Just another item to help instill confidence in our fighting ability
Despite 400% Cost Increase And Poor Reliability, F-35 Approved For Increased Production Rate
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
.......But the $2 trillion topline cost doesn’t tell the whole picture, as getting to that number requires reducing the number of hours each F-35 flies per year by 21 percent on average. While reducing stick time for pilots will certainly reduce costs for the maintenance-intensive F-35, it is an awful way to do so as it will inevitably result in less-experienced, less-capable pilots who could end up paying the ultimate price due to inadequate training.
Further, for such an accounting trick to have any chance of succeeding in keeping costs down, we must count on our enemies not to engage in actions that force us to use our F-35s more than their meager estimated 8 to 10 hours of allotted flight hours per month.
.........Further, all the evidence suggests that the
F-35 sortie generation rate will be vastly inferior to combat-proven planes like the F-16 and the A-10 that over the years have been modernized/upgraded to feature state-of-the-art technology. And let’s not forget the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been in development since 1994, and that U.S. taxpayers have already
spent more than $300 billion on it.
This begs the question of how the F-35 was certified for full-rate production even while its very expensive combat capabilities are not yet ready for real-life testing (simulations don’t count) and the
F-35’s full mission capability rate could be as low as 30 percent. We don’t know the answer because the DOT&E testing report is not available to the taxpaying public.
What we do know is that the F-35’s overall reliability is poor, its engine is inadequate, it
can’t do close air support, its
within-visual-range dogfighting is mediocre at best, its range while carrying a full weapons loadout in “Beast Mode”
is poor, and because of its ongoing weight issues, key safety equipment was removed from it, making it arguably
the most fragile plane in the U.S. fighter inventory. Given these facts, its recent certification warrants a large dose of skepticism.
Finally, does anyone really believe the $2 trillion program cost is the final word or that new engine cores will be ready to go in 2029?