This is an article about why Finland selected the F35A, without mentioning a single reason why Finland selected the F35A. No ranking, no mention of technical advantages no independent benchmark of this platform still to be proven in combat anywhere. And no, bombing ISIS does not count.
> no mention of technical advantages no independent benchmark
Because those weren't the deciding factors. Cost and maintainability were. (It's implied that the planes were close enough in capability that the "gate checks" were just that. Gates. Not goals.)
Finland didn't want to end up with another Betamax fleet.
Everybody of course would like to read a ranking of all fighter jet planes me included. Not like who is fastest or has most ammunition but who has the best rate of survival. This could perhaps be determined by some sort of simulation. Would not make sense to put them into an actual fight really. Countries who own the planes would not want the enemy to know their weaknesses.
Rate of survival under what circumstances? Even for the simple case of pairwise one-on-one dogfights, there could easily be a rock-paper-scissors scenario where there's no single dominant plane.
Also, the data would be from simulations. Outside of Ukraine, there haven't been many fighters of advanced nations shot down in decades.
More than 20 years ago, I wrote networking portions of such simulations. Even for the unclassified components for those simulations, many of the components were still both commercial secrets and considered munitions under ITAR export controls.
Terrain maps beyond a certain resolution are classified. As I remember, the somewhat lower resolution terrain maps were still ITAR controlled munitions. Some of the radio propagation models are classified.
Even half-way decent simulation outputs are likely also classified.
In my case, for the most part, the simulations were used to shorten the turnaround time in the early prototyping stages, and also a fair amount for the sales team to sell military hardware to governments.
And in Ukraine, the life expectancy of anything flying above treetop has been very very low (admittedly F35 would fare better than its competitors here).
There were rumours of an Isreali F-35 targeted and damaged (but survived) by some old Russian AA system, maybe BUK? This was based on observed events and movements. Of course, we would never know, which is correct and appropriate.
The topic of "spectral stealth" is complicated. It is vulnerable to systems of networked radars, among other things. It is one feature that may be very useful, but it is not a "panacea".
Russian BUKs and S-400s in Syria repeatedly and consistently tracked Israeli F-16s. In an actual shooting war they'd have gone down, fast, and the Israelis knew it -- which is why they bought into the F-35. Price was good and, like, "stealth".
There is little to suggest that the Israeli F-35 was taken down by a missile; the sources involved are not especially credible. Eurasia Times, for example, is basically Russia Today (RT) and is not really trustworthy. Most of the posts elsewhere, e.g. Quora, are from questionable accounts and aren't credible either.
It's possible it happened and they're spinning it as something birds -- which is pretty lame and damning if true -- but most of the pro-shot-down points are difficult to take seriously.
Nothing is known, but if we assume the basic events are not fabricated, then the behaviour of an F-35 was somehow altered by a fired missile. If such a missile detonated within a radius of maybe 30-40m (or something) then damage would have been substantial. If greater than maybe 100m (or something) there would only be mild damage, but that means the missile wasn't tracking the target. This scenario would also not be surprising.
If true, I don't think it necessarily presents the F-35 poorly. But it's only a rumour. And if true, it most likely would be classified as secret, since reporting it would be like handing the enemy a damage assessment report.
You might want to track down the information they release from multinational training exercises like Red Flag. Reportedly the F-35 has put in multiple dominant showings at Red Flag since its debut. I'm not sure how complete the information they release from these exercises is, though, and some of the aircraft involved (most notably the F-22) are notoriously restrained to keep the true capabilities of the platform secret.
Not really sure what “proven in combat” looks like, the US fortunately hasn’t fought a peer in a long, long time so all of our stuff has only been tested in fairly one sided wars.
If a country’s Air Force is getting in fair fights, I’d suspect either they are in pretty dire circumstances, or they have some questionable decision making going on!
> without mentioning a single reason why Finland selected the F35A
There are at least three within the first tenth of that long article alone that I read, namely:
* the most boring factor, simply the sheer amount of F-35s sold is a huge benefit. As has been stressed from the outset, Finland can’t afford to be the sole operator of an aircraft
* Lockheed Martin provided a unique tailored solution to Finland – one described in their BAFO-press statement to “includes many opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35 that have not been offered before.”
* Which brings us to what has been the most controversial aspect of the program: cost. The acquisition cost has come down nicely,
I'll grant it's a badly written article for clarity and it's hard to pick the details out from the noise and fluff but it's simply incorrect to claim that not a single reason was mentioned.
( other than on the technical grounds that more than "a single reason" was provided in the article. )
Are there any jet fighters available to buy that Finland would be the only operator of? I'd assume all other options would be operated in their country of origin at the very least (eg Gripen in Sweden, Rafale in France...)
Those don't have stealth of course and having Russia as a direct neighbor it's much more likely they'll see combat against an advanced military (much more do than western Europe) so I can imagine they wanted that advantage even though it's not perfect.
> any jet fighters available to buy that Finland would be the only operator of?
The concern isn't being sole operator at time of sale, but decades down the road. The Gripen, for example, is used by Sweden, South Africa, Hungary and Czechia [1].
I'm such a fan of the Gripen. It's significantly cheaper to operate than the F-35, with around 4 to 5 Gripen flight hours for the same cost as one F-35 flight hour. While it doesn't have stealth capabilities, it does have over the horizon radar, can carry the Meteor air-to-air missile which has a 100km range and was specifically designed to operate in a "distributed and de-centralised" manner; that is from rough, but still paved, runways and highways.
I really wish they'd send a couple of squadrons of Gripens to Ukraine, because I think they'd be the perfect aircraft for that theatre.
Yep, and especially for smaller countries with smaller air forces and budgets, having more Gripens makes more sense than having fewer but more expensive F-35s. The risk of not being able to properly maintain them down the line and ending up with 3-4 operable planes is too high for the advantages of stealth (which IMO comes more into play when on the offence, which Finland probably won't be anytime soon).
Agree about Ukraine too. Sending highly sophisticated jets that will take months to learn is wasting Ukraine's time - Gripens, maybe Mirage 2000s, MiG-29s make the most sense.
> The Ukraine war will be won through stocks and new production.
Or on the diplomatic table. While I agree it is a good thing to send Ukraine all we reasonably can, it is a nonzero probability Putin gets into hot water and ousted - bad health, pissed-off bureaucracy, domestic protests once he's forced to conscript people in central (ethnic) Russia.
> Or on the diplomatic table. While I agree it is a good thing to send Ukraine all we reasonably can, it is a nonzero probability Putin gets into hot water and ousted - bad health, pissed-off bureaucracy, domestic protests once he's forced to conscript people in central (ethnic) Russia.
Ukraine being a part of Russia is a mainstream opinion in Russia. It's a core part of Russian propaganda abroad and has been so since the 1800s (Novorossya).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but a new leader will adopt many of the nationalist tropes.
Russia completely leaving occupied territories, especially Crimea, diplomatically, will be extremely hard to do.
And Ukraine without Crimea will always be exposed. It's too easy to choke off their maritime access without it.
The thing is, Russian economy is in shambles. The only major trading partners they have left is China and India... and the West won't ever open up unless Russia at the very least leaves the occupied territories, which leaves the Ukrainians free to focus on regaining Crimea.
Some countries can be hellbent on self-destruction if they feel their "national pride" is being offended.
And European messaging is... strongly in favor of Ukraine but at reduced/no cost for Europe. So in practice European messaging is actually weak.
There are quite a few big European economies that would want to open up the Russian economy again. Conflicting interests are still fighting it out and we can't be sure which side will out. It could very well be that the winning political side in the West says a chopped up Ukraine is sufficient at the end of this war.
Don't be so sure. Trump wants to "end the war" by cutting off help to Ukraine and force them to "negotiate" with Russia, i.e. surrender their territory. Orban is making things harder than necessary for EU to show a united front against Russia. Who knows what the political reality will be in a few years if the war continues then, too many wants things to go back to normal even if that means appeasing Putin.
It is not a given that, if Putin is ousted, his replacement will stop the war. While there are factions that are not keen on the war (many of the oligarchs that have interest in trading with the west) , there are some others (the warlords) that are even more hawkish than Putin, and seeing as he is very careful to please them, they have a lot of power.
Doesn't really matter when there are hundreds in stock (recently decommissioned or soon to be decommissioned) - they're faster to deliver than ones that are yet to be produced.
> Ukraine can't get new ones.
They don't need new ones, they need flying ones, yesterday. The proposed swaps with various NATO countries like Bulgaria sounded like the best option - Ukraine gets jets they can fly today, and the other country gets an upgrade for their help.
> The risk of not being able to properly maintain them down the line and ending up with 3-4 operable planes is too high for the advantages of stealth (which IMO comes more into play when on the offence, which Finland probably won't be anytime soon).
I guess, it really depends on your threat model.
If you assume that Russia is the main threat, and assume that what's going on in Ukraine is what future combat would likely look like, forward deployed SAMs are the main threat to aircraft. I have to imagine that advanced stealth capabilities would really help Sweden maintain an air capability in such an environment.
From what I understand, the Ukrainian airforce has taken a pretty severe beating (understandably). Heck - the Russian airforce has been pretty limited as well - they do run sorties, but they aren't exactly operating with impunity.
Small, high-GDP countries like the nordics are also likely to rear a small amount of the high-quality pilots required for operating fighter jets. Maximizing those pilots by putting them in exquisite, high-end aircraft, with strong interoperability with aircraft operated by close allies (in this case most of the rest of NATO), makes a lot of sense.
It's crazy that Finland is OK with only being able to fly their planes 20 minutes a day. I get they are so fast that intercept from takeoff isn't much longer than intercept from up in the air but still...
I think with pilots would amount to, in practice, a declaration of war from Sweden to Russia. So that's not going to happen. And since Sweden applied for NATO membership, it's not even a theoretical possibility at this point I'd say.
But even without pilots, and crewed by Ukrainian pilots lacking training on the system, I think the ability to lob 100 km range missiles over the horizen, has to be worth something.
Are those numbers still accurate? F-35 was a lot more expensive early on and a lot of number comparisons are stuck on those early production numbers rather than later ones.
That makes the Gripen a non-starter for picking a new aircraft to base your air force around in 2023. Stealth is now the single-most important factor, bar none. Non-stealthy aircraft are sitting ducks to a wide variety of threats.
> it does have over the horizon radar, can carry the Meteor air-to-air missile which has a 100km range
Yes see this is the kind of capability that allows stealthy aircraft like the F-35 to completely obliterate a Gripen at long range, with the Gripen never having a chance of even detecting the F-35. And of course the F-35 has long range air-to-air missiles for it too.
You make it sound as stealth is a boolean value. Stealth is not that easy. It depends on many factors. Stealth from whom, when, systems, where, and how much.
There is a probability (only indirect rumors) that F-35 can already be detected in some situations on some systems (global eye?) and there is definitely no guarantee that F-35 will keep it's stealth ability in the future.
Yes, but whatever improvements in radar will happen in the future, if they can see a stealthy jet twice as far, they can see a non-stealthy jet twice as far too. If the window of vulnerability of a stealthy jet goes from 2 minutes to 4 minutes, the one for non-stealthy could go from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. You still want the stealthy jet.
Ironically, you're the one treating stealthiness as a boolean value here:
> there is definitely no guarantee that F-35 will keep it's stealth ability in the future.
Of course as radar and computer systems improve it's likely that stealthy airplanes will become detectable from farther away, but they're not just gonna lose their stealthy characteristics entirely, in a boolean manner!
Exactly, sorry if I did not use the right word (not native english speaker). I did not know that "keep" was so binary. With keep stealth ability I meant that it may not keep all it's properties to the same degree as today and some of them can decay. For example as you mention about the distance for detection from a single radar in normal flight.
Note that Czechia, Hungary and South Africa have much older Gripens which are not relevant to this conversation. Czechia is moving to the F-35 instead of ordering the Gripen E.
I think it's a little bit relevant because it still gives a hint of how SAAB performs as a partner, which is very important for such an advanced weapons system, but I'll upvote you.
Yeah, this. Smaller countries can easily wind up holding the bag with less-widely adopted defence procurements, and without a wider community of users investing in the platform and its parts ecosystem it can become a sustainment nightmare.
For example, Australia became the sole operator of the F-111 from when the USAF retired it in 1998, until the RAAF retired it in 2010. The Australian Army also found itself in the position of sole operator of the ARH variant of the Eurocopter Tiger, a situation which lead to severe sustainment issues and exorbitant per-hour flight costs (estimates of up to AU$34k), and eventually lead to the 2021 decision to replace them with Apache Guardians.
But it did. Stealth, widespread adoption globally (resulting in a larger logistical support base and long term support), and low cost were all mentioned as features of the F-35 that made it preferable to its competitors.
Does anyone seriously think the F-35A is not technically as-good-as or superior to the Typhoon on a number of axes? If it's similar in cost to the Typhoon, it seems like a no-brainer. Of course the "If" is doing a lot of work which is why TFA was so focused on whether or not the costs in the contracts were reasonable.
The Eurofighter is higher specced than the F-35 on a number points - speed, manoeuvrability, capacity, and possibly endurance - but this is not really part of the debate.
The question is how they are going to be used in practice, with everything that entails. The decision also includes a gamble on how the platform develops in the future, and how adversary's capabilities develop.
The F-35 has already had numerous successes operating in a high-threat anti-air environments in Lebanon and Syria (edit: and Iran) at the hands of the Israelis.
Norway went with the F-35A some time ago[1] to replace our F-16s, and we got the first planes in 2015. Since then we've gotten a fair bit of experience with it, including join exercises[2] as well as developing a landing system for our arctic climate[3]. Denmark has also gone for the F-35A[4], and recently got its first planes.
If Finland joins NATO, it makes sense to combine air forces[5] in Scandinavia, in which case I can imagine there's a lot of benefits from having the same airplane as one of the other members. Obviously that w as not a direct consideration back when the decision was made, but surely some of the people involved were eyeing close cooperation in Scandinavia if shit hit the fan.
Regardless, I imagine Finland has had a chat with the Norwegian Air Force about the plane, which feedback should be highly relevant given the similarities between the countries. So far from what I've read the Norwegian Air Force seems quite happy with the F-35.
I wonder how much value there would be in having some level of dissimilar redundancy in (soon to be) NATO air forces. All NATO countries having fleets of the F35 makes us vulnerable to any kind of weakness or bug that adversaries are able to exploit.
It is worth noting that the US operates a number of F-35s out of Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. The weather conditions are comparable to the sub-arctic areas of Scandinavia.
Heck they were figuring out how to operate in Thule this month.
The F-35s in Eielson seems to be a quite recent development though from what I can see[1][2], while the article I linked to was from 2017 when they were doing final certification tests of the "arctic landing device".
But yeah, seems like it's definitely not an issue these days.
It is not NATO which enforces that. It is the superior spending and technology the overlord ;) is producing which makes every competing product a tough sell regards its pricing.
And yes, you spent your money with friendly nations.
Maybe because the technical selection process was not important? The decision was purely political, they wanted to please the most important NATO country, and they wouldn't achieve that goal by buying MiG or Tornado.
Help me understand what sets the F-22 apart from the F-35? I've read the Wikipedia pages, but I still don't get why F-22 is so remarkable that it cannot be sold to other countries.
Speed and stealth I assume. From what I understand the top speed is classified, and stealth is still a super secret technology where they count the milligrams of exterior coating when decommissioning a stealth fighter.
Well because in combat seconds and centimeters can make a difference. You might know it is capable of Mach 4 and can plan for that, but if it's capable of Mach 4.2 and you haven't found it economical to respond to that, it is the difference between life and death.
Speed would be very important in a potential Pacific Theater conflict. The F-22 is significantly more fuel efficient than the F-15 so while the top speed might be slightly slower it can actually maintain a higher average speed in real operations.
Speed is important for some mission types, like when you're intercepting a Tu-160 or Mig-31, or when you want to avoid being intercepted yourself (such as after being detected during a penetration mission).
Speed also provides an energy advantage against SAM's and very long range ATA missiles.
The F-35 can probably go faster than the stated top speed of M1.6, though, if surivival depends on it. I would guess its real top speed is around M2, similar to an F-16.
Ok, maybe you have information I don't have, but those planes have long range missiles of their own.
What would a US carrier group do to stop a large group of Tu-160, Tu-22, Mig31 and similar aircraft armed with anti-ship missiles with ranges that in many cases exceed 1000km, and some of which are supersonic or even hypersonic?
If the carrier is several 1000 kilometer from land, maybe F35's flying CAP + any additional scrambled fighters may provide enough protection.
But the closer the carrier gets to land, the more vulnerable they may be.
What kind of missile would you use against these bombers, and at what distance?
Now keep in mind that the enemy can stay in the air for a while far within their friendly airspace, and then suddenly start a dash towards you at a speed of Mach2.
In cases like this, I would believe that having a few F-22 around (possibly from land based air bases in the area) would be a good addition to the fighters on the carrier, simply because the F-22 could much more easily dance with the enemy bombers as they were repositioning.
It's claimed to have an operational range of 3000km.
Kh-55 has a similar range, but lower speed (sea-skimming, though).
Then there is the Kh-32 with operational range stated as 600-1000km.
And then there are plenty of missiles of ranges from 300-1000km.
Also, China is actively developing similar systems.
I suppose it's classified at what ranges these systems would be able hit targets such as carriers. But if they're able to at all, it would be at rangers much beyond what you can defend against with aim120/aim160 missiles.
RIM 161/SM3 would provide some protection, but they are probably not very accurate at the extreme ranges, especially if targetting supersonic attackers.
Which means that interceptors may be the best option. Against large groups of enemies, the speed of the interceptor is still relevant, and there are certainly some in the Navy that worries about the loss of the F14, in particular in the Pacific.
For now, I suppose it makes sense to have some F22's and F15's in the general area where such conflicts could take place.
Well, according to Wikipedia, it's nicknamed "Carrier Killer". Also, if it's specified speed is correct, it would travel at several km per second, and reach the carrier in 2-3 minutes if fired from 1000km away.
If it has any kind of ability to home in on the ship based on radar, sattelite or similar, it shouldn't matter much if it's fired from 200km or 2000km. And even less if it carries a nuke. Even at 40kn, a ship doesn't go THAT far in 3 minutes.
Of course, if it's not performing per specification, it wouldn't be the first time for a Russian weapon system. So it makes sense to take the claims with a grain of salt.
The main point, though, is that in some places, it's hard to protect important assets from all angles against enemies that are a lot faster. This may not be all that important in Eastern Europe. It might be more important in the Arctic, Middle Eastern or Pacific theatres, though.
At the very least, speed allows each plane to patrol a larger area in relatively remote places.
Anti-ship missiles are dealt with by anti-ship missile defenses[1]. They have to deal with the problem from submarines and land based missiles anyway.
The F22 is an air-superiority fighter. To quote Wikipeda interceptor role is mostly dead:
> the strategic threat moved from bombers to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Dedicated interceptor designs became rare, with the only widely used examples designed after the 1960s being the Panavia Tornado ADV, Mikoyan MiG-25, Mikoyan MiG-31, and the Shenyang J-8.
I'd note the most recent of any of those is the Mig31 (operational since 1981, production finished in 1994). It's worth reading combat reports from Ukraine against the Mig31 - where it is being used in an air-superiority role. There the big advantage of the Mig31 is its R-37 missile (range 200+ miles).
The F-22 can go faster and further than the F-35. It's also more maneuverable and a touch stealthier. (The F-35 has better tech, is cheaper to build and operate and can carry more armament.)
For the F-35 to work out to somehow being cheaper than the F-22 they have to acquire some insane number of them for nearly two decades then keep them in service for 50 years. At some point reality is going to set in that a front-line aircraft that is also old enough to run for senator may not be the best idea.
It's also unlikely the projected numbers are ever going to be acquired simply due to the fact that projected budgets and reality don't usually agree.
Particularly during R&D you can kick and scream as much as you want to deny reality about things. At some point it will set in that while the F-35 does in fact exist as an aircraft, it isn't practical, meets none of it's objectives and may actually be operationally inferior to existing aircraft.
If you don't believe me read any of the DOT&E reports on the F-35. Even they mention that for things to work out would require the F-35 program to suddenly go from never meeting any of their own objectives to meeting 100% of them for the forseeable future.
My personal projection is that acquisition is halted in the next few years and in less than 20 years the available aircraft will be in storage in Davis-Monthan or a similar facility.
Are you claiming that the Pentagon is secretly acquiring F-35 airframes for far higher prices than other JSF program partners or foreign sales customers, in order to cook the books?
It's not necessarily how remarkable it is, it's more about not exporting your absolute most advanced technologies because it's more likely for a future adversary to gain access to it, and thus learn how copy it or defeat it.
Most nations want to hang onto that technological edge as long as feasible.
> The "multi-role" thing is what made developing and debugging the F-35 such a > pain.
Not so much the multi role part as the fact that it's really 3 different aircraft that they tried to make as similar as possible.
Had they only made the F35A, with the rules of F35B and C covered by other planes, then it would probably be either cheaper or more capable in some ways.
The F-22 is a single purpose machine like a Ferrari or Lamborghini, whereas the F-35 is more of a utility vehicle like a Toyota Hilux. The F-35 can do vertical takeoff (VTOL), carrier landings for the Navy (F-22 cannot), and has multiple variants to support these deployment scenarios. The F-22 doesn't really have any variants, it is an Air Force plane thru and thru. The A in F-35A designates air force, conventional take-off and alnding. Other variants exist, like the F-35B (this one can do VTOL) and F-35C (catapult-assisted, aka getting yeeted off of an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean). All of this comes at a trade-off / engineering cost, of course. The F-22 is more of a specialized scalpel, the F-35 is meant to be more versatile and operate in more environments. There is a sacrifice to be made there. The F-22 is more stealth, has more thrust, is faster and more maneuverable - meant to be used in air to air combat. The F-35 is smaller, slower, but can do things like vertical takeoff. It is designed more for ground assault type work, bombing runs, etc.
In a dogfight I do not think that there is an aircraft on this planet that can compete against an F-22. The F-35 is no slouch, either, but the F-22 is the alpha predator.
There is no variant of the F-35 that can do VTOL. Apparently they did a test and got some prototype to take off vertically with no fuel and nothing else on board. But it is not a VTOL aircraft.
> Apparently they did a test and got some prototype to take off vertically with no fuel
That would be…impressive, actually. But I doubt any variant of the F-35 has demonstrated takeoff, vertical or otherwise, without fuel, though I suppose if you were extremely generous with your definition of “takeoff”, the F-35C might be able to, given its CATOBAR capability.
Lockheed Martin says of the video: "An F-35B test aircraft completes its first-ever vertical takeoff (VTO) at NAS Patuxent River, Md., on May 10, 2013. While not a capability used in combat, VTOs are required for repositioning of the STOVL in environments where a jet could not perform a short takeoff. In these cases, the jet, with a limited amount of fuel, would execute a VTO to travel a short distance."
This is not a combat functionality and would never be used in actual combat environment. F-35 is explicitly not a VTOL aircraft any more than a baseball is.
F35B also has the hover capability. Its focus is to support in CAS (Close Air Support) roles, not necessarily doing hover support like helicopters, but STOVL capability needed to be stationed on temporary smaller airfields. AFAIK it's main use-case is to support the Marines.
My understanding is that dogfighting shouldn’t be a thing with the F-35. It’s not like in Top Gun where the pilot needs to align the plane with its target to shoot it down. The F-35 pilot just needs to point their head towards the enemy to lock on. That means they can shoot down someone that’s behind them. No acrobatics needed.
The F-35 comes with a bunch of other technology that make it truly formidable. The cost has also come down substantially, so it’s probably the cheapest option out there as well.
We keep saying missiles are great and dogfighting is over, and we keep being proven wrong.
Mind you, eventually this will be correct... just it's been declared prematurely for 60 years and so this still may not be the correct moment to say so.
> The F-35 pilot just needs to point their head towards the enemy to lock on.
Missile performance won't be equal in this case; if the enemy can launch missiles with higher pkill, well..
I agree with your main sentiment. There are niches for WVR combat, though, such as in mountainous terrain or in areas with massive amounts of SAM assets.
The enemy COULD pop out from just behind the mountain/hill in front of you, and force you to have to resort to short ranged (FOX 2) missiles or even guns.
Still, though, this is not enough to prioritize extreme agility over stealth today. The F35 is more than agile enough for the few times this occurs, especially if there is a wingman around.
Ukraine is proving this. The Ukrainian airforce is slowly being attrited through hypersonic BVR (beyond visual range) R37 and R77 missiles launched by Migs that aren't even flying over Ukraine. They're firing those missiles from the safety or Russia, 100km away from the border. And because they're hypersonic reaction times are short (they have a top speed of about Mach 5).
> We keep saying missiles are great and dogfighting is over, and we keep being proven wrong.
My understanding is that the "dogfighting is over" rhetoric stopped being proven wrong during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraqi fighters started mysteriously exploding in the sky during operations.
The thing that's complicated is rules of engagement.
If you can safely entirely rely upon on IFF and deconfliction, all is great.
If you ever have to close to identify targets, then you might end up with some significant maneuvering, etc. Of course, the F-35 isn't terrible at this, and stealth and efficiency lets it better choose the terms of this engagement.
A naval variant capable of carrier landings of the F-22 was considered by the US Navy but was ultimately not adopted. The airframe is definitely capable of it, if given sufficient military and political will.
I’m 90% certain the airframe needs modification to support naval operations. The modification is so costly and difficult that Navy saw no reason to buy F22.
There are yet to exist, but I bet in a dogfight with AI armed drones, which don't have a human to suffer from G impact on crazier manouvers, it might end in another way.
For example, lets see what Bayraktar MIUS will be doing.
No one gives any credibility to the capabilities of the SU-57, lack of ability to produce them aside. Close up photos of the aircraft show that elementary features of a 5th generation aircraft are not implemented at all. It is basically a 4th gen aircraft dressed in 5th gen clothing. Its lack of stealth, for example, is well-known; it may be better than prior Soviet aircraft but orders of magnitude less stealthy than e.g. an F-35.
Someone will eventually produce an aircraft to rival the 5th gen capabilities of the US, but it hasn’t been done yet. Every competitor so far has been theater. Meanwhile, the US is actively developing and testing 6th gen combat aircraft.
They have poor sensor suites too. If everyone can see you before you can see them, you’re not going to survive no matter what other advantages you think you have.
Yep, while Russia is good at engine and airframe design they are behind in terms of optics and stealth. But their are other advantages like maneuverability maintainability and cost to manufacture.
Literally all irrelevant if you get taken out in a BVR engagement by a less maneuverable plane you can't see (or by a missile coming off an F-15EX you do see, being spotted by the F-35 you don't).
I know it feels good to imagine otherwise but Russia is objectively ahead (at the moment) in terms of ballistics and air defense.
But aircraft tech, yes - absolutely. The US knows how to build impressive planes. But stand-off ballistics and drones are now the better bang for the buck.
> I know it feels good to imagine otherwise but Russia is objectively ahead (at the moment) in terms of ballistics and air defense.
What do you mean “ballistics”? Ballistic missiles? If so, then, sure, Russia has much longer range conventional SRBMs than the US (though that should change this year, with the PrSM coming online), which has largely (until comparatively recently) focused on manned aircraft abd cruise rather than ballistic missiles for the same use.
> But stand-off ballistics and drones are now better bang for the buck.
In the specific tacrical environment of the Ukraine war, they may be, given the inability of either side to achieve reliable air superiority. Certainly, as terror weapons against civilian populations it is true.
It's not clear Russia is better at any of that, it's that Russia has land-based launch systems they can use in the war they started, whereas the US can't easily loan Ukraine an entire sea or air-launched system (particularly because the current logic still tends towards "no weapons which could hit Moscow easily).
Ukraine is not the United States military, and is not being armed with its full complement of weapons for very specific diplomatic reasons. Whereas Russia has been free to unload all it's conventional weapons as it sees fit.
> It is designed more for ground assault type work, bombing runs, etc.
The problem is: what exactly do you bomb? I.e. what is the battle-related purpose of this machine?
Bombing tank formations would, of course, make sense, let's say if you encounter a formation of 10-15 tanks a F-35 sortie would make sense. But then the enemy adapts and starts only using tanks in "solitary", so to speak, or at most in "pairs". Does it make economic and operational sense to fly and risk a F-35 just to destroy two tanks? I don't know.
The same goes for enemy artillery. Does it make economic sense to risk a F-35 sortie just to try and take out howitzers scattered over the entire front line? I think it doesn't, for example the Russians have been reasonably good at taking NATO-sent M777s just by using counter-artillery or Lancet suicide mini-drones (orders of magnitude cheaper than a F-35, excluding the opportunity costs of losing an airplane pilot's life).
Of course, F-35s would be best in destroying civilian infrastructure related to the enemy's war effort behind the front-lines, stuff like power transmission units, bridges, railways etc, meaning what NATO did in Serbia in 1999 and what the Allies tried to do against Germany in WW2. But, again, it's much cheaper to do it with cruise missiles (the Russians have also proved that that is doable during the current war in Ukraine), ignoring the fact that it might not work (the Germans carried out producing war stuff until the early months of 1945, despite the very heavy aerial bombings).
I think the US military has been the victim of its own success in the first Gulf War, when indeed air superiority allowed them to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait with almost no losses on the US side. But the second Gulf War proved that once the war gets more complicated (in that case when it got close to Baghdad and to populated centers) then relying on airplanes alone is not enough.
so we send f16s and f15s as appropriate for those tasks for which the risk is there for the f35?
If there's a war in 5-10 years with china, will drones be fighting on the battlefield, maybe preventing the us' billions in fighters from doing things?
> so we send f16s and f15s as appropriate for those tasks for which the risk is there for the f35?
If I were an accountant for the US military, yes, I would do that. But, of course, things are a lot more complicated, because if they have built it they'll have to use it, you can't go in front of a Congressional budget commission and say that it doesn't make sense to use a F-35 when the F-16 can do the job just as fine, because they'll furiously ask you why did you need all that money for the F-35 in the first place.
> If there's a war in 5-10 years with china, will drones be fighting on the battlefield
Could be. Either way, I think we haven't reached the "maximum" when it comes to the use of aerial drones in modern warfare, not by a long shot. Partly also because of institutional reasons, when you've spent so much money on a project like the F-35 you don't ask your best military minds to think too much about drones so that you could best employ them on the battlefield, you ask those bright minds to put the F-35 to use (because a general's future career prospects depend on it). This would only get alleviated by the US having to fight a real war, when, supposedly, those institutional motives would be overcome by the reality of war.
About a possible US war against China I can't comment much because I don't know the situation in that geographic area all too well. It is my understanding though that the US is preparing for a war over the vast area of the Pacific, a repeat of their WW2-campaign if you wish, but I'm not sure China will fall into that trap. But this is pure unsubstantiated speculation from me, time will tell.
You use the F22 (and stand-off munitions) to obtain air superiority at the opening of hostilities. Bombing airstrip, C&C infrastructure, SAM suppression, etc.
You then use your vast fleet of less capable planes to ramp up sorties, provide air support during combined arms operations, etc. You can still use your magic airplane for protection of those assets during sorties, and for strike missions on high-value, high-threat targets.
That is why it is not a problem to have 'few' expensive magic planes. The US only had a hand full of U2's and SR71's, because you're not doing spying runs over Russia 10x a day.
> to obtain air superiority at the opening of hostilities
That works for a very short war, like those in Iraq/Kuwait in 1990-1991 and in Serbia in 1999 happened to be, meaning it was cost effective to have invested so much money in the far more superior US planes because the wars in themselves were short (so the US got a good ROI out of using those advanced planes).
But what to do in case of a war that spans over an entire year or more? (like the current war in Ukraine). The marginal utility of those first debilitating air strikes carried out by advanced planes goes down quite rapidly, nobody cares after 12 months of intense on-the-ground war if some airfields behind the front have been blasted just as the war started, most probably those airfields have already been repaired.
And there's also the opportunity costs. The money spent on developing a very advanced plane like the F-22 could have been put to better use by investing in the US's artillery shells-making industry (of which the West has not enough of right now), artillery shells which provide a much better ROI during a 12-month land-war compared to an advanced plane.
It's all a matter of what future wars the US plans to get into and how it thinks those wars will actually develop.
The purpose of the air force is to stop the war becoming 12 months of intense ground fighting, isn't it? What would the early days of the war in Ukraine have looked like if Russia had access to a USAF-level strike capability?
> But then the enemy adapts and starts only using tanks in "solitary", so to speak, or at most in "pairs".
Then you've already won. Tanks are by far most useful on offense when concentrated. Individual tanks can not break through infantry lines, if the infantry has any amount of anti air weaponry attached.
> The problem is: what exactly do you bomb?
F35's main responsibility would be to ensure air superiority, by keeping the air free of enemy aircraft (including any medium to large drones) and by supressing and finally destroying enemy air defences.
Once that is achieved, they can be used for any kind of traditional CAS or go hunting enemy artillery positions. When on the defensive, aircraft are superb at limiting enemy mobility, by attacking trains, convoys bridges and rail heads.
Also, and espeicially in large wars where satellites are likely to be shot down, having aircraft over a warzone provides a huge intelligence advantage. Even when out of bombs, the aircraft can use cameras and data links to send coordinates for enemy artillery, bunkers and tanks back to HQ or to friendly forces.
And obviously, once air supremacy has been achieved, all the 4th gen aircraft can also join in the CAP/Ground Attacks/Interdiction missions.
> it's much cheaper to do it with cruise missiles
This is not true. Cruise missiles are quite expensive when compared to bombs. A tomahawk missile costs $2M per unit. By comparison, a JDAM bomb costs about $25K. Even when including aircraft maintainance, fuel, etc, bombs are an order of magnitude cheaper than cruise missiles.
> But the second Gulf War proved that once the war gets more complicated (in that case when it got close to Baghdad and to populated centers) then relying on airplanes alone is not enough.
The second gulf war was primarily a TV war for public opinion. The best approach to wars where you're not willing to use the amount of force necessary to win it, is to not fight it.
These are some weird takes. Saying that the F-35 is built for ground strike roles doesn't mean that there's no need for ground forces or infantry, or that other capabilities won't ever be more suitable for certain strike operations, or that people have WWII-era strategic bombing campaigns in mind.
fwiw, if you're looking for a particular kind of strike target, the F-35 is widely regarded as the USAF's most credible SEAD/DEAD platform. It's suitable for a wide range of other roles, but SEAD really sets it apart.
The F-22 was a "money is no object" design intended to push the state-of-the-art in terms of absolute performance even with diminishing ROI.
The F-35 was designed to be a mass produced aircraft that (1) could be exported widely without risk of leaking too many secrets and (2) reduced absolute performance and features based on a more pragmatic cost-benefit analysis where it only needed to be good enough and not the best possible. Economies of scale factored greatly into its design.
> Help me understand what sets the F-22 apart from the F-35?
Supersonic flight without afterburners (supercruise). In theory, at least, that should be a huge advantage on either side of an interception scenarios.
F22 is stealthier and has better radar packages, more oriented towards air superiority. F22 is designed to completely dominate the sky. F35 was originally designed to be a multi-role fighter, it's still that, but not cheap. And has some very advanced features not noted in this article, oddly. Integrated sensors and communications turn it into a flying AWACS, very potent.
There’s a gliding AWACS that is much cheaper. There’s also a single use AWACS that you can launch from a trebuchet, which also doubles as ammunition to batter your enemy’s defenses.
Estimated frontal Radar Cross Section (really just estimates, actual figures tend to be classified as you can imagine): 1.2m² for the F-16, 0.8m² for Mirage 2000 and Gripen C, 0.04m² for Rafale and Eurofighter (0.05m² with anti-air missiles), 0.002m² for the F-35, 0.0002m² for the F-22. [1]
Using F-16 the baseline, Rafale is 30x smaller, F-35 is 600x smaller and F-22 is 6000x smaller. So there's a factor 10 in favor of the F-22 when compared to the F-35. On top of that F-22 is said to be more optimized in all directions, while for the F-35 the focus was more on the frontal RCS, so the F-22 overall average RCS is probably even better.
Europeans will note that in terms of RCS, the 4.5 Gen moniker of Rafale/EF is well deserved: halfway between an F-16 and an F-35...
Production was ended for a lot of reasons, but the program still exists in a support role. They're deployed in active duty and are upgraded/retrofitted with modern technology.
Most / All of the infrastructure built to build the F-22 has been cannabalized to build the F-35. The production machinery and factories for the most part just don't exist anymore and would have to be rebuilt.
In the 2000s, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates cancelled the program. IIRC Gates concluded - and many agreed - that the F-22 was designed for an enemy and fight that no longer existed, the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
You might think history proved Gates wrong, but no air power can compete with what the US has now, sans the F-22, and it would have been very expensive.
I assume gates et al weren't foreseeing the rapid rise of china then. That plus the seemingly rapid advance of drones must make it difficult to plan the last few years.
Even if they did foresee it, buying expensive F-22's in the 2000s seems a mistake. The US would have had 20 year old planes (though still technologically advanced), designed for the wrong fight. It's such an issue that the Air Force is now working to retire their F-22's.
For example, a war with China, if it happened, would be most expected around Taiwan; how would F-22's reach the fight? There are no airbases nearby, except on Taiwan which would be innundated with missile attacks. The F-22 doesn't fly from aircraft carriers (which are imperiled by China's missiles regardless). The US needs a longer-range fighter in the Pacific, to cover the vast territory without bases.
Also, the F-22 afaik doesn't integrate with the new network-oriented joint force, where every asset is a sensor and node on the network, all sharing and a view of the battlefield. It doesn't integrate with 'wingman' drones, now the concept for at least part of the Air Force, where human-piloted planes control several drones.
Instead, the US spent that money elsewhere at the time, getting a better return on investment, remains in the lead now (with F-35's), is building a bomber for the China contest (B-21's), and designing a new fighter.
>F-22 was designed for an enemy and fight that no longer existed, the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
True, same with the Seawolf-Class Sub's, just too expensive for the "now"-state. However i think with china, the US has to go back to the far-ahead-tec doctrine....fast...
The F-22 replacement is already under active development.
The F-22 was a pretty radical departure from what came before it, and I think it served as a prototype for all the subsequent next generation platforms from which many things were learned. As good as it was, you aren't going to get everything right the first time and technology progresses.
Is the F-22 still advanced? As I recall, it's still running a computer from ‘93 - is it's radar, sensor fusion, and weapons system competitive with an f-35?
Would an f-35 with awacs support beat an f-22 with awacs support in Beyond visual range combat?
There is intentionally not a lot of public knowledge released on the F-22. All aircraft are constantly retrofitted and upgraded to remain modern and relevant. Huge huge huge amounts of money are spent on this. Hell, the B-52 is still in service today and it was released in 1952. I can't say for certain, but I would be surprised if the F-22's in operation today have as-advanced or more advanced capabilities than the F-35. Just because they are older does not mean they are running older tech. They'll gut the entire cockpit and drop in a new one no problemo.
The F-22 is frighteningly capable in the air superiority role, by all accounts, when it comes to stuff like NATO exercises and Red Flag. AFAIK they haven't lost any flying attack missions against rebels in Yemen, which might or might not be proof of anything.
It's not going to have next-generation stuff like Multifunction Advanced Data Link. I assume that's because of its older avionics, and because it has been deemed not worth upgrading because of its age. [0]
It's not my area of expertise but it's probably accurate to say that the F-22 is stronger than anything at its specialized, traditional air superiority mission but it will be left behind when it comes to flying alongside drones and other interceptors. The F-15EX and F-35, along with unmanned drones, will be able to do amazing things in concert by communicating with one another over their network. That is a different paradigm.
The F-22 flew over Jemen? Didn't know that... But then, the only really contested air spaces were Iraq, Serbia (both before the F-22, and the latter let to the retirement of the F-117) and now Ukraine. In all other cases, NATO and other forces had complete air superiority. And under these conditions, WW2 planes would do the job.
F-22 isn't even competitive in the pure mission statement since its air-to-ground capabilities are very limited - it was built for pure air superiority and its very poor as a multirole fighter.
That's a big factor for countries that can't afford BOTH air superiority and ground support craft.
F-35 is just... a pretty good airplane for a pretty good price.
The F-22 is still being upgraded. It has better air-to-ground capabilities than it used to, and the electronics and software is being upgraded, too.
It's still probably the Ultimate Fighter.
Also, it's not operating alone. Wherever there is an F22, you should expect to also find other assets, including the F35. The F22 is just the tip of the spear, to be committed when it's speed or manouverability is required.
The F-22 isn't built anymore. And as far as F-35 alternatives go, the Eurofighter and the Rafale come to mind. Not that the F-35 is a bad plane, so.
Edit: One thing the F-35 has that the other planes don't: Interoperability across basically all NATO nations and beyond. And it is the most up to date, and still in volume production, model.
If we speak of specific capabilties: The F-22, F-15C/D/E/EX and F/A-18C/D/E/F are better at air superiority. The F-15E and -EX are better at ground attack. The A-10 is better at close air support. The F-16 (all its variants...) is on par with the F-35 on all counts except for stealth and STOVL.
The only thing the F-35 has a decisive advantage in is STOVL capability. Everything else is compromised to achieve the "one plane fits all" vision; the F-35 is a jack of all trades, master of none.
The A-10 is obsolete. Its airframe literally can’t hold the power systems required to support modern defensive and offensive capabilities. It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment. It was designed for the threat environment from half a century ago with no upgrade path.
F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.
You don’t seem to understand the criteria against which military aircraft are judged.
Yet we keep using the a-10 to fight against non-modern air defenses over and over again. It has a use. If ukraine had them, would russia be able to shoot them all down? The answer should be yes, but russia should have waxed ukraine theoretically.
Russian AA is killing Ukrainian Migs very well when they're not careful. No one is flying over Ukraine very much because both sides have AA dominating all engagement altitudes.
I don't think you understand the kinds (and volumes) of SAM firepower a Soviet hangover can leave you with. Ukrainian skies are the most dangerous skies in the world right now, for both sides.
I wasn't trying to say that a10s should be used in Ukraine (because they'd be shot down). But a10s are still really useful in many other circumstances, most recently when fighting countries without air superiority. So if the us fights China, it doesn't seem like they'd be that useful because the us might not have air superiority and it won't be a tank war.
>The A-10 is obsolete. Its airframe literally can’t hold the power systems required to support modern defensive and offensive capabilities. It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment. It was designed for the threat environment from half a century ago with no upgrade path.
Yet we keep flying it in the face of repeated attempts to retire it, with the USAF even going on the record that the A-10 will be kept in inventory "indefinitely"[1]. The A-10 is clearly not obsolete and continues to proudly serve the USA and its friends and allies, and enjoys much adoration from its pilots, mechanics, infantrymen, and civilian fans.
>F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
The F-15 has suffered no airframe loss to enemy combat action in its entire service history, that is a feat not easily met. The USAF even went as far as to procure new F-15s, the -EX model, because F-35 production wasn't keeping up.
As for the F/A-18, the Hornet boasts superior flight range and payload capacity besides being significantly cheaper, to say nothing of its proven air superiority and multirole capabilities.
>The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.
That is patently false. The F-35 must sacrifice what little stealth it has to carry more payload, otherwise it can only carry a small handful within its internal weapon bays. Even accounting for carrying payload on its wing pylons, it still can't hold a candle to the other fighters; the F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.
As for range, it pales in comparison to air superiority fighters (eg: F-15C/D/E/EX, F-22) or 4th gen naval fighters (the F/A-18C/D/E/F).
> The USAF even went as far as to procure new F-15s, the -EX model,
> because F-35 production wasn't keeping up.
Is that the reason? I thought it was the need to counter the Chinese strategy of mass producing fighters with an idea of overwhelming western fighters through sheer weight of number. F35 is weak on per hour running cost and uptime per unit, and loses to the F15 variant if you are looking to scale.
The f35 can operate in a similar role to an e8 alongside a mix of cheaper aircraft.
Yes, F35 production not keeping up with airforce recapitalization needs, something like 45% of airframes flying beyond service life. So need to plug gap with F15s.
> F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.
But also this. Which touches on F35 being very complicated to develop for, and taking ages to integrate weapons vs F15s. And some operational considerations like not wanting to retrain F15 pilots.
Look at USAF 4+1 for next 15 years of procurement. Basically F35A, F15EX, F16CD, A10s and +1 being F22s that will be replaced by NGAD.
Read between the line consideration is F35/F22 was made for Europe/RU theatre, lacks range in PRC theatre without tanking, which are vunerable to J20s with longer range and air to air. Hence NGAD being mid sized bomber, and acquiring 100 B21s that cost as much as 1000 F35s.
Point is EX has continuity with prior weapons integration. AF wanted F15 capabilities and opted for modernized variant. Plus F15s simply carrying more = USAF opting to keeping mixed composition of airframes that excels in different capabilities niches instead of previous TACAIR proposal of going all in on stealth. Even A10, for as much meme calling for it's death, got a host of modernization that puts it ahead of F35 for certain missions short/medium term. AF still going to go HAM on 35s long term, but within next 15 years, they're reorienting for 4+1 mix because 35s simply won't be the stealth swiss army knife it was designed to be, largely due to software complexity that makes integration painful.
Yes, F-35 production simply wasn't sufficient in the face of pressure from aging F-15C/D airframes that will very soon need replacements:
>Adding new F-15s was not an Air Force idea, but instead came out of the Pentagon’s Cost and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE, and was endorsed by former Defense Secretary James Mattis. While the Air Force’s long-held position has been to invest only in fifth generation fighter technology, it has defended the plan to buy new F-15s as a way to maintain fighter capacity, given the aging of the F-15C fleet and the slow pace of F-35 acquisitions.
>While the Air Force is adamant that buying F-15EXs will not reduce the requirement to build 1,763 F-35s, history and the Air Force’s own budget request suggests otherwise. The 2020 budget submission shows the Air Force buying 24 fewer F-35s over the next five years compared to last year’s plan.
>Yet we keep flying it in the face of repeated attempts to retire it, with the USAF even going on the record that the A-10 will be kept in inventory "indefinitely"[1]. The A-10 is clearly not obsolete and continues to proudly serve the USA and its friends and allies, and enjoys much adoration from its pilots, mechanics, infantrymen, and civilian fans.
Because the US has, in the past decades, not waged a war against a near-equal opponent who could have held together any kind of air force or air defenses for at most the first few days of a US invasion. In all of the US wars since the A-10 might have been obsolete against a near-equal opponent, it was more advanced than the mass of opposing tech, and could be used well. For counterinsurgency, the cost of actually modern tech is more of a problem, given that the cheap old stuff is still far superior to anything a Taliban commander can put in the field, and given that guerilla warfare has as it's aim not tactical victories, but increasing the cost to the bigger party into politically untenable regions.
It is very much obsolete in the sense that the US also requires air capabilities for large, near-equal conflicts, and there is no unsurprising way for A-10s to be useful there. In summary: keep enough A-10s around for CAS against outclassed opponents, but don't plan on having enough to take on China, seems like a wise strategy.
> You don’t seem to understand the criteria against which military aircraft are judged.
FYI your argument was going so well until you employed this fallacy. What GP does or doesn't understand is entirely irrelevant, not to mention that mind-reading is forbidden, not really, but it is also fallacy. Only what is stated is relevant. Now if you'll just accept this, I actually do not want to argue. I was hoping you would not mind answering my questions, because I do not understand.
> It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment.
Obviously, we have a modern air defense, and the F-35 and F-22, among other elements, are a part of it. Who else does? Russia? North Korea? China? I'm just curious who threatens our 50 year old technology. IOW, besides our allies, who has 4th and/or 5th gen aircraft that we need to shore up against and not let them wreck our jalopies?
> The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
same question, who, other than our allies, is operating 5th gen aircraft that we should be concerned about? I'm not making any point. I really don't know. Appreciated.
No one is operating 5th gen aircraft that the US should be concerned about. Many countries are operating air defenses that the US should be concerned about. The 5th gen aircraft have credible, but not perfect, defense in-depth against the current generation of air defense platforms, whereas the 4th gen aircraft do not (though they may gain it at some point).
In the specific case of the A-10, it was designed for a world that had extremely primitive sensor systems that couldn’t even reliably lock onto a plane when looking straight at it. We aren’t in that world anymore. Not only is the terminal guidance sophisticated and reliable but the warheads are designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the A-10. Everyone has had 50 years to work on that problem.
Modern Russian and Chinese systems effortlessly deal with an A-10; it lacks the power systems to support modern counter-measures against modern systems. It isn’t upgradable like that because that wasn’t a design objective.
Modern military aircraft like the F-35 have critical combat roles that don’t involve dogfighting. Their sensor suites and processing capabilities are at least as important as any other particular feature, and other aircraft don’t have that. Their systems can measure and exploit their environment to an astonishing degree.
yep, we can also draw some interesting conclusions from the current conflict in Ukraine and that's with a targeted campaign an air defense is only as good as the entire network and system it's built around.
The Ukrainian air force with mostly su-24's and su-27's should not exist or even be able to operate against Russia's supposed air defense capabilities(s-400, s-300, Tor, manpads) but war is almost always a battle of information and the stealth and network capabilities the F-35 has puts it a league of its own. One which only the f-22 could transcend but the raw number of F-35's being pumped out negates that advantage to a degree
The Ukrainian air force is severely limited in it's air operations against the Russians. Similarly the Russians largely don't operate their aircraft over Ukraine. That's because both sides have air defence systems that are highly capable against aircraft of those generations.
Both sides have essentially untouchable radars. The Ukrainians have so far avoided shooting at Russian planes flying much beyond the Ukrainian border, and Russia has the Beriev A-100.
E-3 would never enter the Ukraine airspace (and they are not Ukraine, but totally-we-are-not-the-part-of-that NATO), while A-50/100 would be gladly shot down if the chance arises. So 'essentially' is not the right word here.
They can scan almost all of Western Ukraine from Belarus airspace. The southern most coast south of Moldova, and maybe Odessa is beyond it's published estimated range assuming it flies more than 100km inside Belarus airspace, but not by much.
At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.
Though probably someone already published their routes, but I too lazy to check, honestly. Still my point stands - As can be downed (and everyone would clap, especially in the US) while Es "NO YOU DONT THATS ARTICLE 5"
>At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.
Over distances of 600km the vertical offset due to earth's curvature is about 20km. If it flies at it's operational ceiling of 14km, it can offset most of that but wouldn't have direct line of sight on planes at extreme range flying below 6km. If it has over the horizon capability though, which honestly seems highly likely for a recently updated system, then it should be able to compensate for the remaining shadow with some loss of resolution. Which I'm guessing is why it's estimated range is considered 600km. I'm sure the military analysts making those estimates know about these effects.
Anyway, southern Ukraine can be directly radar imaged from over Crimea so it's really not an issue. It's petty clear Russia can have full radar coverage of all of Ukraine without having to put their air radar assets close to Ukraine.
It is of course possible Ukraine might decide to try a long range anti-air strike, but I think that's unlikely due to the possibility of hitting a civilian plane, or the target coming down on a civilian area.
The F-35 massively outperforms any 4th gen at Red Flag in air-to-air. F-15E and A10 have advantages in ground support vs enemies without proper anti-air defense, but the F-35 has massive advantages against enemies with serious air defences, such as S300 and S400. (Just look at how both Russian and Ukrainian air forces have to stay at low altituteds and stick to friendly air space in the Ukraine war).
The only nation that is a realistic threat to Finland, is Russia, and against Russia, the F-35 is a near-perfect aircraft.
By having F35, Finland also has much improved capabilities to interoperate with Nato nations. If the US needs to reinforce Finland's air bases, US planes can be serviced locally. Or if Finland is being overwhelmed, their fighters can fall back to Norway, Denmark or Germany.
Apart from operating costs, there are very few disadvantages to the F-35.
In an extremely unlikely close range dogfight with an F-16, where the F-35 has no missiles, the F-16 could win.
If the F-35 has any of its weapons though, then the F-16 gets pasted by a missile the F-35 fires whenever it wants because it can essentially shoot behind itself.
In reality the F-16 gets killed without ever knowing it's being tracked.
Sure, if you're fighting adversaries without antiaircraft defenses.
That doesn't leave you with many viable use cases.
But yeah... if you've wiped out your enemy's air defenses (or they never had them) including man-portable rocket launchers and all they've got left is a column of unarmored trucks then absolutely, the A-10 going to be devastating.
I'm not in the US, or even in a NATO country (yet, heh) and I read all the comments about how obsolete the A-10 is but I guess you're exaggerating a little for dramatic effect. :) I'm pretty sure the A-10 would be at least "greatly annoying" to far heavier vehicles than unarmored trucks.
The Gun [1] penetrates 76 mm armor at 300 m range, which would surely hurt a bit. I'm not sure how successive rounds interact with thicker armor, but would hate to be the one to find out on the ground. :/
I find it almost hard to believe that it can fire 65 rounds per second, where each round weighs almost 400 g, and all of that while flying. It's an incredible piece of Very Angry Engineering.
The infantry on the ground also love the A-10 coming in to lay down support fire, it's a great morale booster.
The US Army is even on the record that they would fly the A-10 themselves if the USAF retired them[1], which played in to USAF keeping the A-10 "indefinitely".
>Sources say the Army is interested in obtaining A-10s should the Air Force decide to retire the twin-engine jets, which have been flying since the 1970s.[1]
The A-10 is adored and respected by our service members, so it's absolutely not obsolete and not retiring any time soon.
No matter how many people fap on Brrrrtt it's a 50 year old design currently capable only for running amok against guerillas with rusted AKs and allied supply convoys. Any theater with enough MANPADs makes A-10 an angry fireball on the ground.
That the US military keeps it around and uses it in places where they don't have air defenses or enemy aircraft to worry about isn't a particularly useful counter to the point that it has massive weaknesses against modern air defenses. You'll also notice that the US has lots of other planes for places where that worry exists.
It is almost as if certain tools have certain use cases. And tgat an organization as large as the US military might what to have those tools for all the use cases they might run into.
The answer? Don't use fighters vulnerable against modern AA against modern AA.
Benefit of the A-10? Lower speed, longer loitering in CAS, something quite valuable in combined arms. And faster than attack helicopters, so A-10s can move faster between mission sites.
It is almost as if certain tools have certain use cases.
And tgat an organization as large as the US military
might what to have those tools for all the use cases
they might run into.
As large as the military's budget is, it's not unlimited. Money spent on one thing is money they don't have for another thing.
So people who point out the A-10's weaknesses aren't saying the A-10 has literally no value at all, because it clearly does. They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives.
Benefit of the A-10? Lower speed, longer loitering in CAS,
something quite valuable in combined arms. And faster than
attack helicopters, so A-10s can move faster between mission sites.
Yes, the A-10 has some absolutely unique attributes and strengths. It's just that the viable use cases dwindle by the year as MANPADs get cheaper and cheaper. It's hard to find reliable sources, but you can apparently get them for under $100K. Think about the list of adversaries we might possibly fight who:
1. Are willing to challenge the US military in direct combat
2. Can't scrape together $100K for a rocket launcher
3. Don't have sympathetic allies that will be happy to give them rocket launchers for free in order to harass the US by proxy
>They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives.
USAF already investigated and answered that question: The F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, but the plan was axed in favor of keeping the A-10 indefinitely upon finding the operational risks and costs of flying the F-35 for CAS missions were not feasible.
Among the problems noted were: More dollars spent per flight hour, higher airframe cost (both in dollars and potential technology leakage) assuming an airframe loss, inferior protections afforded to the pilot, inferior airframe robustness and sturdiness, inferior payload, inferior flight range (and thus loitering time), and too fast minimum airspeed.
In fact, the F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, F-15C/D and potentially -E, F-16C/D, F/A-18C/D/E/F, F-22, and AV-8. The only aircraft the F-35 has thus far successfully replaced is the AV-8 owing to STOVL being a unique and niche capability. In all other cases the F-35 has at best complimented the preceding aircraft, and at worst failed as their replacement.
I'm not telling you the A-10 isn't great. It is! If an engineer can look at a cutaway drawing of an A-10 without feeling a great swelling in their heart, are they even truly alive?
Yes, the A-10 is insanely superior for CAS, for all of the reasons you mentioned. If your enemy is so impoverished and cut off from allies that it doesn't have dirt cheap MANPADs or anything else from the last several decades of anti-aircraft technology.
There are of course mitigation strategies for AA. Combined arms are a thing. SEAD is a thing. Utilizing weather/darkness/terrain is a thing. Cutting your enemies off from arms shipments is a thing. Hammering them with CAS until they have proven they can actually thwart it is a thing.
It's just that a lot of those mitigations start to break down when your foe's AA is "a dude carrying a cheap, essentially fire-and-forget portable weapon who can duck back into a cave, a house, or a literal hole in the ground and instantly blend back in with the populace or otherwise become effectively invisible."
This isn't theory.
You can see countless examples for yourself of Russian choppers and slow (but faster than A-10, I think) Su-25 getting absolutely wrecked in Ukraine in exactly the manner I have described. As a result, the fight has largely turned into a ground war with Russia chucking missiles at Ukraine but only from safely within Russian airspace. And this is Russia's military we're talking about; they have copiously demonstrated that they're not particularly concerned about the casualties they're racking up. The US tends to be far more conservative and risk-averse.
You can say that the US would utilize combined arms, SEAD, etc more effectively than Russia. I'd agree; it'd be hard to do much worse. But the fundamental reality is that AA (particularly against unstealthy foes) has gotten really good, really cheap, really portable, and much harder to suppress.
A-10s being vulnerable to modern air defences isn't a concern for the US military, because guess what: We have a lot of tools to use in our arsenal.
F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16C/D Fighting Falcons, F/A-18C/D/E/F Hornets and Super Hornets, B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits, and US Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles among others are perfectly capable of performing the alpha strikes necessary to severely damage and destroy enemy defences and infrastructure and clear the way. A-10s along with other "vulnerable" CAS assets like the AC-130 Spooky and US Army AH-64 Apache then perform their missions with impunity.
yea those speaking points about the F-35 not doing well in air superiority were mostly russian/chinese misinformation lol. The plane is no f-22 for sure but almost all 4th gen and even 4.5 gen planes would be long shot down before even getting in range for a dog fight.
It could be, if necessary, spun back into production. It would be very expensive and take time, at least $50B to produce 200 more and a few years to get restarted, but it's not like it would need to be designed again. We know how to make them. The issue seems to be the concern that future threats will make F-22 a poor match, and that it will compete financially against new programs that may be a better match. But who really knows what the threat will be in 2035? Maybe the F-22 is just right, and if it is and we need more, we'll make more.
Will probably need updates to a whole bunch of electronics and computerstuff, even with military HW timeliness. And probably porting. I have no doubt second system syndrome will creep in.
One reason that germany has selected the F35 as it’s next gen multirole aircraft is that it’s certified to carry US nuclear weapons. Other planes are theoretically capable of doing so, but would require adaptions and certification, increasing cost. With Finland on a path to join the NATO, this could be one consideration here as well.
US nukes, of the free-falling kind, were exactly why Germany went for a US model. And of those options, F-15, F/A-18 and F-35, the F-35 is the most modern. The F-15 was more or less obsolete at the time (the go for the -X uograde came later), and the F-35 prpably has the longer service life ahead of it.
The Eurofighter could of course carry and drop US nukes. The issue is that it would need US cwrtification to do so, and for rather obvious reasons that certification was close to impossible to get.
Again, the F-35 is a great plane. There are reasons so why it is not not even for the USN and USAF, only one.
Because you still need to test that stuff before using it. And yes, if it was accute, testing and certification would go fast (see COVID vaccines), but it would still be tested. In reality, having a platform able to carry nukes is Germanies way to be, and stay, part of NATO's nuclear weapon councils. For sure, Germany could also buy Rafales and use French nukes, but that would create such a public outcry that the only result would be no nukes at all anymore for Germany regardless of whose nukes Germany is borrowing.
Edit: The reason for the outcry over French nukes is not that they are French, but rather the need to change the laws around nuclear participation to allow the switch. And that legislative changes would lead to a ton of public debate everyone wants to avoid, as this debate would kill nuclear participation in general. So nobody in governmant wants to take this risk, hence the procurement of a US platform to replace the aging Tornado fleet as a carrier of US nukes.
Again, forgive my ignorance: why would anyone (aside from plane salesmen) care whether German planes carry French or American nukes? Are the French people that opposed to sharing with the Germans? That's for the insight!
The German public cares, US nukes are kind of an accepted, and mostky ignored reality. French nukes would wake up the public. The big party that cares about US nukes on non-US planes, e.g. Eurofighter, is the Pentagon. As they have to certify the aircraft, they are a lot less eager to do that fast or at all. Because the Pentagon prefers NATO nations, or any other allied nation, to buy the F-35 over other models.
And the French, which excluded their nukes from NATO oversight, might actually be reluctant to share them with Germany. Using Rafales insteads of Eurofoghters might helo, but then Germany is in the same position it is with the F-35. With the added "benefit" of a potentially hurtful public debate.
But German defense policy is built around self-defense and coalition defense: NATO, EU, UN. Nuclear weapons are opposed by Germany, and it's only because NATO is viewed as essential that nuclear sharing is accepted. Most Germans don't know about it though. A bilateral (FR-GE) extension of nuclear policy would be politically unacceptable to Germany, and require extensive legal change.
The French proposal was intended as an incentive to make nuclear policy evolve and think about common European interests, and wasn't really meant to be practical. As you state, it would require to change German constitutional law. It also reflects France's position as a nuclear power that doesn't partake in US-NATO nuclear planning and sharing (this in turn would be unacceptable to the French political class and public opinion).
I think the German acquisition of F-35s is a bit subtle.
The Luftwaffe always wanted to buy F-35. I suspect they stalled the subject of the Eurofighter nuclear certification (which would take a good ten years) to force the German government to buy F-35s to keep its commitment to nuclear sharing. The whole thing happened at a time where the ministry of defence seemed disorganized and plagued by scandals. To be coherent with the Eurofighter policy, nuclear certification should have been a top priority ten years ago...
The relationship between the German government, the Luftwaffe, the US industry (and Lockheed...) and the German aerospatial industry has always been complex, and Germany has often been keen to use allied programs to avoid internal defense industry problems, with more or less success. See the Starfighter article on Wikipedia for the most egregious example.
With the German industry stalling the French-German-Spanish fighter project, I also suspect that they'll plan a similar manoeuver with the Eurofighter replacement.
The German Luftwaffe, Defence ministry and Lockheed have a colored history for sure. It would be a pitty so if the Germans manage to kill FCAS... NGAD, the US equivilant, seems to be a) not for export and b) not so well suited for the European theatre. so it is either FCAS, more F-35s (something Airbus would lobby heavily against) or a domestic program. And the latter seems to be unaffordable, the French would likely go alone as they did with Rafale out of principle. And Germany isn't Sweden neither.
The main pain point in all those large European defence programs is industrial workshare, especially between France and Germany and within Airbus between various sites.
German pilots also train with American nukes. You can’t just slap a nuke on a plane and treat it like any other bomb. And in peacetime, a jury rigged attachment loosing a bomb would be a publicity disaster:)
Because you can't just strap a nuke to a pylon, pull the safety pin from the fuze and fly off into the sunset in your cowboy hat.
You need an extensive set of avionics to control and arm the nuke in the plane which add substantial cost and aren't designed for/integrated into all aircraft.
> One reason that germany has selected the F35 as it’s next gen multirole aircraft is that it’s certified to carry US nuclear weapon
Which begs the question, why didn't Germany collaborate with France on nukes where they could be a more or less equal partner, compared to the US where they would always be the subservient party with little to no control?
Charles de Gaulle. Apparently there was a proposal to share nuclear weapons between France, Germany and Italy, but according to the Charles de Gaulle government "atomic weapons should never be shared with others" (https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/15330/1/Nucl...).
De Gaulle wanted sovereign control of any French nuclear deterrent and did not trust that, if it came to it, the US would put itself on the line for Europe: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139272.htm - presumably, for similar reasons he did not want any dependence on allies, even ones closer in location and likely part of the same conflict.
The US did actually help the French nuclear programme once it started going, under the reasoning that multiple nuclear-armed NATO members is better than one.
De Gaulle has long been out of power and dead. We're talking about current-ish policies and choices, and Macron did talk a few times about sharing the nuclear power and burden with the whole EU as France is now the only nuclear power left, but maybe it was just talk.
It seems to be hard to find an explanation for the lease gravity nuclear weapons strategy for Germany.
I presume that they require US launch codes (and the F35 has a kill switch?). So what is the use for Germany?
The fear in Europe (confirmed by Westpoint graduate Mearsheimer long before the Ukraine war) is that if Russia strikes a single city in Europe, the US will get second thoughts and not retaliate. Germany then cannot retaliate either, so what is the point?
This is the reason for France to have its own nuclear arsenal and fighters.
The reason that those US controlled, German dropped, nukes allow Germany to oarticipate in the NATO nuclear planning councils. The Netherlands had the same agreement and dropped out of it a while ago.
The closest competitor in this race was probably the SAAB Gripen, which would win out on several categories (Cost per flight hour, maintenance cost and complexity, ground turnaround time, more capable AA missiles until at least 2027, more local production). So while the decision to go with F-35 of several "almost" Gripen buyers is understandable, it was by no means a walk over. Few buyers of F-35 will have much local manufacturing and technology transfer, for example. It's basically buying off Lockheed's shelf, paying US wages rather than domestic ones. The sticker price will look similar but mean different things.
The deal does mention "opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35..." which I'm not sure exactly what it is. I thought the US and Lockheed were extremely reluctant to this kind of transfer.
The Gripen also wins on a huge metric of having source code access, and a more open supply chain (not ALIS).
Not sure I'd buy a plane that I don't really own.
In addition, this is an F35A vs Gripen E, so the Gripen has a better STOL capability, likely better radar (rotating GaN), more mature avionics link, supercruise, similar RCS (apart from frontal, it's likely to be smaller, red flag exercises hinted that they were not really detectable) and faster software updates.
WRT stealth, if you want to be stealthy you can't use active radar, only passive. As such having IRST capability in addition to a good datalink is extremely useful to detect other aircraft. The F22 has no IR capability so is at a disadvantage in BVR from that, similar for the F35 which (I think) only has a downward targeting IR.
From a reliability perspective, the Gripen is a long way ahead, the duty availability F35s is probably 70% at best by now (2019 figure was 50% https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2019-06-16/q...) mainly due to parts shortage. The F35 still can't fly in stormy weather due to lightning strikes etc.
I've no doubt the F35 can be a capable aircraft, just not compared to it's competitors. The decision, as usual, is more a political one.
Apart from being a hangar queen, the F35 is not technically “owned”. More like a long term “lease” or SaaS model. You need a new PIN code, aka OTP, every day from the US government to just operate it when it is not under maintenance.
I imagine this is related to encrypted communications, where they'd want to rotate the key every day, and are unlikely to let anyone be able to generate those keys on their own.
It's not true. The actual code that loaded into the plane is NATO MIDS/Link-16/IFF keys, not 'starting' the aircraft. And this is specifically for Austria, not NATO countries.
The Austrian Eurofighters can fly and operate without those keys, they just won't be able to join NATO Link-16 networks or other encrypted NATO communications or navigation networks. This is standard practice for all modern combat aircraft, incidentally, as encryption keys are rotated on a regular basis and need to be loaded into the aircraft's onboard systems before flight. The data can also include additional interoperability elements such as TDMA slice allocations in the case of Link-16.
The reason it has to be done by the unnamed contractor is because Austria is not a member of NATO, so it can't be given control over key handling. The same is true for Sweden & Switzerland.
It's a logical tradeoff. Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland get access to encrypted NATO networks and can therefore interoperate seamlessly with NATO forces, but they're always free to opt-out. Sweden for instance has fall-backs to national data links and communications networks to which only it has the encryption keys.
First off, you all are massively overestimating the capabilities of the Gripen and I have no idea how'd you get credible information for most of what you cited. But more importantly, Finland is a small country who's entire military is focused on defending against Russia and therefore doesn't need to "own" their aircraft.
Well, for credible info:
>> In addition, this is an F35A vs Gripen E, so the Gripen has a better STOL capability, likely better radar (rotating GaN), more mature avionics link, supercruise, similar RCS (apart from frontal, it's likely to be smaller, red flag exercises hinted that they were not really detectable) and faster software updates.
RCS is an overall estimate, certainly not from the front as the F35 is designed as a strike fighter, but with a smaller plane, the RCS may well be similar elsewhere
https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2021/01/07/gripen/
Anyway, this is missing the point, which that it's difficult to trust a platform that you don't have the source code to, have to use a parts management system that phones home, and a system that uploads flight data back home. Ownership in this case means having the ability to independently run the aircraft without reliance on other countries' benevolence. In that capacity, whether your adversary is Russia, or some other country is irrelevant.
Gripen E's radar being better than that of the F-35 is certainly an unique take. The AN/APG-81 has a 71.4% bigger aperture than the ES-05. While the ES-05 does benefit from reduced power consumption due to the GaN transistors, it still has significantly lower peak output power than the AN/APG-81.
Wider FOV is nice, but the AN/APG-81 can see further. AN/APG-81 is the better radar out of the two, and also offers better EW capabilities than the ES-05.
The Gripen E can only supercruise according to SAABs very own original definition of "supercruise", and so far there's been no indication that it can do so while carrying weapons.
>RCS is an overall estimate, certainly not from the front as the F35 is designed as a strike fighter, but with a smaller plane, the RCS may well be similar elsewhere https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2021/01/07/gripen/
If Gripen was as stealthy as you like to suggest, SAAB would be shouting it from the rooftops. Yet, they aren't.
I could grab a ton of Lockheed Martin sales propaganda and drop it in as a "rebuttal" but that's obviously a waste of time. STOL is super useful if you need it but irrelevant if you have long runways, and since the F-35B wasn't in the running we can assume Finland isn't putting a ton of weight on that. The Gripen's software is mature in the same way Windows 98 is, maybe it's a joy to work with I wouldn't know and if you knew you wouldn't be able to say. But the real issue is RCS, that information is super classified. You can throw the geometry into a simulator and guess at material properties but you will never have enough information to actually say one stealth fighter is more stealthy than another.
As for the ownership question, why does it matter to Finland that have complete control over their aircraft? Why do they need to prevent flight data from being set back to the US? Most importantly, why do they need to be able to independently operate the aircraft? It's only purpose is to fight Russians, and now that they're joining NATO they would be fighting Russians alongside the US.
They were, which is why this would be big news.
The F-35 is a huge and long term defense US diplomacy and influence manoeuver. Maybe the recent changes in the strategic context have helped change the stance, or maybe it's mostly the fact that the supply chain for F-35 parts and maintenance are already established and it's easier to fit Finland workers into them rather than renegotiate everything with half the JSF participants.
> The deal does mention "opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35..." which I'm not sure exactly what it is.
The article has: The principle is simple: Finland is to be able to keep the aircraft up in the air even if the borders are shut. To ensure that Finland will have an indigenous maintenance and repair capability for over 100 components (including parts of the fuselage and engine), which is based on the items covered by the industrial cooperation agreement. There will also be significant stockpiles of components that aren’t on the list of items which Finland can repair and overhaul organically (often parts with very long mean time between failures, and for which it aren’t economical to build up an independent repair capability). Notable is also that the Finnish organic repair capability is not just for domestic use, but is also part of the GSS (the global support solution) meaning that they will be used to maintain parts for the global spares pool.
The problem with the F-35 is its cost for the buying country.
Complex, costly, almost no offsets, and black box systems (only the Israeli AFAIK have a custom system). Also it can only take a few munitions, while keeping its supposed stealth, hence the famed RAND study predicting a US defeat in the event of a Taiwan battle. Also it is more fitting to consider the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C as three completely different aircrafts.
Two major problems arise :
- the "aircraft carrier" or "tessarakonteres" problem : at some point your system (ship or aircraft) is too complex and costly to risk losing it in battle, even if it is supposedly very hard to defeat. And the slightest damage is very costly in terms of down time. This is amplified by the single-type problem.
- the F-35 kills your local industry and makes supply and maintenance chains complex and dependent upon US and Lockheed-Martin goodwill, including on the software side. This is one of the major points from critics, among them Boeing.
The Finland deal seems to address the last point, and seems much better than other F-35 deals with European countries.
That said, the F-35 is a revolution for US allies, even those who didn't buy it. The information flow in central to the aircraft like to no previous US fighter. A few years ago the French Rafale notably defeated every aircraft in air superiority games (draw against the theoretically much better F-22) because its information systems could be updated quickly to the local conditions.
Every US-allied Air force around the world acknowledges today that compatibility with the F-35 information systems will be the only way to carry out allied operations in the near future, like Link-16 today. If you can't do it, you'll have a very hard time showing up as a blue dot on the screen, let alone be efficient in combat. The easy solution is to buy Lockheed-Martin. However, I really think it's a bad thing in the long-term.
The F-22 was that advanced. The avionics suite of the F-35 is significantly more advanced than the F-22. The F-22 hasn't been produced in over a decade and is going to be phased out in the early 2030s.
Even if there weren't a law still on the books banning the F-22's export, we don't have production and no one would buy one when they could have a still-in-production F-35.
It's the only 5th gen fighter jet that is available. The fact that the price point happens to be highly competitive with 4th gen fighters is almost irrelevant.
Again, people trying to sell the F-35 in the oughties were saying that, but the experts I went to at the time were skeptical (and especially skeptical whether those extra capabilities matter for those countries which don't have a war against Russia, China, India, or Turkey in their threat model).
We now know that the Russian air force is much less capable than some believed it was.
The calculus is pretty simple. The F-35 costs about as much as a modern 4th generation aircraft these days but consistently slaughters those 4th generation aircraft in exercises due to its unique capabilities. This gives it a high force multiplier for the cost that works well no matter the quality of the adversary. I think everyone expected the F-35 to be much more expensive than advanced 4th generation aircraft, which would change the argument, but that turned out not to be the case.
That dozens of countries are buying fleets of F-35s also makes the practical logistics, operations, interoperability, and maintenance of the aircraft attractive. It is quickly becoming the new F-16 in terms of ubiquity in a modern Air Force.
> We now know that the Russian air force is much less capable than some believed it was.
I'm fairly certain Russia has not bothered to unleash their T-50 PAK's against Ukraine, so that remains to be seen doesn't it? And from all available literature those are at least on par with the F-22 if not slightly better.
Now the B-21 Raider (bomber, not a fighter) is probably without peer currently. That thing looks like a UFO.
After a year of losing the war and firing all kind of random munitions, if Russia had aircraft which it thought could survive against Ukrainian air defenses, I think it would use them. They certainly are not scared of losing people or equipment.
It seems like the Russian air force can't carry out large operations with sophisticated aircraft, whereas NATO air forces have lots of practice at that.
The Russian Air Force is carrying out large operations with sophisticated and intentional payloads on a weekly basis as widely reported by even western media. But they haven’t been flying far into Ukrainian airspace - likely due to all the old and very capable S-300s that are still operational (and that’s the old stuff, Russia is already fielding S-500s not to mention Buk 3 and Pantsir). Fear of losing people and equipment is precisely why they’re using stand-off ballistics from a safe distance instead of doing bombing raids.
There’s a reason Ukraine is asking for Patriots and other air defense systems (their air defense is degraded).
Everyone knows russia doesn't fear to lose people.
They haven't been flying to Ukraine because their pilots and "advanced" planes can be easily shot down with a regular Stinger system that costs like $40k.
You’ve buying too much into the twitter/Reddit version of how things are going. Russian mothers love their sons just as much as American ones. Consider balancing your sources with actual military experts (and not ones on the boards of US defense contractors or journalist with liberal arts degrees).
> Russian mothers love their sons just as much as American ones.
It doesn't matter at all what they think, average citizen has absolutely no influence on how the government is run in Russia. Russia is a colonial power: security apparatus chiefs, billionaires and their servants in Moscow and St Petersburg form the elite, and together they plunder rest of the country.
Typical things that a person from a free country would think of don't work: elections are rigged, no point in participating. Civil society and non-governmental organizations (eg NRA, ACLU) barely exist and have no influence. Media is under full government control, no way to publish anything to wide auditorium. Courts are utterly corrupt. If you stage a protest, then the loudest ones will be dragged into a police van and beaten and raped on the spot, with screams heard by others outside on the street[1].They'll go home and do nothing, or they'll get the same treatment.
So many people in the west see Russia as "just another country", while it differs fundamentally: it never developed much beyond slavery. It never developed a free multipolar society where everyone's voice mattered through elections and all sorts of public organizations from book clubs to church groups. It never had freedom and its elite never had to listen to the people. There is simply no tradition of everyone participating in how the country is run.
Putin has sent a hundred thousand to death, and nobody will do anything if he sends a million more. He can mow down those mothers with a machine gun, and the default reaction from brainwashed population will be "I suppose they had it coming".
There's already a difference between how the Russian armed forces values pilots, recently mobilized rookies, and then there's how the Wagner group values the recruited prisoners.
According to MoD Twitter (what a world we live in) they are using the su57 but very conservatively. Long-range attacks from inside Russian airspace only, so when they get shot down the wreckage will land in Russia. Hardly the choice of a confident Air Force.
I'm quite sure if Ukraine had access to F-35 or F-22 there would be stipulations that those would be used the same way. Countries try to be very careful about not giving opponents information about the latest high end gear.
This is nothing new, BTW. During WWII the UK forbade the new Gloster Meteor jet fighter from flying over Nazi occupied territory, for fear that the Germans might learn something valuable from a crashed jet. It was only in the last few months of the war that the Meteors were allowed to fly over enemy territory, as by then the outcome was abundantly clear and even if a jet was shot down the Germans wouldn't have time to do anything with the information.
There are three problems that make the T-50 unsuitable for use over Ukraine:
1) They only exist in VERY limited numbers.
2) They're only stealthy from the front. If fired at from the rear or flank, they're vulnerable.
3) Russia has very limited access to good SEAD/DEAD type munitions (like the AGM-88 that USA is using)
What the T-50 is really designed for, I believe, is to defend friendly SAMs against enemy F35/F22. When such an aircraft is detected, T-50s can come in from deep within friendly airspaces and fly directly towards the incoming F35/F22 without being detected, and then hopefully shoot them down before being seen itself.
I think Canada would have gone with Boeing F-18s had Boeing not killed Bombardier with that trade lawsuit that got tossed. Canada doesn't prioritize capability when it comes to procurement.
Canada is not a bad example, because previous governments almost got railroaded into the F-35, drew it back and held an open competition, and then decided on the F-35 after all. It seems like some of the skeptics now trust the F-35 and I would like a proper article on the details (not an 'op-ed' type article that tries to sell a narrative or a vehicle).
This article and the talk by Perun don't explain why opinions changed (or why to trust the claims about low costs and great capabilities this time, when early in the program they were just puffery)
Ten years ago, everyone interested in military aircraft who was not trying to sell the F-35 told me that it was terrible (too expensive, trying to do too many incompatible things, dependent on software systems which did not work and possibly could not work). I would be interested in an article on what changed now that more countries are picking it.
The bugs have mostly been fixed, and it's cheaper than most 4.5 gen fighters (they're building a lot of them so the unit cost drops significantly) while being significantly more capable (see the ridiculous numbers it puts up at Red flag).
People have also learned that a lot of the "experts" that criticized it were extremely noncredible (eg. Pierre Sprey) and are spouting nonsense that hasn't been true since before the Vietnam war (eg. Relevance of dogfighting and guns in air combat).
The thing about dogfighting and guns / mawr dakka seems to be an American thing, I did not hear it, but David 'Warisboring' Axe seemed like a serious reporter, and Marcus Ranum was a serious IT guy
Mirage 2000, Rafale, and Typhoon were/are all arguably designed with a huge emphasis on energy maneuverability, which is also only meant for dogfights according to postings on internet forums. And there are plenty of other isolated ways you could argue the reverse of the US showing restraint in ways others don't, such as Europe's love for delta wings (rejected most recently when the F-35 was first considered), or the Russkies' obsession with supermaneuverability, which the US has barely even considered sane enough for demonstrators. In terms of "mawr dakka", too, assuming you're referring to the A-10, that honor also belongs not to the US, per popular opinion, but to the Soviets in the MiG-27. You've just never heard of it because they wanted to fire essentially the same projectile in a slightly bigger casing at 2000 more rounds per minute, which the airframe simply couldn't handle reliably, and were also limited in the battles they did see due to an unusual weakness to ground fire as opposed to the A-10's unusual resiliency. And besides that, the US also built the F-111 and F-117 as an explicit alternative to light air attack craft.
The only "American thing" that really exists in modern military history is a tendency to do more things than everyone else. The US has NIH-ed their way into pretty much every military technology that's been hypothesized by someone not wearing a tinfoil hat and raving about Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci. The public hears about questions like dogfighting and firepower in US aircraft because the US is one of the only countries in the world whose military actively seeks out (or at least sought out, there's some argument that the F-35 is the beginning of the end) multiple home-grown variants of military equipment, especially aircraft, that are expected to compete both on economic and doctrinal value as actual service craft for continuing contracts, rather then just proving ground test beds. More chances to change preference, more chances for contracts, more argument, more buzz filtering into newspapers. In contrast, we're probably not going to talk much about if stealth is a Finnish thing or whatever else for quite some time after this. Perhaps the American thing is spending lots of money, but a full assessment doesn't really allow for more specifics than that.
There's definitely a distortion field around the F-35 both from the positive perspective and the negative. As most of us are laymen who've never flown the plane, it's hard to know which viewpoint is definitive.
Sentiment has definitely shifted towards the positive viewpoint though.
However, the negative viewpoint is not unrealistic. The US can strong arm other countries into buying their crap with bribes and other under the cover dealings. Heck why do you think TSMC is opening a fab in Arizona? Because it's a profitable move? No way.
I guy I grew up with is a flight instructor for the F-35. He claims (publicly) it's a total game changer compared to the F-16's he used to fly before.
In exercises such as Red Flag, it dominates anything 4th gen.
"Stealth" is not only about being hard to detect. It's just as much about making it difficult for enemy missiles to get a lock and keep it until they score a hit.
Also, the softer (or software) elements of the F-35 is a huge part of it. Sensor Fusion makes it a lot easier to know what to do next.
As I see it, the budget and schedule overruns are not functional faults in the airplane itself, but in the program that produces and maintains it. As such, it is not in the scope of a tender process for procuring such planes outside the US.
The competitors have gotten more expensive, and apparently they've sold enough that the "shovel cash into development and make it up on volume" approach has worked. Like, the Gripen's development costs are a fraction of the F-35s, so it should be cheaper both because of that and because of being built with less fancy technology. But the development cost doesn't matter now that everyone and their dog is ordering a thousand F-35s (and it certainly feels like it took a certain amount of "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM" to get there, but at some point being the industry standard is a self-sustaining position), and meanwhile the Gripen is more expensive to operate than it should be because... honestly I'd really like to see some answers on what kind of "cost disease" seems to have affected all "4th gen" combat aircraft over the last 10 years or so, but it's undeniable that it's happened.
The short answer is that you've been misinformed. Many of the criticisms of the F-35 originate from one or many of the following:
* Manufacturers of competing fighter jets. If enough people think the F-35 is terrible, they might vote for politicians who will nix F-35 procurement and maybe buy their plane instead. These often take the form of slick PR hits where e.g. the CBC will cite Boeing as an "expert source" about why Boeing's Super Hornet is a better choice than the F-35 for the Canadian air force.
* Russian state media, which wants to further their own propaganda narrative.
* Pierre Sprey, who has notoriously overstated the extent of his expertise and his involvement with US aircraft development in the past, and has convinced unwitting journalists (including the aforementioned Russian state media) to cite him.
A lot of things have changed over the past ten years: Pierre Sprey passed away, Boeing's credibility has taken a massive hit in recent years for a number of reasons, and the Russians are invading Ukraine which makes them pretty unpopular and Westerners much less willing to take RT and the like at face value. Meanwhile, the F-35 is in service and seems to be relatively successful so far.
Confident strangers on the Internet are not worth much. Good articles, with references, which go into competing points of view and explain the problems with them, are worth a lot.
Like I said, that Sprey person seems like a blowhard who got attention in the USA, I never heard of him before some YouTube videos in the past few months. The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum.
> The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum.
And by what standard did you find them credible when it comes to evaluating fighter jets? It seems like you aren’t applying a consistent standard to ”confident strangers on the Internet”, which is all those guys seem to be.
The truth is, anyone with the qualifications and information necessary to make a proper evaluation already works for a military and isn’t allowed to say much.
I got to know and trust Ranum and Axe on the specific areas of expertise of IT projects and contemporary military affairs for years (have not heard much from them since then). You, on the other hand, are a stranger on the Internet.
I live in a democracy, so its my duty to form an opinion about large controversial purchases my government proposes to make. Of course my opinion on most of them can't be an expert opinion, but it can be at least as good as my representatives'.
There's nothing you can really trust. Everyone has some interest or other. Ontop of that the things people consider essential don't always turn out to merit the emphasis (Norden bombsight eg?)
I think there's historical evidence that the US used bribery to get aircraft sold in the distant past and no doubt other countries have too so it would be odd to think that political and other pressures are now suddenly non-existent because we're better human beings than before.
You cannot really even trust pilots because they will want Raybans and iPhones even when the cheaper generic sunglasses and phones do the job. They are only the top of the pyramid of people that have to look after the system.
> I live in a democracy, so its my duty to form an opinion about large controversial purchases my government proposes to make. Of course my opinion on most of them can't be an expert opinion, but it can be at least as good as my representatives'.
I agree with you that in a democracy it's a citizen duty to be informed of what is happening. Though in the case of fighter jets, or other high-end military systems, they are very complex and the exact capabilities (and how the military intends to make the most of those capabilities, which can vary greatly for different offerings in a tender) are highly classified. And to be fair, I'm quite sure our representatives don't know much if anything of the classified stuff either.
At least in the Finnish case, there was a procurement organization setup including, obviously, Air Force personnel but also lots of other expertise. They did a very expensive and thorough evaluation of the various offerings, including access to classified material I'm sure, before ending up at recommending the F-35. The politicians then more or less rubber-stamped the recommendation. That is not to say that politicians couldn't go against that recommendation, ultimately it's their decision. Things like industrial policy (aka jobs programs) related to major military acquisitions matter, and particularly during the cold war Finland tried to stay neutral and one way this was done was that major military acquisitions were divided between Soviet and Western gear (e.g. how Finland ended up with both Mig-21 and Saab Draken fighters). Though today if the politicians would decide to go against the recommendation of the procurement organization I'm sure that would cause quite an uproar and need some pretty hefty justifications.
> and particularly during the cold war Finland tried to stay neutral and one way this was done was that major military acquisitions were divided between Soviet and Western gear
How much of this was down to practicality, though? Being able to pick and choose the best gear from each side?
> How much of this was down to practicality, though? Being able to pick and choose the best gear from each side?
I'm not an expert on cold war Finland, but my understanding is that Finland was threading a very fine needle between not provoking the USSR (see Prague 1968) while still maintaining relations with the West in order to not be seen as being part of the Soviet sphere of influence (which, again, can be seen as form of insurance against a Soviet annexation). Foreign trade, and in particular major arms deals, were VERY politicised, and I'd imagine there would be a need for very strong differences in military/technical capabilities to override the political considerations in any particular deal.
Sure, my point is that this also presents a rare opportunity. Countries that were fully aligned one way or the other wouldn’t be able to get any equipment from the other side, even if it was a better fit for their requirements.
The project had a real mark-to-market agonizing reappraisal in 2010 or so, as reviewed here (from the standpoint of 2013): <https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-690t>. Since then development targets have largely been met, and potential customers are much more comfortable with capability and reliability data.
Scathing criticism of the early F-35 development process has always been entirely warranted, and the Pentagon continues to pay the price in rebuilding costs for early "production" airframes. Its also notable that the Navy is being quite, ah, deliberate about F-35C deployment; I think only one carrier is currently rated to operate them. The Marines are more gung-ho about their F-35Bs, but only the F-35A is an export success story so far.
> Ten years ago, everyone interested in military aircraft who was not trying to sell the F-35 told me that it was terrible
IIRC, the most serious criticism of the F-35 was mostly not that the fighter was terrible, but that the decision to pursue the project in the way it was was terrible, that the misguided attempt to try to save money by commonality among the radically different missions of the main versions instead made each variant more expensive to develop than it would be independently, compromised capability, and didn’t solve logistical problems better than separate projects would have.
(There was also criticism based on the cost arc of manned fighter development vs. alternative technologies and countermeasures against them that in terms of funding mix, the US should have been spending more on alternatives/countermeasures and less on manned fighters including the F-35, which was an even higher-level meta-criticism.)
TBH, I find it really hard to believe that all the R&D cost associated with the STOVL variant was worth it, instead of just equipping a couple carriers with catapults and arrestor gear. Not to mention that the carrier variant is significantly more capable in terms of range and payload than the STOVL version.
As for manned vs. unmanned, while unmanned technologies are clearly developing rapidly, I suspect they're not ready yet for all the manned missions. Hence the JSF project is still warranted. Maybe the next gen JSF follow-up will be an entirely unmanned platform, who knows..
The primary driver for requiring the STOVL variant was the US Marine Corps which wanted to fly the F-35B off of amphibious ships to provide close air support for ground troops. There was never any possibility of equipping those ships with catapults and arresting gear; not enough space. Now perhaps the STOVL variant should have been dropped and the Marines told to make do with other aircraft, but that wasn't politically feasible at the time.
Sixth generation tactical aircraft will probably be optionally manned. So they can operate as drones when flying high-risk strike missions against known targets but can also carry pilots when greater flexibility is needed.
There are 12 catobar carriers in existence at the moment, 11 operated by the US Navy. (Soon to be 13 with the Chinese Fujian carrier entering the mix.) Maybe the UK would've gotten their act together and fitted catobar on the Queen Elizabeths if the F-35B didn't exist, but for the most part I think this is indicative of the challenge of putting together the hardware to launch/recover modern fighter aircraft at sea.
The F-35B may have started as a Marines ask, but it seems to have become an export success with countries that aren't really up to footing the costs for catobar-capable flat-tops for modern fighter aircraft during peacetime, e.g. the UK, Japan, Italy, Korea, potentially Spain.
The Marines have also been exploring the F-35B in austere basing, EABO conops, airborne amphibious ops, etc., so it's not just carrier ops.
It has been a lead weight on the JSF development project, for sure, but the F-35B does seem to provide an intriguing capability now that it's a thing. I'm also not convinced that a dedicated STOVL project would've given a more suitable plane -- it really seems like you would want the whole stealth + advanced sensor/avionics package on your jump jet to meet needs like naval LHD-borne fixed-wing AEW/air interceptor/task group anti-air range extender, airborne amphibious ops CAS, etc. Owing to the difficulties encountered by the JSF in supporting the F-35B, I doubt it's going to be succeeded by another platform for a very long time.
I'm not saying the F-35B should be canceled. That would be dumb. All the money has been poured into the project, and the thing exists and works, and even provides some kind of capability that wasn't there before.
Just saying that in a hypothetical world in the early 90'ies (a quick wikipedia look says that the STOVL JSF can be traced back at least to a 1992 USMC/USAF project that eventually morphed into the JSF), if it would have been decided back then that, nope, we're not gonna do a follow-up to the Harrier, then navies that are currently looking at the F-35B would have decided to either upgrade existing small carriers with catobar and/or ordering new carriers with them. And I think in that case the total cost could have been cheaper. Yes, somewhat more expensive carriers, but cheaper planes and much less R&D cost.
I didn't interpret you as saying that the F-35B should be cancelled. I'm more bringing context that it's not solely a US Marines toy, and not solely a baby-carrier plane.
I don't think that adding catobar support for modern fighter platforms is viable for all of these small carriers that are incorporating the F-35B. Admittedly my understanding of the situation is very shaky, but by all accounts I've heard, the catapults and arrestor gear place very significant strain on even the US supercarriers. More countries used to operate catobar carriers in the past (such as my home country of Australia, up until the retirement of the Melbourne and a decision to discontinue fixed-wing carrier ops), which I suspect has to do with the operation of lighter aircraft from the carriers at the time. (~7t max takeoff weight for a Sea Venom, ~11t for a Skyhawk; compare to ~30t for a Super Hornet or an F-35C.) Maybe the situation has gotten better with EMALS cats, but we're yet to see this technology used to make baby catobar carriers a thing, so who knows?
The countries in question would likely need to upgrade from their ~25000t LHDs to something with at least the displacement of the 40000t Charles de Gaulle. (Not to mention that most such carriers use nuclear power for both propulsion and to power the cats and traps.) Such vessels would come at great expense, and likely also have significantly larger crewing requirements, which tends to be a pain point for middle-power navies. I also don't think a lot of these vessels would've been built bigger in anticipation of catobar requirements, as they were largely originally specced for helicopter deck and amphibious roles. The F-35B really seems like an opportunity which all of these countries have siezed upon after seeing it come to fruition.
Again, it seems like you have a case with the Queen Elizabeths, though it seems like the UK balked at the cost of fitting catobar, if that's any indication.
As to whether the costs would've been offset by savings in the development of the F-35B, I don't even think we're talking about costs on the same magnitude here. For reference, total R&D costs for the F-35 as of 2019 were $71.9billion in 2012 dollars. Building and sustaining big boy carriers for middle-power countries would've cost the JSF partners hundreds of billions of dollars, easily.
> I didn't interpret you as saying that the F-35B should be cancelled. I'm more bringing context that it's not solely a US Marines toy, and not solely a baby-carrier plane.
Fair enough.
As for the size of a carrier needed for F-35, the Royal Navy was apparently operating the Phantom from ~30kt carriers. They did some tests with a smaller ~25kt carrier and found that it worked in principle but required lowered fuel load etc. I had assumed the Phantom to be a really massive plane, but it turns out the max weight is around 30t, similar to a F-35, so the comparison is actually pretty close. (I would guess it would in principle be possible with a smaller ship if you'd do a WWII style straight deck and utilize the entire deck for launching and landing, though I guess that would limit operations rate too much so nobody wants to do that?)
For cost, I think I saw somewhere some estimates that the RN had calculated that equipping the Queen Elizabeths with catobar would have added IIRC ~$200M per boat. However one also needs to take into account the cost difference between the F-35 B and C variants. Searching around I found a figures from 2019 that said a B variant then went for $115.5M and a C for $107.7M (for comparison, the A model at $89M but I found newer figures from 2022 saying $80M). But if, hypothetically, the B model wouldn't exist production numbers for the C model would be higher and thus lower per unit costs. Lemme just spitball it and say $100M in 2019 for a C model in the hypothetical world without the B model. Per wikipedia the complement of a Queen Elizabeth is 36 F-35's. So (115.5-100)x36 = $558M, which is more than twice the cost of the catobar installation. Even if we assume no cost difference for the C model due to the disappearance of the B model, it's still (115.5-107.7)x36=$281M, still much higher than the price of the catobar installation. Not to mention that over the service life of the carrier probably many generations of planes would be used (or newer versions of F-35's, considering F-35 is expected to be a very long-lived platform).
I guess the crux of the argument is really what about those navies that want to operate baby carriers. If we assume a ~40kt Charles de Gaulle is about the minimum you wanna have for a 'proper' catobar carrier (maybe ~30kt if you really stretch it?), that leaves out all those 25kt helicopter carriers and whatnot.
The criticism about the folly of merging into one super program to rule them all (F35ABC) was proven at least partially correct. It caused lots of problems, delays, cost overruns. The Navy doesn't seem to like the F35C much anyway. But now all that's been finished and paid off. What's left is a great plane at a good price that's very modular and everyone is investing into upgrading it for the long haul.
Came here to say this. The F-35 was widely considered a boondoggle, if not a flop. Not sure what cave all the MIC boosters crawled out of, but this is hilarious.
Got cheaper from mass production, or because the massive sunk cost of trillions of dollars isn't factored into the unit cost? Those trillions could have been used to improve the military in more important ways, not to mention the country, which has failing infrastructure, inadequate education, etc.
I'm not sure why you think the sunk cost wouldn't be factored into the unit cost? Lockheed Martin (and them any other subcontractors) aren't a charity.
Well, they set out to create one plane to rule them all, and essentially ended up with three different planes... In addition the first 5-10 years have been riddled with software issues. Luckily they seem to have ended up being pretty good jets though, and the price is decreasing for the F35A quite a bit.
The F-35b/c? (vtol one) lets foreign navies operate aircraft on helicarriers (think Japan, Italy, South Korea).
There are no competing stealth aircraft capable of naval deployment. China is developing what appears to be a stealth fighter for their aircraft carriers, but I don't know how soon they will be deployed.
It also further aligns them with the US military complex team which - anyone who’s watching Ukraine knows is the right pick. Gripen is cool but Finland needs a strategic partnership with the US. Sweden is already their best friend and they certainly can’t rely on the big EU countries to not try to not hurt Putins feelings instead of helping a ally in an existential struggle
> The two countries are moving into NATO together, they are practically married.
I think this is what you meant, but it could be misread: the former is a sign, not the cause, of the latter. They’ve had aligned security policy for a long time, which is reflected in their joint decision to choose to apply to NATO.
This time it was Finland that pushing them both to NATO. Finland had friendly pack with Sweden that if either of them decide to pursue NATO membership they would let the other one know.
Last year by the time Finnish leadership and people were pretty much decided on NATO, Sweden was just starting their discourse so they had to catch up not be left behind. Now somewhat ironically because of Sweden, Turkey has been delaying and objecting the membership.
Finland has also kept with updating equipment and keeping the conscription military service these past 100 years, Sweden ended their conscription and mostly been downsizing their military.
That is probably true, but it is worth noting that when people war gamed out a swift capture of any Baltic state (kind of like what happened in Crimea) one of the frequent moves of the Russian player was to capture Gotland, which made NATO reinforcement very difficult. Also, it showed that while Sweden has a capable air force and good naval assets in the baltic, it still might have trouble defending Gotland in the future.
I don't think anyone thinks an attack on Gotland was ever likely, and it certainly isn't now, but if Russia's goal was to bring back all the former states of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states are on that list. And that gets pretty difficult for those two countries to stay neutral. Finland was once part of Russia too and they have a contentious history.
I’m pretty sure Finland and Sweden are sticking together though, at least that’s what I read last. Finland seems like a good get for NATO, so it is nice that they are willing to stick with their neighbor.
Geography suggests that Sweden would be an extremely reliable ally for Finland in any conflict with Russia. Assuming that Sweden didn't want to be the next domino to fall.
I do feel a little bit sad that Saab's Gripen wasn't chosen - it seems to do well in adverse conflict conditions (takeoff/landing from public roads, etc.). The adoption of the F-35 instead of the Gripen also shifts their military doctrine a bit.
As a Finn, I trust that the procurement organization made the correct choice, and from what I can gather as a lay person the F-35 seems like a significantly more capable platform.
However, the Gripen is certainly a very interesting aircraft, like you say, designed to be operated from makeshift airstrips and maintained by conscripts. It's also amazing how a small country like Sweden with a fairly limited budget has managed to create a competitive fighter. Though the engine and many of the weapons systems are US or European, but still. I'd like to think that if F-35 weren't available, Gripen would have been a very strong, if not the strongest, contender.
This is probably one of the most important considerations, pretty much all of Finland’s recent military hardware updates even prior to the NATO bid was sought out for intentional compatibility with NATO.
The Finnish as a culture are pretty pragmatic in my experience.
Generally since the end of the cold war NATO compatibility has been a requirement in military procurements. The only exceptions that come to mind is that in the early/mid 90'ies they bought a bunch of ex-DDR equipment at close to scrap prices, and in the mid-90'ies they bought the Buk air defence missile system from Russia (also very cheaply), AFAIU essentially to settle some outstanding debts from the cold war era bilateral trade deals.
This F-35 decision was made back in 2021. Since then, Finland has given up independent neutrality and is joining NATO. Much to the annoyance of Russia. Finland fought two wars against the USSR in the last century. Finland may have to fight another one. They're not getting those aircraft as status symbols.
If nothing else, US would do its best to prevent F-35s falling into Russian hands. In that way, F-35s grouped in bases close to the border is an effective trip-wire.
I doubt they will dominate for that long. I think we should see 6th gen within 10 years, and AI may make unmanned aircraft more cost efficient than F-35s even sooner than that.
But for anytone (who is friendly with the US) that need a multi perpose fighter sooner than that, the F35 is the obvious choice today. And it may stay useful even when 6th gen arrives, just like F16's are still relevant today.
NGAD + MUM-T likely in next 10 years, but not for export. US allies also now doing their own 6th gen program, i.e. JP-UK-IT-SE (Global Combat Air Programme), FR-DE-ES (Future Combat Air System) and 4.5 gen SKR (Bormae), but that's still 10-20 years away. So in meantime 35 only obvious choice for anything over 4.5 gen.
I do agree that AI fighters the future. Simply because once you engineer without human limits, flight envelopes / performance will shift in attacker favour. Anti-air missiles work by arbituaging gap unmanned and manned limits. I can see performant UAVs being magnitude more capable in dodging anti air to the point where it becomes not feasible in terms of cost and magazine depth to try to even shoot them down, especially from naval platforms, i.e. 500 VLS cells in carrier group with 30% dedicated to AA might successfully interdict 50 manned fighters and need 200 to overwhelm, but with manned fighters that might only be effective against 5 unmanned, or 20 unmanned to overwhelm. Realistically less because ships become significantly less useful if they have disproportionately focus on anti air. Basically skip job of stealth of being difficult to detect to being nearly impossible to hit in the first place. Hence airforce betting/pouring 1000 F35s worth of $$$ on B21s that's difficult to detect and fly in altitudes that's difficult to hit, straight from CONUS.
I think most of what you write are possible futures. Though I'm not sure they're the only possible futures.
As aircraft (and particularily unmanned ones) improve, air defense systems will be likely to change to meet the new challenges.
I find it really difficult to conclude what the balance will be in that arms race (apart from the prediction that humans are not likely to be needed in every plante anymore).
For instance, it may be that lasers mounted in ships (or even large planes) may become really good at countering many of the threats that appear. Then again, that could lead to mirror coating as a counter, but that may reduce stealth, and so on.
Furthermore, the distinction between missile and aircraft can go away. We may get hybrids that have the range of aircraft, but the power an manouverability of missiles, but with very short range guns replacing the warhead, making them reusable.
Launch platforms may also change. The B21 may very well be just as important for anti-air duty as the F-35, if the right kind of missiles/air launched drones are available. The F-35 on the other hand, can act as drone control platforms, privding more advanced sensors and compute than each drone would have.
Over oceans, maybe surface ships become obsolete, but in addition to options such as lasers, rail guns and more advanced missiles, one needs to keep in mind that they can be hard to detect (if satellites are knocked out).
Subs are likely to stay relevant, though, even though they too may become unmanned relatively soon.
Many possible futures, but IMO for short/medium term projections one can narrow down if extrapolating from can be feasibly procured in time frame and limits of said hardware. Personally have extreme doubts on direct energy weapons for anything other than homeland defense where power/magazine is not issue. Like I don't see existing fleets being overhulled for enough power generation for sustained DE use. Maybe in new DDGX but that's 10+ years of developmeent and another 20+ years to be aquired in numbers. Only realistic answer to saturation missile strikes is advanced interceptors because you can counter salvo, which is more or less what expert panels on hypersonics from last few years have said. IMO fighter design is roughly going to be larger airframes for IndoPac theatre where you need long range, and extending that range will be even longer range stand off missiles vs bullets. Hi-lo mix of with sacrificial loyal wingman. B21 very likely can be used for mesh sensor + anti air. Space infra is heading starlink, both PRC and US have 10,000s constellations planned, I think surface ships doomed. Autonomous subs probably big. Biggest development for me will be volume aquisition of long range bombers like B21/H20 and prompt global strike / long range precision strikes. Drop ordnance accurately in volume or with speed, using platforms completely hosted from homelands = skipping all the layers inbetween and going strait for strategic targets on adversaries home front (i.e. all major energy infra). AKA conventional MAD. Everything else is incidental if conventional war has escalation rung equivalent to being nuked.
Ok, I think much of what you write are high likelihood possibilities, though I think it also depends on a lot of assumptions:
> ike I don't see existing fleets being overhulled for enough power generation for sustained DE use.
Ford class carriers have two A1B reactors, each capable of delivering 125MW of electricity. I believe that should be enough to power quite capable DE weapons (or railguns) when/if such reach maturity. A task force of 4 carriers would have 1GW+ between them.
> Only realistic answer to saturation missile strikes is advanced interceptors...
Any place where you can cut the kill chain will do:- Prevent them from seeing you
- Stay out of reach
- Shoot down incoming missiles
- Cause them to miss
- Survive being hit.
> IMO fighter design ...
I agree with most of what you write about fighters/aircraft.
> Space infra is heading starlink
Satellites are relatively easy to shoot down, though. In a war where carriers are sunk, I think satellites would be fair game too. And with eyes in space, spotting ships can be hard, especially if the ships are stealthy (vs radar).
> long range bombers like B21/H20 and prompt global strike
Even these rely on in-flight refueling. While better missiles may make them capable of self defence over oceans, they are vulnerable over land, where adversaries may hide using the terrain.
> going strait for strategic targets on adversaries home front
Here I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Chaina and the US will not be able to knock out each other's infra with conventional weapons with any kind of speed, especially across continents. Air defences are too effective for that, and the targets too many and too resilient.
Only after a very prolonged campaign of SEAD/DEAD followed by large scale systematic bombing could that be done. History shows that this is extremely difficult, though. (Before WW2, a lot of people were saying exactly what you say here, that strategic bombing would be MAD, but that was far from the case.)
I simply don't see such a war go on for that long without nukes.
As it looks now, the next great war may be over Taiwan. The first stage of such a war would be the invasion itself (possibly after some period of SEAD). During the invasion, the US (+UK/Australia) would use carriers, subs and land based air (Japanese islands) to try to help Taiwan. Most combat would occur over the oceans. I'm sure the US navy is quite busy wargaming this already, including how close to Taiwan they could risk placing their carriers.
If the invasion fails, naval warfare would be less relevant. Taiwan would turn into a long term unsinkable US carrier.
If Taiwan falls, and the war doesn't end, there would be a period of naval warfare. The US would seek to force China to it's knees by blocking all trade. China would have to break such a blockade to defend their superpower status (they're highly dependent on ocean-going trade for almost everything). The US might still have access to bases in Japan, the Philipines and/or some other friendly nations in the area.
In this case, it would be China (and Japan) that would depend on being able to have their surface ships survive. Eventually, i believe China would be able to retain Taiwan, but if there is a multi year blockade followed by multi decade sanctions, China might well go back to being a 3rd world country. And if China should be able to break US control over the open oceans, maybe they would become the new hegemon. Or, given their recent aggressive tendencies, maybe it would unite a large coalition against them.
Carrier escorts do the defense. Escorts won't be nuclear, they'll have power plants for DE, but again that's replacing current DDGs with DDGX, which is decades a way. You can plop some DE on carriers themselves, but the issue is fires generation, the virtue of interceptors / missiles is you can engage multiple targets, i.e counter salvo with salvo. I'm doubtful entire CSG will have enough DE to engage 100s of incomings. A task force of 4 carriers operating together is... very risky/unlikely. I don't think DE is dead end, I just don't think it's a panacea in a naval environment.
>cut the kill chain will do
Context dependent, I can only evaluate with respect to PRC scenario within 1st/2nd island chain.
- Prevent from seeing, unlikely. Prior point about space infra is constellations trending towards 1,000s with persistent coverage, impossible to shoot them all down. The answer to ASAT vulnerability going forward is to spam them until it becomes infeasible / not economical to shoot down entire network before they can be used to counter strike.
- Stay out of reach unlikely, projected future naval air operation ranges are more or less locked in (inclusive of tanking), IRBMs will out range them, i.e. they can either stay away and maybe be safe but useless, or engage and be in danger.
- Shoot down, yes but matter of magazine depth/saturation, PRC will have more firepower bandwidth than multiple carrier groups can intercept. EW/missing is a big unknown though.
- Survive, IMO redundant, I think mostly assumed modern naval hulls will survive / keep floating due to advances in damage control, but being hit will likely end in mission kill.
There’s also considerations like PRC systems destruction warfare that targets US weak points like replenishment fleets that supply carrier groups, or tankers or AWACs. Just taking out a handful of fast combat support ships basically turns entire navy into single deployment assets - carrier groups have just days of endurance operating at high tempo, carriers can still sail on nuke power, but unlikely without escorts.
> long range bombers
They're also not panacea, but in lieu of regional basing, i.e. PRC doesn't have access near the US, and US basing near PRC is not survivable, they're decent platforms to penetrate and systematically take out enemy defense networks from more survivable homelands. Especially with a fleet of 100+. Mainly "cheap" global strike options, and probably largely something the US can exploit with a good pacific tanking network... assuming survivable. PRC H20 is mainly good for up to Hawaii, but there’s a lot of US mil infra in that range (i.e. all the shit in AU) that will substantially cripple US presence. For CONUS there’s ICBM/hypersonic for….
> home front strikes
Both sides are currently pursuing prompt/precise global strikes with ICBMs for a reason - 30 minutes to take out any global strategic infra that can be hit with 100M CEP. Which includes basically all power generation infra, refineries etc that are resilient, nor are ABM/defense currently feasible, especially at scale. No one has resources to ABM thousands of strategic nodes. WW2 strategic bombing failed at forcing capitulation but succeeded in breaking the war machine. No one thought it would be MAD, which was conceived post WW2 for nuclear brinkmanship. Besides DE/JP never had a chance to strategically bomb the US - it wasn't mutual. Modern global strikes are MAD, because it's mutual, and basically the escalation rung before going nuclear. It's good not to "see" such war as possible, because that's the point, mutual vulnerability = mutual deterrence. Question who is deterred more. In TW scenario, I would argue favours PRC, since they're willing to escalate further for TW.
On TW: island would never turn into an unsinkable US carrier because US assets are not survivable that close to PRC, or JP, or SKR in...
Modern carriers are overprovisioned for electricity generation PRECISLY to keep the option open to mount DE and similar weapons directly on them. Just because destroyers were used for AA defence during WW2 doesn't mean they will have that role in WW3.
> impossible to shoot them all down
Almost nothing is impossible. And I don't even think the cost of shooting down a lot of satellites need to be very high. And keep in mind that you only have to shoot down those that are on top of the TOO. It's probably rather simple to have ground or even air launched missiles that can shoot down satellites at will.
> IRBMs will out range them
Most hypersonic missiles today have a relatively limited range (less than the range of most aircraft, especially if they're refueled in-air) Ballistic missiles are easier to shoot down and less accurate. This comes down to a cost analysis, not black/white.
> PRC will have more firepower bandwidth than multiple carrier groups can intercept.
This is correlated with range. The longer range, the higher the cost to have this kind of arsenal. Combine with improvements in both ABM's energy weapons, etc, the outcome is not given, I would say.
> US basing near PRC is not survivable,
Just because an airfield can be reached by some cruise missile, doesn't mean the attacker can destroy anything at that air field at will. What we're seing in Ukraine, is that air defences can stop a large percentage of missiles. If you have missiles of your own, you can shoot back at enemy missile launcers. If you have good bunkers, missles may not do much damage, and if you store aircraft underground or within mountains (like Taiwan is rumored to), the aircraft are even harder to kill.
Also, F35B do not rely on airfields at all. You can hide them anywhere, and they can take of from a short stretch of road.
It is NOT easy to make an area unsurvivable. The number of missiles will always be limited.
> but being hit will likely end in mission kill.
That depends what is hitting them, and where they're hit. Some hits have little effect, some sink the carrier, some put it out of action for hours, days or weeks.
> WW2 strategic bombing failed at forcing capitulation but succeeded in breaking the war machine.
Germany had a higher industrial output just a few months before the end of the war than they had in 1940/41.
The bombing certainly had an effect. It diverted resources into building AA, repairing damage, defensive fighters and so on, but it was the ground forces, in particular the Red Army that crushed Germany.
Against Japan, the submarine blockade was probably more important for the industrial output than the bombing. The nukes did make a convincing argument psychologically, though.
> for the PRC reverting to 3rd world country or coalition uniting against them. Not really possible, PRC export to the west bloc likely to sanction
I'm not talking sanctions, but a full naval blockade lasting years, probably combined with cutting rail links to Russia. China is much more dependent on trade than the USA. (Japan would suffer a lot though, if China could return the favor.)
> energy producers aren't siding with the west
In an actual war, blockade means you stop all shipping going in/out. With torpedos if neccesary. There are no oil producers that can break a USN blockade if China cannot (except for a small number of Russian rail lines).
A full convential war between NATO and China would look nothing like the Ukraine war. The economy of almost every country in the world would be wrecked due to collapsing supply chains. Living standards would fall to a fraction of what they are today. In many places, famines would erupt. And even where there'd be enough food, a lot of essential goods (such as medicines) would become unavailable in most countries not producing them themselves.
Imagine a 5th gen fighter costing as much as a 4th gen one and being able to do almost anything pretty well.
Only a few countries can afford to have multiple types of aircraft to serve multiple roles. For everyone else the F-35 is a bargain and a technological marvel. Just buy a bunch of them and you're pretty set.
How can anyone look at the record of the F-35 and think anything other than it is a complete boon doggle? Just look at it. It's a fat turd of a plane that cannot turn, and they keep crashing.
I guess people will tell themselves whatever they have to in order to believe in western military supremacy. How quickly we forget that the USA can't win a war and is really only good at bombing civilians from altitude.
Isn't the title here on HN a little misleading considering it's: "F-35A is HX – The Winner Takes It All" on the site itself? Or that the article never really delves too hard into the Finnish procurement process, outside of a few anecdotes about cost and the Finnish competition being "too honest".
As someone who spent quite a long time working in the Danish public sector, often on the higher levels of public procurement, I think it's sort of fun but ultimately fruitless to talk about these processes in the public. Denmark also went with the F-35A, and we too had a lot of discussion about whether or not that was a good idea (especially when Trump then won the election and started alienating Europe). Anyway, in our procurement processens there is thousand upon thousand worth of pages detailing all the different things that goes into these decade long procurement processes, spanning the length of different governments, and it's really hard to sum things up as "this is why we chose how we chose" because it's always a bunch of different things.
Part of it is the technology, which is well described in this article. The F35 is better than it's competition. Part of it is cost. You could willingly buy the "deprecated" F18 Super Hornet which I believe was the most serious competition here in Denmark and hope that was "good enough". Or you could go with the more geo-political route of betting on more local industry to hopefully build up an European (or Swedish/Finnish) alternative in time while getting an inferior product until that succeeded. And a range of other things, but at the end of the day, in many Scandinavian countries the F-35 is going to replace the F-16, and with decades worth of co-operating with the American Airforce for training on top of the F-35 being the better project, and our countries tending to look more to American than to Europe (we speak English as our first second language, not French/German/Spanish/Itallian after all) it was likely always going to be the F-35. Even so, the process was very serious and produced a lot of documentation, and so far, it seems like one of the most successful and least corrupt public procurement processes at that scale in Denmarks history. So while it's easy to think this and that on the choice, I think it's also good to keep in mind the kind of serious work that seem to have gone into these processes in every Scandinavian country.
I guess you can now even say that it was a good choice, and it probably was. Maybe the competition, like the Eurofighter would also have seen huge improvements if it had been given the same amount of money the F-35 project did, maybe it wouldn't have.
My personal take-away from it, was how huge of a public discussion we hade about it here in Denmark when it was 18 Billion Danish Kroner. Yes, it's become a much more expensive process, but while 18 billion dkr is a lot of money. You can run a city with 60.000 citizens 6 full years for those money here in Denmark, we ended up paying the mink-farmers 19 billion dkr in "sorry we killed your mink sort of illegally because they might mutate covid". With that perspective in mind, I feel sort of silly about the public second guessing, my own included, about whether pouring 18, or even 35, billion dkr into the F-35 was better than going with it's cheaper alternatives because, well, I'd frankly rather have a bunch of F-35 than a bunch of dead mink. This last part is obviously a bit of a jest, but I think you can follow my meaning.
Why do you expect the next government will somehow be better for Sweden than Erdoğan?
If they climb to power, they will still need to compel to hardcore nationalist population, in case of Sweden even more than Erdoğan, since they will need their social credit for topic they find important to them and won't burn it because of Sweden.
In the end, Erdogan's opposition to Sweden is mostly related to Sweden granting asylum to Kurds, and Sweden can't (and won't) extradite them because Swedish law forbids them to.
And if the opposition candidate wins, he will be busy repairing all the mess Erdogan did to Turkey's foreign relations - even if the nationalists in the coalition will whine, they can't afford wasting more political good-will for a couple hundred Kurds.
turkey knows they are in a position to extract more concessions out of sweden (and the US). Sweden wants to be in NATO more than NATO truly need sweden, and turkey knows it.
Eventually turkey will concede, but not before squeezing every drop of advantage they can obtain. It doesn't really matter who's at the top in turkey - the incentive dictates the behaviour.
If it wasn't for the need to do your part in the alliance, of which the US is the most powerful member, then Finland would probably choose Gripen, hands down. The Gripen is basically designed for Finland by virtue of being designed for Sweden. Ground crew of 3, can land and depart with regular roads, reload-refuel in 15 minutes, low fuel consumption etc etc.
Even with Sweden within NATO, Sweden would be a small industrial-military partner and the US a big one.
I don't think you understand. Sweden always planned to fight a contracting, losing war, eventually devolving into partisan warfare.
If I recall the Cold War plans correctly, one of the more realistic plans prepared for 3-4 weeks of war before being overrun and partisan warfare starting. The road-as-runway plan was critical for this, there would be no time to build anything, just keep everything flying and attacking from surprise locations for as long as possible. The submarine force tied into to this also, with its ability to stay submerged for 3 weeks.
The whole idea was never for Sweden to really win, just to make the Soviet win so momentally Pyrrhic they would think twice about an actual ground invasion. From a military standpoint, we never hoped for our major cities to be spared nukes. We counted on them being bombed to oblivion day one.
Try building runways when all major infrastructure and the country is in total chaos. That's why there were arms and fuel depots everywhere, with everything from missiles down to submachine guns.
Edit: and you say propping up defence industry as if insinuating it's just a boondoggle. When it comes to geopolitics, it's not. It's the only way to have total control of supply chains and constant upgrade of arms.
Gripen may have become something of a boondoggle over time, but it was born from the Cold War and still traces most of its design goals from that situation.
That's cool and all, but in 2023 you aren't going to successfully operate jets in those conditions. You'll either fly right above the treetops or get shot down, well, actually the enemy jets with down-looking radar will shoot you down anyway. Even if you manage to keep flying, you won't get much value out of those jets in partisan warfare.
The idea of Sweden being overrun in 3-4 weeks is a bit absurd anyway, perhaps it's just not a reasonable assumption to start building upon.
>Edit: and you say propping up defence industry as if insinuating it's just a boondoggle. When it comes to geopolitics, it's not. It's the only way to have total control of supply chains and constant upgrade of arms.
Well, that's not what I was insinuating. But since you bring it up, the Gripen isn't exactly a great example of "total control of supply chains". That's a big part of why nobody wants to buy it, if you're going to deal with ITAR you might as well buy the F-35.
Now we are getting somewhere and getting more nuanced. I think the Ukraine airforce actually has proven some of my points. They have operated out of roads and unexpected locations, and also operate old MIGs without stealth, to great effect, despite very old, short range missiles.
Regarding ITAR and such, I can only agree, except "might as well". F35 is more expensive and complicated to operate, Gripen is surprisingly expensive per airframe. But I think they still are very different systems good for different things. And as the Cold War wound down, Gripen became more of a pure industrial project. Still, for Sweden and Finland, it looks like hand-in-glove.
Ukraine is very far from being overrun, almost entirely operates from regular airfields and not roads or other unexpected locations.
Are they operating to great effect? The HARMs are nice, but surface-launched anti-radiation missiles would be both far cheaper and more resilient than Gripens.
Presumably in a "partisan warfare" scenario, you wouldn't be worrying about stuff like Shahed drones destroying your infrastructure either.
> F35 is more expensive and complicated to operate
It does provide advantages for that money, and certainly has a brighter future than the Gripen E which nobody will buy.
Go on, give me some actual examples. What sort of cheap missiles are used to cause more than a few thousand dollars worth of damage to runways in Ukraine?
Make a hole in tarmac, until it's fixed it can't be used, by the time it's fixed it can be targeted again.
It's all nice and easy when you attack third world countries with no real army from aircraft carrier but when a high intensity conflict with a real military power begins you can be sure most of your airports will be targets, which is exactly what happened to Ukraine, not even 2 weeks in the conflict:
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/russian-forces-h...
Uh, how do you plan to use dumb bombs like that in a conflict like Ukraine?
That would require you to be able to fly right over the enemy airfield, they'd need to have no air defenses whatsoever.
You'll damage a runway at the cost of a pilot (probably $5M+), aircraft (at least $10M), and dumb bombs ($30k each). Putting your total price paid for thousands of dollars worth of runway damage in the tens of millions.
> when a high intensity conflict with a real military power begins you can be sure most of your airports will be targets, which is exactly what happened to Ukraine, not even 2 weeks in the conflict
That kind of damage is fixed within hours at a cost of low thousands of dollars at most. Russia can do only it using incredibly expensive standoff-range missiles, spending at the very least hundreds of thousands if not millions to punch a hole on a runway that takes a few hours to repair.
> Uh, how do you plan to use dumb bombs like that in a conflict like Ukraine?
That would require you to be able to fly right over the enemy airfield, they'd need to have no air defenses whatsoever.
Eeeeh that's exactly what happened in the beginning of the conflict... they (Russia) had paratroopers in Kiev day 1
The Rafale, Typhoon, Gripen, etc. are not comparable to the F-35. The F-35, beyond being a purpose-built stealth jet, is almost as much an electronic warfare platform as it is traditional multirole fighter. The tech is as much on sale as the ability to fly is; 35's software, sensor suite, etc. is famously advanced. Neither can really be substituted for the other; the US' own A-10 and F-15/16 modernization projects failing to really keep pace demonstrate this. This is why SaaB had to throw in two GlobalEye AWACS platforms with their offer of 64 Gripens to match LM's 64 F-35s (and Boeing's 14 EA-18Gs with their 50 FA-18Fs).
Finland pretty much knew who would win the testing when they selected their definition of success, ignoring the unexpected (which to be fair did eliminate two competitors); either you want the traditional fighter model with inherent low cost and you go with Gripen, or you want in on the F-35's technology platform and true multirole capability (higher payload) and you politically bully LM into delivering you a reasonable price cut (probably on the basis of US jobs in the short term, I'd guess), like the article seems to describe. And frankly, good on the Finns for doing it.
> Stealth simply isn't as important as one would think so long as you're not running missions into enemy territory.
That would be a silly assumption, to buy a jet fighter and assume you'd never run missions into enemy territory. More than that, if <<your own country>> gets invaded, guess what, they put SAMs onto your territory and suddenly it becomes <<enemy territory>> :-)
Russia or similar invaders didn't roll a "single S-400" into Ukraine. Nor would they in any similar invasion.
They'd bring in the whole shebang.
So my rhetorical question to you would be: why would you not buy a system with a reduced radar footprint, advanced avionics, advanced weapons control systems and advanced networking? Even if it's only for defensive purposes.
Heck, even if it's for flying strictly over territory you control. Advanced radars cover hundreds of kilometers as do modern anti-air missiles. They can shoot you down without even going near their direct airspace. That's what Russia is doing right now, they're taking down Ukrainian aircraft at no risk to themselves launching a bunch of R37s from deep in their territory (50-100km) from Migs Ukraine can't reach or even see.
It's just that being in with NATO is more important than equipment case in point Ukraine.
F-35 is designed for ingress into densely covered enemy territory.
The stealth allows more flexibility in approach it stops jets being scrambled along the route, it stops assets being moved in to hangars and otherwise hidden.
It means you're less likely to be flying through a valley of manpads. Who were all warned of impending jets coming in.
Flying into an enemy carrier group with airborne radar being pinged from every direction.
These are the missions Israel runs against Iran and Syria (not the carrier group) or the US may theoretically run against Russia in a world war situation (during conflict it's likely the US would be protected by heavy ECW from growlers not just stealth).
This is not within Finland's likely missions unless it's acting with NATO.
If you don't need that then there are many cheaper, easier to run alternatives.
So does Finland want an F-35 or a bunch of gripen and hundreds of manpads and ATGMs?
Ukraine has repelled Russia very effectively with just manpads, ATGMs and NATO intelligence.
All things being equal that would be preferable. If buying US weapons NATO becomes more protective then the calculus changes.
> This is not within Finland's likely missions unless it's acting with NATO.
It's a lot less likely now, but Russia could have very well tried the exact same thing against Finland, in which case Finland for sure would have been running the exact same missions against Russia. Suppress Russian threats in Russia itself to protect Finnish territory.
And Finland isn't in NATO, yet. Though their luck will probably be that Russia won't be able to do anything else major for at least a decade.
> Ukraine has repelled Russia very effectively with just manpads, ATGMs and NATO intelligence.
Ukraine has effectively repelled Russia because it's the second biggest military in Europe after Russia, and second strongest air defence in Europe after Russia.
This is the sole biggest factor without saying which, everything else is meaningless.
It's mainly because the attrition rate should have entirely depleted the S-300 system in the first 6 months (2-3 per week during the main phase).
Ukraine is a big country and there were loads of missile attacks to defend. It's very unlikely it was able to move S-300s continuously into needed areas compared with manpads.
Yet it would have been a PR disaster if NATO admitted to supplying weapons to Ukraine before the invasion started. So MANPADs are implied to have sprouted like mushrooms in Ukraine...
MANPADs have intercepted a few missiles, but are not a tool for intercepting missiles.
> Yet it would have been a PR disaster if NATO admitted to supplying weapons to Ukraine before the invasion started. So MANPADs are implied to have sprouted like mushrooms in Ukraine..
>Ukraine has repelled Russia very effectively with just manpads, ATGMs and NATO intelligence.
MANPADs are nice to have, but it's Ukraine's own Soviet air defense equipment which is keeping Russian aviation at bay.
The focus on MANPADs really makes it hard to take anything else you say seriously. It's the 100+ active S300 batteries Ukraine had that made all the difference, not MANPADs.
They try to put them anywhere they can, as close as they can get. Numbers and distance seem to matter. They might also be counting on losing a number of them.
It's also rumoured that some large portion of Russian losses are due to their own anti air. So coordination is difficult.
It's about a combination of stealth and the sensor/avionics package -- the ability to detect and identify SAM radar systems and launchers, and chart a path which minimizes likelihood of detection, aided by the aircraft's low radar signature, while enabling strike operations to take place. If you're arguing that the F-35 is not invisible, then you're attacking a strawman.
The F-117 was central to SEAD operations during Desert Storm, and the F-35 is regarded as the most credible SEAD platform in the USAF inventory today.
Because that's not the main reason or even a primary reason. There are a bunch of NATO countries that don't use US aircraft. Similarly there are non-NATO countries that buy the F-35 and many non-NATO countries that would want to buy it if they were able to.
For a much better breakdown on why countries would buy the F-35. This portion of this presentation by Perun is a great intro: https://youtu.be/7Z_gTGJc7nQ?t=2219
In short, because of massive scale, the F-35 is cheap despite being highly advanced.
But the kind of all aspect high quality stealth of the F-35 only matters when you're surrounded by advanced radar capabilities.
That's high power radar and high coverage to capture scatter at different angles..along with the bandwidth (processing) needed to detect coincident events.
Most of the time you want to destroy those assets and you have cheaper jets like the F-16/18 respond to every ping with an anti radiation missile.
>> when you're surrounded by advanced radar capabilities
Like maybe when you are defending a border against waves of incoming fighters?
>> cheaper jets like the F-16/18 respond to every ping with an anti radiation missile.
If those pings are in range of air-launched anti-radiation missiles, then those launch platforms are well within the range of the much larger ground-launched sams beside those pings. SEAD with non-stealthy aircraft is a much more complex mission than simply throwing harms at pings.
If you want to avoid "being seen", you must not use radar.
Then, to launch missiles, you need to network with a distributed group sharing sensor data. This mode of operation is possible in all modern fighter jets, and capabilities are being added continually with avionics/software upgrades. This is true for F-35, but also for Rafale, Eurofighter, and Gripen.
Dodging missiles depends on kinetics, but it's possible existing Russian radar homing missiles can't lock on to an F-35. In this respect, it is has an advantage.
Sharing sensor data is always a good idea and helps with being stealthy since you can see the opponent sooner (without giving yourself away as much). Reduced radar cross section then helps further, because the opponent sees you later. Combine both for best results.
I expect that most or all radar guided missiles (modern and historical) can be used to engage an F-35 (or any other stealth-y aircraft). The effective engagement range will be lower than against a less-stealthy aircraft though.
Dodging missiles does not rely exclusively on kinetics. There are several ways to try to break a lock or at least temporarily confuse a missile. (eg. notching, chaff, ECM) . Having improved sensor fusion and reduced RCS can obviously make these tools and tactics a bit easier and more effective too.
> The effective engagement range will be lower than against a less-stealthy aircraft though.
It should depend on its operation. If the missile is receiving guidance updates in the beginning phase from a sensor network, and only relying on its own sensors in the final phase (if at all), then spectral stealth will make less of a difference. But older missiles and platforms can not do this.
This is the gamble of the F-35; compromise the non-updatable specs in order to achieve safety from present day known threats.
If you're thinking of say an AIM-120: it is always going to be helpful to be less visible to all sorts of sensors; in the launching aircraft, in other aircraft on the datalink, in addition to the built in radar when the missile goes pitbull.
If the opponent has less accurate data when compared to the less-stealthy situation; then the opponent will have a harder time guiding their weapons compared to the less-stealthy situation. It may also be easier to spoof, dodge, and/or hide.
Modern missile systems are getting smarter and smarter no matter what, you may need to stack several advantages in order to defeat them.
Massive pressure and incentives from the U.S. Just like everyone else who want to be in good standing with NATO.
The “selection process” in Denmark was a total sham, most of the competitors didn’t even bother submitting a bid, because it was obvious from the start that the F-35 would win.
They're generation older (with everything that means for their sensor suite, pilot workload and situational awarness) and won't have all the benefits of sharing the same platform with the rest of the Europe.
> won't have all the benefits of sharing the same platform with the rest of the Europe.
Buying the _eurofighter_ wouldn't let them share the same platform as the _rest of Europe_? I realize that the F-35 has racked up a number of sales recently, but there's quite a few eurofighters around still, and more on the way IIRC
Yes, unsurprisingly more countries are procuring F-35 than the Typhoon. Eurofighter also costs about the same while being technologically less advanced, its A/G capability was bolted on after the fact.
So great that only Brazil was willing to buy them. And not at all because they were the best planes they could get, but because Brazil strongly prefers to not buy from the US and SAAB offered a great technology transfer deal.
Political reasons that may or may not make sense. Brazil would perhaps benefit in many ways by aligning themselves with the US, but for a variety of reasons they simply don't want to do that.
In the fickle Brazilian political environment, not aligning with the US might end up being a rather pragmatic move. As a politician, who knows how badly your successor will fuck up those ties?
There was no pressure from the U.S. to buy it and there are no incentives from the U.S. to buy it. And no there are plenty of NATO countries that care very much about indigenous hardware development and do not buy US hardware.
The real reason is because the F-35 is in fact very cheap for what it does.
How would you know? Are you privy to all conversations between the Finnish and the U.S. government?
> there are no incentives from the U.S. to buy it
Right from the article itself:
>> However, in what is a major win for the team behind HX, Lockheed Martin provided a unique tailored solution to Finland – one described in their BAFO-press statement to “includes many opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35 that have not been offered before.”
Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another. A nice boon for the politicians who can then brag about how they’re securing Finnish/Danish/Italian/whatever jobs.
At least in Denmark, it’s a bit of an open secret that the Danish government is unusually efficient and unanimous whenever decisions are made that help U.S. interests in some way or another.
Like how Denmark have joined pretty much every U.S. war of aggression in recent history, despite having no interests at all in Afghanistan or the middle east.
That's still not proof of any such conversation happening.
Denmark joined because the US invoked Article 5 after 9/11. It was more about making sure they're protected if they ever need it in the future, so I'd say it was absolutely in their interest. This was the first time Article 5 was invoked, not going would've killed NATO and their own security. The invasion of Ukraine has solidified their reasoning.
No, of course they wouldn’t make such pressure official. But it’s not exactly a secret that the U.S. arms industry has a lot of political pull. Not hard to imagine that such pull extends to “helping” NATO subjects to pick the right suppliers.
As for article 5, that might explain the second gulf war and/or Afghanistan, but certainly not the first gulf war, Libya or Syria.
Whenever Uncle Sam says “jump”, you’ll see all the small NATO states lining up to ask “How high?”.
One could also read that as providing the nation the ability to handle its own needs for these aircraft and thus not be as reliant on Lockheed Martin. Basically just alleviating one of the primary concerns of choosing a foreign aircraft.
> Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another.
What? This is pretty much standard practice across the board in military procurements. For example, as part of SAAB's Gripen bid for Canada, they would arrange for the aircraft to be produced, assembled, and maintained in Canada if the Gripen were selected. Countries do this for a variety of reasons -- yes, to bolster local industry, but also to give them a leg-up on sovereign sustainment of the platform, and so that they can ramp up manufacture to meet their own needs in the event of a war.
> How would you know? Are you privy to all conversations between the Finnish and the U.S. government?
It's usually on the person proposing the existence of something to prove that it exists rather than on the person saying it doesn't exist to prove that it doesn't. I can't prove the lack of existence of bigfoot nor can I prove the lack of existence of aliens having visited earth.
> Right from the article itself:
> <snip>
> Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another. A nice boon for the politicians who can then brag about how they’re securing Finnish/Danish/Italian/whatever jobs.
That's not an incentive from the US though. That's an incentive from Lockheed Martin. Which is something businesses do when they're trying to close sales with a skeptical customer and can afford to do so.
Also the fact that it keeps proving to be an actually good plane by all standards with a price tag that's not all that higher than its competitors stuck with a full generation older design and all the downsides that brings.
And augmented by the fact that a large chunk of Europe is going to be operating the same plane, driving down maintenance costs, sharing maintenance knowledge, reducing interoperability issues and ensuring that spare parts will be available.
same happened in Belgium, the US won over the French Jet.
In hindsight nobody cares anymore, but it was a lot of public debate and very clear the decision was political and not merit based
Hey, that has value, there is definitely a good case to be made for that. But just be open and honest about it instead of doing weird procurement steps
Since most of the cost is in the software, engine and systems, why make the airframe commonality such a big point? There could be an F-35D that would be a totally new airframe but would use everything else from the other models. There will be lots of F-35:s manufactured, maintained and upgraded over the lifespan so it would make sense to "tap into" that ecosystem. Composite manufacturing has been advancing a lot. If the structure can be uncoupled from the rest, then it would allow for better performance. The current shape of the F-35 variants is limiting their supersonic performance. One could also optimize the airframe for cost or speed of manufacture.
It might be deemed now that the airframe performance is adequate. This might change in the future as adversaries improve.
The biggest problem with the F-35 airframe is that it's fat and thus the aerodynamics kind of suck. This design was essentially forced by the need for the B model to have a single engine with sufficient thrust for vertical landing. The A and C models would have been better as twin engine designs with the weapons bay in between, like a smaller version of the F-22. But at this point it's too late and there's no way to fund the development of a D model with a radically different outer mould line.
Exactly! Also the length was limited because it has to fit to small aircraft carrier lifts. Something a new design for non-naval use wouldn't need to take into account.
YF-23 had a narrow and deep weapons bay that was considered problematic since if a weapon jammed to the rail, it would prevent release of other weapons above it. Maybe it's also bad if you want to shoot a lot of missiles in a very short time span. The production design had a wider bay, worsening the aerodynamics a bit: https://yf-23.webs.com/F-23A.html
Using common airframe for three variants was probably the major flaw of F-35 program. I think they were concerned about the design costs. They made it work but it was expensive to get working. Plus, the electronics and software were the really expensive pieces.
It would have probably been cheaper and better to design two planes, one conventional (F-35A, F-35C) and one vertical take-off. Then save money by using common parts and the same avionics.
Oh boy I'm very excited for a well articulated thread full of people who know about modern jet fighter combat and selection rather than a bunch of IT people who get everything they know from clickbait sites that cite RT contributors.
What is their opinion about being unable to go supersonic for more than short bursts currently classified as "will not fix"? [1]
A hint they got from the world of software development clearly... :-)
"...At extremely high altitudes, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ versions of the F-35 jet can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time before there is a risk of structural damage and loss of stealth capability, a problem that may make it impossible for the Navy’s F-35C to conduct supersonic intercepts...
The Defense Department does not intend to field a fix for the problem, which influences not only the F-35’s airframe and the low-observable coating that keeps it stealthy, but also the myriad antennas located on the back of the plane that are currently vulnerable to damage, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News...
...The F-35 Joint Program Office has classified the issues for the "B" and "C" models as separate category 1 deficiencies, indicating in one document that the problem presents a challenge to accomplishing one of the key missions of the fighter jet..."
As an interested layman I'd have thought, the higher, the better, because less friction. Now I'm wondering why. Because of lower outside air temperature, making some material expand/shrink too fast? Now I'm puzzled. Does this mean it can't go (high) supersonic at lower altitudes either? Because denser air causing even more friction? I mean something like Mach 2 at 1000 feet. Mission impossible?
F-35 avionic software is written in C++, so obviously any use of such an airplane is to be condemned until rewritten into an HN-approved language.
/flamebait
To contribute something productive: I'm actually often pleasantly surprised how non-IT people with relevant experience often show up on HN comment threads.
The problem with being an expert on the F-35 is, you can't talk about most of the things you know. So internet hot takes dominate and you can't refute them without revealing things that you shouldn't reveal.
That goes both ways. The problem of being an expert on the F-35 is that you can't warn friendly nations of the critical problems classified as confidential.
"“Details of [deficiencies] — even unclassified [deficiencies] — are not publicly releasable because the information is operationally sensitive, and its release could be detrimental to U.S. and international war fighters operating F-35s worldwide,”... Seal noted that all remaining critical deficiencies are classified as category 1B issues, which represent a “critical impact on mission readiness.” The more serious category 1A problems indicate a risk to the operator’s life..."
"...In June 2019, Defense News published an investigation into the F-35 that detailed all 13 category 1 deficiencies on the books at the time — the first and only time a full list of F-35 critical deficiencies has been publicly released."
Since Finland selection was done way before, how many of these were disclosed to them?
I got a good laugh out of them, if I was the conspiratorial sort I'd think that the thread is being astroturfed. However my personal guess is there's a lot of posters from a certain English speaking nation that's anti-NATO and gets a lot of anti-NATO propaganda from it's government and media. So they're just reciting talking points.
Wait, I’m honestly having trouble figuring out what country you’re talking about. Is Ireland anti-NATO? Australia? I’m scratching my head trying to figure out who I’m missing.
Or is it a NATO member that’s anti-NATO? But in that case I can’t imagine that the government provides a lot of anti-NATO propaganda…
Ah, OK, fair enough. I wasn’t thinking about the relatively long list of countries that have English as an official language, though I suppose it’s quite likely the case that there are more English speakers in India than any country other than the U.S.
Didn't the US spend something like $1 trillion over a decade to develop this plane? I remember reading stories for years about how expensive it was. So maybe Finland is reaping the benefits of the extravagant development costs that the US sunk into this fighter. Also, the other contenders don't have stealth capabilities, which seems to be an obvious reason for not winning the contract.
No, the 1.5 trillion dollar number everybody loves to quote is in 2070 then year dollars and is the total cost of the program which includes design, acquisition, operations and maintenance for making and using a lot of planes (~2,300) over the next ~50 years.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadBecause those weren't the deciding factors. Cost and maintainability were. (It's implied that the planes were close enough in capability that the "gate checks" were just that. Gates. Not goals.)
Finland didn't want to end up with another Betamax fleet.
I think it's the other way around. Technically, the F-35 has been superior all along, but it used to be expensive.
Now, with the cost coming down, the reason NOT to pick it went away.
Also, the data would be from simulations. Outside of Ukraine, there haven't been many fighters of advanced nations shot down in decades.
Terrain maps beyond a certain resolution are classified. As I remember, the somewhat lower resolution terrain maps were still ITAR controlled munitions. Some of the radio propagation models are classified.
Even half-way decent simulation outputs are likely also classified.
In my case, for the most part, the simulations were used to shorten the turnaround time in the early prototyping stages, and also a fair amount for the sales team to sell military hardware to governments.
The topic of "spectral stealth" is complicated. It is vulnerable to systems of networked radars, among other things. It is one feature that may be very useful, but it is not a "panacea".
There is little to suggest that the Israeli F-35 was taken down by a missile; the sources involved are not especially credible. Eurasia Times, for example, is basically Russia Today (RT) and is not really trustworthy. Most of the posts elsewhere, e.g. Quora, are from questionable accounts and aren't credible either.
It's possible it happened and they're spinning it as something birds -- which is pretty lame and damning if true -- but most of the pro-shot-down points are difficult to take seriously.
If true, I don't think it necessarily presents the F-35 poorly. But it's only a rumour. And if true, it most likely would be classified as secret, since reporting it would be like handing the enemy a damage assessment report.
If a country’s Air Force is getting in fair fights, I’d suspect either they are in pretty dire circumstances, or they have some questionable decision making going on!
There are at least three within the first tenth of that long article alone that I read, namely:
* the most boring factor, simply the sheer amount of F-35s sold is a huge benefit. As has been stressed from the outset, Finland can’t afford to be the sole operator of an aircraft
* Lockheed Martin provided a unique tailored solution to Finland – one described in their BAFO-press statement to “includes many opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35 that have not been offered before.”
* Which brings us to what has been the most controversial aspect of the program: cost. The acquisition cost has come down nicely,
I'll grant it's a badly written article for clarity and it's hard to pick the details out from the noise and fluff but it's simply incorrect to claim that not a single reason was mentioned.
( other than on the technical grounds that more than "a single reason" was provided in the article. )
Those don't have stealth of course and having Russia as a direct neighbor it's much more likely they'll see combat against an advanced military (much more do than western Europe) so I can imagine they wanted that advantage even though it's not perfect.
The concern isn't being sole operator at time of sale, but decades down the road. The Gripen, for example, is used by Sweden, South Africa, Hungary and Czechia [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen
I really wish they'd send a couple of squadrons of Gripens to Ukraine, because I think they'd be the perfect aircraft for that theatre.
Agree about Ukraine too. Sending highly sophisticated jets that will take months to learn is wasting Ukraine's time - Gripens, maybe Mirage 2000s, MiG-29s make the most sense.
Stopped being produced 15 years ago.
> MiG-29
Ukraine can't get new ones.
> Gripens
Could be an option, but available only in low numbers.
The Ukraine war will be won through stocks and new production.
Ukraine can't afford a dead-end platform. Especially because "sending highly sophisticated jets that will take months to learn".
The F-16 is probably the best option, still being made, but much more importantly, available in large numbers, thousands of them out there.
Or on the diplomatic table. While I agree it is a good thing to send Ukraine all we reasonably can, it is a nonzero probability Putin gets into hot water and ousted - bad health, pissed-off bureaucracy, domestic protests once he's forced to conscript people in central (ethnic) Russia.
Ukraine being a part of Russia is a mainstream opinion in Russia. It's a core part of Russian propaganda abroad and has been so since the 1800s (Novorossya).
I'm not saying it's impossible, but a new leader will adopt many of the nationalist tropes.
Russia completely leaving occupied territories, especially Crimea, diplomatically, will be extremely hard to do.
And Ukraine without Crimea will always be exposed. It's too easy to choke off their maritime access without it.
And European messaging is... strongly in favor of Ukraine but at reduced/no cost for Europe. So in practice European messaging is actually weak.
There are quite a few big European economies that would want to open up the Russian economy again. Conflicting interests are still fighting it out and we can't be sure which side will out. It could very well be that the winning political side in the West says a chopped up Ukraine is sufficient at the end of this war.
We'll see, it's super hard to predict.
For Russia at least, wouldn’t that be plenty enough to get by on?
Doesn't really matter when there are hundreds in stock (recently decommissioned or soon to be decommissioned) - they're faster to deliver than ones that are yet to be produced.
> Ukraine can't get new ones.
They don't need new ones, they need flying ones, yesterday. The proposed swaps with various NATO countries like Bulgaria sounded like the best option - Ukraine gets jets they can fly today, and the other country gets an upgrade for their help.
I guess, it really depends on your threat model.
If you assume that Russia is the main threat, and assume that what's going on in Ukraine is what future combat would likely look like, forward deployed SAMs are the main threat to aircraft. I have to imagine that advanced stealth capabilities would really help Sweden maintain an air capability in such an environment.
From what I understand, the Ukrainian airforce has taken a pretty severe beating (understandably). Heck - the Russian airforce has been pretty limited as well - they do run sorties, but they aren't exactly operating with impunity.
With or without pilots?
But even without pilots, and crewed by Ukrainian pilots lacking training on the system, I think the ability to lob 100 km range missiles over the horizen, has to be worth something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Operational...
That makes the Gripen a non-starter for picking a new aircraft to base your air force around in 2023. Stealth is now the single-most important factor, bar none. Non-stealthy aircraft are sitting ducks to a wide variety of threats.
> it does have over the horizon radar, can carry the Meteor air-to-air missile which has a 100km range
Yes see this is the kind of capability that allows stealthy aircraft like the F-35 to completely obliterate a Gripen at long range, with the Gripen never having a chance of even detecting the F-35. And of course the F-35 has long range air-to-air missiles for it too.
There is a probability (only indirect rumors) that F-35 can already be detected in some situations on some systems (global eye?) and there is definitely no guarantee that F-35 will keep it's stealth ability in the future.
> there is definitely no guarantee that F-35 will keep it's stealth ability in the future.
Of course as radar and computer systems improve it's likely that stealthy airplanes will become detectable from farther away, but they're not just gonna lose their stealthy characteristics entirely, in a boolean manner!
Only Sweden and Brazil ordered the new Gripens.
Not really, and even if they did, it might not be worth the effort. Instead they got a super attractive technology transfer deal from SAAB.
For example, Australia became the sole operator of the F-111 from when the USAF retired it in 1998, until the RAAF retired it in 2010. The Australian Army also found itself in the position of sole operator of the ARH variant of the Eurocopter Tiger, a situation which lead to severe sustainment issues and exorbitant per-hour flight costs (estimates of up to AU$34k), and eventually lead to the 2021 decision to replace them with Apache Guardians.
The question is how they are going to be used in practice, with everything that entails. The decision also includes a gamble on how the platform develops in the future, and how adversary's capabilities develop.
If Finland joins NATO, it makes sense to combine air forces[5] in Scandinavia, in which case I can imagine there's a lot of benefits from having the same airplane as one of the other members. Obviously that w as not a direct consideration back when the decision was made, but surely some of the people involved were eyeing close cooperation in Scandinavia if shit hit the fan.
Regardless, I imagine Finland has had a chat with the Norwegian Air Force about the plane, which feedback should be highly relevant given the similarities between the countries. So far from what I've read the Norwegian Air Force seems quite happy with the F-35.
[1]: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-35/f-35-glob...
[2]: https://www.tu.no/artikler/norske-flygere-har-for-forste-gan...
[3]: https://www.ffi.no/aktuelt/podkaster/16-slik-har-ffi-forsket...
[4]: https://www.f35.com/f35/global-enterprise/denmark.html
[5]: https://www.nrk.no/trondelag/luftfartssjefen-vil-ha-felles-n...
Heck they were figuring out how to operate in Thule this month.
But yeah, seems like it's definitely not an issue these days.
[1]: https://www.f35.com/f35/news-and-features/north-to-the-futur...
[2]: https://alaskapublic.org/2023/01/23/the-air-force-is-swappin...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Air_and_Space_Force#Inv...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Frenc...
And yes, you spent your money with friendly nations.
This is a NATO buy in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument
"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu
For example, the F22 has a slower top speed than the F15 (although higher non-afterburner speed).
Speed also provides an energy advantage against SAM's and very long range ATA missiles.
The F-35 can probably go faster than the stated top speed of M1.6, though, if surivival depends on it. I would guess its real top speed is around M2, similar to an F-16.
No it's not.
Modern US doctrine favors early detection and long range engagement by missiles.
What would a US carrier group do to stop a large group of Tu-160, Tu-22, Mig31 and similar aircraft armed with anti-ship missiles with ranges that in many cases exceed 1000km, and some of which are supersonic or even hypersonic?
If the carrier is several 1000 kilometer from land, maybe F35's flying CAP + any additional scrambled fighters may provide enough protection.
But the closer the carrier gets to land, the more vulnerable they may be.
What kind of missile would you use against these bombers, and at what distance?
Now keep in mind that the enemy can stay in the air for a while far within their friendly airspace, and then suddenly start a dash towards you at a speed of Mach2.
In cases like this, I would believe that having a few F-22 around (possibly from land based air bases in the area) would be a good addition to the fighters on the carrier, simply because the F-22 could much more easily dance with the enemy bombers as they were repositioning.
What now? A Kinzhal will probably fly that far, but it won't hit a moving ship at that distance.
Kh-55 has a similar range, but lower speed (sea-skimming, though).
Then there is the Kh-32 with operational range stated as 600-1000km.
And then there are plenty of missiles of ranges from 300-1000km.
Also, China is actively developing similar systems.
I suppose it's classified at what ranges these systems would be able hit targets such as carriers. But if they're able to at all, it would be at rangers much beyond what you can defend against with aim120/aim160 missiles.
RIM 161/SM3 would provide some protection, but they are probably not very accurate at the extreme ranges, especially if targetting supersonic attackers.
Which means that interceptors may be the best option. Against large groups of enemies, the speed of the interceptor is still relevant, and there are certainly some in the Navy that worries about the loss of the F14, in particular in the Pacific.
For now, I suppose it makes sense to have some F22's and F15's in the general area where such conflicts could take place.
Which may be true in a land attack role, but is obviously not the case in an anti-ship role (if that capability really exists at all!).
Realistically, you'll be very happy if you hit a target 300km away with current anti-ship missiles.
If it has any kind of ability to home in on the ship based on radar, sattelite or similar, it shouldn't matter much if it's fired from 200km or 2000km. And even less if it carries a nuke. Even at 40kn, a ship doesn't go THAT far in 3 minutes.
Of course, if it's not performing per specification, it wouldn't be the first time for a Russian weapon system. So it makes sense to take the claims with a grain of salt.
The main point, though, is that in some places, it's hard to protect important assets from all angles against enemies that are a lot faster. This may not be all that important in Eastern Europe. It might be more important in the Arctic, Middle Eastern or Pacific theatres, though.
At the very least, speed allows each plane to patrol a larger area in relatively remote places.
The F22 is an air-superiority fighter. To quote Wikipeda interceptor role is mostly dead:
> the strategic threat moved from bombers to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Dedicated interceptor designs became rare, with the only widely used examples designed after the 1960s being the Panavia Tornado ADV, Mikoyan MiG-25, Mikoyan MiG-31, and the Shenyang J-8.
I'd note the most recent of any of those is the Mig31 (operational since 1981, production finished in 1994). It's worth reading combat reports from Ukraine against the Mig31 - where it is being used in an air-superiority role. There the big advantage of the Mig31 is its R-37 missile (range 200+ miles).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interceptor_aircraft
The F-22 can go faster and further than the F-35. It's also more maneuverable and a touch stealthier. (The F-35 has better tech, is cheaper to build and operate and can carry more armament.)
Than the F-22??
It's also unlikely the projected numbers are ever going to be acquired simply due to the fact that projected budgets and reality don't usually agree.
Particularly during R&D you can kick and scream as much as you want to deny reality about things. At some point it will set in that while the F-35 does in fact exist as an aircraft, it isn't practical, meets none of it's objectives and may actually be operationally inferior to existing aircraft.
If you don't believe me read any of the DOT&E reports on the F-35. Even they mention that for things to work out would require the F-35 program to suddenly go from never meeting any of their own objectives to meeting 100% of them for the forseeable future.
My personal projection is that acquisition is halted in the next few years and in less than 20 years the available aircraft will be in storage in Davis-Monthan or a similar facility.
Most nations want to hang onto that technological edge as long as feasible.
The "multi-role" thing is what made developing and debugging the F-35 such a pain.
However, that seems to be paying off as now it gets manufactured in more and more volume.
Not so much the multi role part as the fact that it's really 3 different aircraft that they tried to make as similar as possible.
Had they only made the F35A, with the rules of F35B and C covered by other planes, then it would probably be either cheaper or more capable in some ways.
In a dogfight I do not think that there is an aircraft on this planet that can compete against an F-22. The F-35 is no slouch, either, but the F-22 is the alpha predator.
That would be…impressive, actually. But I doubt any variant of the F-35 has demonstrated takeoff, vertical or otherwise, without fuel, though I suppose if you were extremely generous with your definition of “takeoff”, the F-35C might be able to, given its CATOBAR capability.
The F-35B is STOVL (Short Takeoff/Vertical Landing), not VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW28Mb1YvwY
Lockheed Martin says of the video: "An F-35B test aircraft completes its first-ever vertical takeoff (VTO) at NAS Patuxent River, Md., on May 10, 2013. While not a capability used in combat, VTOs are required for repositioning of the STOVL in environments where a jet could not perform a short takeoff. In these cases, the jet, with a limited amount of fuel, would execute a VTO to travel a short distance."
The F-35 comes with a bunch of other technology that make it truly formidable. The cost has also come down substantially, so it’s probably the cheapest option out there as well.
Mind you, eventually this will be correct... just it's been declared prematurely for 60 years and so this still may not be the correct moment to say so.
> The F-35 pilot just needs to point their head towards the enemy to lock on.
Missile performance won't be equal in this case; if the enemy can launch missiles with higher pkill, well..
The enemy COULD pop out from just behind the mountain/hill in front of you, and force you to have to resort to short ranged (FOX 2) missiles or even guns.
Still, though, this is not enough to prioritize extreme agility over stealth today. The F35 is more than agile enough for the few times this occurs, especially if there is a wingman around.
My understanding is that the "dogfighting is over" rhetoric stopped being proven wrong during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iraqi fighters started mysteriously exploding in the sky during operations.
If you can safely entirely rely upon on IFF and deconfliction, all is great.
If you ever have to close to identify targets, then you might end up with some significant maneuvering, etc. Of course, the F-35 isn't terrible at this, and stealth and efficiency lets it better choose the terms of this engagement.
A naval variant capable of carrier landings of the F-22 was considered by the US Navy but was ultimately not adopted. The airframe is definitely capable of it, if given sufficient military and political will.
For example, lets see what Bayraktar MIUS will be doing.
Someone will eventually produce an aircraft to rival the 5th gen capabilities of the US, but it hasn’t been done yet. Every competitor so far has been theater. Meanwhile, the US is actively developing and testing 6th gen combat aircraft.
But aircraft tech, yes - absolutely. The US knows how to build impressive planes. But stand-off ballistics and drones are now the better bang for the buck.
What do you mean “ballistics”? Ballistic missiles? If so, then, sure, Russia has much longer range conventional SRBMs than the US (though that should change this year, with the PrSM coming online), which has largely (until comparatively recently) focused on manned aircraft abd cruise rather than ballistic missiles for the same use.
> But stand-off ballistics and drones are now better bang for the buck.
In the specific tacrical environment of the Ukraine war, they may be, given the inability of either side to achieve reliable air superiority. Certainly, as terror weapons against civilian populations it is true.
More generally, that's less clear.
Ukraine is not the United States military, and is not being armed with its full complement of weapons for very specific diplomatic reasons. Whereas Russia has been free to unload all it's conventional weapons as it sees fit.
The problem is: what exactly do you bomb? I.e. what is the battle-related purpose of this machine?
Bombing tank formations would, of course, make sense, let's say if you encounter a formation of 10-15 tanks a F-35 sortie would make sense. But then the enemy adapts and starts only using tanks in "solitary", so to speak, or at most in "pairs". Does it make economic and operational sense to fly and risk a F-35 just to destroy two tanks? I don't know.
The same goes for enemy artillery. Does it make economic sense to risk a F-35 sortie just to try and take out howitzers scattered over the entire front line? I think it doesn't, for example the Russians have been reasonably good at taking NATO-sent M777s just by using counter-artillery or Lancet suicide mini-drones (orders of magnitude cheaper than a F-35, excluding the opportunity costs of losing an airplane pilot's life).
Of course, F-35s would be best in destroying civilian infrastructure related to the enemy's war effort behind the front-lines, stuff like power transmission units, bridges, railways etc, meaning what NATO did in Serbia in 1999 and what the Allies tried to do against Germany in WW2. But, again, it's much cheaper to do it with cruise missiles (the Russians have also proved that that is doable during the current war in Ukraine), ignoring the fact that it might not work (the Germans carried out producing war stuff until the early months of 1945, despite the very heavy aerial bombings).
I think the US military has been the victim of its own success in the first Gulf War, when indeed air superiority allowed them to get the Iraqis out of Kuwait with almost no losses on the US side. But the second Gulf War proved that once the war gets more complicated (in that case when it got close to Baghdad and to populated centers) then relying on airplanes alone is not enough.
If there's a war in 5-10 years with china, will drones be fighting on the battlefield, maybe preventing the us' billions in fighters from doing things?
If I were an accountant for the US military, yes, I would do that. But, of course, things are a lot more complicated, because if they have built it they'll have to use it, you can't go in front of a Congressional budget commission and say that it doesn't make sense to use a F-35 when the F-16 can do the job just as fine, because they'll furiously ask you why did you need all that money for the F-35 in the first place.
> If there's a war in 5-10 years with china, will drones be fighting on the battlefield
Could be. Either way, I think we haven't reached the "maximum" when it comes to the use of aerial drones in modern warfare, not by a long shot. Partly also because of institutional reasons, when you've spent so much money on a project like the F-35 you don't ask your best military minds to think too much about drones so that you could best employ them on the battlefield, you ask those bright minds to put the F-35 to use (because a general's future career prospects depend on it). This would only get alleviated by the US having to fight a real war, when, supposedly, those institutional motives would be overcome by the reality of war.
About a possible US war against China I can't comment much because I don't know the situation in that geographic area all too well. It is my understanding though that the US is preparing for a war over the vast area of the Pacific, a repeat of their WW2-campaign if you wish, but I'm not sure China will fall into that trap. But this is pure unsubstantiated speculation from me, time will tell.
You then use your vast fleet of less capable planes to ramp up sorties, provide air support during combined arms operations, etc. You can still use your magic airplane for protection of those assets during sorties, and for strike missions on high-value, high-threat targets.
That is why it is not a problem to have 'few' expensive magic planes. The US only had a hand full of U2's and SR71's, because you're not doing spying runs over Russia 10x a day.
That works for a very short war, like those in Iraq/Kuwait in 1990-1991 and in Serbia in 1999 happened to be, meaning it was cost effective to have invested so much money in the far more superior US planes because the wars in themselves were short (so the US got a good ROI out of using those advanced planes).
But what to do in case of a war that spans over an entire year or more? (like the current war in Ukraine). The marginal utility of those first debilitating air strikes carried out by advanced planes goes down quite rapidly, nobody cares after 12 months of intense on-the-ground war if some airfields behind the front have been blasted just as the war started, most probably those airfields have already been repaired.
And there's also the opportunity costs. The money spent on developing a very advanced plane like the F-22 could have been put to better use by investing in the US's artillery shells-making industry (of which the West has not enough of right now), artillery shells which provide a much better ROI during a 12-month land-war compared to an advanced plane.
It's all a matter of what future wars the US plans to get into and how it thinks those wars will actually develop.
Then you've already won. Tanks are by far most useful on offense when concentrated. Individual tanks can not break through infantry lines, if the infantry has any amount of anti air weaponry attached.
> The problem is: what exactly do you bomb?
F35's main responsibility would be to ensure air superiority, by keeping the air free of enemy aircraft (including any medium to large drones) and by supressing and finally destroying enemy air defences.
Once that is achieved, they can be used for any kind of traditional CAS or go hunting enemy artillery positions. When on the defensive, aircraft are superb at limiting enemy mobility, by attacking trains, convoys bridges and rail heads.
Also, and espeicially in large wars where satellites are likely to be shot down, having aircraft over a warzone provides a huge intelligence advantage. Even when out of bombs, the aircraft can use cameras and data links to send coordinates for enemy artillery, bunkers and tanks back to HQ or to friendly forces.
And obviously, once air supremacy has been achieved, all the 4th gen aircraft can also join in the CAP/Ground Attacks/Interdiction missions.
> it's much cheaper to do it with cruise missiles
This is not true. Cruise missiles are quite expensive when compared to bombs. A tomahawk missile costs $2M per unit. By comparison, a JDAM bomb costs about $25K. Even when including aircraft maintainance, fuel, etc, bombs are an order of magnitude cheaper than cruise missiles.
> But the second Gulf War proved that once the war gets more complicated (in that case when it got close to Baghdad and to populated centers) then relying on airplanes alone is not enough.
The second gulf war was primarily a TV war for public opinion. The best approach to wars where you're not willing to use the amount of force necessary to win it, is to not fight it.
fwiw, if you're looking for a particular kind of strike target, the F-35 is widely regarded as the USAF's most credible SEAD/DEAD platform. It's suitable for a wide range of other roles, but SEAD really sets it apart.
The F-35 was designed to be a mass produced aircraft that (1) could be exported widely without risk of leaking too many secrets and (2) reduced absolute performance and features based on a more pragmatic cost-benefit analysis where it only needed to be good enough and not the best possible. Economies of scale factored greatly into its design.
Supersonic flight without afterburners (supercruise). In theory, at least, that should be a huge advantage on either side of an interception scenarios.
Using F-16 the baseline, Rafale is 30x smaller, F-35 is 600x smaller and F-22 is 6000x smaller. So there's a factor 10 in favor of the F-22 when compared to the F-35. On top of that F-22 is said to be more optimized in all directions, while for the F-35 the focus was more on the frontal RCS, so the F-22 overall average RCS is probably even better.
Europeans will note that in terms of RCS, the 4.5 Gen moniker of Rafale/EF is well deserved: halfway between an F-16 and an F-35...
[1] Figures gathered from this thread: http://www.air-defense.net/forum/topic/20630-rafale/page/202...
When it WAS in production, it was 2 decades ahead of anything else. Had it been the F35 in production at that time, it too would be illegal to export.
You might think history proved Gates wrong, but no air power can compete with what the US has now, sans the F-22, and it would have been very expensive.
For example, a war with China, if it happened, would be most expected around Taiwan; how would F-22's reach the fight? There are no airbases nearby, except on Taiwan which would be innundated with missile attacks. The F-22 doesn't fly from aircraft carriers (which are imperiled by China's missiles regardless). The US needs a longer-range fighter in the Pacific, to cover the vast territory without bases.
Also, the F-22 afaik doesn't integrate with the new network-oriented joint force, where every asset is a sensor and node on the network, all sharing and a view of the battlefield. It doesn't integrate with 'wingman' drones, now the concept for at least part of the Air Force, where human-piloted planes control several drones.
Instead, the US spent that money elsewhere at the time, getting a better return on investment, remains in the lead now (with F-35's), is building a bomber for the China contest (B-21's), and designing a new fighter.
True, same with the Seawolf-Class Sub's, just too expensive for the "now"-state. However i think with china, the US has to go back to the far-ahead-tec doctrine....fast...
The F-22 was a pretty radical departure from what came before it, and I think it served as a prototype for all the subsequent next generation platforms from which many things were learned. As good as it was, you aren't going to get everything right the first time and technology progresses.
Would an f-35 with awacs support beat an f-22 with awacs support in Beyond visual range combat?
It's not going to have next-generation stuff like Multifunction Advanced Data Link. I assume that's because of its older avionics, and because it has been deemed not worth upgrading because of its age. [0]
It's not my area of expertise but it's probably accurate to say that the F-22 is stronger than anything at its specialized, traditional air superiority mission but it will be left behind when it comes to flying alongside drones and other interceptors. The F-15EX and F-35, along with unmanned drones, will be able to do amazing things in concert by communicating with one another over their network. That is a different paradigm.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multifunctional_Information_Di...
That's a big factor for countries that can't afford BOTH air superiority and ground support craft.
F-35 is just... a pretty good airplane for a pretty good price.
It's still probably the Ultimate Fighter.
Also, it's not operating alone. Wherever there is an F22, you should expect to also find other assets, including the F35. The F22 is just the tip of the spear, to be committed when it's speed or manouverability is required.
Edit: One thing the F-35 has that the other planes don't: Interoperability across basically all NATO nations and beyond. And it is the most up to date, and still in volume production, model.
The only thing the F-35 has a decisive advantage in is STOVL capability. Everything else is compromised to achieve the "one plane fits all" vision; the F-35 is a jack of all trades, master of none.
It's like you give zero credit for either stealth or that fancy radar, which are pretty important in a modern air superiority role.
F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.
You don’t seem to understand the criteria against which military aircraft are judged.
Yet we keep flying it in the face of repeated attempts to retire it, with the USAF even going on the record that the A-10 will be kept in inventory "indefinitely"[1]. The A-10 is clearly not obsolete and continues to proudly serve the USA and its friends and allies, and enjoys much adoration from its pilots, mechanics, infantrymen, and civilian fans.
>F-15 and F-18 are not better at air superiority. The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
The F-15 has suffered no airframe loss to enemy combat action in its entire service history, that is a feat not easily met. The USAF even went as far as to procure new F-15s, the -EX model, because F-35 production wasn't keeping up.
As for the F/A-18, the Hornet boasts superior flight range and payload capacity besides being significantly cheaper, to say nothing of its proven air superiority and multirole capabilities.
>The F-35 can carry much more weapons payload than any of the 4th gen aircraft you mention and has more range. That on its own is a huge win, stealth and sensors notwithstanding.
That is patently false. The F-35 must sacrifice what little stealth it has to carry more payload, otherwise it can only carry a small handful within its internal weapon bays. Even accounting for carrying payload on its wing pylons, it still can't hold a candle to the other fighters; the F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.
As for range, it pales in comparison to air superiority fighters (eg: F-15C/D/E/EX, F-22) or 4th gen naval fighters (the F/A-18C/D/E/F).
[1]: https://archive.ph/20170912212105/http://www.theaustralian.c...
Is that the reason? I thought it was the need to counter the Chinese strategy of mass producing fighters with an idea of overwhelming western fighters through sheer weight of number. F35 is weak on per hour running cost and uptime per unit, and loses to the F15 variant if you are looking to scale.
The f35 can operate in a similar role to an e8 alongside a mix of cheaper aircraft.
> F-15EX in particular can carry patently ridiculous payloads.
But also this. Which touches on F35 being very complicated to develop for, and taking ages to integrate weapons vs F15s. And some operational considerations like not wanting to retrain F15 pilots.
Look at USAF 4+1 for next 15 years of procurement. Basically F35A, F15EX, F16CD, A10s and +1 being F22s that will be replaced by NGAD.
Read between the line consideration is F35/F22 was made for Europe/RU theatre, lacks range in PRC theatre without tanking, which are vunerable to J20s with longer range and air to air. Hence NGAD being mid sized bomber, and acquiring 100 B21s that cost as much as 1000 F35s.
>Adding new F-15s was not an Air Force idea, but instead came out of the Pentagon’s Cost and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE, and was endorsed by former Defense Secretary James Mattis. While the Air Force’s long-held position has been to invest only in fifth generation fighter technology, it has defended the plan to buy new F-15s as a way to maintain fighter capacity, given the aging of the F-15C fleet and the slow pace of F-35 acquisitions.
>While the Air Force is adamant that buying F-15EXs will not reduce the requirement to build 1,763 F-35s, history and the Air Force’s own budget request suggests otherwise. The 2020 budget submission shows the Air Force buying 24 fewer F-35s over the next five years compared to last year’s plan.
Further reading: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/f-15ex-vs-f-35a/
Because the US has, in the past decades, not waged a war against a near-equal opponent who could have held together any kind of air force or air defenses for at most the first few days of a US invasion. In all of the US wars since the A-10 might have been obsolete against a near-equal opponent, it was more advanced than the mass of opposing tech, and could be used well. For counterinsurgency, the cost of actually modern tech is more of a problem, given that the cheap old stuff is still far superior to anything a Taliban commander can put in the field, and given that guerilla warfare has as it's aim not tactical victories, but increasing the cost to the bigger party into politically untenable regions.
It is very much obsolete in the sense that the US also requires air capabilities for large, near-equal conflicts, and there is no unsurprising way for A-10s to be useful there. In summary: keep enough A-10s around for CAS against outclassed opponents, but don't plan on having enough to take on China, seems like a wise strategy.
FYI your argument was going so well until you employed this fallacy. What GP does or doesn't understand is entirely irrelevant, not to mention that mind-reading is forbidden, not really, but it is also fallacy. Only what is stated is relevant. Now if you'll just accept this, I actually do not want to argue. I was hoping you would not mind answering my questions, because I do not understand.
> It would get wrecked against any modern air defense environment.
Obviously, we have a modern air defense, and the F-35 and F-22, among other elements, are a part of it. Who else does? Russia? North Korea? China? I'm just curious who threatens our 50 year old technology. IOW, besides our allies, who has 4th and/or 5th gen aircraft that we need to shore up against and not let them wreck our jalopies?
> The latest flavor of F-15 can still hold its own against other 4th gen aircraft but it will struggle against 5th gen aircraft. This has been demonstrated many times.
same question, who, other than our allies, is operating 5th gen aircraft that we should be concerned about? I'm not making any point. I really don't know. Appreciated.
In the specific case of the A-10, it was designed for a world that had extremely primitive sensor systems that couldn’t even reliably lock onto a plane when looking straight at it. We aren’t in that world anymore. Not only is the terminal guidance sophisticated and reliable but the warheads are designed specifically to destroy aircraft like the A-10. Everyone has had 50 years to work on that problem.
Modern Russian and Chinese systems effortlessly deal with an A-10; it lacks the power systems to support modern counter-measures against modern systems. It isn’t upgradable like that because that wasn’t a design objective.
Modern military aircraft like the F-35 have critical combat roles that don’t involve dogfighting. Their sensor suites and processing capabilities are at least as important as any other particular feature, and other aircraft don’t have that. Their systems can measure and exploit their environment to an astonishing degree.
The Ukrainian air force with mostly su-24's and su-27's should not exist or even be able to operate against Russia's supposed air defense capabilities(s-400, s-300, Tor, manpads) but war is almost always a battle of information and the stealth and network capabilities the F-35 has puts it a league of its own. One which only the f-22 could transcend but the raw number of F-35's being pumped out negates that advantage to a degree
one side has untouchable radars and AWACS.
At what altitude? Earth isn't flat, so even at 20km and superb electronics you don't see what happens near the ground.
Though probably someone already published their routes, but I too lazy to check, honestly. Still my point stands - As can be downed (and everyone would clap, especially in the US) while Es "NO YOU DONT THATS ARTICLE 5"
Over distances of 600km the vertical offset due to earth's curvature is about 20km. If it flies at it's operational ceiling of 14km, it can offset most of that but wouldn't have direct line of sight on planes at extreme range flying below 6km. If it has over the horizon capability though, which honestly seems highly likely for a recently updated system, then it should be able to compensate for the remaining shadow with some loss of resolution. Which I'm guessing is why it's estimated range is considered 600km. I'm sure the military analysts making those estimates know about these effects.
Anyway, southern Ukraine can be directly radar imaged from over Crimea so it's really not an issue. It's petty clear Russia can have full radar coverage of all of Ukraine without having to put their air radar assets close to Ukraine.
It is of course possible Ukraine might decide to try a long range anti-air strike, but I think that's unlikely due to the possibility of hitting a civilian plane, or the target coming down on a civilian area.
The only nation that is a realistic threat to Finland, is Russia, and against Russia, the F-35 is a near-perfect aircraft.
By having F35, Finland also has much improved capabilities to interoperate with Nato nations. If the US needs to reinforce Finland's air bases, US planes can be serviced locally. Or if Finland is being overwhelmed, their fighters can fall back to Norway, Denmark or Germany.
Apart from operating costs, there are very few disadvantages to the F-35.
If the F-35 has any of its weapons though, then the F-16 gets pasted by a missile the F-35 fires whenever it wants because it can essentially shoot behind itself.
In reality the F-16 gets killed without ever knowing it's being tracked.
That doesn't leave you with many viable use cases.
But yeah... if you've wiped out your enemy's air defenses (or they never had them) including man-portable rocket launchers and all they've got left is a column of unarmored trucks then absolutely, the A-10 going to be devastating.
The Gun [1] penetrates 76 mm armor at 300 m range, which would surely hurt a bit. I'm not sure how successive rounds interact with thicker armor, but would hate to be the one to find out on the ground. :/
I find it almost hard to believe that it can fire 65 rounds per second, where each round weighs almost 400 g, and all of that while flying. It's an incredible piece of Very Angry Engineering.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAU-8_Avenger
The US Army is even on the record that they would fly the A-10 themselves if the USAF retired them[1], which played in to USAF keeping the A-10 "indefinitely".
>Sources say the Army is interested in obtaining A-10s should the Air Force decide to retire the twin-engine jets, which have been flying since the 1970s.[1]
The A-10 is adored and respected by our service members, so it's absolutely not obsolete and not retiring any time soon.
[1]: https://archive.ph/20130915210441/http://www.defensenews.com...
Thinking of it, do yoi think attavk helicopters are obsolete as well? Or MBTs? Just because there arebportable missiles out there that can hurt those?
The answer? Don't use fighters vulnerable against modern AA against modern AA.
Benefit of the A-10? Lower speed, longer loitering in CAS, something quite valuable in combined arms. And faster than attack helicopters, so A-10s can move faster between mission sites.
So people who point out the A-10's weaknesses aren't saying the A-10 has literally no value at all, because it clearly does. They're questioning the cost vs. the alternatives.
Yes, the A-10 has some absolutely unique attributes and strengths. It's just that the viable use cases dwindle by the year as MANPADs get cheaper and cheaper. It's hard to find reliable sources, but you can apparently get them for under $100K. Think about the list of adversaries we might possibly fight who:1. Are willing to challenge the US military in direct combat
2. Can't scrape together $100K for a rocket launcher
3. Don't have sympathetic allies that will be happy to give them rocket launchers for free in order to harass the US by proxy
USAF already investigated and answered that question: The F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, but the plan was axed in favor of keeping the A-10 indefinitely upon finding the operational risks and costs of flying the F-35 for CAS missions were not feasible.
Among the problems noted were: More dollars spent per flight hour, higher airframe cost (both in dollars and potential technology leakage) assuming an airframe loss, inferior protections afforded to the pilot, inferior airframe robustness and sturdiness, inferior payload, inferior flight range (and thus loitering time), and too fast minimum airspeed.
In fact, the F-35 was slated to replace the A-10, F-15C/D and potentially -E, F-16C/D, F/A-18C/D/E/F, F-22, and AV-8. The only aircraft the F-35 has thus far successfully replaced is the AV-8 owing to STOVL being a unique and niche capability. In all other cases the F-35 has at best complimented the preceding aircraft, and at worst failed as their replacement.
Yes, the A-10 is insanely superior for CAS, for all of the reasons you mentioned. If your enemy is so impoverished and cut off from allies that it doesn't have dirt cheap MANPADs or anything else from the last several decades of anti-aircraft technology.
There are of course mitigation strategies for AA. Combined arms are a thing. SEAD is a thing. Utilizing weather/darkness/terrain is a thing. Cutting your enemies off from arms shipments is a thing. Hammering them with CAS until they have proven they can actually thwart it is a thing.
It's just that a lot of those mitigations start to break down when your foe's AA is "a dude carrying a cheap, essentially fire-and-forget portable weapon who can duck back into a cave, a house, or a literal hole in the ground and instantly blend back in with the populace or otherwise become effectively invisible."
This isn't theory.
You can see countless examples for yourself of Russian choppers and slow (but faster than A-10, I think) Su-25 getting absolutely wrecked in Ukraine in exactly the manner I have described. As a result, the fight has largely turned into a ground war with Russia chucking missiles at Ukraine but only from safely within Russian airspace. And this is Russia's military we're talking about; they have copiously demonstrated that they're not particularly concerned about the casualties they're racking up. The US tends to be far more conservative and risk-averse.
You can say that the US would utilize combined arms, SEAD, etc more effectively than Russia. I'd agree; it'd be hard to do much worse. But the fundamental reality is that AA (particularly against unstealthy foes) has gotten really good, really cheap, really portable, and much harder to suppress.
F-15E Strike Eagles, F-16C/D Fighting Falcons, F/A-18C/D/E/F Hornets and Super Hornets, B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits, and US Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles among others are perfectly capable of performing the alpha strikes necessary to severely damage and destroy enemy defences and infrastructure and clear the way. A-10s along with other "vulnerable" CAS assets like the AC-130 Spooky and US Army AH-64 Apache then perform their missions with impunity.
It could be, if necessary, spun back into production. It would be very expensive and take time, at least $50B to produce 200 more and a few years to get restarted, but it's not like it would need to be designed again. We know how to make them. The issue seems to be the concern that future threats will make F-22 a poor match, and that it will compete financially against new programs that may be a better match. But who really knows what the threat will be in 2035? Maybe the F-22 is just right, and if it is and we need more, we'll make more.
I think in reality spinning up production again would essentially be a new fighter based on the same core design, maybe reusing a lot of the parts.
The Eurofighter could of course carry and drop US nukes. The issue is that it would need US cwrtification to do so, and for rather obvious reasons that certification was close to impossible to get.
Again, the F-35 is a great plane. There are reasons so why it is not not even for the USN and USAF, only one.
Edit: The reason for the outcry over French nukes is not that they are French, but rather the need to change the laws around nuclear participation to allow the switch. And that legislative changes would lead to a ton of public debate everyone wants to avoid, as this debate would kill nuclear participation in general. So nobody in governmant wants to take this risk, hence the procurement of a US platform to replace the aging Tornado fleet as a carrier of US nukes.
And the French, which excluded their nukes from NATO oversight, might actually be reluctant to share them with Germany. Using Rafales insteads of Eurofoghters might helo, but then Germany is in the same position it is with the F-35. With the added "benefit" of a potentially hurtful public debate.
But German defense policy is built around self-defense and coalition defense: NATO, EU, UN. Nuclear weapons are opposed by Germany, and it's only because NATO is viewed as essential that nuclear sharing is accepted. Most Germans don't know about it though. A bilateral (FR-GE) extension of nuclear policy would be politically unacceptable to Germany, and require extensive legal change.
I think the German acquisition of F-35s is a bit subtle. The Luftwaffe always wanted to buy F-35. I suspect they stalled the subject of the Eurofighter nuclear certification (which would take a good ten years) to force the German government to buy F-35s to keep its commitment to nuclear sharing. The whole thing happened at a time where the ministry of defence seemed disorganized and plagued by scandals. To be coherent with the Eurofighter policy, nuclear certification should have been a top priority ten years ago...
The relationship between the German government, the Luftwaffe, the US industry (and Lockheed...) and the German aerospatial industry has always been complex, and Germany has often been keen to use allied programs to avoid internal defense industry problems, with more or less success. See the Starfighter article on Wikipedia for the most egregious example.
With the German industry stalling the French-German-Spanish fighter project, I also suspect that they'll plan a similar manoeuver with the Eurofighter replacement.
The main pain point in all those large European defence programs is industrial workshare, especially between France and Germany and within Airbus between various sites.
You need an extensive set of avionics to control and arm the nuke in the plane which add substantial cost and aren't designed for/integrated into all aircraft.
Which begs the question, why didn't Germany collaborate with France on nukes where they could be a more or less equal partner, compared to the US where they would always be the subservient party with little to no control?
De Gaulle wanted sovereign control of any French nuclear deterrent and did not trust that, if it came to it, the US would put itself on the line for Europe: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139272.htm - presumably, for similar reasons he did not want any dependence on allies, even ones closer in location and likely part of the same conflict.
The US did actually help the French nuclear programme once it started going, under the reasoning that multiple nuclear-armed NATO members is better than one.
I presume that they require US launch codes (and the F35 has a kill switch?). So what is the use for Germany?
The fear in Europe (confirmed by Westpoint graduate Mearsheimer long before the Ukraine war) is that if Russia strikes a single city in Europe, the US will get second thoughts and not retaliate. Germany then cannot retaliate either, so what is the point?
This is the reason for France to have its own nuclear arsenal and fighters.
The deal does mention "opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35..." which I'm not sure exactly what it is. I thought the US and Lockheed were extremely reluctant to this kind of transfer.
In addition, this is an F35A vs Gripen E, so the Gripen has a better STOL capability, likely better radar (rotating GaN), more mature avionics link, supercruise, similar RCS (apart from frontal, it's likely to be smaller, red flag exercises hinted that they were not really detectable) and faster software updates.
WRT stealth, if you want to be stealthy you can't use active radar, only passive. As such having IRST capability in addition to a good datalink is extremely useful to detect other aircraft. The F22 has no IR capability so is at a disadvantage in BVR from that, similar for the F35 which (I think) only has a downward targeting IR.
From a reliability perspective, the Gripen is a long way ahead, the duty availability F35s is probably 70% at best by now (2019 figure was 50% https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2019-06-16/q...) mainly due to parts shortage. The F35 still can't fly in stormy weather due to lightning strikes etc.
I've no doubt the F35 can be a capable aircraft, just not compared to it's competitors. The decision, as usual, is more a political one.
The Austrian Eurofighters can fly and operate without those keys, they just won't be able to join NATO Link-16 networks or other encrypted NATO communications or navigation networks. This is standard practice for all modern combat aircraft, incidentally, as encryption keys are rotated on a regular basis and need to be loaded into the aircraft's onboard systems before flight. The data can also include additional interoperability elements such as TDMA slice allocations in the case of Link-16.
The reason it has to be done by the unnamed contractor is because Austria is not a member of NATO, so it can't be given control over key handling. The same is true for Sweden & Switzerland.
It's a logical tradeoff. Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland get access to encrypted NATO networks and can therefore interoperate seamlessly with NATO forces, but they're always free to opt-out. Sweden for instance has fall-backs to national data links and communications networks to which only it has the encryption keys.
STOL capabilities https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2020/august/gripen-des...
Radar, note that's I'd said it's an estimate, based on the fact that it's the first GaN radar and has a wider FOV https://www.saab.com/markets/india/gripen-for-india/technolo...
More mature here means has been around longer in one from or another, since the Viggen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen
Supercruise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise
RCS is an overall estimate, certainly not from the front as the F35 is designed as a strike fighter, but with a smaller plane, the RCS may well be similar elsewhere https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2021/01/07/gripen/
Fast software updates https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2021/january/gripen-so...
Anyway, this is missing the point, which that it's difficult to trust a platform that you don't have the source code to, have to use a parts management system that phones home, and a system that uploads flight data back home. Ownership in this case means having the ability to independently run the aircraft without reliance on other countries' benevolence. In that capacity, whether your adversary is Russia, or some other country is irrelevant.
>STOL capabilities https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2020/august/gripen-des...
Who really cares about STOL capabilities of the Gripen? Unless you're on a small island, you can build longer runways.
>Radar, note that's I'd said it's an estimate, based on the fact that it's the first GaN radar and has a wider FOV https://www.saab.com/markets/india/gripen-for-india/technolo...
Gripen E's radar being better than that of the F-35 is certainly an unique take. The AN/APG-81 has a 71.4% bigger aperture than the ES-05. While the ES-05 does benefit from reduced power consumption due to the GaN transistors, it still has significantly lower peak output power than the AN/APG-81.
Wider FOV is nice, but the AN/APG-81 can see further. AN/APG-81 is the better radar out of the two, and also offers better EW capabilities than the ES-05.
>More mature here means has been around longer in one from or another, since the Viggen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen
I believe the word you're looking for is "older", even though "more mature" sounds nicer.
>Supercruise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise
The Gripen E can only supercruise according to SAABs very own original definition of "supercruise", and so far there's been no indication that it can do so while carrying weapons.
>RCS is an overall estimate, certainly not from the front as the F35 is designed as a strike fighter, but with a smaller plane, the RCS may well be similar elsewhere https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2021/01/07/gripen/
If Gripen was as stealthy as you like to suggest, SAAB would be shouting it from the rooftops. Yet, they aren't.
>Fast software updates https://www.saab.com/newsroom/stories/2021/january/gripen-so...
Meaningless marketing speak.
Anyway,
> Ownership in this case means having the ability to independently run the aircraft without reliance on other countries' benevolence.
Good luck operating Gripens without relying on the benevolence of the US, UK and Sweden.
As for the ownership question, why does it matter to Finland that have complete control over their aircraft? Why do they need to prevent flight data from being set back to the US? Most importantly, why do they need to be able to independently operate the aircraft? It's only purpose is to fight Russians, and now that they're joining NATO they would be fighting Russians alongside the US.
The article has: The principle is simple: Finland is to be able to keep the aircraft up in the air even if the borders are shut. To ensure that Finland will have an indigenous maintenance and repair capability for over 100 components (including parts of the fuselage and engine), which is based on the items covered by the industrial cooperation agreement. There will also be significant stockpiles of components that aren’t on the list of items which Finland can repair and overhaul organically (often parts with very long mean time between failures, and for which it aren’t economical to build up an independent repair capability). Notable is also that the Finnish organic repair capability is not just for domestic use, but is also part of the GSS (the global support solution) meaning that they will be used to maintain parts for the global spares pool.
Two major problems arise :
- the "aircraft carrier" or "tessarakonteres" problem : at some point your system (ship or aircraft) is too complex and costly to risk losing it in battle, even if it is supposedly very hard to defeat. And the slightest damage is very costly in terms of down time. This is amplified by the single-type problem.
- the F-35 kills your local industry and makes supply and maintenance chains complex and dependent upon US and Lockheed-Martin goodwill, including on the software side. This is one of the major points from critics, among them Boeing.
The Finland deal seems to address the last point, and seems much better than other F-35 deals with European countries.
That said, the F-35 is a revolution for US allies, even those who didn't buy it. The information flow in central to the aircraft like to no previous US fighter. A few years ago the French Rafale notably defeated every aircraft in air superiority games (draw against the theoretically much better F-22) because its information systems could be updated quickly to the local conditions.
Every US-allied Air force around the world acknowledges today that compatibility with the F-35 information systems will be the only way to carry out allied operations in the near future, like Link-16 today. If you can't do it, you'll have a very hard time showing up as a blue dot on the screen, let alone be efficient in combat. The easy solution is to buy Lockheed-Martin. However, I really think it's a bad thing in the long-term.
Even if there weren't a law still on the books banning the F-22's export, we don't have production and no one would buy one when they could have a still-in-production F-35.
We now know that the Russian air force is much less capable than some believed it was.
That dozens of countries are buying fleets of F-35s also makes the practical logistics, operations, interoperability, and maintenance of the aircraft attractive. It is quickly becoming the new F-16 in terms of ubiquity in a modern Air Force.
Now the B-21 Raider (bomber, not a fighter) is probably without peer currently. That thing looks like a UFO.
It seems like the Russian air force can't carry out large operations with sophisticated aircraft, whereas NATO air forces have lots of practice at that.
There’s a reason Ukraine is asking for Patriots and other air defense systems (their air defense is degraded).
Everyone knows russia doesn't fear to lose people.
They haven't been flying to Ukraine because their pilots and "advanced" planes can be easily shot down with a regular Stinger system that costs like $40k.
It doesn't matter at all what they think, average citizen has absolutely no influence on how the government is run in Russia. Russia is a colonial power: security apparatus chiefs, billionaires and their servants in Moscow and St Petersburg form the elite, and together they plunder rest of the country.
Typical things that a person from a free country would think of don't work: elections are rigged, no point in participating. Civil society and non-governmental organizations (eg NRA, ACLU) barely exist and have no influence. Media is under full government control, no way to publish anything to wide auditorium. Courts are utterly corrupt. If you stage a protest, then the loudest ones will be dragged into a police van and beaten and raped on the spot, with screams heard by others outside on the street[1].They'll go home and do nothing, or they'll get the same treatment.
So many people in the west see Russia as "just another country", while it differs fundamentally: it never developed much beyond slavery. It never developed a free multipolar society where everyone's voice mattered through elections and all sorts of public organizations from book clubs to church groups. It never had freedom and its elite never had to listen to the people. There is simply no tradition of everyone participating in how the country is run.
Putin has sent a hundred thousand to death, and nobody will do anything if he sends a million more. He can mow down those mothers with a machine gun, and the default reaction from brainwashed population will be "I suppose they had it coming".
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/xmza9r/...
https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1612337912091217920
This is nothing new, BTW. During WWII the UK forbade the new Gloster Meteor jet fighter from flying over Nazi occupied territory, for fear that the Germans might learn something valuable from a crashed jet. It was only in the last few months of the war that the Meteors were allowed to fly over enemy territory, as by then the outcome was abundantly clear and even if a jet was shot down the Germans wouldn't have time to do anything with the information.
1) They only exist in VERY limited numbers. 2) They're only stealthy from the front. If fired at from the rear or flank, they're vulnerable. 3) Russia has very limited access to good SEAD/DEAD type munitions (like the AGM-88 that USA is using)
What the T-50 is really designed for, I believe, is to defend friendly SAMs against enemy F35/F22. When such an aircraft is detected, T-50s can come in from deep within friendly airspaces and fly directly towards the incoming F35/F22 without being detected, and then hopefully shoot them down before being seen itself.
This article and the talk by Perun don't explain why opinions changed (or why to trust the claims about low costs and great capabilities this time, when early in the program they were just puffery)
People have also learned that a lot of the "experts" that criticized it were extremely noncredible (eg. Pierre Sprey) and are spouting nonsense that hasn't been true since before the Vietnam war (eg. Relevance of dogfighting and guns in air combat).
The only "American thing" that really exists in modern military history is a tendency to do more things than everyone else. The US has NIH-ed their way into pretty much every military technology that's been hypothesized by someone not wearing a tinfoil hat and raving about Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci. The public hears about questions like dogfighting and firepower in US aircraft because the US is one of the only countries in the world whose military actively seeks out (or at least sought out, there's some argument that the F-35 is the beginning of the end) multiple home-grown variants of military equipment, especially aircraft, that are expected to compete both on economic and doctrinal value as actual service craft for continuing contracts, rather then just proving ground test beds. More chances to change preference, more chances for contracts, more argument, more buzz filtering into newspapers. In contrast, we're probably not going to talk much about if stealth is a Finnish thing or whatever else for quite some time after this. Perhaps the American thing is spending lots of money, but a full assessment doesn't really allow for more specifics than that.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/03/23/the-new-york-ti...
https://mises.org/power-market/f-35-15-trillion-boondoggle
Sentiment has definitely shifted towards the positive viewpoint though.
However, the negative viewpoint is not unrealistic. The US can strong arm other countries into buying their crap with bribes and other under the cover dealings. Heck why do you think TSMC is opening a fab in Arizona? Because it's a profitable move? No way.
In exercises such as Red Flag, it dominates anything 4th gen.
"Stealth" is not only about being hard to detect. It's just as much about making it difficult for enemy missiles to get a lock and keep it until they score a hit.
Also, the softer (or software) elements of the F-35 is a huge part of it. Sensor Fusion makes it a lot easier to know what to do next.
Both of these are groups which exist to oppose any kind of military spending, neither of them have any relevant expertise.
F-35 is quite cheap now.
"Quite cheap now." After we already wasted trillions on it.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/about/
* Manufacturers of competing fighter jets. If enough people think the F-35 is terrible, they might vote for politicians who will nix F-35 procurement and maybe buy their plane instead. These often take the form of slick PR hits where e.g. the CBC will cite Boeing as an "expert source" about why Boeing's Super Hornet is a better choice than the F-35 for the Canadian air force.
* Russian state media, which wants to further their own propaganda narrative.
* Pierre Sprey, who has notoriously overstated the extent of his expertise and his involvement with US aircraft development in the past, and has convinced unwitting journalists (including the aforementioned Russian state media) to cite him.
A lot of things have changed over the past ten years: Pierre Sprey passed away, Boeing's credibility has taken a massive hit in recent years for a number of reasons, and the Russians are invading Ukraine which makes them pretty unpopular and Westerners much less willing to take RT and the like at face value. Meanwhile, the F-35 is in service and seems to be relatively successful so far.
Like I said, that Sprey person seems like a blowhard who got attention in the USA, I never heard of him before some YouTube videos in the past few months. The critics I remember were war reporters such as David Axe and IT specialists such as Marcus Ranum.
And by what standard did you find them credible when it comes to evaluating fighter jets? It seems like you aren’t applying a consistent standard to ”confident strangers on the Internet”, which is all those guys seem to be.
The truth is, anyone with the qualifications and information necessary to make a proper evaluation already works for a military and isn’t allowed to say much.
I live in a democracy, so its my duty to form an opinion about large controversial purchases my government proposes to make. Of course my opinion on most of them can't be an expert opinion, but it can be at least as good as my representatives'.
Neither of them have the qualifications to evaluate fighter jets. In any case….
Here’s a pretty comprehensive compilation of well-cited information from 2014 you can pore through: https://comprehensiveinformation.wordpress.com/
And here’s a copy of a story originally published by Air & Space Magazine in 2019 with quotes from F-35 pilots: https://www.jsfsim.nl/f-35/f-35-what-the-pilots-say/
I think there's historical evidence that the US used bribery to get aircraft sold in the distant past and no doubt other countries have too so it would be odd to think that political and other pressures are now suddenly non-existent because we're better human beings than before.
You cannot really even trust pilots because they will want Raybans and iPhones even when the cheaper generic sunglasses and phones do the job. They are only the top of the pyramid of people that have to look after the system.
I completely agree.
I agree with you that in a democracy it's a citizen duty to be informed of what is happening. Though in the case of fighter jets, or other high-end military systems, they are very complex and the exact capabilities (and how the military intends to make the most of those capabilities, which can vary greatly for different offerings in a tender) are highly classified. And to be fair, I'm quite sure our representatives don't know much if anything of the classified stuff either.
At least in the Finnish case, there was a procurement organization setup including, obviously, Air Force personnel but also lots of other expertise. They did a very expensive and thorough evaluation of the various offerings, including access to classified material I'm sure, before ending up at recommending the F-35. The politicians then more or less rubber-stamped the recommendation. That is not to say that politicians couldn't go against that recommendation, ultimately it's their decision. Things like industrial policy (aka jobs programs) related to major military acquisitions matter, and particularly during the cold war Finland tried to stay neutral and one way this was done was that major military acquisitions were divided between Soviet and Western gear (e.g. how Finland ended up with both Mig-21 and Saab Draken fighters). Though today if the politicians would decide to go against the recommendation of the procurement organization I'm sure that would cause quite an uproar and need some pretty hefty justifications.
How much of this was down to practicality, though? Being able to pick and choose the best gear from each side?
I'm not an expert on cold war Finland, but my understanding is that Finland was threading a very fine needle between not provoking the USSR (see Prague 1968) while still maintaining relations with the West in order to not be seen as being part of the Soviet sphere of influence (which, again, can be seen as form of insurance against a Soviet annexation). Foreign trade, and in particular major arms deals, were VERY politicised, and I'd imagine there would be a need for very strong differences in military/technical capabilities to override the political considerations in any particular deal.
Here's a great Australian-based analysis of the F-35's particular attractions for current foreign buyers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQgNwrtVoZ4
Scathing criticism of the early F-35 development process has always been entirely warranted, and the Pentagon continues to pay the price in rebuilding costs for early "production" airframes. Its also notable that the Navy is being quite, ah, deliberate about F-35C deployment; I think only one carrier is currently rated to operate them. The Marines are more gung-ho about their F-35Bs, but only the F-35A is an export success story so far.
IIRC, the most serious criticism of the F-35 was mostly not that the fighter was terrible, but that the decision to pursue the project in the way it was was terrible, that the misguided attempt to try to save money by commonality among the radically different missions of the main versions instead made each variant more expensive to develop than it would be independently, compromised capability, and didn’t solve logistical problems better than separate projects would have.
(There was also criticism based on the cost arc of manned fighter development vs. alternative technologies and countermeasures against them that in terms of funding mix, the US should have been spending more on alternatives/countermeasures and less on manned fighters including the F-35, which was an even higher-level meta-criticism.)
As for manned vs. unmanned, while unmanned technologies are clearly developing rapidly, I suspect they're not ready yet for all the manned missions. Hence the JSF project is still warranted. Maybe the next gen JSF follow-up will be an entirely unmanned platform, who knows..
Sixth generation tactical aircraft will probably be optionally manned. So they can operate as drones when flying high-risk strike missions against known targets but can also carry pilots when greater flexibility is needed.
The F-35B may have started as a Marines ask, but it seems to have become an export success with countries that aren't really up to footing the costs for catobar-capable flat-tops for modern fighter aircraft during peacetime, e.g. the UK, Japan, Italy, Korea, potentially Spain.
The Marines have also been exploring the F-35B in austere basing, EABO conops, airborne amphibious ops, etc., so it's not just carrier ops.
It has been a lead weight on the JSF development project, for sure, but the F-35B does seem to provide an intriguing capability now that it's a thing. I'm also not convinced that a dedicated STOVL project would've given a more suitable plane -- it really seems like you would want the whole stealth + advanced sensor/avionics package on your jump jet to meet needs like naval LHD-borne fixed-wing AEW/air interceptor/task group anti-air range extender, airborne amphibious ops CAS, etc. Owing to the difficulties encountered by the JSF in supporting the F-35B, I doubt it's going to be succeeded by another platform for a very long time.
Just saying that in a hypothetical world in the early 90'ies (a quick wikipedia look says that the STOVL JSF can be traced back at least to a 1992 USMC/USAF project that eventually morphed into the JSF), if it would have been decided back then that, nope, we're not gonna do a follow-up to the Harrier, then navies that are currently looking at the F-35B would have decided to either upgrade existing small carriers with catobar and/or ordering new carriers with them. And I think in that case the total cost could have been cheaper. Yes, somewhat more expensive carriers, but cheaper planes and much less R&D cost.
I don't think that adding catobar support for modern fighter platforms is viable for all of these small carriers that are incorporating the F-35B. Admittedly my understanding of the situation is very shaky, but by all accounts I've heard, the catapults and arrestor gear place very significant strain on even the US supercarriers. More countries used to operate catobar carriers in the past (such as my home country of Australia, up until the retirement of the Melbourne and a decision to discontinue fixed-wing carrier ops), which I suspect has to do with the operation of lighter aircraft from the carriers at the time. (~7t max takeoff weight for a Sea Venom, ~11t for a Skyhawk; compare to ~30t for a Super Hornet or an F-35C.) Maybe the situation has gotten better with EMALS cats, but we're yet to see this technology used to make baby catobar carriers a thing, so who knows?
The countries in question would likely need to upgrade from their ~25000t LHDs to something with at least the displacement of the 40000t Charles de Gaulle. (Not to mention that most such carriers use nuclear power for both propulsion and to power the cats and traps.) Such vessels would come at great expense, and likely also have significantly larger crewing requirements, which tends to be a pain point for middle-power navies. I also don't think a lot of these vessels would've been built bigger in anticipation of catobar requirements, as they were largely originally specced for helicopter deck and amphibious roles. The F-35B really seems like an opportunity which all of these countries have siezed upon after seeing it come to fruition.
Again, it seems like you have a case with the Queen Elizabeths, though it seems like the UK balked at the cost of fitting catobar, if that's any indication.
As to whether the costs would've been offset by savings in the development of the F-35B, I don't even think we're talking about costs on the same magnitude here. For reference, total R&D costs for the F-35 as of 2019 were $71.9billion in 2012 dollars. Building and sustaining big boy carriers for middle-power countries would've cost the JSF partners hundreds of billions of dollars, easily.
Fair enough.
As for the size of a carrier needed for F-35, the Royal Navy was apparently operating the Phantom from ~30kt carriers. They did some tests with a smaller ~25kt carrier and found that it worked in principle but required lowered fuel load etc. I had assumed the Phantom to be a really massive plane, but it turns out the max weight is around 30t, similar to a F-35, so the comparison is actually pretty close. (I would guess it would in principle be possible with a smaller ship if you'd do a WWII style straight deck and utilize the entire deck for launching and landing, though I guess that would limit operations rate too much so nobody wants to do that?)
For cost, I think I saw somewhere some estimates that the RN had calculated that equipping the Queen Elizabeths with catobar would have added IIRC ~$200M per boat. However one also needs to take into account the cost difference between the F-35 B and C variants. Searching around I found a figures from 2019 that said a B variant then went for $115.5M and a C for $107.7M (for comparison, the A model at $89M but I found newer figures from 2022 saying $80M). But if, hypothetically, the B model wouldn't exist production numbers for the C model would be higher and thus lower per unit costs. Lemme just spitball it and say $100M in 2019 for a C model in the hypothetical world without the B model. Per wikipedia the complement of a Queen Elizabeth is 36 F-35's. So (115.5-100)x36 = $558M, which is more than twice the cost of the catobar installation. Even if we assume no cost difference for the C model due to the disappearance of the B model, it's still (115.5-107.7)x36=$281M, still much higher than the price of the catobar installation. Not to mention that over the service life of the carrier probably many generations of planes would be used (or newer versions of F-35's, considering F-35 is expected to be a very long-lived platform).
I guess the crux of the argument is really what about those navies that want to operate baby carriers. If we assume a ~40kt Charles de Gaulle is about the minimum you wanna have for a 'proper' catobar carrier (maybe ~30kt if you really stretch it?), that leaves out all those 25kt helicopter carriers and whatnot.
There are no competing stealth aircraft capable of naval deployment. China is developing what appears to be a stealth fighter for their aircraft carriers, but I don't know how soon they will be deployed.
I think this is what you meant, but it could be misread: the former is a sign, not the cause, of the latter. They’ve had aligned security policy for a long time, which is reflected in their joint decision to choose to apply to NATO.
Last year by the time Finnish leadership and people were pretty much decided on NATO, Sweden was just starting their discourse so they had to catch up not be left behind. Now somewhat ironically because of Sweden, Turkey has been delaying and objecting the membership.
Finland has also kept with updating equipment and keeping the conscription military service these past 100 years, Sweden ended their conscription and mostly been downsizing their military.
I don't think anyone thinks an attack on Gotland was ever likely, and it certainly isn't now, but if Russia's goal was to bring back all the former states of the Soviet Union, the Baltic states are on that list. And that gets pretty difficult for those two countries to stay neutral. Finland was once part of Russia too and they have a contentious history.
Anyway, both Sweden and Finland have much to offer NATO.
However, the Gripen is certainly a very interesting aircraft, like you say, designed to be operated from makeshift airstrips and maintained by conscripts. It's also amazing how a small country like Sweden with a fairly limited budget has managed to create a competitive fighter. Though the engine and many of the weapons systems are US or European, but still. I'd like to think that if F-35 weren't available, Gripen would have been a very strong, if not the strongest, contender.
This is largely an irrelevant capability, it's easy and cheap to build lots of runways.
The Finnish as a culture are pretty pragmatic in my experience.
But for anytone (who is friendly with the US) that need a multi perpose fighter sooner than that, the F35 is the obvious choice today. And it may stay useful even when 6th gen arrives, just like F16's are still relevant today.
I do agree that AI fighters the future. Simply because once you engineer without human limits, flight envelopes / performance will shift in attacker favour. Anti-air missiles work by arbituaging gap unmanned and manned limits. I can see performant UAVs being magnitude more capable in dodging anti air to the point where it becomes not feasible in terms of cost and magazine depth to try to even shoot them down, especially from naval platforms, i.e. 500 VLS cells in carrier group with 30% dedicated to AA might successfully interdict 50 manned fighters and need 200 to overwhelm, but with manned fighters that might only be effective against 5 unmanned, or 20 unmanned to overwhelm. Realistically less because ships become significantly less useful if they have disproportionately focus on anti air. Basically skip job of stealth of being difficult to detect to being nearly impossible to hit in the first place. Hence airforce betting/pouring 1000 F35s worth of $$$ on B21s that's difficult to detect and fly in altitudes that's difficult to hit, straight from CONUS.
As aircraft (and particularily unmanned ones) improve, air defense systems will be likely to change to meet the new challenges.
I find it really difficult to conclude what the balance will be in that arms race (apart from the prediction that humans are not likely to be needed in every plante anymore).
For instance, it may be that lasers mounted in ships (or even large planes) may become really good at countering many of the threats that appear. Then again, that could lead to mirror coating as a counter, but that may reduce stealth, and so on.
Furthermore, the distinction between missile and aircraft can go away. We may get hybrids that have the range of aircraft, but the power an manouverability of missiles, but with very short range guns replacing the warhead, making them reusable.
Launch platforms may also change. The B21 may very well be just as important for anti-air duty as the F-35, if the right kind of missiles/air launched drones are available. The F-35 on the other hand, can act as drone control platforms, privding more advanced sensors and compute than each drone would have.
Over oceans, maybe surface ships become obsolete, but in addition to options such as lasers, rail guns and more advanced missiles, one needs to keep in mind that they can be hard to detect (if satellites are knocked out).
Subs are likely to stay relevant, though, even though they too may become unmanned relatively soon.
> ike I don't see existing fleets being overhulled for enough power generation for sustained DE use.
Ford class carriers have two A1B reactors, each capable of delivering 125MW of electricity. I believe that should be enough to power quite capable DE weapons (or railguns) when/if such reach maturity. A task force of 4 carriers would have 1GW+ between them.
> Only realistic answer to saturation missile strikes is advanced interceptors...
Any place where you can cut the kill chain will do:- Prevent them from seeing you
- Stay out of reach
- Shoot down incoming missiles
- Cause them to miss
- Survive being hit.
> IMO fighter design ...
I agree with most of what you write about fighters/aircraft.
> Space infra is heading starlink
Satellites are relatively easy to shoot down, though. In a war where carriers are sunk, I think satellites would be fair game too. And with eyes in space, spotting ships can be hard, especially if the ships are stealthy (vs radar).
> long range bombers like B21/H20 and prompt global strike
Even these rely on in-flight refueling. While better missiles may make them capable of self defence over oceans, they are vulnerable over land, where adversaries may hide using the terrain.
> going strait for strategic targets on adversaries home front
Here I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Chaina and the US will not be able to knock out each other's infra with conventional weapons with any kind of speed, especially across continents. Air defences are too effective for that, and the targets too many and too resilient.
Only after a very prolonged campaign of SEAD/DEAD followed by large scale systematic bombing could that be done. History shows that this is extremely difficult, though. (Before WW2, a lot of people were saying exactly what you say here, that strategic bombing would be MAD, but that was far from the case.)
I simply don't see such a war go on for that long without nukes.
As it looks now, the next great war may be over Taiwan. The first stage of such a war would be the invasion itself (possibly after some period of SEAD). During the invasion, the US (+UK/Australia) would use carriers, subs and land based air (Japanese islands) to try to help Taiwan. Most combat would occur over the oceans. I'm sure the US navy is quite busy wargaming this already, including how close to Taiwan they could risk placing their carriers.
If the invasion fails, naval warfare would be less relevant. Taiwan would turn into a long term unsinkable US carrier.
If Taiwan falls, and the war doesn't end, there would be a period of naval warfare. The US would seek to force China to it's knees by blocking all trade. China would have to break such a blockade to defend their superpower status (they're highly dependent on ocean-going trade for almost everything). The US might still have access to bases in Japan, the Philipines and/or some other friendly nations in the area.
In this case, it would be China (and Japan) that would depend on being able to have their surface ships survive. Eventually, i believe China would be able to retain Taiwan, but if there is a multi year blockade followed by multi decade sanctions, China might well go back to being a 3rd world country. And if China should be able to break US control over the open oceans, maybe they would become the new hegemon. Or, given their recent aggressive tendencies, maybe it would unite a large coalition against them.
Carrier escorts do the defense. Escorts won't be nuclear, they'll have power plants for DE, but again that's replacing current DDGs with DDGX, which is decades a way. You can plop some DE on carriers themselves, but the issue is fires generation, the virtue of interceptors / missiles is you can engage multiple targets, i.e counter salvo with salvo. I'm doubtful entire CSG will have enough DE to engage 100s of incomings. A task force of 4 carriers operating together is... very risky/unlikely. I don't think DE is dead end, I just don't think it's a panacea in a naval environment.
>cut the kill chain will do
Context dependent, I can only evaluate with respect to PRC scenario within 1st/2nd island chain.
- Prevent from seeing, unlikely. Prior point about space infra is constellations trending towards 1,000s with persistent coverage, impossible to shoot them all down. The answer to ASAT vulnerability going forward is to spam them until it becomes infeasible / not economical to shoot down entire network before they can be used to counter strike.
- Stay out of reach unlikely, projected future naval air operation ranges are more or less locked in (inclusive of tanking), IRBMs will out range them, i.e. they can either stay away and maybe be safe but useless, or engage and be in danger.
- Shoot down, yes but matter of magazine depth/saturation, PRC will have more firepower bandwidth than multiple carrier groups can intercept. EW/missing is a big unknown though.
- Survive, IMO redundant, I think mostly assumed modern naval hulls will survive / keep floating due to advances in damage control, but being hit will likely end in mission kill.
There’s also considerations like PRC systems destruction warfare that targets US weak points like replenishment fleets that supply carrier groups, or tankers or AWACs. Just taking out a handful of fast combat support ships basically turns entire navy into single deployment assets - carrier groups have just days of endurance operating at high tempo, carriers can still sail on nuke power, but unlikely without escorts.
> long range bombers
They're also not panacea, but in lieu of regional basing, i.e. PRC doesn't have access near the US, and US basing near PRC is not survivable, they're decent platforms to penetrate and systematically take out enemy defense networks from more survivable homelands. Especially with a fleet of 100+. Mainly "cheap" global strike options, and probably largely something the US can exploit with a good pacific tanking network... assuming survivable. PRC H20 is mainly good for up to Hawaii, but there’s a lot of US mil infra in that range (i.e. all the shit in AU) that will substantially cripple US presence. For CONUS there’s ICBM/hypersonic for….
> home front strikes
Both sides are currently pursuing prompt/precise global strikes with ICBMs for a reason - 30 minutes to take out any global strategic infra that can be hit with 100M CEP. Which includes basically all power generation infra, refineries etc that are resilient, nor are ABM/defense currently feasible, especially at scale. No one has resources to ABM thousands of strategic nodes. WW2 strategic bombing failed at forcing capitulation but succeeded in breaking the war machine. No one thought it would be MAD, which was conceived post WW2 for nuclear brinkmanship. Besides DE/JP never had a chance to strategically bomb the US - it wasn't mutual. Modern global strikes are MAD, because it's mutual, and basically the escalation rung before going nuclear. It's good not to "see" such war as possible, because that's the point, mutual vulnerability = mutual deterrence. Question who is deterred more. In TW scenario, I would argue favours PRC, since they're willing to escalate further for TW.
On TW: island would never turn into an unsinkable US carrier because US assets are not survivable that close to PRC, or JP, or SKR in...
Modern carriers are overprovisioned for electricity generation PRECISLY to keep the option open to mount DE and similar weapons directly on them. Just because destroyers were used for AA defence during WW2 doesn't mean they will have that role in WW3.
> impossible to shoot them all down
Almost nothing is impossible. And I don't even think the cost of shooting down a lot of satellites need to be very high. And keep in mind that you only have to shoot down those that are on top of the TOO. It's probably rather simple to have ground or even air launched missiles that can shoot down satellites at will.
> IRBMs will out range them
Most hypersonic missiles today have a relatively limited range (less than the range of most aircraft, especially if they're refueled in-air) Ballistic missiles are easier to shoot down and less accurate. This comes down to a cost analysis, not black/white.
> PRC will have more firepower bandwidth than multiple carrier groups can intercept.
This is correlated with range. The longer range, the higher the cost to have this kind of arsenal. Combine with improvements in both ABM's energy weapons, etc, the outcome is not given, I would say.
> US basing near PRC is not survivable,
Just because an airfield can be reached by some cruise missile, doesn't mean the attacker can destroy anything at that air field at will. What we're seing in Ukraine, is that air defences can stop a large percentage of missiles. If you have missiles of your own, you can shoot back at enemy missile launcers. If you have good bunkers, missles may not do much damage, and if you store aircraft underground or within mountains (like Taiwan is rumored to), the aircraft are even harder to kill.
Also, F35B do not rely on airfields at all. You can hide them anywhere, and they can take of from a short stretch of road.
It is NOT easy to make an area unsurvivable. The number of missiles will always be limited.
> but being hit will likely end in mission kill.
That depends what is hitting them, and where they're hit. Some hits have little effect, some sink the carrier, some put it out of action for hours, days or weeks.
> WW2 strategic bombing failed at forcing capitulation but succeeded in breaking the war machine.
Germany had a higher industrial output just a few months before the end of the war than they had in 1940/41.
The bombing certainly had an effect. It diverted resources into building AA, repairing damage, defensive fighters and so on, but it was the ground forces, in particular the Red Army that crushed Germany.
Against Japan, the submarine blockade was probably more important for the industrial output than the bombing. The nukes did make a convincing argument psychologically, though.
> for the PRC reverting to 3rd world country or coalition uniting against them. Not really possible, PRC export to the west bloc likely to sanction
I'm not talking sanctions, but a full naval blockade lasting years, probably combined with cutting rail links to Russia. China is much more dependent on trade than the USA. (Japan would suffer a lot though, if China could return the favor.)
> energy producers aren't siding with the west
In an actual war, blockade means you stop all shipping going in/out. With torpedos if neccesary. There are no oil producers that can break a USN blockade if China cannot (except for a small number of Russian rail lines).
A full convential war between NATO and China would look nothing like the Ukraine war. The economy of almost every country in the world would be wrecked due to collapsing supply chains. Living standards would fall to a fraction of what they are today. In many places, famines would erupt. And even where there'd be enough food, a lot of essential goods (such as medicines) would become unavailable in most countries not producing them themselves.
Imagine the worst stage of Covid, multiply by 5.
The worst part is that this scenario is ...
Eg. https://historyandwar.org/2015/09/11/dassault-rafale-vs-f-35...
Only a few countries can afford to have multiple types of aircraft to serve multiple roles. For everyone else the F-35 is a bargain and a technological marvel. Just buy a bunch of them and you're pretty set.
I guess people will tell themselves whatever they have to in order to believe in western military supremacy. How quickly we forget that the USA can't win a war and is really only good at bombing civilians from altitude.
Proper use of bribes can make any plane look fantastic to the buyer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQB4W8C0rZI
As someone who spent quite a long time working in the Danish public sector, often on the higher levels of public procurement, I think it's sort of fun but ultimately fruitless to talk about these processes in the public. Denmark also went with the F-35A, and we too had a lot of discussion about whether or not that was a good idea (especially when Trump then won the election and started alienating Europe). Anyway, in our procurement processens there is thousand upon thousand worth of pages detailing all the different things that goes into these decade long procurement processes, spanning the length of different governments, and it's really hard to sum things up as "this is why we chose how we chose" because it's always a bunch of different things.
Part of it is the technology, which is well described in this article. The F35 is better than it's competition. Part of it is cost. You could willingly buy the "deprecated" F18 Super Hornet which I believe was the most serious competition here in Denmark and hope that was "good enough". Or you could go with the more geo-political route of betting on more local industry to hopefully build up an European (or Swedish/Finnish) alternative in time while getting an inferior product until that succeeded. And a range of other things, but at the end of the day, in many Scandinavian countries the F-35 is going to replace the F-16, and with decades worth of co-operating with the American Airforce for training on top of the F-35 being the better project, and our countries tending to look more to American than to Europe (we speak English as our first second language, not French/German/Spanish/Itallian after all) it was likely always going to be the F-35. Even so, the process was very serious and produced a lot of documentation, and so far, it seems like one of the most successful and least corrupt public procurement processes at that scale in Denmarks history. So while it's easy to think this and that on the choice, I think it's also good to keep in mind the kind of serious work that seem to have gone into these processes in every Scandinavian country.
I guess you can now even say that it was a good choice, and it probably was. Maybe the competition, like the Eurofighter would also have seen huge improvements if it had been given the same amount of money the F-35 project did, maybe it wouldn't have.
My personal take-away from it, was how huge of a public discussion we hade about it here in Denmark when it was 18 Billion Danish Kroner. Yes, it's become a much more expensive process, but while 18 billion dkr is a lot of money. You can run a city with 60.000 citizens 6 full years for those money here in Denmark, we ended up paying the mink-farmers 19 billion dkr in "sorry we killed your mink sort of illegally because they might mutate covid". With that perspective in mind, I feel sort of silly about the public second guessing, my own included, about whether pouring 18, or even 35, billion dkr into the F-35 was better than going with it's cheaper alternatives because, well, I'd frankly rather have a bunch of F-35 than a bunch of dead mink. This last part is obviously a bit of a jest, but I think you can follow my meaning.
NATO.
This is a way to pony up money in a way that would be appreciated if Finland joined NATO.
It's the killer feature of F-35 and F-22 and heck modernized F-16s.
I suppose it's hinted at. Finland can't find and maintain an air force alone...
Stealth simply isn't as important as one would think so long as you're not running missions into enemy territory.
If they climb to power, they will still need to compel to hardcore nationalist population, in case of Sweden even more than Erdoğan, since they will need their social credit for topic they find important to them and won't burn it because of Sweden.
And if the opposition candidate wins, he will be busy repairing all the mess Erdogan did to Turkey's foreign relations - even if the nationalists in the coalition will whine, they can't afford wasting more political good-will for a couple hundred Kurds.
Eventually turkey will concede, but not before squeezing every drop of advantage they can obtain. It doesn't really matter who's at the top in turkey - the incentive dictates the behaviour.
Turkey feels safe already with respect to Russia. But increasingly slighted by Western attitudes.
Even with Sweden within NATO, Sweden would be a small industrial-military partner and the US a big one.
This is worth way less than it sounds like. Building runways is cheap.
> The Gripen is basically designed for Finland by virtue of being designed for Sweden
Sweden wanting to prop up their domestic industry does not mean that Gripen is the best fighter jet for Sweden.
I don't think you understand. Sweden always planned to fight a contracting, losing war, eventually devolving into partisan warfare.
If I recall the Cold War plans correctly, one of the more realistic plans prepared for 3-4 weeks of war before being overrun and partisan warfare starting. The road-as-runway plan was critical for this, there would be no time to build anything, just keep everything flying and attacking from surprise locations for as long as possible. The submarine force tied into to this also, with its ability to stay submerged for 3 weeks.
The whole idea was never for Sweden to really win, just to make the Soviet win so momentally Pyrrhic they would think twice about an actual ground invasion. From a military standpoint, we never hoped for our major cities to be spared nukes. We counted on them being bombed to oblivion day one.
Try building runways when all major infrastructure and the country is in total chaos. That's why there were arms and fuel depots everywhere, with everything from missiles down to submachine guns.
Edit: and you say propping up defence industry as if insinuating it's just a boondoggle. When it comes to geopolitics, it's not. It's the only way to have total control of supply chains and constant upgrade of arms.
Gripen may have become something of a boondoggle over time, but it was born from the Cold War and still traces most of its design goals from that situation.
The idea of Sweden being overrun in 3-4 weeks is a bit absurd anyway, perhaps it's just not a reasonable assumption to start building upon.
>Edit: and you say propping up defence industry as if insinuating it's just a boondoggle. When it comes to geopolitics, it's not. It's the only way to have total control of supply chains and constant upgrade of arms.
Well, that's not what I was insinuating. But since you bring it up, the Gripen isn't exactly a great example of "total control of supply chains". That's a big part of why nobody wants to buy it, if you're going to deal with ITAR you might as well buy the F-35.
Regarding ITAR and such, I can only agree, except "might as well". F35 is more expensive and complicated to operate, Gripen is surprisingly expensive per airframe. But I think they still are very different systems good for different things. And as the Cold War wound down, Gripen became more of a pure industrial project. Still, for Sweden and Finland, it looks like hand-in-glove.
Are they operating to great effect? The HARMs are nice, but surface-launched anti-radiation missiles would be both far cheaper and more resilient than Gripens.
Presumably in a "partisan warfare" scenario, you wouldn't be worrying about stuff like Shahed drones destroying your infrastructure either.
> F35 is more expensive and complicated to operate
It does provide advantages for that money, and certainly has a brighter future than the Gripen E which nobody will buy.
Destroying runways is cheap and easy, look at Ukraine
> look at Ukraine
Go on, give me some actual examples. What sort of cheap missiles are used to cause more than a few thousand dollars worth of damage to runways in Ukraine?
Make a hole in tarmac, until it's fixed it can't be used, by the time it's fixed it can be targeted again.
It's all nice and easy when you attack third world countries with no real army from aircraft carrier but when a high intensity conflict with a real military power begins you can be sure most of your airports will be targets, which is exactly what happened to Ukraine, not even 2 weeks in the conflict: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/russian-forces-h...
Uh, how do you plan to use dumb bombs like that in a conflict like Ukraine?
That would require you to be able to fly right over the enemy airfield, they'd need to have no air defenses whatsoever.
You'll damage a runway at the cost of a pilot (probably $5M+), aircraft (at least $10M), and dumb bombs ($30k each). Putting your total price paid for thousands of dollars worth of runway damage in the tens of millions.
> when a high intensity conflict with a real military power begins you can be sure most of your airports will be targets, which is exactly what happened to Ukraine, not even 2 weeks in the conflict
That kind of damage is fixed within hours at a cost of low thousands of dollars at most. Russia can do only it using incredibly expensive standoff-range missiles, spending at the very least hundreds of thousands if not millions to punch a hole on a runway that takes a few hours to repair.
Eeeeh that's exactly what happened in the beginning of the conflict... they (Russia) had paratroopers in Kiev day 1
You wouldn't have any luck dropping bombs like those out of helicopters.
Finland pretty much knew who would win the testing when they selected their definition of success, ignoring the unexpected (which to be fair did eliminate two competitors); either you want the traditional fighter model with inherent low cost and you go with Gripen, or you want in on the F-35's technology platform and true multirole capability (higher payload) and you politically bully LM into delivering you a reasonable price cut (probably on the basis of US jobs in the short term, I'd guess), like the article seems to describe. And frankly, good on the Finns for doing it.
That would be a silly assumption, to buy a jet fighter and assume you'd never run missions into enemy territory. More than that, if <<your own country>> gets invaded, guess what, they put SAMs onto your territory and suddenly it becomes <<enemy territory>> :-)
That's not quite how it works. It's not like a game of Civilization II where stealth beats SAM.
The problem modern stealth aims to defeat is that radar capabilities are networked with high speed processing.
Rolling a single S-400 into enemy territory doesn't suddenly make even mig-29s obselete.
Similarly an F-117 couldn't fly over even a S-125 with absolute safety.
They'd bring in the whole shebang.
So my rhetorical question to you would be: why would you not buy a system with a reduced radar footprint, advanced avionics, advanced weapons control systems and advanced networking? Even if it's only for defensive purposes.
Heck, even if it's for flying strictly over territory you control. Advanced radars cover hundreds of kilometers as do modern anti-air missiles. They can shoot you down without even going near their direct airspace. That's what Russia is doing right now, they're taking down Ukrainian aircraft at no risk to themselves launching a bunch of R37s from deep in their territory (50-100km) from Migs Ukraine can't reach or even see.
It's just that being in with NATO is more important than equipment case in point Ukraine.
F-35 is designed for ingress into densely covered enemy territory.
The stealth allows more flexibility in approach it stops jets being scrambled along the route, it stops assets being moved in to hangars and otherwise hidden.
It means you're less likely to be flying through a valley of manpads. Who were all warned of impending jets coming in.
Flying into an enemy carrier group with airborne radar being pinged from every direction.
These are the missions Israel runs against Iran and Syria (not the carrier group) or the US may theoretically run against Russia in a world war situation (during conflict it's likely the US would be protected by heavy ECW from growlers not just stealth).
This is not within Finland's likely missions unless it's acting with NATO.
If you don't need that then there are many cheaper, easier to run alternatives.
So does Finland want an F-35 or a bunch of gripen and hundreds of manpads and ATGMs?
Ukraine has repelled Russia very effectively with just manpads, ATGMs and NATO intelligence.
All things being equal that would be preferable. If buying US weapons NATO becomes more protective then the calculus changes.
It's a lot less likely now, but Russia could have very well tried the exact same thing against Finland, in which case Finland for sure would have been running the exact same missions against Russia. Suppress Russian threats in Russia itself to protect Finnish territory.
And Finland isn't in NATO, yet. Though their luck will probably be that Russia won't be able to do anything else major for at least a decade.
Ukraine has effectively repelled Russia because it's the second biggest military in Europe after Russia, and second strongest air defence in Europe after Russia.
This is the sole biggest factor without saying which, everything else is meaningless.
It's mainly because the attrition rate should have entirely depleted the S-300 system in the first 6 months (2-3 per week during the main phase).
Ukraine is a big country and there were loads of missile attacks to defend. It's very unlikely it was able to move S-300s continuously into needed areas compared with manpads.
Yet it would have been a PR disaster if NATO admitted to supplying weapons to Ukraine before the invasion started. So MANPADs are implied to have sprouted like mushrooms in Ukraine...
Enough to shoot down each other's airforce a few times over.
> Yet it would have been a PR disaster if NATO admitted to supplying weapons to Ukraine before the invasion started. So MANPADs are implied to have sprouted like mushrooms in Ukraine..
You can’t be serious, NATO openly delivered MANPADs and vast amounts of other munitions before the war started https://www.armyrecognition.com/defense_news_february_2022_g...
https://www.dw.com/en/russia-ukraine-crisis-who-supplies-wea...
Maybe try to learn some basic facts about the subject before commenting?
MANPADs are nice to have, but it's Ukraine's own Soviet air defense equipment which is keeping Russian aviation at bay.
The focus on MANPADs really makes it hard to take anything else you say seriously. It's the 100+ active S300 batteries Ukraine had that made all the difference, not MANPADs.
It's also rumoured that some large portion of Russian losses are due to their own anti air. So coordination is difficult.
The F-117 was central to SEAD operations during Desert Storm, and the F-35 is regarded as the most credible SEAD platform in the USAF inventory today.
> NATO.
Because that's not the main reason or even a primary reason. There are a bunch of NATO countries that don't use US aircraft. Similarly there are non-NATO countries that buy the F-35 and many non-NATO countries that would want to buy it if they were able to.
For a much better breakdown on why countries would buy the F-35. This portion of this presentation by Perun is a great intro: https://youtu.be/7Z_gTGJc7nQ?t=2219
In short, because of massive scale, the F-35 is cheap despite being highly advanced.
It's about avoiding a go pound sand stance no matter the US leadership.
If you're in NATO, or have applied you're relatively cozy. What if you don't want to do those things?
Except France and Spain, they all use US aircraft or are in the acquisition phase.
BTW Spain is also considering buying the F-35.
??? Stealth has myriad applications in defensive engagements. Dont like being killed by radar-guided missiles? Stealth helps.
But the kind of all aspect high quality stealth of the F-35 only matters when you're surrounded by advanced radar capabilities.
That's high power radar and high coverage to capture scatter at different angles..along with the bandwidth (processing) needed to detect coincident events.
Most of the time you want to destroy those assets and you have cheaper jets like the F-16/18 respond to every ping with an anti radiation missile.
Like maybe when you are defending a border against waves of incoming fighters?
>> cheaper jets like the F-16/18 respond to every ping with an anti radiation missile.
If those pings are in range of air-launched anti-radiation missiles, then those launch platforms are well within the range of the much larger ground-launched sams beside those pings. SEAD with non-stealthy aircraft is a much more complex mission than simply throwing harms at pings.
Then, to launch missiles, you need to network with a distributed group sharing sensor data. This mode of operation is possible in all modern fighter jets, and capabilities are being added continually with avionics/software upgrades. This is true for F-35, but also for Rafale, Eurofighter, and Gripen.
Dodging missiles depends on kinetics, but it's possible existing Russian radar homing missiles can't lock on to an F-35. In this respect, it is has an advantage.
I expect that most or all radar guided missiles (modern and historical) can be used to engage an F-35 (or any other stealth-y aircraft). The effective engagement range will be lower than against a less-stealthy aircraft though.
Dodging missiles does not rely exclusively on kinetics. There are several ways to try to break a lock or at least temporarily confuse a missile. (eg. notching, chaff, ECM) . Having improved sensor fusion and reduced RCS can obviously make these tools and tactics a bit easier and more effective too.
It should depend on its operation. If the missile is receiving guidance updates in the beginning phase from a sensor network, and only relying on its own sensors in the final phase (if at all), then spectral stealth will make less of a difference. But older missiles and platforms can not do this.
This is the gamble of the F-35; compromise the non-updatable specs in order to achieve safety from present day known threats.
If the opponent has less accurate data when compared to the less-stealthy situation; then the opponent will have a harder time guiding their weapons compared to the less-stealthy situation. It may also be easier to spoof, dodge, and/or hide.
Modern missile systems are getting smarter and smarter no matter what, you may need to stack several advantages in order to defeat them.
The US does not export the F-22, even to NATO allies.
Did the Ancient Greeks tell anyone how to make their flamethrowers?
The “selection process” in Denmark was a total sham, most of the competitors didn’t even bother submitting a bid, because it was obvious from the start that the F-35 would win.
There are no alternatives to F35.
Buying the _eurofighter_ wouldn't let them share the same platform as the _rest of Europe_? I realize that the F-35 has racked up a number of sales recently, but there's quite a few eurofighters around still, and more on the way IIRC
In the fickle Brazilian political environment, not aligning with the US might end up being a rather pragmatic move. As a politician, who knows how badly your successor will fuck up those ties?
The real reason is because the F-35 is in fact very cheap for what it does.
Please don't jump on bandwagons.
Here's a good video covering this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z_gTGJc7nQ&t=2219s
How would you know? Are you privy to all conversations between the Finnish and the U.S. government?
> there are no incentives from the U.S. to buy it
Right from the article itself:
>> However, in what is a major win for the team behind HX, Lockheed Martin provided a unique tailored solution to Finland – one described in their BAFO-press statement to “includes many opportunities for the Finnish defense industry related to the direct manufacture and maintenance of the F-35 that have not been offered before.”
Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another. A nice boon for the politicians who can then brag about how they’re securing Finnish/Danish/Italian/whatever jobs.
Are you? How do you know they've happened?
Like how Denmark have joined pretty much every U.S. war of aggression in recent history, despite having no interests at all in Afghanistan or the middle east.
Denmark joined because the US invoked Article 5 after 9/11. It was more about making sure they're protected if they ever need it in the future, so I'd say it was absolutely in their interest. This was the first time Article 5 was invoked, not going would've killed NATO and their own security. The invasion of Ukraine has solidified their reasoning.
As for article 5, that might explain the second gulf war and/or Afghanistan, but certainly not the first gulf war, Libya or Syria.
Whenever Uncle Sam says “jump”, you’ll see all the small NATO states lining up to ask “How high?”.
No it wouldn't.
The Article 5 invocation resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Assist and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Active_Endeavour, that's all.
>Whenever Uncle Sam says “jump”, you’ll see all the small NATO states lining up to ask “How high?”.
Consider that small NATO states want to partake in this stuff because it offers their forces an opportunity to gain experience.
Article 5 has only been invoked once, and did not involve any actual conflict.
"Open secret" is the news version of "Trust me bro"
What? This is pretty much standard practice across the board in military procurements. For example, as part of SAAB's Gripen bid for Canada, they would arrange for the aircraft to be produced, assembled, and maintained in Canada if the Gripen were selected. Countries do this for a variety of reasons -- yes, to bolster local industry, but also to give them a leg-up on sovereign sustainment of the platform, and so that they can ramp up manufacture to meet their own needs in the event of a war.
It's usually on the person proposing the existence of something to prove that it exists rather than on the person saying it doesn't exist to prove that it doesn't. I can't prove the lack of existence of bigfoot nor can I prove the lack of existence of aliens having visited earth.
> Right from the article itself:
> <snip>
> Pretty much all buyers of the F-35 have been offered different sorts of kick-back deals, where they get to produce parts of the plane or handle maintenance, so the deal props up the national arms industry in some way or another. A nice boon for the politicians who can then brag about how they’re securing Finnish/Danish/Italian/whatever jobs.
That's not an incentive from the US though. That's an incentive from Lockheed Martin. Which is something businesses do when they're trying to close sales with a skeptical customer and can afford to do so.
And augmented by the fact that a large chunk of Europe is going to be operating the same plane, driving down maintenance costs, sharing maintenance knowledge, reducing interoperability issues and ensuring that spare parts will be available.
In hindsight nobody cares anymore, but it was a lot of public debate and very clear the decision was political and not merit based
Hey, that has value, there is definitely a good case to be made for that. But just be open and honest about it instead of doing weird procurement steps
Since most of the cost is in the software, engine and systems, why make the airframe commonality such a big point? There could be an F-35D that would be a totally new airframe but would use everything else from the other models. There will be lots of F-35:s manufactured, maintained and upgraded over the lifespan so it would make sense to "tap into" that ecosystem. Composite manufacturing has been advancing a lot. If the structure can be uncoupled from the rest, then it would allow for better performance. The current shape of the F-35 variants is limiting their supersonic performance. One could also optimize the airframe for cost or speed of manufacture.
It might be deemed now that the airframe performance is adequate. This might change in the future as adversaries improve.
YF-23 had a narrow and deep weapons bay that was considered problematic since if a weapon jammed to the rail, it would prevent release of other weapons above it. Maybe it's also bad if you want to shoot a lot of missiles in a very short time span. The production design had a wider bay, worsening the aerodynamics a bit: https://yf-23.webs.com/F-23A.html
It would have probably been cheaper and better to design two planes, one conventional (F-35A, F-35C) and one vertical take-off. Then save money by using common parts and the same avionics.
It's very typical of tech people to think we know more than domain experts.
A hint they got from the world of software development clearly... :-)
"...At extremely high altitudes, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ versions of the F-35 jet can only fly at supersonic speeds for short bursts of time before there is a risk of structural damage and loss of stealth capability, a problem that may make it impossible for the Navy’s F-35C to conduct supersonic intercepts...
The Defense Department does not intend to field a fix for the problem, which influences not only the F-35’s airframe and the low-observable coating that keeps it stealthy, but also the myriad antennas located on the back of the plane that are currently vulnerable to damage, according to documents exclusively obtained by Defense News...
...The F-35 Joint Program Office has classified the issues for the "B" and "C" models as separate category 1 deficiencies, indicating in one document that the problem presents a challenge to accomplishing one of the key missions of the fighter jet..."
[1] - https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/supersonic-speeds...
Those two countries do not do carrier ops, why would they care about this at all?
/flamebait
To contribute something productive: I'm actually often pleasantly surprised how non-IT people with relevant experience often show up on HN comment threads.
/s
"The number of major F-35 flaws is shrinking, but the Pentagon is keeping details of the problems under wraps" - https://www.defensenews.com/smr/hidden-troubles-f35/2021/07/...
"“Details of [deficiencies] — even unclassified [deficiencies] — are not publicly releasable because the information is operationally sensitive, and its release could be detrimental to U.S. and international war fighters operating F-35s worldwide,”... Seal noted that all remaining critical deficiencies are classified as category 1B issues, which represent a “critical impact on mission readiness.” The more serious category 1A problems indicate a risk to the operator’s life..."
"...In June 2019, Defense News published an investigation into the F-35 that detailed all 13 category 1 deficiencies on the books at the time — the first and only time a full list of F-35 critical deficiencies has been publicly released."
Since Finland selection was done way before, how many of these were disclosed to them?
I would build F35 over the weekend in Rust.
Or is it a NATO member that’s anti-NATO? But in that case I can’t imagine that the government provides a lot of anti-NATO propaganda…