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Flawed F-35 Fighter Too Big to Kill


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Flawed F-35 Fighter Too Big to Kill as Lockheed Hooks 45 States

By Kathleen Miller, Tony Capaccio & Danielle Ivory - Feb 22, 2013 3:00 AM GMT+0200

F-35: A Short History of the Costliest Fighter Ever

The Pentagon envisioned the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as an affordable, state-of-the-art stealth jet serving three military branches and U.S. allies.

Instead, the Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) aircraft has been plagued by a costly redesign, bulkhead cracks, too much weight, and delays to essential software that have helped put it seven years behind schedule and 70 percent over its initial cost estimate. At almost $400 billion, it’s the most expensive weapons system in U.S. history.

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Wish it would get killed. The price doesn't stop climbing, doesn't match all our needs, and yet my government seems hell bent on buying them no matter what.

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Wish it would get killed. The price doesn't stop climbing, doesn't match all our needs, and yet my government seems hell bent on buying them no matter what.

Just buy those fancy new ones Iran has.

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Wish it would get killed. The price doesn't stop climbing, doesn't match all our needs, and yet my government seems hell bent on buying them no matter what.

The funny thing is, the F35, from what I understand, originated as an effort to provide a more cost-effective alternative to the F-22.

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Just buy those fancy new ones Iran has.

Hahah, I'm betting that the batteries in the remote controller don't fare too well in the arctic.

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History has shown that a one-size-fits-all platform never really works and certainly doesn't save money. There's a reason why you have different air frames performing different missions.

That said, name a weapons system that has been deployed in the past 50 years that hasn't had cost overruns, production delays, and similar articles written about them. Even our most venerable "backbone" systems in use today were laughable government follies at one time or another. It seems to be the norm rather than the exception in military procurement.

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The funny thing is, the F35, from what I understand, originated as an effort to provide a more cost-effective alternative to the F-22.

Figures. I was gonna ask, what's wrong with the F-22? I'm not sure there's even anything out there that can touch it. (I'm not up on air weapon systems though.)

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Figures. I was gonna ask, what's wrong with the F-22? I'm not sure there's even anything out there that can touch it. (I'm not up on air weapon systems though.)

F-22 costs $150 million per aircraft. The F-35 was originally supposed to cost much less, I think around 50 or 60 million... but has gone up to 107 million now for the classic take off varient.

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If it takes 20 years from board to combat flight its a failed money sucking project. Look at the innovation we accomplished during WW2 as an example of what we can do and how fast we can advance these things if we put our "true" effort into it. Its just about the $$

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Too big to kill? Isn't that because the F-35 is meant to carry out strike missions against ground targets also and therefore needs to be a bit bigger and stronger than the F-22 in order to carry bigger munitions?

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Im not sure how much were allowed to talk about the F-35's capabilities outside of America. Sorry.

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It's going to be an export fighter, meaning we are selling it to countries overseas. Italy, Canada, Japan, Australia, and 4 other countries are buying it.

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Just buy those fancy new ones Iran has.

They'd probably sell them for chicken and pistachios :w00t:
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Figures. I was gonna ask, what's wrong with the F-22? I'm not sure there's even anything out there that can touch it. (I'm not up on air weapon systems though.)

One thing I recently learned about the F-22 is that it has to be re-coated with special coatings for every so many flight hours or it does not remain stealthy. Not sure this is a big issue but it seems that anything that affects combat ops would have to be figured into the mix for costs to own.
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It's going to be an export fighter, meaning we are selling it to countries overseas. Italy, Canada, Japan, Australia, and 4 other countries are buying it.

even thou usa sells planes to ally's, none of those planes have same capability's as planes in usa. they get same airframes and engines, but avionics and radars are not the same.

they are ally's today, tomorrow may be different, iran is an example, usa sold them f 14s, back in the days.

Edited by aztek
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Im not sure how much were allowed to talk about the F-35's capabilities outside of America. Sorry.

none of us here knows info that is not allowed to talk about,

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Lightning recently grounded the F-35 variant known as Lightning II because its engineers discovered it could explode if hit by lightning.

It's a gigantic disappointment in performance, a Yugo priced like a Ferrari paraphrasing Winslow Wheeler. Canada pulled its orders for the F-35 completely.

It's probably the ultimate evidence that we can't build anything worth a damn anymore. Our weapons proficiency hung on a little bit longer than our consumer products. China will stamp out superior aircraft for pennies on the dollar and our government will contract to buy theirs. Keynesians probably think we're going to sell more debt to make the purchase; good luck with that ruse continuing much longer.

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Lightning recently grounded the F-35 variant known as Lightning II because its engineers discovered it could explode if hit by lightning.

lol. when will they learn, names do matter, lightning II, Phobos-Grunt (grunt- Russian for ground.).......etc,.

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Yes, it has had lots of problems, but name a weapons system that hasn't.

It will all get fixed and 20 years from now we'll be talking about it like the F16 and F15 - which were plagued with the same kind of problems too.

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what's wrong with the F-22? I'm not sure there's even anything out there that can touch it. (I'm not up on air weapon systems though.)

.

an eurofighter typhoon would scrap it!

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$400bn can't be right, can it?? can it?!

that's more than some company directors earn in a year, so it can't be right surely?

can it??

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When you'r creating a high-tech multi-role stealth fighter with the latest technology and avionics, you're not going to have much change after $90-100 billion for R&D, testing, sourcing of parts. Don't forget that Lockheed made it overly complicated by sourcing the F-35's parts from 1500 different contractors in 48 states.

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yeah, but still, $400bn is a HELLUVA lot of money! when the eurofighter ended up $8bn over budget, people got DISAPPEARED over it!

you guys have some pretty top-notch stuff over there, with probably the best equipped armed forces in the world, and I mean, what the hell happened?!

you can run COUNTRIES on that sort of money!!

must be a pretty kick-ass plane!

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Today its altitude and steath. Make drones that fly high and send missles down on any jet fighter. Duh

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