How America Oversold Stealth

I said it way back when. I'll say it again. The F-35 is not the plane for Canada. I'm not sure it's the plane for any country, the US and Britain excepted.

My criticisms of the F-35 still hold true. It was pitched as a breakthrough, "fifth generation" jet fighter. At the outset I said it might be a 5th generation airplane but it was Gen 5.0-Beta. A "beta" anything is a development product, a work in progress, a proof of concept experiment.  The F-35 was and remains a beta model.

The usual way a beta progresses is you discard what doesn't work, take what does and incorporate the best elements into something even better. The deal with Lockheed, however, is based on keeping the whole thing, warts and all.

20-years ago when Lockheed's best and brightest were designing the F-35 it was a different world. As stealth strike fighters go, the F-35 was the only game in town. Without something to measure it against Lockheed was able to make the most preposterous claims about their new baby.

The F-35 was designed to defeat challenges that it might face 20-years ago. Things were pretty basic back then. For example just about everyone had settled down to X-band radars. So you design an airplane to defeat X-band radars. And, because of all the inherent flaws in your design, you focus on frontal-aspect stealth cloaking. You're not as concerned about whether your aircraft can be seen from above or below or from the sides or the back. You've reduced your problem from all six facets to just one and that one becomes the litmus test of how stealthy you are. Because you're focusing on radar cross section you pretty much have to "fix" your design from the get go. You can't later bolt on extra stuff because that would give you away, defeat the whole purpose. Meanwhile, as you begin the endless business of testing and developing, your intended adversaries - Russia and China - get out their paper and pencils and figure out how they'll bugger you up.

The guys in the black hats have been real busy. They looked for the Achilles' heel and found a bunch of them. They're everywhere. Some come from the F-35 design. Some come from the F-35 technology. Some arise out of how the aircraft will be deployed and operated tactically. In some cases they've let word out about their counter-measures. In others they're still closely held secrets. Each side is bringing a bunch of stuff to the table and we won't know what works and what doesn't until they lock horns. That day, should it come, will be as fascinating as it will be horrible.

One of the other side's breakthroughs came in being able to identify and target the F-35 from long range. X-band radars aren't very effective. L-band radars work far better. And then there is a range of advanced optical, infrared, even acoustic sensors. The Australians have developed a sensor that can detect the turbulence of a fast jet. What the other side has learned is that you can bundle these sensors, call it "sensor fusion," and all of a sudden what can't be seen, or targeted or attacked, can.

Aviation Week has run a series of articles on "low observable" technology and design and, when you put it all together, it describes the airplane you would build to overcome the F-35's many flaws and shortcomings. Things like "all-aspect" stealth that provides cloaking in all six facets, not just one. Those vertical tails have to go. They're like waving a flag. Instead you wind up with a design that looks like a miniature B-2 bomber, a flying wing. Heat masking is another must have. The F-35 has the hottest tailpipe in the business which leaves it incredibly vulnerable to much faster interceptors in a tail chase. That has to go. And, instead of X-band cloaking, the first real stealth strike fighter will have multi-band, multi-sensor stealth. It has to be radar stealthy across the spectrum, infra-red stealthy, optically stealthy. It has to be everything the F-35 isn't.

That, in a nutshell, is the warplane the United States is designing right now. Build that airplane, load it up with all the electronic wizardry developed for the F-35, and you might just get your money's worth, maybe.

In the meantime Canada should buy something affordable, off the shelf, perhaps of European manufacture. We might even hook up with SAAB on a new aircraft, a twin-engine variant based on their Gripen.