Pentagon?s big budget F-35 fighter ?can?t turn, can?t climb, can?t run? | The Great Debate
Pentagons big budget F-35 fighter cant turn, cant climb, cant run
Is there a serious problem, or just the press hunting for a story?
We should have went with a higher number of cheaper, less capable fighters. After all, quantity is it's own quality.
LEt's discuss this. What cheaper, less capable fighter? Considering a full tilt F-16 costs nearly as much as the next batch of F-35s then what fighter should we have chosen? Certainly not the F-18 since it has less capability for performance than even the F-16 although the F18 does have quite a few of the really neat toys.
The most important things for a fighter jet are speed and maneuverability. They really don't need all the fancy bells and whistles. They need a decent electronics warfare package and targeting capability. Other than that, the most important thing is the skill of the pilot. Remember how that F-4 took out two F-18's? They don't need stealth, since it really doesn't give a pilot the edge it used to. So we could make capable fighters for a lot less than an F-35.
Yes, someone here made the claim that one F-4 took out 2 F-18s. It may not have happened. I would require a decent cite before I accept that.
Second, the F-18 is limited to 7 gees when hosting weapons. Originally, the F-4 had a 12G rating but no pilot could ever sustain that. But it could sustain 9 gees in the first few seconds of a turn. The problem is, in the waning days of the F-4 it was reduced to 6 gees. The F-4 started to be limited starting in the late 80s. It got tired after almost 30 years of hard living. But in a real world, the Avionics of the F-18 would smoke any F-4 even in the 90s.
Now, what fighter would you suggest. Obviously it's going to be a light fighter. A Heavy costs over 100 mil. The F-15 in it's most recent form costs more than 110 mil a copy. The F-16 fully equipped to US standards costs at least 80 mil. Even then, the F-35 and F-22 use them as cannon fodder.
We could look at the Russian Fighters. The Mig-35 is just an upgraded Mig-29 which has lost more battles than it's won in actual combat. The SU-35 is an upgraded SU-27 which is a decent fighter. I actually rate the SU-30 better than the SU-35 just because of the numbers in service. The added thrust vectoring is very impressive at an air show but in actual combat, if you slow down enough to use it then you are dead, dead, dead.The SU-35 uses manual controlled thrust vectoring. Us it wrong and things get very hairy very quickly. The only fighter with it where thrust vectoring actually works in combat is the automatic controlled F-22. As it stands now, the Russian Fighters are trying to catch up but they don't really have the capability. The problem is, the technology to compete or surpass the US costs money, lots of money. And decades. So I think we need to look at, maybe, the French.
The Rafale may be the bird you are talking about. But at 93 (USD) a copy, it's out of reach for most smaller air forces.
The F-18, once you deck it out, reaches close to 90 mil. But it's a carrier bird. Alabi, the best of them but carrier birds are heavy and really can't go up against first class land fighters.
The F-16 is also pushing 90 mil when decked out.
What drives up costs isn't the bird itself, it's the avionics. Even then, that avionics is a generation behind the F-35. Probably the best 4 gen fighter right now is the F15E and versions. It has the good stuff, does what you want but is more than 110 mil a copy. Right now, the F-35 avionics is even a half gen better than the F-22. Yes, Stealth will become less affective one day. But for the next 10 or more years, it's still king and that leaves the F-35 at 85 to 95 mil a copy the best buy.
