Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies...
>>
WASHINGTON: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the costliest weapons procurement project ever, is set to make its maiden test flight next week, a U.S. general running the project said on Tuesday.
>>
Most spent on a 'cheapest fighter'. Snort.
>>
"I am optimistic that we will see the airplane fly as early as Monday" at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Fort Worth, Texas, test site, Marine Brig. Gen. David Heinz, the Pentagon program office's deputy director, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington, D.C.
>>
The F-16's first flight was actually a high speed taxi test in which the pilot induced a roll oscillaiton so severe that his only alternatives were to lift off or accept a ground loop.
We should be so lucky this time.
>>
At a projected $276.5 billion, the planned family of radar-evading warplanes represents the Pentagon's priciest planned purchase -- more than 2,400 aircraft by 2027 for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Three single-engine F-35 models are to replace aging F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and a range of other fighter and strike aircraft for the United States and its friends over the next 30 years.
>>
DEWs based on COIL technology are workable as 'single shot' throwaway systems with today's technology. In ten years _whether we do it or not_ China and France will likely have working diode pumped 'all electric' weapons systems. And the value of airpower will be inversely proportional to the amount of money lost and skyknight hero image that is lost when they are blink-of-eye blown apart.
Of course 'then there are the worthless civilians' who don't issue multibillion dollar contracts to keep RAM attacks and indeed MIRVs from falling on their heads.
>>
The supersonic, multirole aircraft's development has been co-financed by eight international partners -- Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.
>>
Which is both the most basic indictment for why the jet is completley worthless and why it's 'really' being built:
A. 'Supersonics' have been a common capability since the F-100 of the 1960s. They are also /useless/ when they are not _persistent_ which ability is effectively denied the F-35 by virtue of having a T/Wr and wingloading no better than that of an A-10 _in military_ thrust. Indeed, the entire concept of supersonic performance is routinely proven flawed by the 'must be a fighter pilots airplane!' nature of UAVs which actually STAY once they get to whereever they are going to exercise air-influence.
B. 'Multirole' is meaningless if nobody wants to play the airwar game with you. Or if they choose to do so in ways (DEWs and Hunting Weapons) for which mixed A2A and A2G performance does not gain anything but a needless increase in cost. ANY aircraft can bomb a static target. ANY aircraft can target a GPS or Datalink jammer or popup S2A threat. 'Purely Defensively' without risk to civilians or rabid dog friendly forces attack. And they don't need to do so as a function of multiple role optimizations. They just need to be a truck-on-station with enough targeting gear to show what they are aiming at to remote operator. Or to confirm it to their own sense of 'where the target is supposed to be' mapped signature offsets. At which point, it's the better-bullet theory that wins. Not the rifle that shoots it.
C. The JSF is the attempt by pissant second and third world city states to leverage the _tax base_ of the U.S. nation-continent in furtherance of a boys club ideal of 'joint warfighterism'. A doctrinal concept which is itself completely predicated on the false assumption that 'when we call, they will come'. And that IF they do, a tiny number of additional forces without OUR level of uniform training and doctrinal approach will somehow leverage a major battle. Iraq proves both of these posits as false because EVEN WE cannot put sufficient airpower up, long enough, on a sortie density vs. coverage density basis, to win the simplest of insurgency driven wars in a _zero_ mixed mission environment for which a and armed sailplane would be infinitely 'better because it was /right there/' able to support our ground forces.
>>
Heinz predicted all eight partners would buy F-35s by 2014, bringing their combined purchases to more than 3,100 aircraft, including the more than 2,400 planned for the United States and 138 scheduled for Britain.
>>
There will be 1,200 USAF jets, 240 Marine jets. And 170 USN jets. Plus another 60-100 Brit jets = 1,710 jets. Not 2,400. Not 3,100.
NONE of which will have a 'common not joint' service test production ramp point for year production rate qualification to offset halved or worse buyouts with high initial 'tri service' scalar economics. i.e. The SOLE reason the JSF was originally seen as the Best Answer was that it offset development costs for common production in numbers which let the manufacturer gain back techbase buyin (itself massively illegal) based on zero competition for all service inventories. Yet JSF production is itself looking to be parted out into microblocks for both home user nations and overseas sales based solely on how many small smart bombs and how /late/ each individual subtype 'can deliver on'.
Something guaranteed to ruin production numbers even before the U.S. Armed Farces come running out of Iraq like high tailed dogs yiping at the amateur-hour kick.
>>
As early as 2010, the Pentagon expects to define an F-35 configuration for sale to even more countries through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, Heinz said.
>>
Which is the polite way of saying that the a billion dollar effort to secure LO features and netcentric codes has _FAILED_, utterly. And we are now facing a situation like unto the F-16/F-16-79/F-20 scenario in which nobody wants the redheaded stepchild variant. And we have already bent over and 'thought of England' for one customer so all the others are going to demand 'full access to the technology' as well.
And why not? The JSF is NOT as good a 'fighter' as the Rafale or Typhoon. Without Stealth it is equally a /lousy/ bomber. And if 'only the U.S. and (more) key Allies' have RFLO in any kind of realistic (manufacturing tolerances and layered material compositing) sense, then they don't have to worry about anything more than the going-on-thirty Flanker as a baseline threat.
For which any Flubber or Rafale can do the job, provided it has AASM and Meteor to trade signature for standoff.
>>
The first buyers of these models likely would include Spain, Israel and Singapore, he said.
>>
Ignore Israel, they are given military handouts as a function of the 2.5 BILLION DOLLAR FMF dole they receive every year. How many for each startup customer? 10? 20? You _really don't_ need but 1/4 the number of airframes if you are delivering X8 GBU-39 from so far out on the slant that the notion of conventional defense suppression or even penetration corridor support is a dated doctrinal requirement.
And once you reach that 'stunning' level of assumption, the idea that TARGETING those weapons is more important than flitting about supersonically also becomes a given.
Targeting means time as much as sensors (which will be common to any modern airframe, regardless). And time means pulling the _drag_ of the manned = fighter mission out of the airframe so you can 'stay awhile' on less weight, no cockpit, no tail and lower SFC penalties.
All that absent /crap/ in turn means that 'Gen-5' (which is, as of now, solely inhabited by the F-35) can default to 'Gen-6'. With zeroed training requirements and generally tenthed utilization factors in anything BUT war. As a 15-25 million dollar UCAV that has direct cost of ownership numbers fit to make the JSF look like the farce it is.
>>
"I believe there will be an additional 2,000 aircraft" sold from 2015 through 2035 to countries outside the original production consortium, Heinz said.
>>
Long after you're retired and removed from the consequences of a RICO statute and Anti-Deficiency Act LIE (Fraud Of Inducement) before Congress. Which should rightly string you up by your testicles for making promises beyond your ken which the taxpayer will have to keep.
>>
He said the scheduled 60-minute first flight of a conventional takeoff and landing model would follow a planned low-speed taxi test at 30 knots on Wednesday and ever-faster taxiing in following days.
>>
Typical. If you haven't anything brilliantly useful to say, baffle them with mundane bullbleep, hip deep. How about the reality of life check:
This initial SDD airframe, on whose existence ALL the initial KPPs for up and away peformance for ALL the variants 'operational suitability and operational effectiveness' will be based, is both the least compromised (USAF CVTOL) and the least /like/ the production models. By virtue of some 2,400lbs of weight overages.
i.e. Not only are you buying a Cadillac based on an Edsel sales pitch, you are also buying a Minivan and an SUV based on the notion that /they too/ will perform like a Cadillac.
And don't you pay no never mind to IOTE/OPEVAL type 'pass or fail' testing. Because if the utterly self obsessed military wants manned airpower, _there is no other choice_ but to find a way to make this, most primitive, JSF pass the SDD evals. No matter what. No matter how /unsuitable/ it or they are.
Because whatever capability is inherent to each of the other variants, only TOGETHER can all three provide Lunchmeat Inc. the money it needs to gain a profit.
Something the last JSF SPO Chief 'made official' when he stated that '1,600 airframes is the baseline below which the profit margin graphs for Lockheed and the cost margins for the taxpayer flatline'.
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1997/articles/apr_97/apr97_01/apr2a_97.html
>>
Citing a 40 percent chance of rain at Fort Worth Monday, Heinz left open the possibility of a slight delay. "You don't want to expose yourself to more risk ... You want to crawl before you walk before you run," he said.
>>
What risk? It's a shoe in so long as the air services are run by pilots and the pilot act to secure their jobs rather than their nation.
>>
John Smith, a spokesman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, said: "We are making good progress toward first flight." He said the actual date hinged on the aircraft's readiness, not on any schedule.
Key F-35 subcontractors include BAE Systems Plc and Northrop Grumman Corp.. If planned funding levels remain on track, Heinz said, Lockheed would produce one F-35 every two days 10 years from now.
>>
Yeah right. You've sacrificed the quick-mate joints to get weight down. You've redesigned a dozen different things to make them 'thinner, sleeker, lighter, weaker!' for a specious weight requirement centered around the LEAST USEFUL VARIANT (F-35B and F-35K, STOVL airpower for the Marines who only have 10 per ship. And the Brits who only have 2 ships!).
Even as you have 'reimagined' as much as engineered costs for specific parts which are no longer generically sourced but highly specific to the JSF and to it's individual airfames.
Now /tell me again/.
After making a 28-32-35 million dollar airplane in 1997 into a 45-48 million dollar airplane in 2001 (October SDD award announcement) and a _112_ million dollar airframe by 2005. How I'm supposed to:
A. Believe that anybody in their /right mind/ is going to 'sign on the dotted line' to buy this POS for three-five times it's initial promised cost IN THE FUTURE (at the rate of real JSF cost increases, by 2014, it will be a 150 million dollar airframe). When already Tier 1/2 parties are looking to jump ship like rats off the Titanic -and they get the best deal- for offsets and the like.
B. Accept that this airframe, with all it's specialized components and ABSENT production engineering is going to be startup manufactured at a faster rate than the F-16 on a NEW assembly line.
You miserable little bleep. We are not ALL morons you know.
>>
He said economies of scale may make the F-35 more affordable over time.
>>
Than WHAT?!
Reducing our inventory to say 1,200-1,500 airframes overall with truly COMMON not 'joint' (three planes, one name) _basing mode_ architecture that effectively reduces the 'overhead' on three airforces for our nation down to just ONE, driven principally AAR/JPALS enabled UCAVs that are 'instantly carqualed' and fly up and away better than any human ever will?
You see, when you set a biased group of individual Alpha Personalities to affirm their own pathetic egotrip existence, you cannot help but realize that they WILL ALWAYS EXCLUDE the option which proves their own obsolescence.
Even if it means /inflating/ the likely achievable capabilities inherent to 'buying in' to their own lies of technical and tactical enablement.
It's the old "Ask a fox to define a chicken for you." rule of letting so-called 'experts' define what the mission is, how to best perform it and whether the chosen (by their spec) solution meets the mission need.
_Illusions Of Choice_. _The Five Billion Dollar Misunderstanding_. _The Pentagon Paradox_. ALL of them describe in excruciating detail what happens when you set up predators to fiduciarily victimize your common exchequer:
They Do.
>>
Current procurement projections are the basis for the F-35's estimated average unit cost of $45 million for the conventional model, to $60 million for one designed to land on aircraft carriers. A third jump-jet version, built for the Marine Corps, is designed for short takeoff and vertical landing.
>>
All of which means nothing unless you factor in the exponentially expanding (with rightwards schedule progression) _R&D Factoring_. Which was originally never to exceed 191 billion dollars in 1994 dollar values. And is NOW at 276 billion dollars in 2005 dollar values. In 2014, we will have lost another war. Oil will be being sold in Euros, Yuans and a thousand and one other currencies _just so that the Arabs can stick a finger in our eye_. And this nation's fiat-currency guarantee that uses oil as a backup to 'real' (market value) driven economic strength will be /shattered forever/.
So that not only will increased costs for everything mean that the JSF is a 150 million dollars or more (2 years into series production). But that that 150 million dollars will be all the more desperately needed elsewhere to cover for bad debts on both the commercial, federal and civilian sectors of a REAL WORLD = PEACETIME economy. Not one artificially pumped up with wartime spending.
This in turn means we will be lucky to see 500 USAF and 250-300 USN/USMC F-35s. Which will ALSO raise ten kinds of stink because we are effectively 'entered into contract' with these foreign investment buddies to GUARANTEE and affordable jet. In the numbers they themselves have preordered.
Such is something the much vaunted military experts are NOT _paid_ to discover, discuss and evaluate as it is 'outside the parameters' of their specialty or concern.
Congress should know better since they sign ALL the checks. But Congress in 2014 will likely be 50-70% different from what it is today, just on the progression of mortality in the old-boy network.
And so it is up to U.S.. We The People to _stop the madness_ that first selects a train and a rail and then runs us down it. To a completely preventable disaster of foolish technology, doctrinal and fiscal spending policies.
>>
On November 14, the Netherlands became the first of the F-35 partner nations to extend its participation from development into a production and support phase.
>>
Whoopy. Look at what the Netherlands did to the F-16MLU effort. Halve the inventory to say 30-40 jets from 70 initially to get the features they need at the cost they can afford. The JSF will be no different. Particularly if 'spiral' costs continue to increase for a baseline capability that _any UCAV_ (French, German, Swede = EADS) could match. The only thing that we can bring to the table is netcentrics (which we just gave away to the Brits) and GBU-39. And both of those will only further 'force multiply' the likely REDUCTION in total inventory that they will naturally consider to be their price-at-X right. I mean after all, if the U.S. can effectively halve it's initial buy commitment...
>>
Canada and Australia will follow suit on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, Heinz said, with the others expected to do so by the end of this month, with the possible exception of Norway because of questions in its legislature about its industry's share of F-35-related contracts.
>>
So we should keep on progressing in a program that is 'all about' enabling foreign countries to profit from a runaway defense industry that is itself largely unanswerable to the U.S. taxpayer because of 'deemed essential to the U.S. defense' laws that shelter them from realistic accounting procedures and specifically those which make them answerable to RICO and Anti Deficiency legislation _specifically_ put into effect to prevent corrupt organizations from promising what they can't deliver?
CONCLUSION:
My daddy once told me that 'the certainty of others' is no excuse for not making up your own mind. Specifically he meant that a mob-psychology endorsement to 'progressively' participate in their problem was not an excuse for failing to build a mental model of what the alternatives could be before adding your stupidity to theirs.
Indeed we OWE ourselves the native scepticism which says "What if..." It doesn't work. It isn't true. There isn't an urgent need. It's all a shell game designed to endorse a false premise.
The JSF is a classic example of manipulating 'all the people just long enough' to have NO BACKUP PLAN LEFT.
Because the smarter alternative (20 years after the F-35 con-cept was first 'engineered' from the fragments of A-X and CALF and ASTOVL) itself will require money and time to implement that we are pissing away on a singular solution.
Even as we are rapidly divesting ourselves of even the option to continue with standins (F-16E and F-15S level teen fighters using 4th/5th generation avionics) until such better choice can eventuate FOR COMPARISON with the 'sole option remaining'.
If you want to be a 'globalized' participant in that kind of contract mob psychology, go ahead and participate in the induced panic. Otherwise, this 'first flight' announcement is just typical of what all is wrong with JSF. Because even if it works, it's not the real McCoy either as what was first promised (cheap and plenty). Or as what it will be 'light enough to meet spec, no matter what'. Instead it is only another legal leap past a production commiment hurdle that greased-wheel forces the train down that single set of rails to a headon collision with reality based fiscal, technical and doctrinal issues which have long since supplanted what The Real McCoy was even originally designed to best-do.
Relative to the F-35, The Military Has Long Known This. And now, So Do You. The difference is that you don't have to support their existence just because /they say so/. You have to ensure that the best choice secures YOUR defense regardless of who else loses their job.
KPl.
>>
WASHINGTON: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the costliest weapons procurement project ever, is set to make its maiden test flight next week, a U.S. general running the project said on Tuesday.
>>
Most spent on a 'cheapest fighter'. Snort.
>>
"I am optimistic that we will see the airplane fly as early as Monday" at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Fort Worth, Texas, test site, Marine Brig. Gen. David Heinz, the Pentagon program office's deputy director, told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington, D.C.
>>
The F-16's first flight was actually a high speed taxi test in which the pilot induced a roll oscillaiton so severe that his only alternatives were to lift off or accept a ground loop.
We should be so lucky this time.
>>
At a projected $276.5 billion, the planned family of radar-evading warplanes represents the Pentagon's priciest planned purchase -- more than 2,400 aircraft by 2027 for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Three single-engine F-35 models are to replace aging F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and a range of other fighter and strike aircraft for the United States and its friends over the next 30 years.
>>
DEWs based on COIL technology are workable as 'single shot' throwaway systems with today's technology. In ten years _whether we do it or not_ China and France will likely have working diode pumped 'all electric' weapons systems. And the value of airpower will be inversely proportional to the amount of money lost and skyknight hero image that is lost when they are blink-of-eye blown apart.
Of course 'then there are the worthless civilians' who don't issue multibillion dollar contracts to keep RAM attacks and indeed MIRVs from falling on their heads.
>>
The supersonic, multirole aircraft's development has been co-financed by eight international partners -- Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.
>>
Which is both the most basic indictment for why the jet is completley worthless and why it's 'really' being built:
A. 'Supersonics' have been a common capability since the F-100 of the 1960s. They are also /useless/ when they are not _persistent_ which ability is effectively denied the F-35 by virtue of having a T/Wr and wingloading no better than that of an A-10 _in military_ thrust. Indeed, the entire concept of supersonic performance is routinely proven flawed by the 'must be a fighter pilots airplane!' nature of UAVs which actually STAY once they get to whereever they are going to exercise air-influence.
B. 'Multirole' is meaningless if nobody wants to play the airwar game with you. Or if they choose to do so in ways (DEWs and Hunting Weapons) for which mixed A2A and A2G performance does not gain anything but a needless increase in cost. ANY aircraft can bomb a static target. ANY aircraft can target a GPS or Datalink jammer or popup S2A threat. 'Purely Defensively' without risk to civilians or rabid dog friendly forces attack. And they don't need to do so as a function of multiple role optimizations. They just need to be a truck-on-station with enough targeting gear to show what they are aiming at to remote operator. Or to confirm it to their own sense of 'where the target is supposed to be' mapped signature offsets. At which point, it's the better-bullet theory that wins. Not the rifle that shoots it.
C. The JSF is the attempt by pissant second and third world city states to leverage the _tax base_ of the U.S. nation-continent in furtherance of a boys club ideal of 'joint warfighterism'. A doctrinal concept which is itself completely predicated on the false assumption that 'when we call, they will come'. And that IF they do, a tiny number of additional forces without OUR level of uniform training and doctrinal approach will somehow leverage a major battle. Iraq proves both of these posits as false because EVEN WE cannot put sufficient airpower up, long enough, on a sortie density vs. coverage density basis, to win the simplest of insurgency driven wars in a _zero_ mixed mission environment for which a and armed sailplane would be infinitely 'better because it was /right there/' able to support our ground forces.
>>
Heinz predicted all eight partners would buy F-35s by 2014, bringing their combined purchases to more than 3,100 aircraft, including the more than 2,400 planned for the United States and 138 scheduled for Britain.
>>
There will be 1,200 USAF jets, 240 Marine jets. And 170 USN jets. Plus another 60-100 Brit jets = 1,710 jets. Not 2,400. Not 3,100.
NONE of which will have a 'common not joint' service test production ramp point for year production rate qualification to offset halved or worse buyouts with high initial 'tri service' scalar economics. i.e. The SOLE reason the JSF was originally seen as the Best Answer was that it offset development costs for common production in numbers which let the manufacturer gain back techbase buyin (itself massively illegal) based on zero competition for all service inventories. Yet JSF production is itself looking to be parted out into microblocks for both home user nations and overseas sales based solely on how many small smart bombs and how /late/ each individual subtype 'can deliver on'.
Something guaranteed to ruin production numbers even before the U.S. Armed Farces come running out of Iraq like high tailed dogs yiping at the amateur-hour kick.
>>
As early as 2010, the Pentagon expects to define an F-35 configuration for sale to even more countries through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, Heinz said.
>>
Which is the polite way of saying that the a billion dollar effort to secure LO features and netcentric codes has _FAILED_, utterly. And we are now facing a situation like unto the F-16/F-16-79/F-20 scenario in which nobody wants the redheaded stepchild variant. And we have already bent over and 'thought of England' for one customer so all the others are going to demand 'full access to the technology' as well.
And why not? The JSF is NOT as good a 'fighter' as the Rafale or Typhoon. Without Stealth it is equally a /lousy/ bomber. And if 'only the U.S. and (more) key Allies' have RFLO in any kind of realistic (manufacturing tolerances and layered material compositing) sense, then they don't have to worry about anything more than the going-on-thirty Flanker as a baseline threat.
For which any Flubber or Rafale can do the job, provided it has AASM and Meteor to trade signature for standoff.
>>
The first buyers of these models likely would include Spain, Israel and Singapore, he said.
>>
Ignore Israel, they are given military handouts as a function of the 2.5 BILLION DOLLAR FMF dole they receive every year. How many for each startup customer? 10? 20? You _really don't_ need but 1/4 the number of airframes if you are delivering X8 GBU-39 from so far out on the slant that the notion of conventional defense suppression or even penetration corridor support is a dated doctrinal requirement.
And once you reach that 'stunning' level of assumption, the idea that TARGETING those weapons is more important than flitting about supersonically also becomes a given.
Targeting means time as much as sensors (which will be common to any modern airframe, regardless). And time means pulling the _drag_ of the manned = fighter mission out of the airframe so you can 'stay awhile' on less weight, no cockpit, no tail and lower SFC penalties.
All that absent /crap/ in turn means that 'Gen-5' (which is, as of now, solely inhabited by the F-35) can default to 'Gen-6'. With zeroed training requirements and generally tenthed utilization factors in anything BUT war. As a 15-25 million dollar UCAV that has direct cost of ownership numbers fit to make the JSF look like the farce it is.
>>
"I believe there will be an additional 2,000 aircraft" sold from 2015 through 2035 to countries outside the original production consortium, Heinz said.
>>
Long after you're retired and removed from the consequences of a RICO statute and Anti-Deficiency Act LIE (Fraud Of Inducement) before Congress. Which should rightly string you up by your testicles for making promises beyond your ken which the taxpayer will have to keep.
>>
He said the scheduled 60-minute first flight of a conventional takeoff and landing model would follow a planned low-speed taxi test at 30 knots on Wednesday and ever-faster taxiing in following days.
>>
Typical. If you haven't anything brilliantly useful to say, baffle them with mundane bullbleep, hip deep. How about the reality of life check:
This initial SDD airframe, on whose existence ALL the initial KPPs for up and away peformance for ALL the variants 'operational suitability and operational effectiveness' will be based, is both the least compromised (USAF CVTOL) and the least /like/ the production models. By virtue of some 2,400lbs of weight overages.
i.e. Not only are you buying a Cadillac based on an Edsel sales pitch, you are also buying a Minivan and an SUV based on the notion that /they too/ will perform like a Cadillac.
And don't you pay no never mind to IOTE/OPEVAL type 'pass or fail' testing. Because if the utterly self obsessed military wants manned airpower, _there is no other choice_ but to find a way to make this, most primitive, JSF pass the SDD evals. No matter what. No matter how /unsuitable/ it or they are.
Because whatever capability is inherent to each of the other variants, only TOGETHER can all three provide Lunchmeat Inc. the money it needs to gain a profit.
Something the last JSF SPO Chief 'made official' when he stated that '1,600 airframes is the baseline below which the profit margin graphs for Lockheed and the cost margins for the taxpayer flatline'.
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/1997/articles/apr_97/apr97_01/apr2a_97.html
>>
Citing a 40 percent chance of rain at Fort Worth Monday, Heinz left open the possibility of a slight delay. "You don't want to expose yourself to more risk ... You want to crawl before you walk before you run," he said.
>>
What risk? It's a shoe in so long as the air services are run by pilots and the pilot act to secure their jobs rather than their nation.
>>
John Smith, a spokesman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, said: "We are making good progress toward first flight." He said the actual date hinged on the aircraft's readiness, not on any schedule.
Key F-35 subcontractors include BAE Systems Plc and Northrop Grumman Corp.. If planned funding levels remain on track, Heinz said, Lockheed would produce one F-35 every two days 10 years from now.
>>
Yeah right. You've sacrificed the quick-mate joints to get weight down. You've redesigned a dozen different things to make them 'thinner, sleeker, lighter, weaker!' for a specious weight requirement centered around the LEAST USEFUL VARIANT (F-35B and F-35K, STOVL airpower for the Marines who only have 10 per ship. And the Brits who only have 2 ships!).
Even as you have 'reimagined' as much as engineered costs for specific parts which are no longer generically sourced but highly specific to the JSF and to it's individual airfames.
Now /tell me again/.
After making a 28-32-35 million dollar airplane in 1997 into a 45-48 million dollar airplane in 2001 (October SDD award announcement) and a _112_ million dollar airframe by 2005. How I'm supposed to:
A. Believe that anybody in their /right mind/ is going to 'sign on the dotted line' to buy this POS for three-five times it's initial promised cost IN THE FUTURE (at the rate of real JSF cost increases, by 2014, it will be a 150 million dollar airframe). When already Tier 1/2 parties are looking to jump ship like rats off the Titanic -and they get the best deal- for offsets and the like.
B. Accept that this airframe, with all it's specialized components and ABSENT production engineering is going to be startup manufactured at a faster rate than the F-16 on a NEW assembly line.
You miserable little bleep. We are not ALL morons you know.
>>
He said economies of scale may make the F-35 more affordable over time.
>>
Than WHAT?!
Reducing our inventory to say 1,200-1,500 airframes overall with truly COMMON not 'joint' (three planes, one name) _basing mode_ architecture that effectively reduces the 'overhead' on three airforces for our nation down to just ONE, driven principally AAR/JPALS enabled UCAVs that are 'instantly carqualed' and fly up and away better than any human ever will?
You see, when you set a biased group of individual Alpha Personalities to affirm their own pathetic egotrip existence, you cannot help but realize that they WILL ALWAYS EXCLUDE the option which proves their own obsolescence.
Even if it means /inflating/ the likely achievable capabilities inherent to 'buying in' to their own lies of technical and tactical enablement.
It's the old "Ask a fox to define a chicken for you." rule of letting so-called 'experts' define what the mission is, how to best perform it and whether the chosen (by their spec) solution meets the mission need.
_Illusions Of Choice_. _The Five Billion Dollar Misunderstanding_. _The Pentagon Paradox_. ALL of them describe in excruciating detail what happens when you set up predators to fiduciarily victimize your common exchequer:
They Do.
>>
Current procurement projections are the basis for the F-35's estimated average unit cost of $45 million for the conventional model, to $60 million for one designed to land on aircraft carriers. A third jump-jet version, built for the Marine Corps, is designed for short takeoff and vertical landing.
>>
All of which means nothing unless you factor in the exponentially expanding (with rightwards schedule progression) _R&D Factoring_. Which was originally never to exceed 191 billion dollars in 1994 dollar values. And is NOW at 276 billion dollars in 2005 dollar values. In 2014, we will have lost another war. Oil will be being sold in Euros, Yuans and a thousand and one other currencies _just so that the Arabs can stick a finger in our eye_. And this nation's fiat-currency guarantee that uses oil as a backup to 'real' (market value) driven economic strength will be /shattered forever/.
So that not only will increased costs for everything mean that the JSF is a 150 million dollars or more (2 years into series production). But that that 150 million dollars will be all the more desperately needed elsewhere to cover for bad debts on both the commercial, federal and civilian sectors of a REAL WORLD = PEACETIME economy. Not one artificially pumped up with wartime spending.
This in turn means we will be lucky to see 500 USAF and 250-300 USN/USMC F-35s. Which will ALSO raise ten kinds of stink because we are effectively 'entered into contract' with these foreign investment buddies to GUARANTEE and affordable jet. In the numbers they themselves have preordered.
Such is something the much vaunted military experts are NOT _paid_ to discover, discuss and evaluate as it is 'outside the parameters' of their specialty or concern.
Congress should know better since they sign ALL the checks. But Congress in 2014 will likely be 50-70% different from what it is today, just on the progression of mortality in the old-boy network.
And so it is up to U.S.. We The People to _stop the madness_ that first selects a train and a rail and then runs us down it. To a completely preventable disaster of foolish technology, doctrinal and fiscal spending policies.
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On November 14, the Netherlands became the first of the F-35 partner nations to extend its participation from development into a production and support phase.
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Whoopy. Look at what the Netherlands did to the F-16MLU effort. Halve the inventory to say 30-40 jets from 70 initially to get the features they need at the cost they can afford. The JSF will be no different. Particularly if 'spiral' costs continue to increase for a baseline capability that _any UCAV_ (French, German, Swede = EADS) could match. The only thing that we can bring to the table is netcentrics (which we just gave away to the Brits) and GBU-39. And both of those will only further 'force multiply' the likely REDUCTION in total inventory that they will naturally consider to be their price-at-X right. I mean after all, if the U.S. can effectively halve it's initial buy commitment...
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Canada and Australia will follow suit on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, Heinz said, with the others expected to do so by the end of this month, with the possible exception of Norway because of questions in its legislature about its industry's share of F-35-related contracts.
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So we should keep on progressing in a program that is 'all about' enabling foreign countries to profit from a runaway defense industry that is itself largely unanswerable to the U.S. taxpayer because of 'deemed essential to the U.S. defense' laws that shelter them from realistic accounting procedures and specifically those which make them answerable to RICO and Anti Deficiency legislation _specifically_ put into effect to prevent corrupt organizations from promising what they can't deliver?
CONCLUSION:
My daddy once told me that 'the certainty of others' is no excuse for not making up your own mind. Specifically he meant that a mob-psychology endorsement to 'progressively' participate in their problem was not an excuse for failing to build a mental model of what the alternatives could be before adding your stupidity to theirs.
Indeed we OWE ourselves the native scepticism which says "What if..." It doesn't work. It isn't true. There isn't an urgent need. It's all a shell game designed to endorse a false premise.
The JSF is a classic example of manipulating 'all the people just long enough' to have NO BACKUP PLAN LEFT.
Because the smarter alternative (20 years after the F-35 con-cept was first 'engineered' from the fragments of A-X and CALF and ASTOVL) itself will require money and time to implement that we are pissing away on a singular solution.
Even as we are rapidly divesting ourselves of even the option to continue with standins (F-16E and F-15S level teen fighters using 4th/5th generation avionics) until such better choice can eventuate FOR COMPARISON with the 'sole option remaining'.
If you want to be a 'globalized' participant in that kind of contract mob psychology, go ahead and participate in the induced panic. Otherwise, this 'first flight' announcement is just typical of what all is wrong with JSF. Because even if it works, it's not the real McCoy either as what was first promised (cheap and plenty). Or as what it will be 'light enough to meet spec, no matter what'. Instead it is only another legal leap past a production commiment hurdle that greased-wheel forces the train down that single set of rails to a headon collision with reality based fiscal, technical and doctrinal issues which have long since supplanted what The Real McCoy was even originally designed to best-do.
Relative to the F-35, The Military Has Long Known This. And now, So Do You. The difference is that you don't have to support their existence just because /they say so/. You have to ensure that the best choice secures YOUR defense regardless of who else loses their job.
KPl.