U.S. military officials have grounded all F-35s while continuing to investigate a runway fire involving one of the fighter jets at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.Back in the day, when these things weren't so fucking expensive, the Army/Air Force often would buy two different airplanes and fund them through initial production in case one of them turned out to be a failure. Even now, they get the top two flying.
In a statement issued Thursday, the Pentagon's press secretary said Air Force and Navy officials ordered the F-35 fleet grounded after initial findings in the incident in Florida on June 23.
But in this case, I doubt if the XF-32 would have been any better. The services have "christmas-treed" too many mission requirements onto the F-35, from VTOL close-air support to air-superiority. The Air Force, Navy and Marines publicly expect the F-35 to do every fixed-wing mission except trash-hauling and strategic bombing. That strikes me as being borderline locked-ward grade insanity.
If you read between the lines of this story, the Navy is hedging its bets on the F-35.
2 comments:
And it started out as such a simple idea:
"Hey, I know what! Let's take a Swiss Army Knife and put wings on it."
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
See Fighter, Experimental, TFX...nuff said.
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