Reminiscing About Ill-Considered Defense Cuts November 5, 2011
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
The woes of the F-35:
Ten years and $66 billion later, the aircraft is still in development, five years behind schedule and 64 percent over cost estimates. The Obama administration may cancel some models and also cut the Pentagon’s orders.Miss me yet?
…
The Pentagon in June 2010 estimated the program’s total cost to be about $382 billion, taking into account an extension of development phase of the program, additional tests and delayed production.
If only there were another aircraft, an aircraft still in production, say a fifth-generation fighter available at $70 million per copy. If only.
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I remember reading an article long ago about fighter warfare.
The point was — winning air superiority does not depend on the technological sophistication of the platform.
Winning depends on how many fighters you can afford to put in the sky.
That’s what the Soviet Union did with MIGs. They were cheap and numerous. They got sold all over the Soviet sphere of influence. Meanwhile, America and France were developing really cool, expensive planes.
Go figure.
Those Migs were pretty bad-ass, weren’t they?
And the combat record of the F-15 against all MiG’s is what?
We don’t have the pilots to field a never ending swarm of jets. So making the pilots we do have more potent is a good plan. And the F22 can just about ignore most previous gen fighters because they either lack the radar or the speed to engage.
When the canned the F22 I could see them pulling the same bit on the F35 and here we are. The two were designed to compliment each other and invalidate every other air force on the planet. No we are going to be stuck with jets that are 40 years old today for the next 20 years.