{"id":194323,"date":"2008-10-05T06:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-05T11:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/05\/the-jsf-is-less-capable-and-more-expensive-than-previously-admitted\/"},"modified":"2008-10-05T06:22:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-05T11:22:00","slug":"the-jsf-is-less-capable-and-more-expensive-than-previously-admitted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/05\/the-jsf-is-less-capable-and-more-expensive-than-previously-admitted\/","title":{"rendered":"The JSF is Less Capable and More Expensive Than Previously Admitted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, we now have reports of Israel signing a contract to buy F-35 JSFs for $15.2 billion<\/a> (see also here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As Bill Sweetman notes<\/a> this means that the JSF costs about $200 million a plane, well over the $80m claimed for the aircraft, and more than the fly away cost of the F-22<\/span>.<\/p>\n

As I’ve noted earlier, there was a Rand study modeling the F-35 against an upgraded Su-27, and it was allegedly clubbed like a baby seal (here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This is unsurprising: with a thrust to weight ratio of about 0.85:1 in air to air configuration, and a wing loading of 108 lbs\/sq ft, similar to the F-105 Thunderchief (aka the “Lead Sled”), this will not be a particularly agile aircraft, even with a state of the art flight control system.<\/p>\n

It appears now that the USAF and Lochkeed Martin are claiming that Maneuvering is Irrelevant<\/a>, as the fighter will have the Distributed Aperture System (DAS), a system of multiple wide angle sensors that will create a 360\u00b0 view around the aircraft, and so it will be able to fly through at high speed and launch a, “high-off-boresight, lock-on-after-launch (LOAL) missile shot with any datalink-equipped missile.”<\/p>\n

They said that the missiles would do all the work before Viet Nam too, and the USAF and the Navy had to start training their pilots to dogfight again.<\/p>\n

BTW, Bill Sweetman (again), in writing about the 360 degree attack, notes that there was a precedent, the Boulton-Paul Defiant, and notes:<\/p>\n

If the Germans had had an expression for “clubbed like baby seals” in 1940, the Luftwaffe would have used it. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My thoughts exactly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, we now have reports of Israel signing a contract to buy F-35 JSFs for $15.2 billion (see also here). As Bill Sweetman notes this means that the JSF costs about $200 million a plane, well over the $80m claimed for the aircraft, and more than the fly away cost of the F-22. As I’ve …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1007,1008,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-defense-procurement","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}