From a NBC article:

... Likewise, earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office reported that only between 54 to 58% of F-35 variants in the military’s possession were available in 2022. The numbers are worse for “full mission availability,” which means the plane is both in a squadron’s possession and can fulfill all of its tasked missions. The F-35 A, which the Air Force uses, was just over 40%; the F-35 B and C, which the Marines and Navy deploy respectively, were closer to 20%.

I don't know about its capability, but its availability does not sound good.

i would disagree that the f35 isn't good at those things you mention. i would say it's actually good at those things, just not as good as specialized planes. but good enough. esp. the f35C in the fleet interceptor role - it has 30% larger wings than the other variants and thus much more range and carry capacity. in air to air it's the second best in the world in pretty much every simulated scenario run by the air force so to say it's not a good interceptor/air superiority fighter is just false. i doubt they'll have it doing much CAS as a primary mission - that'll be all the 4th gen fighters we still have and why we keep them. as a bomber? well that's the primary advantage of is stealth so even if it can't haul its weight in explosives, its ability to get over the target unseen and drop a guided weapon is second to none in the tactical inventory; so yeah, if i needed a high priority target hit real quick like, i'd pick an f35 over any other F/A in the inventory.

and technology does, in fact, make us unstoppable, a few contrary examples not withstanding. why do you think we dominated the iraqis even though they had a larger army than us? technology and the training to use it right. our SF units are practically cyborgs with all the tech that's integrated into their ops plans. even the subs you mention - in a shooting war their major advantage over the russians and chinese will be their superior technology. yes the air war over vietnam was an example of us getting ahead of ourselves, but i think we've taken to heart that lesson and technology has matured to the point where it's finally capable of what they promised 50 years ago.

i think you've been drinking the anti-establishment koolaid a little too hard, cuz like half of what you wrote is just false. the f35 is good to great at most things even against modern opposition, as proven in multiple war games and asymmetric exercises.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 11:17:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 10:57:
Aviation Week does a podcast and there was a whole episode dedicated to this subject not too long ago.

this one? https://aviationweek.com/podcasts/check-6/podcast-understanding-air-power-former-usaf-futurist

That's the one.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 10:57:
Aviation Week does a podcast and there was a whole episode dedicated to this subject not too long ago.

this one? https://aviationweek.com/podcasts/check-6/podcast-understanding-air-power-former-usaf-futurist

dscarron wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 10:23:
Quite positive that if no other lessons are taken by the Ukraine War that pocket change weapons like Manpads, compared to million dollar systems, makes much of the old technology really much less dominating and interesting to deploy.

That said, if a hick with a rifle can take down a 8 figure piece of military hardware then we need to storm the Pentagon and get our money back.

I have to agree with you on that. War has become increasingly asymmetrical and Ukraine has proven that it can take that to the extreme. Though the NVA provided a pretty compelling case for it, too. Cheap drones are already reinventing the battlefield as we have historically known it.

Speaking as "a hick with a rifle", don't discount the man. Hicks with rifles have fended off the Russians, the British, the French, and many other would-be empires who thought themselves invincible.

1badmf wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 02:46:
cmon bop, it's not all that bad. can't shoot something you can't see right? in tens of thousands of sorties only one stealth jet has ever been lost. as far as i know it's the only one that's ever even been hit, and the f35 is two generations of stealth beyond the night hawk.

for sure it's not as survivable if it does get hit, but it's a worthy trade off if it doesn't ever get hit. and i think the military has sort of matured in its understanding of air warfare in the last 20 years. they know now they don't need an all stealth flying force; that would just be a monumental waste of money. stealth for the first 3 days to take down enemy air defenses and high value targets, then bomb trucks the rest of the war. i don't know for sure but i doubt they're gonna replace all the f/a18s with f35Cs. the bomb trucks still have significant value in uncontested air space. that's why the air force is buying new f-15EX strike eagles.

You're somewhat pushing the trap I mentioned previously. Stealth has an advantage in some applications but it shouldn't be the core concept you build an airframe around if you need multirole capability. There are significant compromises when that occurs. Those compromises cost lives, increase costs and maintenance, and reduce capability. There is no perfect airframe, to be sure, but you want to minimize the former two and increase the latter. The F-35 fails in that regard.

Both the US and China are changing doctrines because both sides realize that total air dominance is likely a thing of the past. Aviation Week does a podcast and there was a whole episode dedicated to this subject not too long ago. Both sides realize that, at best, you'll get temporary air dominance to achieve specific mission goals. How we fight wars has significantly changed and how we source information has significantly changed. I don't need to see your aircraft to shoot them down if I can compromise your information network and have you show me where they are going to be. When that happens, stealth is not a functional aspect.

But let's look at this critically. Is the F-35 a good fleet interceptor? No. Is it a bomb truck? No. Is it a good CAS platform (something the Navy does as well, even if the Chair Force grinds their teeth about sharing that role while they themselves no longer wish to do it)? No. Is it a good air superiority fighter when compared to the F-22 or J-20? Ehhhhh...sorta. But we already have the F-22 in that role. So what does the F-35 do really well that other platforms don't? Not the tech, but its actual job. From everything I have read...not much. It's a pork barrel project solution in search of a problem and that's why I call it a shitbox.

The closest analog on the Navy side of things we have is, believe it or not, submarines. By their nature, subs have always been about stealth since the American Civil War. But beyond that, they have to be good at their jobs, too. Notice the Navy didn't decide to try and combine the capabilities of the the Virginia and Columbia classes in to one class? That's because they have two inherently different jobs and asking one platform to do both of them means that it does neither of them well. So we have a dedicated sea denial platform and a dedicated ballistic platform.

Then there's the Army's OICW project. It too proclaimed that technology was going to do ALL THE THINGS. We decided at that time to hang on to the M-16 for a while longer, just recently deciding to replace it with yet another AR platform in a different caliber. The wrong caliber, in my opinion, but that's a different conversation.

It's important to remember, too, that no one has been in a shooting war in the sky with a near-peer adversary since the Korean War and that was between the MiG-15 and F-86. The Vietnam War saw the US' F-4As and F-105s get chewed up by MiGs until the F-4Bs showed up and even then that was at the painful lesson that technology was not, in fact, going to make the US unstoppable. Since then, the US has never been at war with an adversary that was close to its own capabilities. The Cold War was all about sabre rattling with no direct conflict.

I am not wowed or amazed by technology for the sake of the technology itself. I only care about what something can actually do, and do better, as a whole package than what preceded it. The F-35 isn't it. It just isn't in any meaningfully measurable way.

If you look at the F-35’s flight path, and let’s just add for conjecture that it was a common and oft-repeated training route, it would give gravy seals plenty of time to setup and ambush the warbird.
https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1703827299412455459

jdreyer wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 00:42:
That could never happen today however, since all the fighter designs from the past 40 years are fly-by-wire aerodynamically unstable aircraft.

Never? Are you forgetting auto-pilot?

In July 1989, Belgium was up in arms after a Soviet MiG-23 fighter jet crashed into a man's home outside the western city of Kortrijk, killing the resident, The New York Times reported at the time. The MiG-23 pilot had apparently ejected while flying over Poland after experiencing an alleged "malfunction."
But rather than crashing, the MiG-23 continued flying for around 560 miles on autopilot, easily passing over East and West Germany and the Netherlands before it finally crashed. The Belgian Foreign Minister at the time noted that the jet had been picked up by NATO radar more than an hour before it crashed.

All that was missing was a cornfield.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 23:41:

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:30:
Pretty sure one 50 caliber round in the wrong location is going to cause the failure of any jet engine. Which is not to say I think the F-35 is a great aircraft. I have serious doubt about it. I am tempted to agree with you about it being a "shitbox", but I realize my knowledge level in that area is not far above an average layman, despite my 7 years, 3 months, and 10 days in the USAF -- so, I don't go that far.

*snip*

When compared to the last three generations and their capabilities in their eras, the F-35 is absolutely a shitbox. Sure, they can sit on the tarmac an an Air Force base and look pretty but they suck at CAS, especially when compared to the old Warthog which is also a much tougher airframe. You can rake both sides of an A-10 with 7.62x39 and it's going to laugh at you while still going brrrrrrrrrt.

The F-35 falls in to the same trap the Phantom did, which is idiots who breathlessly exclaim "technology is going to do ALL THE THINGS". While conveniently forgetting the lessons learned from the last time we tried that approach.

Quite positive that if no other lessons are taken by the Ukraine War that pocket change weapons like Manpads, compared to million dollar systems, makes much of the old technology really much less dominating and interesting to deploy.

That said, if a hick with a rifle can take down a 8 figure piece of military hardware then we need to storm the Pentagon and get our money back.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 23:13:
The F-35B wasn't hovering either, or they wouldn't have had a problem finding the wreckage.

No shit it wasn’t hovering, the chip that allows the F-35 to be remotely piloted was manufactured in China and has a well documented back door on 7chan / Reddit.. A chinese weather balloon took complete control of it and the pilot was given the option to eject or spend the rest of his life in re-education camps. The F-35 was remote controlled to a waiting aircraft carrier off the coast and is currently steaming towards China.
The debris field is nothing more than old farm equipment.

Mercurial Musk is Pondering Twitter Paywall
#BestBusinessmanEver

That 4chan story sounds like the wacko conspiracy theories my ex-wife used to prattle on about every other day.

cmon bop, it's not all that bad. can't shoot something you can't see right? in tens of thousands of sorties only one stealth jet has ever been lost. as far as i know it's the only one that's ever even been hit, and the f35 is two generations of stealth beyond the night hawk.

for sure it's not as survivable if it does get hit, but it's a worthy trade off if it doesn't ever get hit. and i think the military has sort of matured in its understanding of air warfare in the last 20 years. they know now they don't need an all stealth flying force; that would just be a monumental waste of money. stealth for the first 3 days to take down enemy air defenses and high value targets, then bomb trucks the rest of the war. i don't know for sure but i doubt they're gonna replace all the f/a18s with f35Cs. the bomb trucks still have significant value in uncontested air space. that's why the air force is buying new f-15EX strike eagles.

ZandarKoad wrote on Sep 19, 2023, 00:30:

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:31:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 21:46:
If it is true, that's hilarious because it shows, again, what a shitbox the F35 is.

How so? Every aircraft that is hovering near the surface is vulnerable to small arms fire, and every aircraft whose pilot ejects, crashes.

ORLY?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt_m79jK1A

Heh.

That could never happen today however, since all the fighter designs from the past 40 years are fly-by-wire aerodynamically unstable aircraft.

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:31:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 21:46:
If it is true, that's hilarious because it shows, again, what a shitbox the F35 is.

How so? Every aircraft that is hovering near the surface is vulnerable to small arms fire, and every aircraft whose pilot ejects, crashes.

ORLY?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXt_m79jK1A

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:30:
Pretty sure one 50 caliber round in the wrong location is going to cause the failure of any jet engine. Which is not to say I think the F-35 is a great aircraft. I have serious doubt about it. I am tempted to agree with you about it being a "shitbox", but I realize my knowledge level in that area is not far above an average layman, despite my 7 years, 3 months, and 10 days in the USAF -- so, I don't go that far.

I look at this from a Navy perspective. This is the first mainline aircraft that the Navy has deployed that is a single engine airframe since the F-8 Crusader and it, the F-35, was foisted upon them. The USN doesn't want it. Few Naval aviators really want it or like it because it's a low survival aircraft. Put a .50BMG round through an F-18's engine and it's still going to make it back to the deck because it has another. That slow, fat bitch F-14 could take hits, lose an engine, and still come back to the deck. Hell, there are photos of F-4s with half a wing blown off and engines full of shrapnel still making it back to the deck. The Navy, as a whole, "loves" the F-35 so much they're already looking to replace it and the NGAD and FA/XX programs (the latter is part of the former) are already being sought for next year's budget. They want to go back to the consolidated F/A role since the F-35 cannot match the now aging F/A-18's capabilities in the missions and roles that are required of the Navy to fulfill. It just can't. It doesn't have the same weapons weight and, when compared to the last three generations of aircraft, it's fragile. It's also more complex, requires more maintenance hours per air hour, and has a shorter expected MTF on the airframe itself.

When compared to the last three generations and their capabilities in their eras, the F-35 is absolutely a shitbox. Sure, they can sit on the tarmac an an Air Force base and look pretty but they suck at CAS, especially when compared to the old Warthog which is also a much tougher airframe. You can rake both sides of an A-10 with 7.62x39 and it's going to laugh at you while still going brrrrrrrrrt.

The F-35 falls in to the same trap the Phantom did, which is idiots who breathlessly exclaim "technology is going to do ALL THE THINGS". While conveniently forgetting the lessons learned from the last time we tried that approach.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 23:13:

RogueSix wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 23:05:

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:57:

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:31:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 21:46:
If it is true, that's hilarious because it shows, again, what a shitbox the F35 is.

How so? Every aircraft that is hovering near the surface is vulnerable to small arms fire, and every aircraft whose pilot ejects, crashes.

Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II has entered the chat.

To be fair, the A-10 does not exactly "hover". It can fly pretty low and slow (not that it should because it is not invulnerable either) but it's far from the insanity of hovering. The F-35 is a marvel of engineering in that regard. And, yes, it is extremely vulnerable when hovering. The slightest bit of disruption to throw it off balance and the counter goes -1 on F-35s owned .

The F-35B wasn't hovering either, or they wouldn't have had a problem finding the wreckage.

According to the "theory" that small arms fire might have been responsible, the F-35 was supposedly practicing hovering maneuvers. Otherwise, it could not have been hit multiple times by small arms fire in the first place, unless the hick on the trigger was Chuck Norris Himself .

Furthermore, if I were to believe in the small arms fire story, then I am convinced that they never had an issue locating the wreckage (as I said, that story has huge gaping holes anyway). They just told the press so in order to avoid wreckage tourism and to prevent someone from finding a piece of debris with a bullet mark on it.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 23:13:

The F-35B wasn't hovering either, or they wouldn't have had a problem finding the wreckage.

Well, in the sketchy 4chan post the story is that it was hovering and got shot up and they never actually lost it and that the idea that it was somehow missing was just military disinformation. In that scenario there's not really a VTOL plane that exists that would not have been vulnerable to the same outcome, so it's not really an indictment of the F-35 design in the way that BoP was saying. That's the point I was trying to make, anyhow.

RogueSix wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 23:05:

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:57:

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:31:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 21:46:
If it is true, that's hilarious because it shows, again, what a shitbox the F35 is.

How so? Every aircraft that is hovering near the surface is vulnerable to small arms fire, and every aircraft whose pilot ejects, crashes.

Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II has entered the chat.

To be fair, the A-10 does not exactly "hover". It can fly pretty low and slow (not that it should because it is not invulnerable either) but it's far from the insanity of hovering. The F-35 is a marvel of engineering in that regard. And, yes, it is extremely vulnerable when hovering. The slightest bit of disruption to throw it off balance and the counter goes -1 on F-35s owned .

The F-35B wasn't hovering either, or they wouldn't have had a problem finding the wreckage.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:57:

Hardline Mike wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 22:31:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 21:46:
If it is true, that's hilarious because it shows, again, what a shitbox the F35 is.

How so? Every aircraft that is hovering near the surface is vulnerable to small arms fire, and every aircraft whose pilot ejects, crashes.

Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II has entered the chat.

To be fair, the A-10 does not exactly "hover". It can fly pretty low and slow (not that it should because it is not invulnerable either) but it's far from the insanity of hovering. The F-35 is a marvel of engineering in that regard. And, yes, it is extremely vulnerable when hovering. The slightest bit of disruption to throw it off balance and the counter goes -1 on F-35s owned .