The Air Force has announced a new study into the tactical aviation requirements of future aircraft, dubbed TacAir. In the process of doing so, Air Force chief of staff General Charles Q. Brown finally admitted what's been obvious for years: The F-35 program has failed to achieve its goals. There is, at this point, little reason to believe it will ever succeed.
According to Brown,(Opens in a new window) the USAF doesn't just need the NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance) fighter, a sixth-generation aircraft -- it also needs a new, "5th-generation minus / 4.5th-generation aircraft." Brown acknowledged some recent issues with the F-35 and suggested one potential solution was to fly the plane less often. "I want to moderate how much we’re using those aircraft," the general said. "You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This is our high end, we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight... We don’t want to burn up capability now and wish we had it later."Ferrari Would Not Consider This Comparison a Compliment
These statements may not seem provocative, but they represent a huge shift in the Air Force's stance regarding the F-35. This aircraft wasn't supposed to be a Ferrari. Instead, the DoD billed the F-35 -- explicitly, loudly, and repeatedly -- as the single platform that could fill any mission requirement and satisfy virtually any mission profile outside of something a B-52 might handle. But delays and problems with the F-35 have kept the project bogged down. Instead of fielding the F-35, the Air Force, Marines, and Navy have all adjusted their plans -- to keep older aircraft in service.
The F-35 was the brainchild of a project originally known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. The JSF was a multi-national development effort between the United States, the UK, and multiple other partner nations. Its explicit purpose was to create a single aircraft that could replace a wide range of air, ground, and strike fighter capabilities.
Today, the F-35 exists in three variants. The USAF operates the F-35A, which provides conventional takeoff/landing. The F-35B provides short-takeoff and vertical-landing (STOVL) capabilities for the US Marines. Finally, the F-35C is designed for carrier operations and is operated by the US Navy.Jack of All Trades, Master of None
The DoD and Lockheed-Martin have spent years painting the F-35 as a flexible, multi-role aircraft capable of outperforming a range of older planes. The rhetoric worked. The DoD retired the F-22 Raptor, F/A-18 Hornet, and several jets in the Harrier family because the F-35 was in line to replace them. The Air Force fought to replace the beloved A-10 Warthog with the F-35 on the grounds that the latter was, somehow, a superior replacement.
This jet flew home. The F-35 has not proven itself to be equivalently robust. Credit: USAF
The USAF also intended to replace the F-16 with the F-35. Back in 2010, Lockheed expected the F-35 to replace the F-15C/D variants as well as the F-15E Strike Eagle(Opens in a new window). That's six different aircraft covering all three roles (air-to-air, strike, and ground). The F-35 was explicitly intended to be a flexible, effective, and relatively affordable aircraft. Engineers designed its sophisticated logistics management systems to reduce downtime and boost reliability. Instead, it's become a trillion-dollar boondoggle.
Mission Creep
To say the F-35 has failed to deliver on its goals would be an understatement. Its mission capable rate is 69 percent(Opens in a new window), below the 80 percent benchmark set by the military. Just 36 percent of the F-35 fleet is available for dispatch, well below the required 50 percent standard. Problems include faster-than-expected engine wear, transparency delamination of the cockpit, and unspecified issues with the F-35's power module. Former Air Force pilots have not been kind(Opens in a new window) in their recent evaluations of the aircraft's performance and capabilities.
The General Accountability Office (GAO) has blamed some of this on spare parts shortages, writing:[T]he F-35 supply chain does not have enough spare parts available to keep aircraft flying enough of the time necessary to meet warfighter requirements. "Several factors contributed to these parts shortages, including F-35 parts breaking more often than expected, and DOD’s limited capability to repair parts when they break.
But parts shortages aren't the problem. They're a symptom. The F-35 tries to be everything, and mission creep has taken over. The aircraft is a project that reaches beyond its own grasp.
In any case, Gen. Brown indicated he has no plans to buy more F-16s. His reason is that not even the most advanced variants have the full scope of features the USAF wants. This would presumably also disqualify the "F-21" Lockheed-Martin recently announced for the Indian market. Instead, the general wants to develop a new fighter, with fresh ideas on implementing proven technologies.The F-35: A Mystery, Inside an Enigma, Wrapped Up in a Shit Show
At this point, it's obvious that the F-35 is a problem child. There have been so many problems with the aircraft, it's difficult even to summarize them. Pilot blackouts, premature part failures, software development disasters, and more have all figured in various documents over the years. Firing the main gun can crack the plane. The Air Force has already moved to buy new F-15EX aircraft. Multiple partner nations that once promised F-35 buys have shifted orders to other planes. The USAF continues to insist it will purchase 1,763 aircraft, but the odds of it doing so are increasingly dubious. The F-15EX costs an estimated $20,000 per hour to fly. The F-35 runs $44,000. Lockheed-Martin has promised to bring that cost down to $25,000, but it's been promising that for years.
Congress has a voice in this discussion, so it's far from a done deal. But this aircraft has spent over a decade mired in failure. Finally, someone at the DoD is willing, however quietly, to acknowledge that the F-35 will never perform the role they designed it to play. As for how much it'll actually cost to build that 4.5th-generation fighter? The F-35 was pitched to Congress and the world as a way of saving money. Today, estimates of the lifetime cost of the aircraft program, including R&D, exceed $1.5 trillion. The price of a supposedly cheaper 4.5-generation plane could easily match or exceed the F-35's flyaway cost by the time all is said and done, though hopefully any future aircraft would still manage to offer a much lower cost per hour.
Feature Image by Staff Sgt Joely Santiago, USAF(Opens in a new window). Jessica Hall contributed to this report. Now Read:
