Re: Airplanes as Sacred Cows


Message posted by JoenTX on December 02, 2010 at 18:12:23 PST:

The F-35 will go on.

#1-Much of the justification in cutting the F-22 buy was that the F-35 was going to be more advanced and more adaptable to a broader range of roles, thus, a smarter money move. Now with F-22 production coming to the end and nothing else at all anywhere close to being in the pipeline, there's no way it can be axed. The USAF, Navy, and USMC have squadrons to fill and there's not much else that can do it save for the Navy which could conceivably go all SH but they want in on the advanced stealth platform as much as the next guy.

#2-There are scads of foreign buyers who've signed agreements and paid development money to get in on the program. Additionally, nations like Spain and Italy have signed on to buy the VTOL version which they have invested large sums of money in recent years to build up VTOL carrier fleets for. Re-furb'd 40 year old Sea Harriers aren't gonna cut it for them.

#3-Along with #2, the USMC has a dozen LHA/LHD decks to fill with a fixed-wing support platform as they have been doing for the last 40 years with various versions of the Harrier. They can't opt for the Super Hornet and half of the original Harrier II force is already sitting in the desert or sold off to other nations.


The success, from the get-go, of the F-35 was going to hinge upon economies of scale. The more customers, the more built, the lower the cost would be to displace the expected high development costs. I believe that cutting a version or an order now to "save money" will only come directly back to impact that decision as the cost of those versions/airframes remaining will almost surely grow proportionally to make up the difference. The Brits, once cutting their order for the VTOL version and then spending the extra cost of changing their planned carriers from VTOL to CTOL, I do not believe will really realize any actual savings. It's a short term stunt to make bad budgetary numbers look a little better which ultimately in 5, 10, 15 years will not look any much better in reality than they would have otherwise.


All that said, with the reference to Canada's purchase above, I do really wonder if it is the best choice for them. To me the Super Hornet does really seem a better fit for them. Canada's interests are almost entirely of the self defense nature. The SH is equipped electronically and arms wise to deal with a wide array of foreseeable threats they might face in this respect.
Just the amateur military aircraft enthusiast in me thinking out loud......


In Reply to: Airplanes as Sacred Cows posted by Turbo 182 on December 02, 2010 at 4:30:54 PST:

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