What a Price To Pay for F35 Fighter!

On the lightning, Lockheed is losing the marketing battle, LM need to licence Apple asap and slap on technicolor apple logo and have rose gold colour scheme.
 
Apple is losing the marketing battle. Not to Android necessarily, mostly to their own high bar expectations of their customers. It's got no VR, no real improvements and the lack of compatibility means that you watch an old 6S commercial on YouTube and feel good about owning one, which means buying one second hand.

Same deal with strike Eagles, solid, tested, much better by almost metric, every aspect except stealth, but that's nearly irrelevant. We don't have a fraction of the support or comms systems to make the most of the features packed in. DAS IR detection at long range of ballistic missiles will never be sent to Australian Aegis cruisers to get an sm-3 to fire.

We will never have the Intel (from NSA data Intel to DIA satellite and everything in between) to use the very limited internal stores usefully in a penetrating strike on high value targets.

We don't have the tankers to get them safely close to where they need to be and as much as they wanted it we will never get a fixed wing fleet air Arm back even if the birds were given as gifts or thigh GT. Don't think this didn't have a real impact on the choice with the AWD early early on.

Go up and wait, try as get involved with JAXA's program. Get cheap second hand strike Eagles or the newer upgraded Korean F-15s or, again, the typhoon. You could completely change the way we fight and geopolitical military focus and get the Gripen or Rafale... There are western choices... In fact it looks like Trump wants to push super bugs which would mean huge new upgrades and possibly partial retrofitting our current inventory to extend and imprint as allow us to keep them and have a much larger fleet...

Many many options.

I very very highly recommend you read the actual report Greg posted, even just the first 2 pages and you'll get the gist. This is a US military report on it's own aircraft, remember that when you're reading it.

Remember that the raptor got plenty of negative press at the time, though it's been so overshadowed by the lightning almost everyone has forgotten, but have a look at this:

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There's about as many ways to price the aircraft as you have fingers and toes, since come without engines, done are total program development cost divided by delivered airframes, since pricings are multiples of others and all are both accurate and inaccurate.
 
China's claim it has 'quantum' radar may leave $17 billion F-35 naked

"CHINA claims it has a radical new 'quantum' radar capable of detecting stealth fighters at great distances. Does this mean our ultra-expensive new F-35 is obsolete, even before we get it?"

"The RAAF's first F-35's will be making their debut Australian appearance at the Avalon air show this week. It's not a combat-capable aircraft, yet, though the first partially operational US squadron of the type was deployed to Japan earlier this year.
But Beijing state media has boasted its scientists have successfully tested a new type of radar capable of defeating stealth technology at ranges out to 100km.
With a single stroke, such a capability would render the $US1 trillion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program obsolete. This includes Australia's $17 billion investment in some 72 examples of the controversial aircraft."

read more at: http://www.news.com.au/technology/i...d/news-story/207ac01ff3107d21a9f36e54b6f0fbab

What a waste of tax payers money ....
 
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