The F35 production may soon be scrapped..seems like the US navy has had huge problems landing the F35 pm its carriers. Estimated cost per plane has risen to $165 million USD... Other sign on nations for the production of the fighter have been told that the advanced electronic system will not be available for their plane orders. some are believed to be on the verge of cancelling their orders. If the production of the F35'S IS CANCELLED it will be a blow for our air force as the US will not sell us the F22. The Russians are expected to have the T50'S in production by 2016..They have already flown at two air shows in Moscow and Paris. They are 5th generation fighters, armed with missiles with a range of 400km. India is going to build the T50'S.. Hope Indonesia doesn't buy any.. Regards Errol 43 Edited ..Had the for sale for $165 each... an omen maybe?
I wonder if we are locked into our order? If production is scrapped and other nations cancel, the cost of maintenance parts could skyrocket. Without active production and a large ownership base, upgrades will slow and we'll have to start thinking about what aircraft to procure next to replace the F-35. I hope Australia hasn't just wasted several billion dollars.
Why don't we scale back to building a single model and get that right. I understand why Australia needs these, but we don't need to be funding R&D for a model that's only going to be used by the US Marines.
Seems like they might have solved the problem the F35 C (NAVY VERSION) was having with landing hook. The hook has been re-positioned. Link^^^google F35 PROBLEM aircraft carrier landing. Regards Errol 43
At the moment I think our buy is at 3 aircraft plus the $200M we paid to become a lvl3 JSF development partner. You want to see some real shocking F-35 news you should see what general hostage said about the F-35 absolutely needing the F-22 to operate and that for most of the envisaged missions it will take 8 lightnings to do the job of 2 raptors. At that ratio it works out heaps cheaper (given the ever rising price of the f-35) to get 60 F-22s than 100 f-35s and we would have gotten much more effective capabilities besides. There are still serious people who think they will restart raptor production. I thought this was a little mad until I learned they kept ALL the tooling and made a video/audio/paper knowledge base of the workers who made the first 187 raptors. Theoretically this was to make future parts supply easier but they have everything they need to kick off the production line again. A B model raptor with some new electronics upgrades would look dammed attractive. I doubt this will actually happen though. The proof for the USNs concern over f-35 is easy to see. They are fast tracking development of 6th gen carrier based fighters under the f/a-xx program. Ostensibly this is because the f-35 is only a partial replacement for the super bug but it likely indicates they will take a reduced f-35 buy (which will HUGELY increase the per unit price as it's only barely workable price wise because of the expected big numbers bought) and try and jump straight to NGAD. I think more likely the USAF and USN will have learned their lesson about common airframes and jointly develop common radar/EW/RAM to save a little money but both will be hands out to congress for money to develop and build next gen aircraft around 5 years after f-35 comes into service on numbers but in time for them to cut the expected buy in half. At this point the program is too big not to get aircraft out of it regardless of how useless thry are (particularly at the price). The money they request will be special emergency money outside of the usual defense budget because they just don't have the money to do this but they will meg it and obviously already want it. My guess is they will wait for some convenient crisis lime Iran getting the bomb so that when midterms roll round even the tea partiers can proudly say they authorised 100 billion to secure America's super power status. Side note, I hate the idea if generations of aircraft. The future of "invincibility through invisibility" i.e stealth, is not assured at all. But apparently the f-35 is a 5th gen aircraft. Meanwhile the su-3x aircraft which in every measurable way are more capable by a huge margin and MUCH more affordable are 4th (4+ if you like this nomenclature). This being premised on the sole basis that the f-35 is stealthy (which it barely is) and the sukhoi is not. All it takes is one clever radar technician or new form of remote sensing to level the playing field on that count and your left with the f-35 costing way more and being almost laughably inferior to the sukhoi. With ever improving IRST sensors already on Russian aircraft (which the f-35 is very vulnerable to), OTH and long wavelength radars that can track most stealth aircraft and the increasing computing power packed into short wavelength radar sites to get tracks from low signal to noise ratio returns it's sketchy at best to bet the farm on a half stealthy expensive aircraft that is outclassed in many ways by western legacy aircraft from the 70's. There are actually a few good things in the JSF program but they are mostly to do with communication and command and control of other assets, essentially all stuff that could be put into a better airframe. It wasn't a bad idea at $50M a plane when it did what was advertised. At $150M a plane that's giving up on all sorts of performance targets all over the place...?
Touchdown! F-35 Fighter Jet Nails 'Landmark' Aircraft Carrier Landing A next-generation F-35C fighter jet successfully landed aboard an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego yesterday (Nov. 3), marking a key milestone for the U.S. Navy. http://www.livescience.com/48601-f35-fighter-jet-aircraft-carrier-landing.html F-35C Completes First Arrested Landing aboard Aircraft Carrier [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STVAM85y3i0[/youtube]
The Russian built SUKHOI T 50(generation 5 fighter) is about to become operational in 2016.. All I can say is God help our Air Force. Regards Errol 43
Better news on the submarine buy...Sweden puts IN PLANS TO AUSTRALIAN government for gotland subs...$20 billion to be made in Australia...IMO the best sub in the world. Quietest because of air comprehson motors. The Swedes share technology with Japan and Germany... Hope that our government sees that it might well be the answer to one of its major problems..Low cost and Jobs for Australians. REgards Errol 43
Interesting idea that I read about recently is that the F-35B is suitable for turning our Canberra-class amphibious assault ships into aircraft carriers. Such a situation would have a dramatic influence on our general capability and strategy.
Isn't it ironic that we are in vicious circle where we are at the mercy of our own ally to buy horrendously expensive equipment that for the most part just rust away whilst this very same ally is the worlds biggest arms dealer by a long way which in itself feeds the very same arms race that we are trying to run in. It is the biggest con is history. As someone far smarter than me said, the problems is governments, not people. Diplomacy is cheaper than these buckets of bolts and the reality is that 6 baby nukes and the country is yours.
Computer glitch prevents US' most advanced F-35 fighter jet from firing until 2019 http://rt.com/usa/219255-f35-fighter-jet-glitch/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...-not-be-able-to-fire-its-guns-until-2019.html
Somewhat misleading. From elsewhere: Some trivia: A test firing of the F-35 gun on the ground: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD_A69B1cyg[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmd8WecFjqA[/youtube] Got anything in a Harrier jump jet ? .... with cup holders of course ....
