with age.Read it all.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, F-22, F-35
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:42 AM
2 Comments:
The original plan was for 750 F-22s. That got steadily whittled down to a "we really need a bare minimum of 250 F-22s to replace the 1,000+ F-15s". Then Obama got in office...That 250 bare minimum got sliced down to 177.
I believe the funds were found to retain a full set of tools and dyes, etc. for the F-22, so production could theoretically be restarted.
One large problem is that Obama wants to withdraw from the world. In the meantime, a big chunk of how the JSF gets funded comes from Tier 1 and Tier 2 partners who will make sub assemblies and components, not only for their own version but for all versions. For instance Turkey is supposed to make some of the airframe. As the US shrinks from the world stage under Obama II, there won't be any incentive for those Tier 1 and 2 countries to continue to underwrite the manufacturing process for a weapons system that won't have a mission and likely will never see the light of day at all.
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