Close on the heels of reports that the Pentagon plans to cut F-35 orders over the next several years, an internal Navy study leaked last week drove a new wave of speculation in the defense and aerospace industries.The defender of the F-35 program, who was quoted in the article, works for LockMart, the maker of the F-35, but you'll have to read the article carefully to discern that.
The study, by the Navy’s aviation arm, says the cost to buy and operate that service’s version of the F-35 will be dramatically higher than predicted — 40 percent more than existing aircraft — and will put a serious squeeze on future budgets.
Can they make anything these days?
We're slowly losing our manufacturing capacity. As we do that, we lose the ability to build things well. That's certainly not the only problem with DoD procurement, but it's becoming one of them.
ReplyDeleteLike the looming problem of the service not being able to find enough educated, fit young people to serve, this is another case of our leaders' unwillingness to think ahead when they set policy.
Given that the F18 Super Hornet is a fairly new aircraft, meets all current and projected Navy requirements, etc., WTF is the F-35 for? I understand the notion of "well, let's get parts commonality across all the services!", but the redesigns needed to navalize the F-35 basically render that argument as utter nonsense. Yeah, the engine is the same between the AF and Navy versions of the F-35. Big f**king deal, the Super Bug was designed to have low maintenance costs from the start too so there's likely to be no difference there.
ReplyDeleteI think most of the problems of the F-35 program boil down to, "we really don't need this fighter plane but want to keep LockMart in business." But surely there's some cheaper corporate welfare program that could be done here rather than a new fighter that's not needed. Or just nationalize them like the French nationalized Dassault when Dassault ran into problems, for cryin' out loud!