Forbes magazine on February 23 (I serve the Soviet Union!) published an article with the eloquent title “The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed”. That is, “The U.S. Air Force has admitted the failure of the F-35 stealth fighter project”
The US Air Force high command wanted a relatively cheap and light fighter to replace the vintage Cold War-era F-16s, and to complement them with a small fleet of sophisticated – but expensive and unreliable – stealth fighters.
The result would be a mix of expensive “fifth-generation” F-22s and F-35s and inexpensive “fifth-generation minus” jets, explained Air Force Commander General Charles Brown Jr.
If this plan sounds familiar, it’s because the Air Force announced more than twenty years ago that it was launching development of low-cost, lightweight fighters to replace the vintage Cold War-era F-16s, and in addition a small fleet of sophisticated – but expensive and unreliable – stealth fighters.
But over twenty-odd years of development, this “light and inexpensive fighter” to replace it became increasingly heavy and expensive as the Air Force and leading contractor Lockheed Martin lavished more and more technology on it.
Yes, we’re talking about the F-35. The twenty-five-ton invisible warplane was the very problem it was meant to solve. And now, officials say, America needs a new fighter jet to solve the F-35 problem.
With a price tag for the aircraft in the region of $100 million apiece, including the engine, the F-35 is super-expensive. And while it has invisibility and high-tech sensors, while it also needs constant expensive maintenance, it is unreliable.
“The F-35 is not a cheap and lightweight fighter jet”, – says Dan Ward, former Air Force programme manager and author of popular business books including The Simplicity Cycle.
“The F-35 is a Ferrari,” Brown told reporters last Thursday. “You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. It’s our ‘high end’ fighter, we want to make sure we don’t have to use it in all the low-level conflicts.”
“I want to regulate the frequency of use of this aircraft”, – Brown added.
‘That’s why we need a new, simpler fighter aircraft to take on the burden of day-to-day operations. Today, about a thousand F-16s at the disposal of the Air Force perform this role. But we haven’t bought a new F-16 from Lockheed since 2001. All the F-16s are too old.”
In his last interview before he resigned in January, Will Roper, the Air Force procurement officer, floated the idea of buying new F-16s. But Brown disapproved of the idea, saying he no longer wanted “classic aircraft”.
The seventeen-ton non-visible F-16 is too difficult to upgrade with the latest software, Brown explained. Instead of ordering “new old” F-16s, he added, the Air Force should initiate a “clean-sheet design” for a new low-cost fighter.
Brown’s comments are effectively an admission of the failure of the F-35 programme. As expected in the nineties, this program was to produce thousands of fighters to replace almost all of the then-existing tactical combat aircraft owned by the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
The Air Force alone needed about 1,800 F-35s to replace the aging F-16s and A-10s, and to at least partially form a mix of simple and sophisticated aircraft, it also needed to replace 180 F-22 twin-engines into the high-tech segment.
But the Air Force and Lockheed have failed the F-35 already at the basic concept level.
“They tried to make the F-35 do too much”, – says Dan Grezier, an analyst with the Project on Government Oversight in Washington.
You need a small-wing version for ground operations, a large-wing version for fleet aircraft carriers with catapults and a vertical takeoff version for small Marine Corps warships.
Complexity increases cost. Increased cost causes delays. Delays give time for developers to further complicate the design. This adds more cost. This causes more delays. And so on.
Fifteen years after the F-35 first flew, the Air Force has only 250 of them. Now the service is signalling possible cuts to the programme. And not because Brown called them a “boutique”, high-tech fighter jet in the F-22 class. The Air Force has ended production of the F-22 after building just 195 copies.
“The F-35 is at a crossroads”, – says Grazier.
Pentagon leaders have realised that the US military needs to shift its focus towards the big threats – i.e. Russia and China – and so the Navy and Air Force will need most of the US military budget of more than $700 billion. And all at the expense of the Army.
“If we want to start production of a new fighter jet, now is the right time”, – says Grazier.
“The Air Force could end production of the F-35 after just a couple of hundred units and divert tens of billions to a new fighter aircraft programme.
But it is an open question whether the Air Force will ever succeed in developing a lightweight, low-cost fighter jet. The new low-tech jet may suffer the same fate that befell the previous one (we’re talking about the F-35): it will gradually gain weight, complexity and cost, becoming high-tech, heavy and expensive.
If that happens, as it has before, the next Air Force chief might tell reporters, say in 2041, that “The new F-36 is a Ferrari, and you don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day.” And will add that “The Air Force needs to develop a new, cheap and lightweight fighter to replace the sixty-year-old F-16.”
Alexander Rogers, Journalist Truth News Agency