I was really addressing the F-35 being a huge waste of money, but I think that the F-4 was successful in so far as it worked for multiple forces and was around for a long time and by may different countries and there are still some of them in active service with other countries IIRC. I think it was an air craft that had a lot of flaws and was basically adapted to do different jobs rather than was designed to do them and is really a testament to the adage that if you put a big enough engine on anything you can make if fly, and if at first you don’t succeed, try putting a gun on it next time. Not sure what exactly your issue with the F-111 is or was, but it had a very similar service history wrt time in service and official retirement date from the US main line service. It certainly wasn’t as versatile as the F-4 but I don’t think you can say that an aircraft that served from the 60’s through the 90’s was unsuccessful.
I think the F-4’s combat record and longevity speak for itself.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamera wanted to consolidate programs (particularly aircraft) between services. This worked well with the F-4 and the LTV A-7 Corsair II. McNamera wanted a dual-service aircraft, with the goal of saving money through commonality. The Air Force wanted a tactical bomber, and the Navy wanted a Fleet Air Defense fighter. The Navy version (which I built models of when I was a kid – shorter nose and longer wings) was overweight, hard to land, and was outclassed by newer Soviet designs. The difference in service history between the F-4 and the F-111 is that while the F-111 served with the Air Force as a tactical bomber and EW aircraft, it never served in the Navy. The F-4 served with both forces – plus the Marine Corps and several foreign forces. The proposed F-111B’s role was taken by the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
The F-35 looks like a repeat of the F-111 fiasco, where one airplane is supposed to take on three very different roles. It might be a good aircraft for the Air Force (if they can get it to run in hot climates). It would probably be a better V/STOL aircraft for the Marine Corps than the AV-8B Harrier. It might make a good fleet air defense aircraft. But to make it perform well in all three roles requires too much compromise and is too much to ask of a single platform.
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The F-35 looks like a repeat of the F-111 fiasco, where one airplane is supposed to take on three very different roles. It might be a good aircraft for the Air Force (if they can get it to run in hot climates). It would probably be a better V/STOL aircraft for the Marine Corps than the AV-8B Harrier. It might make a good fleet air defense aircraft. But to make it perform well in all three roles requires too much compromise and is too much to ask of a single platform.
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Time will tell, and I generally agree with the point you are making here. It still doesn’t necessarily make it a huge waste of money. My feeling on this is that it was more technically challenging than they thought, and because it’s a next gen air craft that they are trying to put a lot of new cutting edge tech into it’s run into loads of issues, but it’s an air frame that will probably be with us for decades and my guess is that by the time it’s been in service for a similar length of time as many other US fighters and has gone through mods and revisions it will be one of the good ones. The F-111 might not have been good at everything, but it was a distinguished air craft with as much longevity as the F-4 in terms of length of service and use of air frame, and I expect the US will end up getting it’s money out of the F-35 as well in the end. I recall that bad things were said about many US weapons systems at this stage in development and deployment, especially the ones that pushed the envelop, while the tried and true designs that didn’t have really faded away.
I’ve read several accounts of war games pointing out that the F35 is a dismal failure. I sincerely hope they have something in the pipeline that replace that aircraft.
Considering the F-35 hasn’t seen combat yet, I think it’s ludicrously premature to dub it a failure, anymore than it would be to call it a success.
I think the F-35 will go down, like many other fighters before it, as a jet that was massively criticized as problematic, expensive and troubled…until it went into combat and absolutely kicked the teeth out of its enemies.
Based on its history with the F-22, the U.S. military will probably use it in combat as little as possible.
It is ironic that its name is Lightning II. The first Lightning had a huge number of teething troubles when it was introduced, but turned into a remarkable fighter. That says nothing about how the F-35 will eventually turn out, of course.
It’s especially ironic because one of the problems with the original Lightning was extremely limited range. It’s the same problem that the F-35B the Royal Navy will be using (probably) has.
I can’t think of many aircraft that have had this sort of development hell. Granted, I wasn’t born when most of the American 4th generation aircraft were introduced.
It depends on how you want to calculate things. The F-35 program development costs rose from about $35 billion when the program started to a current estimate of about $55 billion, or about a 60% increase. Yes, a 60% increase so far, but it seems that over the last two years, the development cost increases have been reined in.
For comparison’s sake, the F-22 was expected to cost $11 billion in development, and it ended up costing about $28 billion. I would add that there were a slew of capabilities that were planned but delayed, and are still under development, such as some tactical data links, that are still costing about a quarter of a billion per year. And yet, the general belief is that the F-35 is a raging disaster of a program, but the F-22 is the coolest airplane since the A-10.
In other metrics, the F-14 had several examples of unplanned interceptions of a certain planet during its test program. IIRC, about four or five of the developmental aircraft experienced temperatures, G forces, and levels of dirt far in excess of the parameters of the test program.
I’m not sure it’s fair to compare the F-35 program to the F-22, though. The F-35 is largely (though obviously not entirely) built to take advantage of technologies that the F-22 had to pioneer. By rights, the F-35 should have been relatively easy to build since in many ways it’s just a scaled down F-22. Granted, there’s the big hole in the middle of the B version but I get the impression that many of the development issues are unrelated to the VTOL stuff.
The idea that the F-35 is a scaled down F-22 is simply incorrect, with the exceptions of the engine and the radar where there is clear heritage. For example, the F-35 optical sensors simply don’t exist on the F-22. The F-22 uses a traditional helmet, which the F-35 does not. The software on the F-35 has about four times more lines of code than on the F-22. In numerous ways, the F-35 is more complex than the F-22.
I can only assume that you think the F-35 is a scaled down F-22 simply because it was designed to be cheaper, and they are both Lockheed products.
ETA: I should add once again that my view of the F-35 fundamental problem is that people assumed it would be three versions of the same plane – sort of like the differences between a Honda Accord EX, LX, and SLE editions. In reality, they are more like three different development programs with some commonality – sort of like how the chassis of a Chevy Tahoe was used as the chassis for the Hummer II, but one wouldn’t call the Hummer simply a variant of the Tahoe.
Well, it’s a bit more than just that. As you say, it’s an airframe that uses many of the same components, the same materials the same engine, the same AESA radar, and is built by the same people. But it’s also built to the same basic plan; that is, to be a true stealth aircraft that doesn’t sacrifice performance or dogfighting capability.
And sure, the F-22 uses a different helmet and doesn’t have helmet mounted displays or targeting systems (yet). But let’s face it, that’s a relatively minor system, and again it doesn’t seem to be one that’s holding up F-35 development.
Same goes for the software; that doesn’t seem to be the issue. Naturally the F-35 is more complex; it’s going to enter service 20 years later. It seems to be dynamic issues that are holding it up, though.
No, it isn’t the same airframe, engine, or radar. That’s just incorrect. The F135 is not an F119, and the development of the F135 has had significant problems (notably several fan blade issues), and last year the cost of production over the program was estimated to have increased by $4 billion. The radar has been smooth sailing, but it is NOT the same radar (APG-81 vs. APG-77).
Dude, you have no clue what you’re talking about now. Software has been the number one development problem for the last several years. It isn’t even debatable. Delays in software development are THE overriding reason why the program has been delayed. You are so far off on this, you might as well argue that soccer is played with an oblong ball.
Fair enough. I haven’t followed it as closely as I was when this thread was a non-zombie.
You’ve got the history of the F-111 and the TFX disaster that it emerged as a highly successful bomber from despite McNamara’s (the man who brought us all Vietnam) best efforts to make it a fiasco a bit wrong. McNamara wanted the Air Force and Navy to share the same aircraft to be better for the budget, regardless of any sense it made. Pretty much the only thing the Air Force and Navy wanted in common was a variable-geometry aircraft which was at the time a new concept. Past that what the Air Force and Navy were looking for was pretty much diametrically opposed. The Air Force wanted an all-weather low altitude deep penetration bomber that would be able to penetrate deep into defended airspace by flying at high subsonic or low supersonic speeds at extremely low altitudes to evade defenses using terrain-following radar. Terrain-following radar was an entirely new concept and the TFX was going to be the first plane to ever use it. The Air Force didn’t care at all about the plane’s high altitude performance; it was never going to conduct missions at high altitude, it was in fact being designed for impressive low level performance to avoid SAMs which were proving to be all too effective against aircraft at those altitude bands. What the Navy wanted was a high performance, high altitude interceptor to deal with the threat of Soviet bombers carrying anti-ship missiles that had ranges of 250 miles and up. To deal with this the Navy wanted a plane that could carry up to 6 AIM-54 Phoenix missiles which could engage targets 80 nautical miles or more out, an unprecedented range for an air-to-air missile at the time when the AIM-7 Sparrow with a range of about 24 miles was about the longest range air-to-air missile in service anywhere. To provide detection and guidance an extremely large and powerful radar, the AN/AWG-9 was to be fitted in the nose and allow at the time unheard of targeting and guidance of all 6 missiles at different targets at the same time. The Navy wanted a plane that could get off the deck of a carrier and rapidly climb to altitude, reach high supersonic speeds at high altitude to be able to intercept Soviet bombers hundreds of miles out, before they could get within 250 miles of the carrier and launch their anti-ship missiles. The Navy didn’t care about the planes low-altitude performance; it wasn’t going to be operating there. That’s why the Navy was able to break free of McNamara’s idiotic TFX plan and develop the F-14.
Sadly, the Aardvark gets tarred with the TFX program which it was developed from and has a highly undeserved reputation as a poor aircraft - you yourself called it the F-111 fiasco - when it was actually a very successful bomber in spite of McNamara’s best efforts to make it a fiasco. It had an extremely low loss rate in Vietnam with only 6 losses out of over 4,000 missions flown, and during Desert Storm in 1991 because it was one of the only planes that could laze its own targets the F-111F dropped over 80% of the laser guided bombs used during the war despite there only being 66 F-111Fs deployed.
What’s so hard about giving a military contractor a fixed budget - say, $50 billion - and a fixed deadline - say, one thousand new jets delivered in 15 years - and say, “Any cost overruns over the $50 billion, you pay for out of your own pocket, and any delays beyond 15 years, you pay a huge penalty of ten million dollars per past-deadline jet?”
If they don’t want to comply, there are plenty of other defense contractors who would love such a big, lucrative contract.
Because in your scenario here you don’t have any flex for innovating new technology, nothing for adds or changes to the contract (which is actually where most of the delays and overruns come from btw), and it’s so vague that no defense contractor would take it…or they would take it and deliver exactly what you asked for, which would probably suck since it wouldn’t take into account any innovations or shifts in mission or experience gained. So, you’d be out $50 billion and get what you asked for in the quantity you asked for, and it would probably be a huge waste.
The government isn’t always stupid, and there are reasons things happen like they do.
That would have worked in the US just fine before you were down to , realistically, two contractors capable of doing so. When Northrup, McDonnell-Douglas,General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Fairchild were still separate you could have done that. You are down to two now, Boeing and LM, which limits your choices substantially. Hence, the mess we are in now.
Think of it this way: any contract like that is essentially made of the elements of cost, schedule, and performance. You’ve outlined a rigid cost and schedule, but not performance – as in, what you want this jet to do. As you offered it, there’s zero doubt that all contractors would bid aircraft that simply weren’t very innovative.
Sometimes that’s okay. Boeing has a fixed-cost development contract with the Air Force for a tanker. It’s relatively low risk, since it doesn’t have to be stealthy or anything. But guess what – Boeing’s had a few bumps in the road, flight tests are slightly delayed, and they are taking a hit in the pocketbook for signing up to that contract. And that’s just for a plain, vanilla tanker.
If you want some kind of cutting edge technology in your jet, there’s going to be risk that the technology won’t work right the first time. To correct that, the contractor needs time and money to work out the problems. So a risk on one element (performance) means that the contractors will hedge on the other two elements (cost and schedule).
If you want a jet to go Mach 3, be stealthy, have awesome radar, and you want 1,000 of them in six years at a cost of $20 billion, no contractor in their right mind would entertain that offer.
Look, defense contractors are very shrewd businesses. They exist to make a profit. The idea that they’d take a bad deal just because they are afraid that someone else would is not realistic in the slightest. There are numerous instances where contractors simply won’t bid on something because they don’t see the business case for it – perfect example, Airbus declined to bid on the Air Force tanker contract I mentioned earlier. They just didn’t see a way to win and make a profit, so they essentially said, “Hey Boeing, if you think you can make a buck on this, it’s all yours. We’re out.”
So, what you’re proposing has been tried. Sometimes it works for non-risky technology. For anything innovative, it’s a hugely risky business proposition for the contractors, and they weren’t born yesterday. They’re perfectly happy not to take a contract that doesn’t serve their shareholders.