“Notorious F-35”? Oh yeah! For me the F-35 Flying Swindle has been a constant source of sardonic comedy ever since it began, and now? The USAF version of the F-35 is wearing out its engines very fast and the solution to that problem according to the new USAF Chief of Staff, General Brown, is to use it less; the thing is like a Ferrari says Brown, too good to drive every day. The USAF needs a totally new design for a fast light fighter to replace the F-35 which was supposed to be the new fast light fighter to replace the F-16, now 28 years old.
They’re going to use the F-35 less? I’m thinking that defeats the purpose of using it at all which is to develop pilot skills; I’m also remembering everything Pierre Sprey said about the design in the first place, dire predictions of failure which have never stopped becoming true.
The plane is so heavy that it needs a huge fuel hungry hot engine to push it to a decent sub-sonic speed and to break the sound barrier at all and keep it supersonic it needs afterburner. The transition through the sound barrier is life threatening for the pilot because the thing is so ungainly and un-aerodynamic it threatens to judder itself to pieces and/or flip into a death dive.
If it makes it to it’s design maximum speed that afterburner will use up all of its fuel very quickly. But that’s the least of the problems because in afterburner mode the tail planes start to melt. You read that right. So afterburner use, and supersonic speed, has to be done in short bursts only. Now the engines, being so big and hot, are wearing out so fast the plane has to be used less; so the F-35 has to become a hanger queen for air shows only, like the F-22, and the USAF and USN are left with the F-16, F-15 and F-18, upgraded sure, but still basically Cold-War era planes. Russia and China both have developed planes that leave the USAF far behind.
The Navy and Air Force have a root problem, and that is the unbeatable, world class corruption of the US military development and procurement system. Pierre Sprey was as accurate in his estimation of the LCS program. It’s resulted in the Little Crappy Ship he predicted. The LCS ships are “unsurvivable” in any real combat situation.
These military ships and planes reflect the decay of American industry in general. US aircraft carriers are falling into disrepair because the four dry docks that repair them are falling into disrepair, for instance. The new aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford, is way over budget, unaffordable, and has had so many problems it’s having a hard time being deployed. You have to wonder how many other USN ships are “disintegrating in contact with salt water."
Meanwhile China has developed a fleet of small fast cheap ships which can launch anti-ship missiles to far outrange and outsmart the USN’s antiquated missiles and confound any defense. Russia too has developed successful literal ships that can be transported by truck and has fielded hypersonic missiles which make carriers obsolete. The US military is not even in the race to match any of these developments.
The key is the good economic health and streamlined industrial capacity of both Russia and China. The story of these rival military development systems is the story of the future in a nutshell. America is in terminal decline because industrial productivity gave way to fantasies of a post-industrial, ‘digital’ world which never could exist. If you can’t produce you don’t have an economy and military power is downstream from economic power.
