This article isn’t really telling the whole story. Most of the numbers are the kind of metrics interpretation a dickhead boss might use to deny you a bonus — they’re technically true but each misrepresents or neglects to mention key context that largely negates the straightforward-sounding ‘fact’ you would assume that the measurement is telling you (examples such as the costs not being averaged out over the entire life of the program, or using a military definition of ‘mission capable’ in a way that implies a layman’s understanding — your car might not be ‘mission capable’ if the interior cab light is out and the mission has a line about ‘capability to read maps at night’, but you can still drive it just fine).
There’s a thousand of these kind of piddling complaints about the F-35, and each of them turns into a nothingburger upon careful scrutiny. Articles like this get clicks by dogpiling them, but the F-35 is about average on costs and problems for a new groundbreaking plane, and unlike true military boondoggles (cough, littoral combat ship) the F-35 is a highly useful weapons platform and delivers effective combat capabilities that are heads and tails above other aircraft.
The short version is this: Even sandbox savages are running around with SAMs that can blast A10s right out of the air these days, and radars see a loaded F-16 coming so well we might as well launch a pilot recovery mission at the same time, if it’s against a peer adversary. The airframes don’t have the shape or space to add the new radars and stealth that the F-35 carries, so you can’t just ‘upgrayyed’, and the costs of interagency government waste is just as bad or worse to build a brand-new less advanced plane adapted to fit the new tech.
In fact, it’s very likely that this ‘4.5-gen’ plane is just that - a way to create a brand-new spending pit that can afford to cut 10% for the Big Guy mainly by not actually having to innovate anything new.
Your welcome for not having to read books full of military jargon and budget definitions to understand this better than Princess Kamel.
This article isn’t really telling the whole story. Most of the numbers are the kind of metrics interpretation a dickhead boss might use to deny you a bonus — they’re technically true but each misrepresents or neglects to mention key context that largely negates the straightforward-sounding ‘fact’ you would assume that the measurement is telling you (examples such as the costs not being averaged out over the entire life of the program, or using a military definition of ‘mission capable’ in a way that implies a layman’s understanding — your car might not be ‘mission capable’ if the interior cab light is out and the mission has a line about ‘capability to read maps at night’, but you can still drive it just fine).
There’s a thousand of these kind of piddling complaints about the F-35, and each of them turns into a nothingburger upon careful scrutiny. Articles like this get clicks by dogpiling them, but the F-35 is about average on costs and problems for a new groundbreaking plane, and unlike true military boondoggles (cough, littoral combat ship) the F-35 is a highly useful weapons platform and delivers effective combat capabilities that are heads and tails above other aircraft.
The short version is this: Even sandbox savages are running around with SAMs that can blast A10s right out of the air these days, and radars see a loaded F-16 coming so well we might as well launch a pilot recovery mission at the same time, if it’s against a peer adversary. The airframes don’t have the shape or space to add the new radars and stealth that the F-35 carries, so you can’t just ‘upgrayyed’, and the costs of interagency government waste is just as bad or worse to build a brand-new less advanced plane adapted to fit the new tech.
In fact, it’s very likely that this ‘4.5-gen’ plane is just that - a way to create a brand-new spending pit that can afford to cut 10% for the Big Guy mainly by not actually having to innovate anything new.
Your welcome for not having to read books full of military jargon and budget definitions to understand this better than Princess Kamel.