You have to be a pretty senior officer to criticize a weapons program, so it's nice to see somebody step up. (Military pilots never do so on the record.)
I study WW2, and the reason the US won the Pacific War is that we had numerous, long-range aircraft (the P-38 twin basically won the war.)
Now we have not numerous, not long-range aircraft (F-22 and F-35) for the same theater. Only 189 F-22's were made with about 150 left after the hurricane, and the US F-35 fleet is 600 delivered but unknown combat-ready - that's not enough for a war, despite China's fighters being worse, but in-theater.
The above was all forseeable, but when the MIC is just checking boxes instead of preparing for war, you end up where we are now.
The US does have an experience and quality advantage over China, but we don't have a clear quantity advantage despite our investment over the last 75 years.
Note that the US was never ready for war on Day One for the past century, so I'm not expecting anything better this time around either, and a lot of our people will die needlessly again.
The F35 is the result of a very dumb decision to do two big things at the same time in the same vehicle:
1 - build a new multi role airplane (that itself was probably overly complex)
2 - build a new networked electronics infrastructure for the airborne military (Air Force, Navy, & Marines)
Car makers figured out not to do this years ago when they started coming out with a new engine before updating the rest of the car. It minimized the number of changes in any given mode year to a level that was manageable and quality increased.
The military should have taken that route and developed these two separately.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 23.5 ms ] threadYou have to be a pretty senior officer to criticize a weapons program, so it's nice to see somebody step up. (Military pilots never do so on the record.)
I study WW2, and the reason the US won the Pacific War is that we had numerous, long-range aircraft (the P-38 twin basically won the war.)
Now we have not numerous, not long-range aircraft (F-22 and F-35) for the same theater. Only 189 F-22's were made with about 150 left after the hurricane, and the US F-35 fleet is 600 delivered but unknown combat-ready - that's not enough for a war, despite China's fighters being worse, but in-theater.
The above was all forseeable, but when the MIC is just checking boxes instead of preparing for war, you end up where we are now.
The US does have an experience and quality advantage over China, but we don't have a clear quantity advantage despite our investment over the last 75 years.
Note that the US was never ready for war on Day One for the past century, so I'm not expecting anything better this time around either, and a lot of our people will die needlessly again.
1 - build a new multi role airplane (that itself was probably overly complex)
2 - build a new networked electronics infrastructure for the airborne military (Air Force, Navy, & Marines)
Car makers figured out not to do this years ago when they started coming out with a new engine before updating the rest of the car. It minimized the number of changes in any given mode year to a level that was manageable and quality increased.
The military should have taken that route and developed these two separately.
That is the problem - large loss of life within a short sustained period does not bode well for US public support today.
The lopsided Iraqi war which only resulted in 214 coalition casualties during the 30 day invasion phase would not be a repeat.
Hope we never find out.